Killers, sex attackers, and violent criminals are amongst Scotland’s longest serving prisoners.
The Record’s new series will explore the individuals and their sordid crimes that have kept them locked away from the public.
Owen Bonner had already spent time at the State Hospital in Carstairs when he was caged again for more than three decades after a notorious five-hour siege at a chicken factory.
The violent brute held two female co-workers hostage at knifepoint during the terrifying incident at Marshall’s Chunky Chicken in Coatbridge.
The incident happened only one year after he had been released from Carstairs.
He was regarded as such a danger to society that he has remained locked up for 32 years later, as one of Scotland’s longest serving prisoners.
Bonner forced his hostages to pray during the five-hour siege as he declared himself “worse than the devil”.
He slashed both women as he waited for his £10,000 ransom demand to be met and made a series of bizarre demands, saying he wanted TV cameras and a Michael Jackson album and outfit.
Police eventually intercepted the then 27-year-old and arrested him.
He was put on trial at the High Court in Glasgow in 1994.
It was heard in court that Bonner said he had been hearing his own voice outside his head telling him to do things.
It was also revealed that when he had been released from Carstairs in 1993, he was ordered to continue taking drugs which helped his schizophrenia.
His mental condition deteriorated when he stopped taking the drugs and on the night he took the women hostage he had also been sniffing glue.
He was eventually found insane by a jury and returned to Carstairs, where he was detained without limit.
Following his conviction, Helen Liddell, then-Labour MP for Monklands East, wrote to Ian Lang, the Conservative Secretary of State for Scotland at the time, demanding answers for the reasoning behind letting him out of the security hospital in the first place.
Locked up from public view in Carstairs, he was known to regularly fight with other patients, disobey basic rules, dressed bizarrely, refused to get out of bed and continued to tell people he was the devil.
During his three decades in custody, he has tried to escape from the psychiatric facility several times.
In 1999, he gave his Carstairs nurses the slip on an escorted trip and briefly went on the run in Glasgow city centre. He was eventually picked up after being found semi-conscious after sniffing glue.
He was later transferred to the medium-security facility at Rowanbank Clinic near Stobhill Hospital in Springburn as part of a programme to eventually release him into the community.
However, in 2015 he sparked a major alert after going on the run during a shopping trip to Glasgow.
The following year he absconded again while on escorted leave before cops caught up with him a day later and returned him to Rowanbank.
Last year, during a trip to the dentist in Ayrshire he managed to escape again and Police Scotland warned the public not to approach him while launching an appeal for information on his whereabouts.
He was eventually traced four days later after a huge manhunt and remains in custody.
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