Heroin smuggling wife sentenced

The court heard Brian Martin was trying to set up a drugs racket

A gangster's wife who tried to smuggle heroin to her husband behind bars has been jailed for three years.

Perth Sheriff Court heard that Brian "The Hawk" Martin - once branded the UK's most wanted man - was trying to set up a drugs racket in Perth Prison.

His wife Diane sewed £1,500 worth of heroin into a pair of jeans and sent them to the jail. She was caught after she left her DNA on the clingfilm wrap.

A drug dealing charge against an inmate, Richard McKee, was not proven.

The court heard Martin, 43, from Perth, sent the jeans to her husband in May, using a false name and from a post office which would not capture her image on CCTV.

DNA experts said there was a billion to one chance the drugs could have been sent by someone else.

They had a cunning plan, like the ones Baldrick used to come up with in Blackadder John Malpass Fiscal Depute

The bungled attempt to get drugs into the jail where her husband was serving 10 years was made just 10 days after he was locked up.

The 48-year-old inmate, from Ballingry in Fife, wanted to establish a drugs racket inside the maximum security jail and picked 21-year-old McKee out to use as his dupe.

McKee, from Fife, told the court he had been bullied and was told he would have to accept a package being sent to the jail in his name.

However, prison officers were suspicious about the bulky linings of the trousers and tore the jeans apart.

Interviewed at the jail, McKee said: "I'm not saying who organised it. I was to give them to the boy in here.

"I can't say who because he will get me and my family. He told me not to say anything.

"I regret it big time now. The jeans were not even in my size."

'For sale'

Fiscal depute John Malpass said: "They had a cunning plan, like the ones Baldrick used to come up with in Blackadder.

"This amount of heroin being introduced into the prison system is for onward transmission. It was for sale.

"She said she didn't do it. What she didn't do was, she didn't wear gloves when she was wrapping the heroin in the clingfilm."

McKee told the court he had not signed a form in the jail to say he would accept the package - and the charge of drug dealing was found not proven against him.

Sheriff Michael Fletcher said he had no option but to jail Martin for three years after she was unanimously found guilty.

Her husband had been jailed after a nationwide manhunt.