Gangs of Edinburgh: The baby-faced assassin and childhood sweethearts who fuelled bloody street war between crime families

Warring crime families' unease over relationship erupted into shocking night of violence

It was 10.50pm on a Saturday when a masked man walked into the packed Marmion pub, a sawn-off shotgun gripped in both hands, and opened fire.

In moments, one man had suffered fatal wounds and a second lay badly injured as the shooter fled into the darkness.

He would be pursued through the streets by a mob who chased him from the Edinburgh bar. They beat him brutally in the face with the butt of his own weapon.

Jamie Bain had been cornered only yards from his front door after launching the gun attack that shocked the city in April 2006.

Fuelled by cocaine, Bain had targeted relatives of his partner Dionne Hendry, a member of the notorious Hendry clan with its reputation for violence.

Their star-crossed relationship had sowed the seeds of that night, and years later, the volatile union was still a source of bad blood between the families.

Bain wed Dionne in 2014 in a high-security prison where he is serving a life for murder, with one Hendry family member describing it as a “marriage made in hell”.

In the months following the ceremony, Edinburgh was again rocked by violence, with the jailhouse nuptials feared to have sparked fresh animosity.

Among the incidents, Dionne’s Range Rover was blasted with a gun and a hoax bomb was left on her doorstep.

She and Bain had been childhood sweethearts at Liberton High School, and she described him later as a “bit of a poser but a good guy to me”.

Dionne fell pregnant with their first child at 16 and the couple later had a son.

But by 2006, Bain, then 22, was part of the city’s underworld and embroiled in a feud with an Inch-based cocaine dealer.

Police had warned Bain his life was in serious danger just weeks before the Marmion shooting.

Bain himself claimed he’d been attacked with a machete, run over by a speeding car and almost stabbed in front of his two kids.

Amid this turmoil, 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.

Bain spent that evening bingeing on cocaine at a flat party in Garvald Court before setting out for the pub on Captain’s Road.

His pal Bernard Young provided him with the stolen shotgun while another friend, Richard Cosgrove, accompanied him to the bar.

James Hendry, then 27, was first to be hit by Bain, face concealed behind a hockey mask, only seconds after being handed a drink by a barmaid.

Then Bain turned the gun on boxing champ Alex McKinnon, 32, Hendry’s brother-in-law, who died from his terrible injuries.

Bain spent a week fighting for his life at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary after being set upon outside and later underwent plastic surgery.

At his trial, his defence team, led by Donald Findlay QC, claimed Bain’s memory for the months preceding the savage beating had been erased.

Speaking from prison after being convicted, Bain said: “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 – dubbed the “baby-faced assassin – was ordered to serve life with a minimum of 22 years.

In 2007, he launched a court battle to become the first prisoner to have sex behind bars in Scotland. He planned to lodge legal papers to fight for the right to “conjugal visits” from Dionne.

Seven years later, the couple tied the knot at Shotts Prison.

A Hendry family member said: “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 had been jailed for nine months for assaulting Bain’s mum, dad and sister.

It was feared the marriage had reopened the feud between the families and, in September 2014, an explosion in violence rocked the city.

A family house in Moredun was sprayed with bullets. The terrifying attack came just days after an 18-year-old man was left with serious facial injuries after being beaten in Gilmerton.

Then Dionne’s Range Rover was hit by gunfire, leaving a large hole below its private registration plate. A drum of petrol with shotgun cartridges strapped to it was left on her doorstep.

The homemade device also had a Liverpool FC scarf tied to it along with the scrawled message: “Time’s running out, lad.”

On the same night, a second bomb was left beside the Inch home of an associate of Bain, while a house in Gilmerton was hit by gunfire.

The survivor of the Marmion shooting, James Hendry, was jailed for 40 months for culpable homicide after killing former Royal bodyguard Edward Dooley with a single punch in 2008.

Hendry – a Scottish light-heavyweight champion in 2001 – died suddenly at his home in December, aged 40.

In 2015, he had been cleared of trying to abduct one of the raiders from the Argyll Arcade robbery in Glasgow.