David Murray seeks to reframe his story. Instead he exposes his darkness.

One of my great pleasures in life is reading. And I read a lot of different stuff. But since time immemorial, I’ve been a fan of the true crime genre — and I’ve always been particularly fascinated by serial killers. The apex predator of that genre, for me, is Theodore Robert Bundy, whose story is so incredible that you’d swear it was fiction… if you didn’t know it was fact.

Handsome. Intelligent. Accomplished. Suave. Sophisticated. Remarkably, a two time escapee from police custody. He probably murdered in excess of 50 women. Officially, he was linked to over 30, but he told Bob Keppel — one of the investigators who helped bring him down — that the real number was over 100. And that might not be an exaggeration. It’s hard to know.

It’s hard to know because Bundy was the poster boy for sociopathic personality disorder — what we, here in Britain, would more likely refer to as psychopathy or psychopathic personality disorder. The clinical term is antisocial personality disorder, although that feels like a flatter, less evocative label.

And it’s not just about one or two nasty traits. It’s a whole collection. A constellation of behaviours. Jon Ronson, the fantastic English journalist, wrote a book called The Psychopath Test, in which he laid out the criteria used to identify sociopathy. It’s fascinating stuff.

That set of traits is known as the Dark Triad.

And do you know what they’ve found? They’ve found a high proportion of sociopathic personalities working in certain key industries — advertising, media, politics. For some reason, those fields seem particularly attractive to that kind of mind. But you’ll find them at the top of almost every profession. You’ll find them among the leading lights of almost every industry.

For the most part, they’re not dangerous in the sense that they’ll pose a physical threat. But they’re dangerous in another, more insidious way. You don’t want to cross them. Because they don’t see human beings as people. They see them as commodities. Tools. Pieces on a chessboard to be pushed around at will.

And they are capable of doing enormous damage. Of wreaking absolute havoc.

The first of the traits in the Dark Triad is psychopathy itself.

Psychopathy manifests as a lack of empathy or concern for other people. It shows up as callousness — coldness — but it also presents as a propensity for risk-taking and a lack of fear of consequences.

You can see why psychopathy is so common in business. These are people who take chances. They walk the high wire of life without a net.

You see the trait a lot in organised crime too.

When you think about what your average gangster has to get up to every morning, the fear not only of the authorities catching him, but of what his rivals might do to him, it makes our own day-to-day existence seem like a faint shadow of a life by comparison. There must be a certain thrill to it.

But in an ordinary personality, it would send anxiety and stress levels through the roof. You’d be a wreck inside a week.

The second trait is called Machiavellianism.

It’s defined by manipulative behaviour and strategic, calculated thinking — always working out how to get one over on others. One of the key traits Machiavellianism shares with psychopathy is the ability these people have to lie straight to your face.

It’s a tool of manipulation, but also a tool of camouflage — a way to cloak their true intentions and real personalities.

And you see this a lot in certain businesses, certain industries. I bet if you gave it five minutes, you could name a few people who fit the profile exactly.

Lying is also compulsive in the Dark Triad. It’s why I have no problem at all labelling Dave King a sociopath much as I do Murray. Lying is actually King’s big red flag. He does it reflexively, in matters both great and small, as if he can’t help himself.

The third trait is narcissism.

Narcissism is easily the most common of the three sociopathic traits. But in the Dark Triad, it’s taken to a whole new level — well beyond the sort of preening self-love we associate with politicians or media personalities.

We’re talking about people completely lost in their own megalomania.

This is grandiosity. A burning need to be admired. A deep sense of entitlement. But there’s something else too — something buried deeper in the literature, harder to spot unless you’re really looking for it.

And it’s their fragility.

It’s in the genuine lack of what we would call self-esteem. It’s not that they think they’re worthless — far from it. But they prickle at the slightest hint of criticism. They are very swift to react to any perceived slight.

Their sense of victimhood is very, very strong — even when they’ve put themselves in the most appalling positions. Even when they’ve done dreadful things and are on the brink of finally being held to account, they’ll play the victim card. They’re very good at constructing scenarios in their minds where other people are to blame for the miseries that have befallen them, even the ones they caused.

When I heard the other day that David Murray’s autobiography had finally come out, my first instinct was to write a scathing piece on it and brand it a work of fiction — which, in many ways, is exactly what it is.

It is a work of fiction. It’s an attempt to rewrite a history that we already know. An attempt to reframe things that already have their texture, their shape — their truth.

This is a common trait among certain people who have fallen from grace. You see it a lot with politicians who’ve had to resign in disgrace. They wait a couple of years, then they publish a tell-all book that basically tries to restructure the way you think about them.

It’s not so much a relaunch as it is an airbrushing of the past. They do it in the hope that people will either start to view what happened in a different light or overlook it entirely and focus instead on the positives they’re trying to project.

“It was a bad experience, but I learned from it.” “It was a mistake, but I paid the price.” That kind of thing. We’ve all seen it. Most of it recognise it.

It’s no surprise that a number of national newspapers have chosen to go along with Murray’s attempted reframing. And it’s no surprise at all that The Daily Record has bought the serialisation rights for the book.

Murray was, after all, their blue-eyed boy. He was their knight on a white steed. He was the hero.

Paulina’s been reading Stephen O’Donnell’s book on Murray and Fergus for a while now, and at some stage she’s going to do a proper review of Murray’s memoir in light of what’s in Stephen’s much better, more honest examination.

But for me, I don’t want to focus on Murray’s obvious intent. I don’t want to waste time deconstructing the lies themselves — I’d be here all day if I did that.

No, I don’t think the book qualifies as fiction at all. Not anymore. Not now that I’ve seen some of what’s in it. Because what I see instead is the reframing of the narrative — seeing the story through David Murray’s own eyes.

And that is fascinating.

The closest parallel I can give you is this: last year, myself and a good friend of mine, Brian Anderson, had lunch with the actor Stephen McCole. We got talking about his portrayal of Arthur Thompson Junior, in the film The Wee Man, and he said something really interesting to me.

He told me that when he met Paul Ferris, he asked him just one question. “What did you like about the guy?” He didn’t want to know anything else. Just that. And Paul told him it was Junior’s sense of humour.

Stephen used that as one of his frames for the character. He told me that every actor creates a story in his own head about the person he’s going to portray, and in his head, for that part, he was a son who expected to inherit the kingdom only for someone from outside the family to come in and usurp him. To steal his father’s love, his father’s respect. To claim what he believed was rightfully his.

His portrayal of Thompson Jnr is almost sympathetic as a result. It is most definitely human. It is, to me, and always was, the best part of the film which takes too many un-necessary liberties with the true events.

I thought that was an amazing insight — not just into the actor’s process, but into the internal stories we all tell ourselves.

Murray’s autobiography should, therefore, not be considered a work of fiction at all; rather, it should be seen as our clearest insight as to how he sees his life — from his perspective. From inside his own head.

It’s a study in how someone like him can continue to believe that he is the hero of the story. That he is a great man thwarted by lesser men. That it took a vast conspiracy of those lesser men to bring him to his knees.

And that it happened, conveniently, at a time when he wasn’t at his best physically or mentally — with the not-so-subtle inference that, had he been at full strength, none of it would have happened. They would never have gotten away with it.

And it’s all there, if you look closely.

Every single box checked on the Dark Triad. This is a sociopathic personality. It’s there in the lies. It’s there in the egotism. It’s there in the sky-high self-regard, bordering on full-blown megalomania, but also the way he let certain people get under his skin, Fergus, O’Neill and Lawwell in particular.

It’s there in the rationalisations, the justifications, the way he twists reality. It’s there in his ability to fool even himself into believing things that, on some level, he must know are manifestly untrue.

One of the repeated lies he tells is the one about how he sunk vast tracts of his own personal wealth into the club; this is nonsense, and everyone knows now that it is nonsense. Murray financed Rangers out of bank debt.

He may have lent the club the private jet every now and again, but the cash for the signings and everything else was coming out of the vast overdrafts and loans extended to him by a bank that by that point was run by men who had taken leave of their own senses and were way down their own rabbit holes of delusion and self-aggrandisement.

Murray was a nasty, ruthless bastard. The fate of Airdrie is a perfect example.

I don’t know if he explores that episode in the book — maybe he’s reframed it. Maybe he’s omitted it altogether. But it’s a telling moment. It shows you the kind of person he really was, and for those unfamiliar with the story, let me tell you what happened — and how David Murray helped push a club off the edge.

In the year 2000, Airdrie ran into serious financial trouble. Debts of around three-quarters of a million pounds. They went into administration. And during that period, they played a Scottish Cup tie against Rangers.

Murray chose to withhold Airdrie’s £30,000 share of the gate receipts, claiming the money was owed to his company, Carnegie.

A lot of people stop short of saying Murray sent Airdrie to the wall. But he definitely kicked them while they were down — and he didn’t hesitate to do it.

To him, it was a piddling sum. A rounding error. To Airdrie, it could have been life or death. He didn’t give a damn. He didn’t give it a second thought.

Likewise, no one doubts that if we had faced a liquidation crisis in 1994, Murray would’ve been standing on the sidelines clapping like an applauding seal. He’s never hidden that from anyone. His mantra of “for every fiver Celtic spend, I’ll spend ten” wasn’t just an expression of sporting rivalry — it was naked hatred. A determination, not simply to win, but to annihilate Celtic.

You don’t have to look hard to see his narcissism either. It’s there in everything — from naming the training ground after himself to the way he still goes on as though all of the club’s successes during that era were his personal triumphs. The managers he worked with, the players under those managers — they barely get a mention. Because in Murray’s head, he was the hero of the story. He always has been.

Murray never acted out violently.

But then, most people with the Dark Triad of traits don’t. It takes something else to fuel that kind of rage — the kind of fury that makes a Ted Bundy. But they all have compulsions. All have a need to feel dominant over others. And they all possess the same need to justify their behaviour, to rationalise even their most cruel acts.

It’s all there in Murray — especially when he talks about EBTs.

He insists they weren’t illegal, as if that matters. As if the deliberate withholding of money that should have gone to public services is somehow fine because it stopped just short of criminality.

He flat-out denies they gave his club a competitive advantage — which begs the question: what would have been the point otherwise?

That’s not just an insult to our intelligence (though it absolutely is). It’s an effort to rationalise. To square the circle. To say, “Yes, we gained an edge… but we didn’t cheat.” Or, “Yes, it wasn’t ideal… but it wasn’t against the law, so what’s the problem?”

Do you know what Bundy was most famous for at the end?

His complete self-absorption. In those final interviews and confessions, he tried to make all those horrible crimes someone else’s fault. He blamed the easy access to pornography in one notorious interview, claiming that it warped his mind.

In one of the many books about him, The Deliberate Stranger – which they made into a very decent TV movie starring Mark Harmon – the writer, his former friend and journalist, Richard W. Larsen, revealed what might be Bundy’s most valuable insight about himself.

He recalls a prison visit where Bundy laid out the Dark Triad for him, trying to explain sociopathic personality disorder. See, Bundy had excelled as a psychology major at university. He understood himself perfectly well.

The part that stuck in Larsen’s mind was this: Bundy described one of the key traits of sociopathy as an inability to feel empathy for the suffering of others… but an intense awareness of their own. It’s always been clear that this is the real key to understanding Bundy and those like him.

And it’s the final piece of the David Murray jigsaw.

Because what you see in the extracts from that book, published in The Daily Record, is exactly that. This man genuinely believes that he is the victim in this story. That he’s the one who was wronged. That he was brought low by forces beyond his control.

It’s there in his comments about Peter Lawwell — that he kicked the club when it was down, that he wielded the knife.

It’s there in the way he claims Craig Whyte duped him.

It’s there in how he portrays the banks as unsympathetic, and HMRC as unreasonable — as though they should have cut him a deal and spared everyone the bother.

It’s even there in his supposed apology to the fans — when he blames someone else, and then says he’s sorry that it tainted his legacy. In that completely self-regarding statement lies the truest essence of who this man is.

He doesn’t care about the Ibrox support — not really. He cares how the Ibrox support feel about him. He doesn’t care about the nurses, the doctors, the firemen, the police officers — and everyone else — who could’ve been hired or given a raise on the money he and his companies cheated out of the taxpayer. He only cares that he won’t be remembered as a virtuous man — because he got caught.

He certainly doesn’t care about the wider Scottish football community and to be fair to him, he’s never pretended to.

Murray is a man driven solely by ego. Driven by his desire to project the best possible version of himself to the world. Murray is a classic sociopath.

He ticks most of the boxes in the Dark Triad. He is obviously megalomaniacal, which ticks Machiavellianism. He is self-obsessed, which ticks narcissism. But it’s his ability to rationalise his behaviour even as he ruthlessly stamps on other people — and his total lack of empathy — that confirms his psychopathy.

And that label doesn’t only apply to those who commit violent acts. It’s about a way of thinking. A way of seeing and interacting with the world.

But more than anything else, all of this is evident in one thing above all: his self-pity. The blame-casting. The constant shifting of guilt. The attempt to reinterpret what he did and make it about what was done to him.

And the most terrifying part?

This isn’t just a manipulative exercise to win public sympathy. He genuinely means all of it. He genuinely believes the story inside his head.

In that version, he is the central character. Everyone else is a walk-on part. He stands alone on the stage beneath the spotlight — and he wants us to understand him. He wants us to empathise — even as he himself cannot feel empathy.

And the problem Murray has — more than anything — is that we do understand him. We understand him far better than he seems to think.

That book is meant to rehabilitate him. That’s why he wrote it. But what it does instead is expose him. It reveals him at his worst. It shows every negative trait that the book was intended to bury. In seeking to whitewash them, it has drawn our attention to every single one of them instead.

And that’s why I’m strangely grateful to The Record for serialising it — not because they get it (they don’t), but because they’ve bought into the myth.

And the great irony?

No one has done more to demolish the myth of David Murray than David Murray himself. Condemned by his own words. Betrayed by his total inability to see the world through anyone else’s eyes.

He really does feel his own suffering.

And that, in the end, might be the only thing he ever felt.