Chain-smoking Margaret ‘Mags’ Haney ruled over an empire peddling heroin from the Raploch estate in Stirling, pocketing huge sums while members of her family did her bidding.
A notorious gangster grannie who flooded city streets with heroin while posing as a community champion evaded justice for years because she was a police informant, a former detective has claimed.
Chain-smoking Margaret ‘Mags’ Haney ruled over an empire peddling heroin from the Raploch estate in Stirling, pocketing huge sums while members of her family did her bidding.
The infamous crime queen died of cancer in 2013, aged 70, ten years after she was jailed for her role in the £250,000-a-year operation. Now, former undercover officer Simon McLean has made the bombshell claim that she was a grass in a six-part podcast called Ballad of Big Mags.
He says there is “no ‘if ‘” about whether the gravel-voiced granny was known by cops in Stirling to be running a drugs racket. But he believes she was given a free pass because she was snitching on other criminals.
When asked why Haney wasn’t shut down earlier despite the town knowing her to be a drug dealer, McLean says: “Because of the relationships with the police.
“I’ve dealt with many, many, many terrorists and very serious criminals, both nationally and internationally, and I’ve never known a successful criminal — or who people would regard as successful — who’s made a lot of money and made a life out of it, that hasn’t been talking and informing to the police at some level.”
When asked if Haney was a criminal informant, McLean says: “There’s no, absolutely no, ‘if ‘ about that whatsoever. I’ve seen it a hundred times, more, where a heroin dealer especially thinks that somebody else is getting into his marketplace, then he’ll shop them to me. Because he wants them off the street. When you think about it, it’s common sense, isn’t it? It’s dog eat dog.”
The mum of 11 put herself forward as a vigilante against the threat of child abusers and even appeared on the Kilroy TV show to talk about protecting youngsters.
But in 2003, after the Daily Record exposed her crimes, Haney admitted running a £250,000-a-year drugs operation, utilising a network of runners including her kids, grandchildren and nieces.
The BBC podcast hears of the rise and fall of Haney, including details on how the paper’s investigation in 2000 led to her being given a 12 year jail sentence.
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