CONVICTED hitman Barry Harvey turned his back on a promising footie career to build a gangland reputation for savagery that terrified even his own henchmen.
The former Partick Thistle youth ace, 36, was feared by both rivals and cronies for the brutality he used — especially when chasing drug debts.
And before Harvey was nailed this week for being a gunman in a three-man execution squad, his trial heard an allegation he used a claw hammer and booze bottle to torture sidekick Thomas Guthrie, 28.
A witness told the High Court in Glasgow that the alleged victim said the brute — who’d been caged for a bloodbath knife attack at the age of just 19 — was “mental”.
Guthrie was Harvey’s getaway driver when he shot dead gym boss Gary More, 32, in Airdrie in September 2018 — when chilling images of the assassin clutching a pistol in the street were captured on CCTV.
The pair also teamed up four months later when Scott Bennett, 43, survived being shot in the head in Rutherglen, near Glasgow.
But jurors were told Guthrie only started working for Harvey after being attacked by him in a horror onslaught in January 2018.
Witness Roy Bennett claimed the blood-soaked beating was carried out over an alleged £40,000 debt.
He claimed Guthrie, nicknamed Tam, begged for mercy.
And Bennett admitted the sight of raging Harvey prowling round his flat in Maryhill, Glasgow, with two masked associates left him so scared that he burst out crying.
He said the first sign of trouble came when he received a phone call from Harvey.
Seconds later the buzzer to his high-rise flat sounded and the fiend appeared with two lackeys.
Bennett claimed the trio, in dark gear and balaclavas, warned him he’d be battered to a pulp if he did not call Guthrie and summon him to the 21st-storey pad.
He said Harvey was strolling round his home “like he owned the place” and was the only one of the three thugs brazen enough to lower his mask and show his face.
And while waiting for Guthrie to arrive, he began ransacking the living room looking in vain for drugs he suspected were stashed.
Giving evidence, 5ft 4in Bennett admitted he began weeping with fear at this point.
When Guthrie appeared, he said Harvey grabbed a claw hammer — then ordered Bennett to head out to the balcony.
The violent maniac handed him a blanket before locking him outside in freezing winter temperatures.
Harvey was then said to have turned up the volume on the TV to drown out the sound of his assault on petrified Guthrie.
Bennett recalled seeing Harvey arm himself with a liqueur bottle before orchestrating a prolonged torture ordeal.
The witness claimed that while standing outside he could still hear Guthrie’s screams and overheard him whimpering: “I’m sorry.”
Eventually the balcony door was opened, revealing a chaotic and sickening scene.
He said Guthrie looked “burst”, with his head bloody and bruised, while his knees were smashed and his trousers were left in shreds.
Bennett told the court: “I asked if I could leave but Barry said, ‘No, because you might need to call an ambulance for your pal.’
“Barry said, ‘Sorry this had to happen in your house.’ Then he shook my hand and left.”
Traumatised Guthrie refused to let his chum call 999. Instead, he asked to be driven to his parents’ home in nearby Summerston.
Bennett insisted he never told anyone about what had happened.
But later he heard people speculating Harvey had attacked Guthrie.
And he feared reprisals after his mum called to say the enforcer had gone to her door looking for him — and she’d cracked his fingers with a golf club when he put his hands through the letterbox.
The witness claimed Harvey later called him again and demanded £1,000 for him “leaking” details of the alleged attack.
Bennett said he insisted he hadn’t grassed and refused to pay up. But he added he was too scared to go home and spent the night in a hotel.
In court, Harvey’s defence team suggested Bennett had made up the whole story to hide his own involvement and “parachuted” in their client’s name.
But the witness told them: “It would be crazy to throw his name into this.”
Judge Lord Clark later acquitted Harvey of the alleged attack after prosecutors dropped the charge.
But the 12-week trial heard how Guthrie continued to look up to him and traded on his association with the evil hardman as an uneasy bond formed between the underworld pair.
Bennett claimed his pal feared Harvey and wanted to be like him. In a statement to cops, he alleged: “Tam would say he was mental. He was really impressed by Barry and wanted to be his mate.
“He would fling Barry’s name about all the time to make people scared of him. He used Barry’s name to threaten me.”
The witness said his chum saw himself as a “hotshot” because he was hanging about with the heavy.
And he told how he saw them together after being summoned by Guthrie late one night.
His friend called him and asked to be picked up in Glasgow.
When he got there, Harvey jumped in the passenger seat “out of the blue”. Bennett thought at first he was in big trouble.
But it emerged they wanted him to drive them to a remote location in Baldernock, Dunbartonshire, because they were looking to dump a stolen motor that had been used in a knife attack on lawyer Joe Shields.
The brief survived being slashed in the face by Guthrie in a kill bid outside his law firm’s office in the city’s Laurieston on July 19, 2018.
But Mr Shields, who had been left scarred by the vicious blade attack, died in February last year, aged 68.
Jurors convicted Guthrie this week of attempting to murder him.
He’d previously been caged for 21 years and seven months in August 2021 after he pled guilty to his part in the savage slaying of More.
Neil Anderson, 47, was put behind bars at the same time for 21 years and nine months after being found guilty of setting up the dad’s murder.
A trial at Glasgow’s High Court was told the car dealer, of Bothwell, Lanarkshire, lured More outside his house to provide a clear shot to the gunman — now identified as Harvey.
Horrifying footage shows the monster walking towards his target while firing 11 shots, three of which hit the helpless victim in the head.
Guthrie then drove Harvey away from the scene in a Skoda, which was found burnt out near the same spot in Baldernock.
Jurors heard how paid assassin Harvey later spent his earnings on a set of “Turkey teeth”.
He and Guthrie then schemed with Darren Owen, 24, to gun down drug dealer Scott Bennett.
They lured their rival to the car park of a vet’s practice in Rutherglen on December 3.
Harvey shot Bennett in the head but the bullet passed through his throat and lodged in his neck.
The panicking target fled to a nearby restaurant while his attackers dumped their car on a country road.
Owen was also found guilty this week of executing Rafal Lyko, 36, over drug debts in Blantyre, Lanarkshire on February 11, 2019.
The Polish national’s remains were discovered in a burnt-out Mercedes.
We told how Harvey was part of Partick’s youth set-up at their Firhill base in Glasgow until he was 15.
But he then turned to a life of crime and violence. In 2004, he left Thomas McCairns close to death in a blade assault carried out while “heavily under the influence”.
He was 19 when he was jailed for nine years over the murder bid.
Harvey will be sentenced along with Guthrie and Owen next month.
