A masked gunman stormed into the bustling Marmion pub, clutching a sawn-off shotgun in both hands, and unleashed fire, killing one man and gravely wounding another.
The gunman was chased through the streets by an angry crowd who pursued him from the Edinburgh establishment. They savagely battered him in the face with the stock of his own firearm.
Jamie Bain was trapped just metres from his home after carrying out the shooting that stunned the city in April 2006. High on cocaine, Bain had gone after relatives of his girlfriend Dionne Hendry, a member of the infamous Hendry dynasty known for its violent reputation.
Their doomed romance had planted the seeds of that evening and years afterwards, the tempestuous relationship remained a catalyst for bitter feuding.
Bain married Dionne in 2014 in a maximum-security jail where he is serving life for murder, with one Hendry relative calling it a “marriage made in hell”, reports the Daily Record.
In the months after the wedding, Edinburgh was once more shaken by bloodshed, with the prison ceremony believed to have ignited renewed hostility. Amongst the attacks, Dionne’s Range Rover was peppered with gunfire and a fake bomb was planted at her doorstep.
She and Bain had been teenage lovers at Liberton High School, and she later characterised him as a “bit of a poser but a good guy to me”. Dionne became pregnant with their first child at 16, and the pair subsequently had a son.
However, by 2006, Bain, then 22, had become entrenched in the city’s criminal underworld and caught up in a bitter dispute with an Inch-based cocaine dealer.
Officers had warned Bain that his life was under severe threat just weeks prior to the Marmion shooting. Bain himself alleged he’d been targeted with a machete, knocked down by a speeding vehicle and nearly knifed in front of his two children.
During this chaos, Bain attacked Dionne on the morning of April 22, leaving her requiring hospital care for bruising to her cheekbone and nose. Officers suspected he feared retaliation from Dionne’s relatives.
Bain spent that evening consuming cocaine heavily at a flat party before heading out to the pub on Captain’s Road. His mate Bernard Young supplied him with the stolen shotgun while another associate, Richard Cosgrove, went with him to the establishment.
James Hendry, then 27, was the first to be struck by Bain, face hidden behind a hockey mask, mere seconds after receiving a drink from a barmaid. Bain then aimed the weapon at boxing champion Alex McKinnon, 32, Hendry’s brother-in-law, who died from his wounds.
Bain spent a week battling for his life at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary after being attacked outside and subsequently received plastic surgery. During his trial, his legal team, headed by Donald Findlay QC, argued that Bain’s recollection of the months leading up to the brutal assault had been wiped out.
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 intended to submit legal documents to campaign for the right to “conjugal visits” from Dionne. Seven years later, the pair wed 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 imprisoned for nine months for attacking Bain’s mum, dad and sister. It was feared the marriage had reignited the bitter rivalry between the families and, in September 2014, an eruption of violence shook the city.
A family home in Moredun was peppered with bullets. The terrifying assault came just days after an 18-year-old man was left with serious facial injuries after being battered in Gilmerton.
Then Dionne’s Range Rover was struck by gunfire, leaving a large hole below its private registration plate. A drum of petrol with shotgun cartridges attached to it was dumped 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 near the Inch residence of an associate of Bain, while a house in Gilmerton was targeted by gunfire.
James Hendry, the survivor of the Marmion shooting, was sentenced to 40 months for culpable homicide after killing former Royal bodyguard Edward Dooley with a single punch in 2008.
Hendry died suddenly at his home in December, aged 40.