It was a typical Saturday night at 10.50pm when a masked man entered the bustling Marmion pub in Edinburgh, brandishing a sawn-off shotgun and began firing.
Within moments, one man was fatally wounded and another severely injured as the gunman fled into the night.
He was chased down by a crowd from the Edinburgh bar who brutally beat him with his own weapon. Jamie Bain, fuelled by cocaine, had targeted members of his partner Dionne Hendry’s family, known for their violent reputation.
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Their tumultuous relationship had been the catalyst for that night’s events and continued to cause friction between the families years later. Bain married Dionne in 2014 in a high-security prison where he is serving a life sentence for murder, with one family member describing it as a “marriage made in hell”.
The months following the wedding saw a resurgence of violence in Edinburgh, with the prison wedding believed to have reignited old feuds. Among the incidents, Dionne’s Range Rover was shot at and a fake bomb was left on her doorstep.
Dionne and Bain, who were childhood sweethearts at Liberton High School, had their first child when Dionne was just 16 and later had a son.
However, by 2006, Bain, then aged 22, had become a part of the city’s criminal underworld and was involved in a dispute with a cocaine dealer based in Inch. Just weeks before the Marmion shooting, police had warned Bain that his life was in serious danger.
Bain himself claimed he’d been attacked with a machete, run over by a speeding car and nearly stabbed in front of his two children. Amid this chaos, Bain assaulted Dionne on the morning of April 22, leaving her needing hospital treatment for bruising to her cheekbone and nose.
Police believed he feared reprisals from members of Dionne’s family. That evening, Bain spent his time bingeing on cocaine at a flat party in Garvald Court before heading out to the pub on Captain’s Road.
His friend Bernard Young provided him with the stolen shotgun while another friend, Richard Cosgrove, accompanied him to the bar. James Hendry, then 27, was the first to be hit by Bain, who had his face concealed behind a hockey mask, only seconds after being handed a drink by a barmaid.
Then Bain turned the gun on boxing champion Alex McKinnon, 32, Hendry’s brother-in-law, who died from his severe injuries. After being attacked outside, Bain spent a week fighting for his life at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and later underwent plastic surgery.
At his trial, his defence team, led by Donald Findlay QC, claimed that Bain’s memory of the months leading up to the brutal beating had been wiped out.
Speaking from behind bars after his conviction, Bain stated: “I honestly can’t remember anything. Alex was a good friend so I can’t understand why it would’ve happened. I cried when I was told he was dead. He was a good guy. I wish I could remember. At least it might give me some kind of explanation.”
Bain, who earned the nickname “baby-faced assassin was ordered to serve life with a minimum of 22 years,” was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 22 years.
He planned to submit legal documents to fight for the right to have “conjugal visits” from Dionne.
Fast forward seven years, and the couple exchanged vows at Shotts Prison. A member of the Hendry family commented: “This is a marriage made in hell. How Dionne now Dionne Bain can flaunt the death of Alex McKinnon by marrying his killer is beyond me. They are welcome to each other.”
In 2008, Dionne’s younger brother was imprisoned for nine months for assaulting Bain’s mother, father, and sister. The marriage was feared to have reignited the feud between the two families, and in September 2014, a surge in violence shook the city.
A family home in Moredun was targeted in a shooting. This terrifying attack occurred just days after an 18 year old man suffered severe facial injuries following an assault in Gilmerton.
Dionne’s Range Rover was riddled with bullets, leaving a gaping hole beneath its personalised number plate. A sinister concoction of a petrol drum and shotgun shells, ominously left on her doorstep, came with a Liverpool FC scarf attached and a chilling note that read: “Time’s running out, lad.”
That same evening, another explosive device was discovered by the Inch residence of a Bain ally, while a property in Gilmerton also became a target for gunfire.
James Hendry, who survived the notorious Marmion pub shooting, was sentenced to 40 months behind bars for the culpable homicide of ex-Royal bodyguard Edward Dooley, following a fatal punch in 2008. The former Scottish light-heavyweight boxing champion of 2001 passed away unexpectedly at his home in December at the age of 40.
Back in 2015, Hendry had been acquitted of an alleged attempt to kidnap one of the Argyll Arcade heist culprits in Glasgow.
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