The World's End

by Tom Wood

  So, after the tape-recorder and video camera were turned on, he was told the subject of this day’s session – one of the Glasgow murders. Things took a depressingly familiar direction. ‘I have nothing further to say’ was once more the best we could extract. Until, that is, we got on to the subject of his cars and, for once, he seemed engaged and curious – almost forthcoming. It was truly remarkable. Here we had a man who was determined to hide the dreadful secrets of his past, particularly the serious sex offences, yet, for some reason, he started talking about the cars he owned. Sinclair must have known the vehicles he drove, particularly the caravanette, would be a significant part of our inquiry. He is, when all is said and done, a clever man who knew our investigations had stretched back through time to unearth huge volumes of new evidence relating directly to him. He had little or no idea of what we had discovered and he had no way of knowing just how important it was for us to establish which cars he owned and when, and yet here he was speaking for the first time as if he was enjoying the recollection – fondly remembering his pride and joy.

  In the first part of the interview that day, he stuck rigidly to ‘I have nothing further to say’ even to the point that, at one stage, he burst out laughing as he said it and then apologised for doing so. This indicated to us that the scene was beginning to take on something of the ridiculous even to him. After a break he spoke a couple of sentences about his jail work, in the kitchens at Peterhead, then stopped himself and, as if reproaching himself, asked for the interview to be cut short because he was saying nothing more.

  So there we have him – disciplined, focused and determined not to talk lest he gives away even the slightest clue that may crack the facade and prompt further revelations. Then, slowly but surely, information started to dribble from him. There was no consistency in his approach. In one question, he would refuse to say even where his son had gone to school and then, in his next answer, he would go into a little detail. Calum Young and Sinclair ended up doing a verbal dance as, little by little, more and more was squeezed out of him. We weren’t getting far and we were certainly nowhere near a confession – no hints of admissions – but there was a steady trickle of information that allowed us to confirm various minor matters we had been less than certain of and, perhaps more importantly, this allowed Sinclair to realise just how much detail of his life was in our possession. We were able to sit and go through his tax records with him. These clearly showed where he was working and when. Perhaps, for once, the control freak in him slipped a little and, on being confronted with overwhelming evidence on minor matters, he felt comfortable in agreeing with the facts as they were presented to him and, forgetting for a moment to shut up, he sometimes even added a little to what we already knew. Throughout this slightly more productive session, he kept falling back on his ‘no further comment’ line and then, almost in the same breath, he’d make further comment.

  For his interviewers, it must have been extremely difficult to continue with those lengthy sessions and stick to the methods they’d been trained to use when they were up against a wall of silence or a repeated response of ‘no comment’. Their task must have frustrating and at times demoralising so, on the few occasions when Sinclair did open up, the officers would have found it a welcome break.

  It went further still. The exact details of the interviews are relatively unimportant but they deserve further examination if only to establish why we progressed on that particular day. Calum started asking about the places he lived in and inevitably that brought in his wife. He agreed that he spent lengthy periods of time separated while they were married and admitted that he took up with other women during these periods. Perhaps deep down a little phrase Calum used at the start of this conversation struck a chord with Sinclair and make him think differently about his situation. Remember that, from the start, we had been at great pains to demonstrate that the people he once regarded as friends and allies may have switched allegiance. One of his accomplices, his partner in the non-sexual crimes, had gone as far as to make formal statements implicating himself in serious offences, such was the change in relationships over the passage of time.

  Calum emphasised once more the extent of the investigations we had conducted into his past and told him that we had spoken to a great many of the women he had known over the years. He then told Sinclair that a lot of the women still held him in ‘great fondness’. Perhaps this little phrase was sufficient to bring about a bit of a sea change in Sinclair’s attitude. Before this moment, the interviewing officers, over all the sessions they had conducted, had given the impression to Sinclair that he was on his own, friendless and alone. Now here were the police telling him some of his old girlfriends still regarded him well.

  When he was asked about one of his more long-standing girlfriends, he agreed that he did know her. He said the flat she stayed in wasn’t a very nice place and it had no heating or electricity. Then the shutters came down again and questions about her were met with the usual ‘no comment’ reply.

  He was then asked about his friend James Smith. Smith was important to us because he told how his mother’s house in Moodiesburn was being painted by Sinclair at the time of the rent collector assault and robbery that we knew he and his younger brother-in-law had carried out just a couple of streets away. So the interviews went something like this:

  ‘Do you know James Smith?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did you know him?’

  ‘Nothing further to say.’

  ‘James has spoken to us and given us his version of events.’

  ‘Sorry, I knew James when he worked as a mechanic at the garage where I was a spray painter.’

  Then, just as suddenly, all further questions about Mr Smith were met with the usual response of ‘no comment’.

  Just as puzzling was Sinclair’s willingness to talk about what for him must have been the most difficult subject of all – his sexuality and his relationships with various women. A series of exchanges saw him at once talk about matters right at the heart of the inquiry and then, in the next answer, refuse to answer fairly innocuous inquiries.

  ‘Did you enjoy sex?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  Then, when asked if he had any preferences, Sinclair laughed as he said, ‘No further comment to make.’

  He claimed his first sexual relationship after coming out of jail at the end of his sentence for the killing of Catherine Reehill was with a woman in Edinburgh. He refused to say if he lived with her but did tell us that he got a sexually transmitted disease from her.

  He would list the names of his wife’s siblings but refuse to say which ones he was friendly with. This was perhaps more understandable as he had committed sexual crimes with one of them and crimes of violence with another.

  When reminded, after another break, that the interview was really concerning the events surrounding the death of Anna Kenny, it was back to the ‘no comment’ replies and so the pattern continued – tiny revelations, followed by ‘No comment.’

  The officers asked if he had ever been to Argyll and he said he had but, when asked if he had been to Skipness, the scene of the disposal of Anna’s body, it was back to the standard ‘no comment’ reply.

  Then he came up with an answer to a question that rather bowled us over. Bear in mind that, over many hours of interviews, the only information that had been forthcoming was of a bland, non-incriminatory nature. Some of his answers shed a tiny bit of light into certain areas we were interested in but that was all. Maintaining concentration and direction over lengthy interviews like this can be demanding and it is all too easy for minds to begin to wander off. I don’t know if Calum and Joe were at this stage – three hours or so into that day’s session with Sinclair – but, if they had been, they were to snap back quickly. Once again they had reminded him he was being interviewed about the murder of Anna Kenny. A book of interview aids had maps, a picture of the caravanette, the dead girl and even one shot of the Hurdy Gurdy pub where she was last seen a
live. Sinclair denied being in the pub at any time and took the opportunity of repeating that he was never much of a drinker. When shown a picture of the pub, he casually dropped into the conversation the fact that he had once been on the roof of the pub – only then it was a bookmaker’s shop and Sinclair told the officers he was on the roof trying to break in. What was that all about? Did he think that we would be impressed by his candour about his visit to a building right at the heart of our inquiry? Or was it a distraction to try to establish that he had no fear of admitting his association with the place? Whatever the reason, his talkativeness soon passed and it was back to ‘no comment’. He had no comment to make on Gordon Hamilton’s wife, Wilma, except to say he didn’t remember her. We knew of a violent row Sinclair had with Gordon the night before his marriage to Wilma which ended with neither Sinclair nor Sarah attending the wedding the next day. But this was getting too warm – it was an area much too central to Sinclair’s killing spree – and he clammed up again as quickly as he had begun to speak.

  Then, six hours into the interview which had only been punctuated with short breaks, the full facts of Anna Kenny’s murder as we knew them were put to Sinclair. As usual, I was in a nearby room watching the interview with other senior officers as it took place. The tension building up in the interview room was clearly visible on our TV monitor as the officers summed up the case against him and offered him the opportunity to rebut the allegations one by one. As he declined to reply to the main allegations and sought to dismiss the lesser ones, Sinclair remained as calm and composed as he’d always been. He appeared cold and remote and the whole interview showed him in a particularly bad light but we needed more and we didn’t have it.

  Early in December, Sinclair was again interviewed at Govan police station. The usual recording and monitoring was in place. It was obvious he had realised that he had gone too far in previous sessions and, this time, he stuck rigidly to his ‘no comment’ plan. Our tactics changed slightly to see if we could reach through to how we considered Sinclair perceived himself. We believed he thought of himself as two Angus Sinclairs. There was the bad one of all those years ago – wicked, violent and unreliable – and there was the new one, the good one, the one who was trusted, respected and liked by those around him. So Calum and Joe decided they would try to contact the good Sinclair to see if he might be willing to reveal details of the bad one.

  This time, they painted a picture of the life of Hilda McAuley for him. They highlighted her hard-working nature and the love she had for her sons. A photograph of the three of them, mother and sons together and smiling, was produced – Hilda’s love for her boys was clearly reciprocated. Calum told how, on the night of her murder, the children had helped their mum get ready to go out. They kissed her goodbye and never saw her again. They pointed out the similarities with his own family, even handing him a current photograph of his own son who he hadn’t seen for many years.

  Again and again, Sinclair refused to budge from his ‘no comment’ stance and the familiar scene of questions being asked and no answers given was played out. Whether it was frustration and anger or guilt I do not know but, during this interview, Sinclair seemed to retreat into himself. He no longer maintained eye contact with the officers and he sat, with his arms folded, staring down at the floor. It was as if he had built a defensive cocoon around himself.

  At one point in this session, we allowed him a visit from his sister who had been as helpful as she could to us throughout the investigation. We do not know what exchanges took place between Sinclair and his sister but I believe she tried as hard as she could to persuade him to tell the whole truth for his sake and that of his entire family. It was to no avail and, when the interview continued, it was ‘nothing further to say’ all the way.

  During all the interviews when he was asked about the deaths of Helen and Christine, Anna, Matilda and Agnes, Sinclair gave nothing away. Protected by his right of silence, we were met by his stony resistance – just as we had feared we would be. Clearly all his years of imprisonment had done nothing to soften him.

  12

  Trial, 2007

  As the investigation progressed, we felt we were beginning to put together a convincing case. The evidence in the World’s End case was strong despite the fact that one of our suspects, Gordon Hamilton, was dead. Angus Sinclair had been positively identified through DNA from samples taken from Helen and Christine and strong traces of Sinclair’s DNA had also been found in the knots and bindings that had been used to secure the girls on that dark night in October 1977. We were very grateful for the diligence shown by our scientists in carefully preserving those items since they were recovered from the crime scenes all those years ago – had they not done so, we wouldn’t have had our full DNA profile of Sinclair. In addition, we had compelling hairs and fibres evidence linking Helen to materials used in vehicles similar to the Toyota caravanette we knew Sinclair had been driving at the time but which was now beyond our reach. We also had expert opinion that suggested Helen and Christine had not been bound and gagged by the same individual – like so many other habits, knot-tying tends to follow distinctive personal patterns. We thought it was significant that the knots used on Christine were all perfectly symmetrical reef knots while all the knots used on Helen were grannies which suggested a more haphazard approach. When we had considered this aspect of the case, our minds went back to Angus Sinclair’s early prison training at Aberdeen, fishing net repair, where consistent and uniform knot tying was essential and would have become second nature to a man working in the repair of nets for so long. Lastly, we could prove Sinclair’s connections with the area of the World’s End pub and we had traced one of Sinclair’s ex-girlfriends who told us they had visited East Lothian near the deposition sites. Given the passage of time, it was as much as we could have hoped for.

  In the Glasgow killings, we lacked the kind of forensic evidence we had in the World’s End murders but, nonetheless, the Strathclyde team had built a good case of circumstantial evidence which, when taken together with what we had for the World’s End case, would, we felt, present a strong case to a jury.

  The evidence that we could not, of course, present was that Sinclair had killed and raped before. We couldn’t say that the use of Mary Gallagher’s trousers as a ligature bore striking similarities to all our cases. In England and Wales, evidence of ‘similar fact’ – that is the accused has been proven to act in this way before – is admissible and has been crucial in a number of notable cases. In Scotland, such evidence is not admissible. Sinclair would, therefore, eventually appear in court as an innocent man with the jury having no knowledge of his background. This aspect of Scots law is to preserve fairness to the accused and dates, as do so many other fundamentals of the law, to a time when capital punishment meant that there were lives at stake. Nowadays, many of us who have worked in the criminal justice system would view it as a little archaic – the inability to present such evidence has, in my view, meant that the balance of fairness has swung very much in favour of the accused and away from the victim and public interest.

  However, those are the rules of the system and we knew we had to work within them. As our investigation concluded, we drew up a comprehensive report and submitted it to the Crown Office. It is the job of the Crown Office to decide on prosecution, settle the nature of the charges and then take the case forward to trial.

  Many people imagine this is a straightforward, clinical process – that the handing over of the report ends police involvement and begins the prosecution phase. In minor cases it is but in major cases it is far more complicated than that. In serious or complex cases, a senior procurator fiscal will take an interest from an early stage, sometimes directing lines of inquiry, but usually monitoring the development of the case. At the stage where it becomes apparent that there is a reasonable body of evidence and that the case is probably destined for the High Court, an advocate-depute is appointed to lead the case for the Crown and to keep abreast of the inquiry. The adv
ocate-depute’s role is crucial for he or she will ultimately recommend to the Crown Office exactly what charges should appear on the indictment. Then, with the senior procurator fiscal, the advocate-depute prepares the case for court and leads the prosecution when the case finally appears in the High Court. Some may see this as a blurring of the lines between police and prosecution but, in fact, it usually works well with each party being very aware of their own role and remit.

  From early in Operation Trinity, we had been in detailed consultation with a senior procurator fiscal and, well before our investigations were complete, an advocate-depute had been appointed to lead the prosecution both in its preparation and through to the eventual trial. We were fortunate that the advocate-depute we had was one of the rising stars in the Crown Office and he quickly got to grips with the complexities of the five cases. This was no easy task – we had been living with the cases for months, and in some cases years, but the advocate-depute would be starting from scratch.

  One of the early decisions he had to make was what should appear on the indictment – in other words, precisely what charges should eventually be brought against Angus Sinclair. During the ten months of our joint investigation, we had amassed a mountain of evidence not just relating to the murders but to a number of other serious violent and sexual crimes all committed in the late 70s, prior to Sinclair’s arrest for the sex attacks on the girls in Glasgow. The crimes we had uncovered were all serious and if they had been current, they would have been prosecuted with vigour. As it was the passage of time, almost thirty years, meant that their importance had faded. The decision was taken that it was not in the public interest to prosecute Sinclair for those crimes given the length of time that had elapsed.