Kilroy
Margaret ‘Big Mags’ Haney on the Kilroy television show in 1997
He became famous for leading a campaign to expel pedophiles from his neighborhood, but Big Mags Haney hid his own criminal history.
In January 1997, long before the modern phenomenon of “pedophile hunters” online, a Scottish grandmother gained fame overnight By successfully expelled a condemned sexual criminal from the Raprain Housing Estate in the Scottish city of Stirling.
Margaret “Big Mags” Haney and his justice spirit have transformed it into a matriarchal personality into the media.
One of his most famous guest appearances was in the popular day -day TV program Kilroy, where he was invited to discuss the “pedophile panic” that was plaguing the county.
Haney argued with the program host, fought with other guests and threatened two men in the audienceclearly disguised, who had been convicted of abusing children.
Its popularity has shot and, in its new role as a self -proclaimed activist against pedophilia, protest throughout the country.
It was seen as a Honest and Honest Personapplauded in many places for defending decent people and taking action to, as she would say, solve a problem that no one else was facing.
Sometimes with a microphone, sometimes with a poster, if Mags was part of the crowd, the press was interested-and the press appearances continued to happen.
“I think there was something inside her, because she really believed it was wrong,” says Cassie Donald, her granddaughter of Haney, who first spoke in a BBC podcast.
“The community was already suffering enough without the pedophiles. She was not the only person who spoke.
But Haney kept a secretand it didn’t take long for it to come out.
Six months after his meteoric rise to fame, the focus of the press moved to the Haney family criminal record.
Big Mags was head of a “wave of a family crimes”Responsible for theft and violence in Stirling.
They were called “Scotland Hell Family”By the tabloids.
“Some of them could have dozens of crimes in their name,” recalls Daily Record journalist Mark McGivern.
“The amount of crimes committed in Stirling for this family was legendary, so it was not good to have them around,” he says.
With the crimes of the exposed family, and the patience of the depleted local community, Big Mags and the Haney were forced to leave the housing estate by a group of 400 people – larger than the one they gathered to expel the pedophile Alan Christie six months earlier.
The crowd gathered near Mags’s apartment shouting “make a fire and put the Haney at the top.”
As the screams got higher, police vehicles arrived at Huntly Crescent to avoid a riot.
Haney came out of a pink shirt and slipper, and showed the middle finger to the crowd while being taken away to his own security.
After his exile from the Raprain Housing Estate, Haney was placed in a temporary accommodation provided by the Municipality.
But, like no other local authority in Scotland or northern England was willing to relieve it, he eventually established himself at the Lower Bridge Street, a few steps from his former territory.
All this time, it continued with this “celebrity”and the Scottish press still loved news about Big Mags.
In 2000, a darker secret about the matriarch and the Haney clan came to light.
Mark McGivern newspaper launched the “Shop-a-Dealer” campaign, which encouraged readers to denounce anonymously largest heroin traffickers of your communities.
The phones kept playing, with many people calling to incriminate Big Mags, accusing it to be the Head of a Dynasty of Trafficking that sold heroin in his apartments.
Community Leader and Gangster
McGivern remembers how the Mags Statute has changed celebrated to feared.
“She was a public figure, a community leader, a great heroine drug dealer and a gangster,” he says.
The journalist had a well -informed source that revealed to him the Haney drug trafficking operation, with Mags in charge. He then investigated, and witnessed family members to sell drugs in the apartments.
McGivern He even bought some heroin packages of Haney as part of your investigation.
Despite having the necessary material to publish the report, he wanted to try to negotiate the purchase of drugs directly with the head of the scheme.
“I entered, they asked me to go to the living room, and I was a little surprised to see that Mags was sitting on a thronea huge chair in the middle of the room, ”recalls the journalist.
“I asked to buy drugs – heroine,” and she looked at me and said, ‘We don’t sell heroin here‘.
“I thought, ‘How am I going to get out of this?'”
Stunned and feeling somewhat intimidated, McGivern fled the “Fortaleza Haney”as it was known, and returned to write your report.
The Daily Record newspaper posted Mags’s photo on the first page with the number one headline.
There was a secret police operation. Four members of the Haney clan were arrested for drug -related crimes and tried at the Edinburgh Superior Court.
In court, it was said that Haney Won up to a thousand pounds a day With the operation, in addition to receiving £ £ £ £.
The judge stated that 60 -year -old Mags was the mentor behind the operation, trafficking large amounts of heroin from what was known as “Haney Hotel.”
Haney was sentenced to 12 years in prison; His 35 -year -old daughter Diane was sentenced to nine years; his 40 -year -old niece Roseann to seven years; and his 31 -year -old son Hugh to five years.
Diane’s daughter, Cassie, was only 10 years old when her mother and grandmother went to prison.
“I remember going to school on the morning of the sentence, and when I came home, they were just not there,” Cassie told BBC. “They said to me, ‘Your mother is in prison, but you’ll see her soon.’ The attitude toward them at the time was basically: ‘You made the bed, now go down in it‘, and there was not much consideration from everyone. ”
Despite the convictions, residents and journalists remained intrigued by the reason for the delay To dismantle Haney’s drug trafficking operation, which was allegedly intense throughout the 1990s.
These Haney family members were convicted of their involvement in a 18 -month drug operation until their arrest in 2001.
Simon McLean, a retired police who investigated the Haney, told the BBC podcast because he thought the drug trafficking operation had not been dismantled before.
“The obvious answer is that She was informant“, These.
“Criminal families and organized crime leaders, I met all these people, and never met one who didn’t talk to the police to some level.”
Another police source confirmed that Big Mags provided information to the police.
Mags Haney Died of cancer in 2013at 70.
Twelve years later, Cassie believes her grandmother’s legacy is more complex than she was portrayed in Mmedia.
“Two things can be true at the same time. It may be a drug dealer who has sold drugs that potentially killed people, but it can also be a loving grandmother and a good person still feel that we should tell you your story.”
