Devastated parents of dad who was stabbed to death ‘disgusted’ after killer was freed from jail early days before murder

THE parents of a murdered dad told of their “disgust” after it emerged his killer had been freed early from jail just days before the knife attack.

Brendan and Marion Handling hit out as career thug Mark Allison, 25, begins a jail sentence of at least 21 years for stabbing their son Gary through the heart.

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And the couple, of Stranraer, say they endured more pain in court where the monster smirked at them before being caged for the unprovoked killing.

Allison, also of the town, was last month jailed at the High Court in Stirling for murdering Gary, 33, in June 2022 while on licence from a previous prison term for violence.

Marion, 64 — now raising the dad of three’s two-year-old son Thomas with Brendan — said: “It is absolutely disgusting.  He was let out at the end of May.

“Two weeks later he murdered my boy.”  

Brendan, 61, recalled their ordeal during Allison’s trial, saying: “When he was leaving the dock, he would look up at us and smirk.

“He just had this smirk on his face every day.

“He showed absolutely no remorse. He was convinced he was going to walk.”

Jurors heard the brute turned up at  Gary’s home in Stranraer just before midnight and knifed him in the heart.

He’d also slashed another man, Jonjo Brown, 48 hours earlier in a playpark.

It came eight years after the Handlings lost Gary’s brother Thomas, 22, to sudden death syndrome.

Brendan said: “Leah called me and said you have to come up, Gary’s been stabbed.

“I ran up that hill and turned the corner and saw all the police and ambulances and saw Gary on the ground bleeding and I just thought, here we go again.

“To lose one son is absolutely horrendous but to lose two, and with Gary in these circumstances, is just heartbreaking. You don’t know how you’ll cope.”

Judge Lord Young said Allison, who was 23 at the time of the murder, confronted the dad-of-three on two previous occasions.

CCTV footage showed knifeman Allison’s girlfriend trying to pull him away from trouble, but he ignored her, instead plunging the knife into his victim’s chest.

Lord Young said: “It’s clear from the CCTV that Mr Handling was moving away from you in the seconds before the fight started.

“You then advanced towards him and struck him at least two blows with a knife.”

Gary, who had two daughters Kaci, 16, Keelie, 15 and a two-year-old son Thomas, was taken to nearby Galloway Community Hospital, but he died a short time later.

Grieving mum Marion steeled herself to watch the murder unfold on CCTV, despite being advised to leave the court.

During sentencing Lord Young told evil Allison: “It is clear to me that you were the instigator of the violence that night.”

The High Court heard less than 48 hours before killing Gary, Allison had slashed another man, Jonjo Brown, on the face with a knife in broad daylight in a kids’ swing park as children were playing, leaving him permanently scarred.

Lord Young said that in itself was an aggravated and unprovoked offence.

Marion said: “I would like him never to get out. We will have to live with this forever.”