Hello and welcome to episode 420 of the UK True Crime Podcast. I'm Adam.

Thank you so much joining me today when we will continue our story from last week.

So there's no guest a month and year game today, but don't worry, it'll be back next week.

If you recall that in the last episode, we followed Edinburgh-based criminal Rodney McLean

as he planned a drug shipment into the UK.

In the operation off the north-east coast of Scotland in July 1996, McLean, known as Popeye,

was arrested when police and customs officers captured a gang of UK and Dutch drug smugglers

off the Caithness coast, with McLean leading the Scottish part of the smuggling plot.

During the operation, a customs officer, 47-year-old father of three Alastair Souter was killed

when he fell and he was crushed between a customs cutter and McLean's

boat. At the time, there were three tons of cannabis on board McLean's converted lifeboat,

Ocean Jubilee, valued at £10 million if it had been sold on the streets at the time.

McClein was convicted in court and sentenced to 28 years in prison.

A year later, this was reduced to 21 years, when the court of appeal ruled that the judge

had been too severe in his sentence as he was punishing McLean for the death of

Alastas de Souter, even though McLean faced no charges in connection to his death.

In his book on McLean, which you can find, along with all my sources in the show notes,

author Wayne Thallon, who is McLean's nephew, had access to diaries and documents written by McLean in prison.

And from this it's clear that McLean, he didn't like prison one bit. He said,

prison is shit. In fact, it's appalling. It deprives you of everyone you love and of everything

you own. It renders you a hollow man, reduced to suffering and needs while the regimentation

that you first despise soon becomes the very

...