A CLYDEBANK murderer’s wife is facing jail for keeping his drug business going while he was behind bars – after he had already been jailed over the illicit venture.

Karen McLellan, who is married to Gavin Toye, was caught growing cannabis at the couple’s home in September.

Six months earlier, in March last year, Toye was jailed after he was caught growing cannabis and dealing it from their home.

Toye had embarked on the doomed drug racket after being released from prison following his murder conviction, reports the Clydebank Post.

He was jailed for life in 1995 for stabbing 27-year-old John McRae to death with a mountaineering axe and a knife as he left a pub in Clydebank.

But Gavin Toye, 56, was released in 2008, after just 13 years, and later married Karen, 57.

She worked as a night shift supervisor at a branch of discount store B&M and it was her criminal activities which resulted in her husband being brought back to the attention of police – and saw him being locked up again. 

Police were investigating a £200 theft from her work and searched her home in Kingston Road, Bishopton, in November 2016, stumbling across his £20,000 cannabis farm.

During the search the officers smelled the cannabis and Gavin, who was in the front bedroom, said: “There’s a cultivation in the loft.”

When officers searched the loft they found 69 plants, fans, insulation, plant food and heaters.

There were 30 junior plants, 16 medium-sized plants and 23 large plants, which police drug experts said were worth a total of £19,320.

Gavin pleaded guilty in March 2017 to two charges of breaking the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 – by growing cannabis at their home and dealing it – and was caged for 35 months at Paisley Sheriff Court.

But Karen kept the business going, and she was caught growing the drug at the property on September 5 last year.

She admitted her guilt over the venture at Paisley Sheriff Court, pleading guilty to a charge of breaking Section 4(2)(a) of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 by growing the class B drug at her home on the day in question. 

Procurator fiscal depute Pamela Flynn did not narrate the circumstances of the crime in court before Sheriff Susan Sinclair.

Karen, who was prosecuted under her maiden name of Karen McLellan, could be jailed for as long as 12 months for the offence when she returns to the dock next month to learn her fate.

Mounted police patrolled outside the High Court in Glasgow on June 30, 1995, when Gavin, then 34, was jailed for life.

Extra police were also drafted in after fights broke out in the streets outside between rival groups the previous day.

Toye was also found guilty of stabbing Stuart Anderson to his severe injury at the Cat and Barrel bar in Clydebank, on February 24, 1994.

The murder victim’s mum, Elizabeth McRae, then 48, said there was a feud between Toye and his friends, and two local brothers who were friends of her son.

Mrs McRae, a taxi driver, said her son got “locked into’’ the vendetta.