Raymond Anderson yesterday denied he was behind the death of Kevin "The Gerbil" Carroll and, in a jail interview, Anderson, 47, pointed the finger at the Lyons underworld clan.He said Carroll - an enforcer for the rival Daniel family - was gunned down in revenge for a bungled hit on a Lyons gang member.And he rejected claims that Carroll, 29, was killed outside an Asda superstore for informing on him and James McDonald over the 2006 slaying of underworld figure Michael Lyons.
At Shotts jail in Lanarkshire - where he is serving 35 years for Michael Lyons's murder - Anderson said he only learned the Gerbil was dead when he phoned his daughter half an hour after news of the shooting emerged on Tuesday.He said: "I had nothing to do with Kevin's murder. I was shocked when I heard."The killing was a revenge attack for a botched hit on one of the members of the Lyons family recently.
"I knew Kevin but although he wasn't a personal friend of mine my heart still goes out to his family and what's left behind all through a drugs war."It is the loss of another young life and it's all over drugs."Anderson and henchman McDonald, 35, were found guilty of killing Lyons in December 2006 in an underworld contract killing.
He spoke out as police revealed they had found the burned-out car used by the three hitmen who shot Carroll five times outside the Asda in Robroyston, Glasgow.The Gerbil was dating Kelly Bo Daniel, 27, daughter of millionaire crime boss Jamie - who has been involved in a long-running turf war with the Lyons - and working as an enforcer for the clan.Carroll was also a ringleader in a series of savage underworld kidnappings - seizing and torturing his gang's rivals for cash, drugs and guns. He and his cronies were nicknamed the "alien abduction" gang because their traumatised victims told police they could not remember anything about their ordeal.He had survived two previous assassination attempts but sources say the failed bid to murder a member of the Lyons family prompted them to send the three hitmen to finish him off.Carroll was alone in an Audi car outside the superstore when he was gunned down.Police are probing a theory that the two men who drove him to the car park where he was assassinated deliberately set him up.