Andrew McVicar was 15 when he murdered Tony Harrington, 20, by slashing his throat with a broken bottle. Nineteen years later the thug got life again for shoving Tim Smith during a burglary
A double killer has been allowed to bid for freedom just six years into his second life sentence.
Andrew McVicar was 15 when he murdered Tony Harrington, 20, by slashing his throat with a broken bottle in Dunstable, Beds, on Christmas Eve 1999. Nineteen years later the musclebound thug got life again for shoving Tim Smith, 57, during a burglary in Hullbridge, Essex.
Grandad Mr Smith died of a brain injury. McVicar, 40, who has a host of other convictions for violence and theft, could be released in a few weeks in a parole review. Tony’s angry mother Julie, 65, said she had not been told of his parole bid and asked: “How many times can someone be given a life sentence before they are kept in prison?”
McVicar, from Lanarkshire, and Colin Garrod had gone to the home of Glenn Mattram in Hullbridge, Esssex, in March last year wearing balaclavas and armed with an imitation gun. They accosted him, his family and Timothy and his wife, who were returning from a pub.
Timothy died in hospital a day later, while his killers spent a holdall of cash they got away with on £3,000 of designer clothes. McVicar was caught after his cousin told police he had admitted being part of a robbery where a man died.
Armed police swooped on a house in his home town of Harthill in April last year and captured him. McVicar and Garrod, 51, of Southend, were also found guilty of having an imitation firearm. Garrod was also sentenced to a minimum of 12 years.