Hogmanay hitman turned streets of Edinburgh into '1930s Chicago'

A HITMAN who murdered a gangster outside a pub on Hogmanay was told he made the streets of Scotland look like "Chigaco in the 1930s".

- BY JAMES MULHOLLAND

Grant Hunter, 34, shot Marc Webley, 38, dead outside the Anchor Inn in Granton, Edinburgh, shortly after 11.30pm on December 31, 2023.

The High Court in Edinburgh heard how Hunter carried out the hit on Webley on "behalf of others unknown" to law enforcement.

CCTV footage showed Hunter parking a stolen Hyundai Tucson car outside the pub before getting out.

Hunter - who was wearing a balaclava, which he pulled up so his victim could see his face - and Webley were seen speaking to each other as a police car drove past.

The assassin then produced what detectives believe to be a Slovakian-made pistol, which has never been recovered. He was then seen to shoot a man called Stewart Pearson.

Members of Webley's family, who were present in court, then watched their relative try to run away as the hitman shot him in the back.

Webley was pronounced dead an hour later after being rushed to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.

Yesterday, prosecutor Graeme Jessop KC told Lord Mulholland how Hunter and his then girlfriend Emma McVie, 27, drove from the scene and hid out in various properties in Edinburgh.

In the days after the attack, they took cocaine, clothes and money from another man called Gary Robertson, 22.