The World's End

by Tom Wood

  We fully understood and half expected this decision but, nonetheless, it carried risks. On the one hand, you could see how it would look from the Crown Office’s point of view. It could be hazardous to clutter the indictment with less serious crimes when the major issue was the five murders. On the other hand, we felt that these more minor offences painted a background to Sinclair’s behaviour and pattern of offending and there were living witnesses who could have described what happened to the jury. It may have been compelling evidence but ultimately we accepted it was the Crown Office’s and the advocate-depute’s decision. He was a very able man and he was the one who would be presenting the case in court so we respected his judgement.

  That left the five murders. The Edinburgh World’s End case of Helen and Christine, together with the Glasgow cases of Anna Kenny, Hilda McAuley and Agnes Cooney.

  By this time, the prosecuting team consisted of the advocate-depute and a senior procurator fiscal from Glasgow who had replaced the Edinburgh procurator fiscal to ensure a geographical spread of responsibility – although, as a safeguard, a senior procurator fiscal in Edinburgh retained an interest. It seemed a reasonable idea at the time but later, as things developed, it would prove to be the source of some difficulty.

  We always knew the viability of the five cases depended on the strength of the evidence in the World’s End case. We hoped that together they would stand up in court but accepted that, separately, the Glasgow cases still lacked sufficient evidence. The critical decision had to be made – would they stand together or would the weakness of the Glasgow cases threaten the World’s End case? Although the Crown Office and the police had had fairly close consultations throughout, we knew that this was a decision they and the advocate-depute would make alone.

  Eventually, in spring 2005, the Crown Office decided not to proceed with the Glasgow cases but to serve an indictment on Angus Sinclair charging him with the World’s End murders of Helen Scott and Christine Eadie. It was a disappointment for us all but the bitterest of blows for Eddie McCusker and his team from Strathclyde. It was Eddie’s last major investigation and he had worked tirelessly to build a case – no one could have done more – but the Crown Office’s decision was absolute and final.

  There was only one advantage and that was that the strength of the World’s End case could not now be jeopardised by weaker cases. Even so, the underlying feeling was one of disappointment. We were convinced we had the right man but the thirty-year gap and the lack of forensic evidence in the Glasgow cases meant that, despite our best efforts, we would never be able to prove it.

  So, after all, we were left with the World’s End cases. It wasn’t the end result Operation Trinity had been working towards but, in Lothian and Borders, it remained of prime importance and we were confident that we had a very strong case.

  As the preparations went ahead, the defence team were given full access to all the documents and papers we’d accumulated over the years. The rules of full disclosure, obligatory in England and Wales, have gradually been accepted as routine in Scotland. This means that the defence has the right to see any evidence we had gathered, which offers them an excellent opportunity to pick holes in an inquiry, especially a historic one like this. It took the defence team a year to review all the evidence but, apart from the delay in going to trial caused by this, we had few worries. We were confident that all the evidence and documents in the World’s End case had been properly and professionally cared for over the years. There were flaws but they were minor and understandable in the circumstances.

  Eventually the defence had done their preparation and a slot of six weeks was estimated by the Crown Office team as being required for the trial. This was an important decision. High Court time is scarce – the courts are overloaded with work – but it was calculated that, to lead the weight of the prosecution evidence and to accommodate the defence, a trial of six weeks would be needed.

  But things were beginning to change. In October 2006, the advocate-depute who had been so actively involved with the case for months and who had carefully led the preparations for the trial was promoted and the responsibility was passed to a new advocate-depute. At the same time, the lead procurator fiscal who had been retained in the Edinburgh office, an able and highly respected individual, was also on the move leaving the original lead fiscal based in Glasgow but, by now, responsible for the Edinburgh cases of the World’s End murders alone – crimes that were not geographically the responsibility of the Glasgow fiscal’s area and of which there was no deep-seated knowledge or ownership. This may seem insignificant but there were also practical difficulties as documents had to be ferried back and forward across the country and the lines of communication were extended.

  While the various moves in staff were all unconnected to the case, we were dismayed by the changes. The senior and well-regarded prosecutors who had been involved throughout the investigation – the ones who had made the key decisions and had planned the Crown Office case – would not be in court or play any part in the trial after all.

  Worryingly for us, there also seemed to be a rejection or at least a strong doubt in the minds of the prosecution team about the low-copy number DNA evidence that forensic experts from England had identified in the knots of the ligatures used to bind Helen and Christine. This evidence did not provide a complete profile of Sinclair but did offer a partial one – an indication which we believed would have been compelling to a jury. We knew that low-copy number DNA profiling was controversial and the forensic science community was divided as to its worth. We were also aware that, in the background, an Australian case involving the murder of a British man, Peter Falconio, was adding to the controversy over reliability of low-copy number DNA profiling. Nonetheless, we felt that if this evidence was carefully presented, it would offer strong support to our case because the low-copy number DNA traces and the different methods of tying the knots pointed to two people being involved in the binding and gagging with a very strong pointer to Sinclair as being one of them.

  Ultimately, the Crown Office decided not to lead this evidence, thereby excluding expert evidence of a high quality and leaving the case strong but one-dimensional. In the end, this proved fatal when Sinclair’s legal team, at late notice, changed their defence to consensual contact – thus dealing a blow to the single-strand Crown Office case.

  By this time, Ian Thomas, Eddie McCusker and I had retired from the police service and Allan Jones had taken responsibility for the police component of the trial. Not that this was of any concern – no one knew more or was better placed to handle the final stages of the police case than Allan. In hindsight, however, I regret that Ian Thomas and I left when we did. However, we had no choice – our police service was completed and we had other commitments. I had already stayed on for eight months past my planned retiring date but it left the case light of senior police champions. Ian Thomas and I could only look on anxiously as things started to unravel.

  There had been too many changes – a new advocate-depute, a lead procurator fiscal who was remote geographically and the rejection of a considerable body of supporting evidence. Separately these issues were concerning but, when put together, they were deeply worrying to those close to the case.

  Eventually, over three years after we reopened the case, the trial of Angus Sinclair opened on Monday, 27 August 2007, just six weeks short of the thirtieth anniversary of the World’s End murders. In the new court building, next to the Crown Office in Chambers Street, Edinburgh, not a mile from the World’s End pub, he was at last called to account for the murders of Helen Scott and Christine Eadie.

  As the date of the trial approached, the liaison between the Crown Office team and the lead officers had been maintained but it came as a shock when, on the opening day, the advocate-depute made it known that he intended to cut the trial short – from the six weeks originally estimated by the Crown Office to only two. This was of real concern to many of us connected to the case – we knew the bulk and the weight o
f evidence that still remained and we struggled to imagine how the case could be cut to two weeks without important material having to be excluded. It was, however, a tactical decision which was the Crown Office’s to make. We were worried but we just had to live with it.

  As the trial drew near, we had speculated as to what Sinclair’s tactics would be – his defence had, after all, had over a year to consider their approach. They had also had complete access to all the data, old and new, from the thirty-year inquiry. It seemed to us that Sinclair had three options. The first, pleading guilty on the day, was out of the question. It wasn’t in his nature and, in any event, he had nothing to lose by playing it long – after all, he was going nowhere and his expensive legal team was not costing him a penny. The second and more likely option was that he offered no defence but let the Crown Office prove its case. He had tried this unsuccessfully in the Mary Gallagher case but it was still worth a try – thirty years is a long time and his lawyers might have picked some loophole in the continuity of evidence that could cast sufficient doubt on the case against him.

  In the event, he chose the route we thought he would – he blamed his conveniently dead brother-in-law, Gordon Hamilton, in the special defence of impeachment and furthermore claimed that any trace of his DNA on the bodies of Helen and Christine was as a result of consensual sex. It was always his best chance – everyone he blamed or alleged to be complicit was dead. Gordon Hamilton could not give his version of events and poor Helen and Christine, just seventeen years old when they died, were not there to rebut his hateful suggestion that they had willingly had sex with him.

  As we’ve seen, he had the advantage of no one knowing about his awful past – the jury had no inkling of the dozen rape victims or the two other girls proven to have died at his hands. But it was also a risky strategy for, in impeaching his dead brother-in-law and claiming consensual sex with the two young girls, he was placing himself at the scene of the crimes. He had sought to neutralise the power of the DNA evidence but, in doing so, he had implicated himself. This approach also made him potentially vulnerable in other areas. How could he explain his denials and the long silences during the many hours of interviews and then suddenly offer this defence? And it would look odd if he decided not to give evidence himself – after all, an innocent man would surely welcome the chance to deny such awful allegations personally. But, if he did give evidence and forgo his right to silence, he was taking the most awful risk. If he entered the witness box in the High Court, he would have to subject himself to a rigorous examination by the prosecuting advocate-depute. His usual tactics of sullen silence would not work in the High Court. It was something he had never dared to do before. In all his many court appearances, in all his interviews, he had always hidden behind his right to silence. In the event, he didn’t have to face these challenges – the jury never got the chance to make a judgement on the character and behaviour of Angus Sinclair.

  The defence of consensual sex also laid bare the flaw in the Crown Office’s approach to the low-copy DNA evidence which would have been powerful in rebutting the suggestion of consent. We had evidence of materials from inside the knots used in tying the girls up that revealed a partial profile of Sinclair’s DNA. In one particular sample, a DNA band unique to Sinclair – that is to say one that was not shared by Hamilton, Helen or Christine – was identified. Our experts had calculated a 1 in 390 probability of finding one of those bands elsewhere in the UK’s population. This may not seem a lot but, given Sinclair’s admission that he was there, it actually significantly strengthened that probability.

  The low-copy evidence together with the expert witnesses we had who were willing to interpret the knot-tying would have done much to rebut the claim of consent and, when it was made known to us what Sinclair’s defence would be, we hoped the Crown Office would reconsider their decision not to present these strands of evidence and would seek to introduce them. In the event, they did not and nor was the evidence of a timeline introduced. This meant there was a potential gap in the understanding of judge and jury about the likely time of death of Helen and Christine. This led the judge to conclude that the girls could have been killed at any time up until the discovery of their bodies – some fifteen to nineteen hours after they were last seen. In fact, we had evidence from pathologists to show that the girls died shortly after they were last seen. Had this evidence been introduced, it would have been harder for Sinclair to credibly claim consensual sexual contact and yet distance himself from the murders.

  The disastrous consequences of these omissions would shortly become apparent as the trial of Her Majesty’s Advocate v Sinclair began.

  As in every murder trial, the case started slowly – there was some scene setting and time devoted to proving the crime had been committed. The friends who last saw the girls alive came through the court giving their thirty-year-old recollections. It was a strange experience. Having read their statements so many times, we felt we knew them personally but, of course, for us, they were frozen in time, back in 1977. It was odd to see the teenage pals of Helen and Christine stand in the box as middle-aged men and women. Then came the witnesses who’d found the bodies, followed by the first police officers on the scenes – these officers were all now long retired, some for over twenty years.

  The defence’s tactics became clear – the prosecution’s case depended on the DNA evidence and, regardless of Sinclair’s claim of consensual sex, there were other considerations. DNA is susceptible to contamination and, back in the 70s, this had not been a consideration so could there not have been some cross-contamination? After all, no protective clothing or face masks were used in these days. It was all designed to create a haze of doubt in the minds of the jury and it would be hammered home by the defence even if the claim of consensual sex was rejected – thirty years was a long time, witnesses’ memories were vague, systems were different, mistakes may have been made, there may be room for doubt and there could be no room for doubt to convict. The standard of proof is clear and set high – to convict, the jury must be sure of guilt beyond all reasonable doubt. And, in any case, the slight, elderly man in the dock had given an explanation and, as unlikely as it seemed, the Crown Office’s case was not structured in a way to attack it.

  One of the saddest elements of any murder trial is when the family and friends give evidence and try to describe in words the events that shattered their lives and marked them for ever. Morain Scott and Christine’s mother, Margaret, spoke of their daughters and gave an account of their last days and the night they left their homes never to return. Both spoke of the impact that the events of October 1977 had on their lives. Then the court heard how Helen’s mother had never recovered from her daughter’s death and had quickly declined into ill-health and died prematurely. They were not in the witness box long and there were no startling revelations as they went through their evidence but the feeling of despair was tangible. No words could come close to describing the injury done to the Scott and Eadie families.

  The remaining course of the trial was nondescript and brief. Amazingly, the special defence and the claim of consensual sex were seen to neutralise the DNA evidence. This we found unbelievable. Two young women had been found gagged, bound, raped and murdered and the man whose semen is found in them lodges an implausible defence of consent which is accepted without question. It frankly beggared belief.

  As the thin list of Crown Office’s witnesses came to an end, there was an awful feeling of anticlimax. We had put together a strong case but you wouldn’t have known it from the lacklustre presentation in court. Then the final blow fell. We learned that the defence were going to motion for no case to answer. It was beyond belief. How could a man whose semen was found in two murdered girls have no case to answer? It defied all logic and it challenged common sense but it succeeded. The judge agreed the defence’s motion before a shocked court. The advocate-depute was not in the court and nor was the lead procurator fiscal, who had been largely absent throughout the trial.
The trial had ended and there was no right for the Crown to appeal

  All connected to the case felt the blow. Experienced court journalists had never seen the like and, on the jury benches, there was amazement. Looking at their faces, I doubted if any of this group of ordinary citizens had been fooled by Angus Robertson Sinclair.

  The prosecution handling of the case was, at first sight, inexplicable. Why had so much evidence been left out? When considered on cool reflection it was, however, all too easy to see what had gone wrong. As usual, there was no single glaring error – just a series of small events, changes in personnel, questionable decisions over evidence that all combined to weaken the case that went to court. The decision had been taken to strip the case bare and lead on the powerful primary DNA evidence. The theory may have been to keep it simple and that to do otherwise would confuse the jury. In the event, the single pillar of the prosecution case was brittle and was effectively neutralised by Sinclair’s special defence. He never had to explain himself or justify his outrageous claims of consensual sex with Helen and Christine. The law protected him from that.

  Outside the court Helen’s father, Morain Scott, composed to the last and carrying himself with the same dignity as he had for thirty years, spoke for us all: ‘The law it may have been – justice it was not.’

  In the aftermath the legal profession closed ranks, but the damage had been done, and behind the scenes there was serious disquiet. There were questions in Parliament, and the media covered all aspects of the case and the trial in minute detail. Even the casual observer with an ounce of sense could see that the trial had been a terrible miscarriage of justice, yet the usually outspoken civil libertarians were strangely quiet. It seemed their concern for injustice only extended to those accused, not victims.