In the latest in our series on unsolved gangland murders the Daily Record examines the fatal stabbing of drugs suspect Martin Toner 22 years ago and how his death remains a mystery to this day
It was early in the morning and a farmer was collecting hay bales when he spotted the body of a man concealed under a hedge.
He called the police who discovered the man had been stabbed several times and his throat slashed.
It also looked like he victim had been killed elsewhere and his body dumped in the field, near the Renfrewshire village of Langbank.
Detectives quickly identified the victim as 34 year old father-of-two Martin Toner from the south side of Glasgow.
He had been reported missing by his wife two weeks earlier and was due to appear in court on cocaine smuggling charges.
Toner, who ran a bin cleaning company, was last seen around 3pm on June 29, 2004, in Langbank’s Main Street and at the Key To Life gym in the Pollokshaws area of Glasgow earlier in the day.
At the time he went missing, almost 22 years ago, police assumed he had gone on the run because of his forthcoming trial. But his family were always convinced he’d been murdered and would never leave his children behind.
As with all murders with a gangland connection police quickly met a wall of silence and struggled to find an obvious motive.
They believed Toner had been lured to his death on the day of his disappearance perhaps by someone he knew and trusted. Appeals for information by the police and family members elicited little response, despite the offer of a £3000 reward.
One senior officer said at the time: “Mr Toner’s alleged involvement in criminality has been widely reported and may be one of the reasons why there is a reluctance on the part of some people to speak to the police.”
The victim’s distinctive Berghaus sports hold-all and mobile phone were also never found.
Eventually the case was wound down and officers moved to other duties until a dramatic development a decade later In 2014 former police officer Douglas Fleming, then 50, was charged with Martin Toner’s murder and stood trial at the High Court in Glasgow the following March.
Now a property developer Fleming was alleged to have killed Toner in the grounds of Gleddoch Estate, Langbank, ten years earlier, before dumping the body in the farmers field.
Fleming, who had served as a Constable with Central Scotland Police for three years in the 1980’s, had become a suspect after admitting giving the murder victim a lift to Langbank on the day he went missing.
They had met earlier at the gym in Pollokshields at around 2.30pm. Fleming then dropped Toner close to the railway station in Langbank and said that was the last he saw him.
At the end of the trial Fleming was cleared after the jury found the murder charge not proven.
A murder charge against a second man was dropped earlier in the trial.
Fleming had been previously cleared in 2008 of conspiracy to import cocaine to Scotland from Colombia, also on a not proven verdict.
Toner had been due to stand trial with Fleming on the same charges.
The day he vanished was the day before their pre-trial hearing.
Both men had been accused of trafficking millions of pounds’ worth of cocaine from Colombia to Antwerp, Belgium.
A trial was told that plain-clothes officers from the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency trailed Fleming to Antigua, in the West Indies, where he met Martin Toner.
Fleming admitted knowing Toner but denied having anything to do with drugs.
To this day it is not clear why he was murdered
One theory was that certain major underworld figures were worried that he might give evidence against them at his forthcoming drugs trial and expose their activities.
Two years before his murder Toner had been involved in a dispute with two brothers from the Glasgow area said at the rime to control the cocaine trade in Scotland.
In 2002, one of them had allegedly gone to Toner’s house and tried to shoot him but the gun jammed and then he tried to stab him.
However Toner who was a martial arts expert was able to overpower his assailant and fend him off.
The two brothers are said to have relocated to Portugal and then Brazil from where they ran their criminal empires.
Nothing has been heard from them for more than six years and they are now feared dead.
It’s not known why Toner went to Langbank on the day of the murder.
It has been suggested he was there to collect £100,000 he had secretly hidden away.
The Toner family have always insisted he was not a big time gangster.
In a 2015 interview his brother James said :”When I think gangster’, I think Al Capone. Martin was not Al Capone.
“He was a family man, who was dedicated to his wife and his two kids. “Everything he did, he did to provide for them.”
Graeme Pearson, former Director General of the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency (SCDEA) said the Martin Toner case reflected the growing international element to drug dealing at the time.
He says criminals of that era from both Glasgow and North Lanarkshire were making contacts abroad and running shoplifting teams in places like Paris and Amsterdam using football matches as a cover.
Around this time the name of the agency changed from the Scottish Drugs Enforcement Agency to the SCDEA in recognition of the growth of organised crime linked to the drugs trade and money laundering.
Mr Pearson added:”When we got to the late 1990s and the early 2000’s that was when things really began to expand.
“Martin Toner was well known at the time.
“But he wasn’t one on the first tier in terms of paying attention to him.
“You had a whole panoply of people who were travelling abroad and making links with European criminals and sharing phone numbers and emails and building up trust.
“During these early days some of the so called trustworthy people were not so trustworthy.
“So at the Scottish end people did get ripped off and grassed up and that is where a lot of these violent crimes emanated from.”
A Police Scotland spokesperson said: “The murder of Martin Toner remains unresolved. Unresolved murders are cases that are never closed and Police Scotland is fully committed to identifying those people responsible for all such cases.
“Police Scotland works closely with the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service and meets regularly to review outstanding unresolved murders from across the country. Working collaboratively, the potential for new investigative opportunities are regularly assessed to maximise the ability to deliver justice for grieving families, irrespective of the passage of time.
“As with any unresolved murder case, we would review any new information provided to police and investigate further if appropriate.”
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