A MURDERER’S wife is facing jail for keeping his drug business going while he was behind bars.

Karen McLellan, who is married to Gavin Toye, was caught growing cannabis at their home in Bishopton in September last year.

Six months earlier, Toye was jailed after he was caught growing cannabis and dealing it from their home in the village’s Kingston Road.

Toye, 56, had embarked on the doomed drug racket after being released from prison following his murder conviction.

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

Toye was released in 2008, after serving just 13 years, and later married McLellan.

She worked as a nightshift 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.

Detectives were investigating a £200 theft from her work and searched her home in November 2016, stumbling across Toye’s £20,000 cannabis farm.

Officers found 69 plants, fans, insulation, plant food and heaters in the loft.

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.

Last year, at Paisley Sheriff Court, Toye pleaded guilty 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.

But 57-year-old McLellan kept the business going before she was caught growing the drug on September 5 last year.

She admitted her guilt at Paisley Sheriff Court, pleading guilty to a charge of breaking 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.

Sheriff Susan Sinclair told McLellan: “I’m going to need to get a Criminal Justice Social Work Report.

“You will need to go to an interview with social workers and come back on the date that you’re about to be given.”

McLellan could be caged for as long as a year for the offence when she returns to the dock next month to learn her fate.