Bank robber and safe-cracker. Born in Govanhill of Glasgow, Meehan began on his criminal career at an early age. He was charged with robbing the St. Rollox Branch of the Clydesdale and North of Scotland Bank in Springburn and appeared in the High Court in 1951. He was involved in the robbery of the British Linen Bank in Oban in 1955 and charged in Dublin with possessing money and other property from that robbery. The same year he blew the safe in the Beauly branch of the Commercial Bank of Scotland, a crime which brought him six years incarceration.
Meehan was at the centre of a much-quoted miscarriage of justice when he was imprisoned for the murder of an elderly woman during a housebreaking in Ayr. It was only after the publication in 1976 of Presumption of Innocence: The Amazing Case of Patrick Meehan by Ludovic Kennedy (b. 1919) that Meehan was granted a Royal Pardon.
In his latter years Meehan claimed to have been part of a communist plot and said he was framed by MI5.
