An armed robber has claimed his love of extreme sports led him to a life of crime – and that his private school background prepared him for his lengthy prison sentence.
Former Gordonstoun pupil Paul Macklin has been released from prison after serving almost 10 years for threatening two police officers with a gun in 2003.
Despite being a free man, the 40-year-old is still fighting to overturn his conviction for a crime he claims he did not commit.
Macklin, the son of a retired oil industry boss, acknowledges that he threw away his privileges to pursue a life of violence, but also says his private education gave him an independence of mind.
He was just 21 when he and a friend tried to stage a £300,000 wages raid in Aberdeen.
The botched heist earned him an eight-year sentence – which he claims he took in his stride because of his time at the prestigious Moray school.
In an exclusive interview with the Press and Journal, he said: “I never found prison particularly hard. It was just like Gordonstoun.
“I remember one disgraced aristocrat, who had been to Eton, was asked how he survived when he came home from prison.
“He said that any man who has been to public school or in the Army will be quite at home. For me, that is how it was.”
Gordonstoun’s head teacher said last night he was “perplexed” by Macklin’s comments and he did not recognise the picture of the school he had painted.
Macklin, who was expelled from the school when he was in his fifth year, said: “That is the one thing about Gordonstoun. You are living there eight months a year with around 50 to 60 other boys.
“Obviously, there is not a lot of parental supervision and you have a culture of 13-to-18-year-olds who live among themselves and police themselves.
“It creates a very independent child from a young age.”
Macklin claimed he turned to crime after losing control of his love for adrenalin sports.
He said: “It is almost embarrassing now to say this but, when I was 18 years old, I was into adrenalin and extreme sports.
“Then I saw that movie Point Break, which presents an armed robbery like an extreme sport.
“It was kind of an adrenalin thing doing these robberies.”
Macklin, who comes from a family of surgeons and barristers, claimed he did not regret the Kittybrewster heist, adding: “I was 21 years old and I took a shot at hundreds of thousands of pounds. To have missed the years 21 to 26 was not the end of the world, but to be in prison from 30 to 40 is different.”
Macklin said he wanted to say sorry to his victims, adding: “If there are people I have hurt, I regret any part in that and I apologise.”
He is due to leave Scotland in the new year and head to the French Alps, where he hopes to work on the slopes.
Comment, Page 32