by Sue Black
In 2011, I had a long meeting with Sandra and she talked me through the reasons why she wanted us to excavate the grave and undertake some exhumations. She believed that Moira’s body might be found directly beneath the coffin of a Mr Sinclair Upton, who had been buried there on 19 March 1957.
The theory was that Moira had met her death at the hands of the suspected paedophile ring on or around 23 February, the day she went missing, and that her body had perhaps been hidden somewhere, possibly within a well-hidden compartment in the bus Gartshore drove, until a suitable disposal site could be found. If he was involved, getting rid of her body would have been a matter of particular urgency for Gartshore, as he was shortly due to appear before the Coatbridge Sheriff Court to face charges relating to the abuse of a twelve-year-old and he would have been anticipating a prison sentence. Indeed, on 18 April, he was given eighteen months in Saughton Prison. It was while serving this sentence that he made a comment to a fellow inmate about how a late acquaintance of his, ‘Sinky’, had ‘done him the greatest of favours that he never knew about’.
Sinclair Upton, who had died aged eighty the month before Gartshore’s incarceration, was a distant relative, and Gartshore would have been aware of his death and impending burial at the Monkland cemetery. Had the death of this innocent man provided a timely and secure disposal site for Moira? Here was a hole in the ground, ready and waiting, and it would have been ideal: who would go looking for a missing body in a cemetery? Gartshore would have known that the lair would probably be dug and left open over the weekend ready for the funeral on the Tuesday. Could Moira have been placed in the lair, perhaps covered by a thin layer of soil, before Mr Upton’s coffin was lowered down on top of her, thereby concealing her perhaps for ever?
I have to say that Sandra’s research and her logic were compelling. I produced a plan for the Crown Office detailing the work that would need to be undertaken to examine the grave and then we sat and waited. That year Frank Mulholland QC, now Lord Mulholland, was appointed lord advocate. A big man who did not shirk controversial decisions, Frank was very hands-on and, having been born in Coatbridge himself, only two years after Moira went missing, he had a strong connection to the town and understood the community’s need for resolution. In 2012, he ordered cold-case detectives to reopen the inquiry as a murder investigation, we got the go-ahead to talk with DCI Pat Campbell of what was then Strathclyde Police and began to discuss exhumations. We had now been on this case with Sandra for eight years.
The agreement was that, with the full permission of the local council and all the families involved, we would commence the exhumations, maintaining full focus on the potential requirement for a switch to a forensic investigation should we identify juvenile human remains, as there were none recorded in this burial plot. To this end, we would be supported by Strathclyde Police and, if the nature of the exhumation did change, the case would come under the direction of the Crown Office. We would then immediately cease to be working for the family and would instead be working for the Crown.
We advised that it would be best to schedule the exhumations for the summer, when the days are longer, there is less rain, the weather is warmer and the soil at Old Monkland Cemetery, which is heavy with clay, would be drier, making the digging easier. As it turned out, the paperwork was at last completed in December. So when were we asked to start? In the second week of January. My colleague Dr Lucina Hackman and I are thinking about advising the police in future to plan digs for the winter months, in the hope that reverse logic will achieve the desired result. Plain talking doesn’t seem to work.
We established that there ought to be seven coffins in total in the triple-width family burial plot. Three on the left, which were more recent, interred in 1978, 1985 and 1995 respectively; one in the middle, dating back to 1923, and three on the right, where the records indicated Mr Upton’s coffin should be lying between that of his wife, laid to rest in 1951, and a later burial in 1976. There was no justification at the outset for disturbing the remains on the left-hand side or in the centre of the plot, although we had permission to do so if this became necessary, for example, if we discovered that Mr Upton’s coffin was not where we expected to find it.
Coffins do not always end up where they are supposed to be. Occasionally people get buried in the wrong place for a variety of reasons. Sometimes when a grave is opened it turns out that there is insufficient space to put the coffin where intended; sometimes they are put in the wrong place purely by mistake. Records do not always accurately reflect the true picture. Indeed, after my own grandmother died in 1976 and we opened the grave for her to be buried with her husband, we found a child’s coffin in our lair. As far as any of us knew, no children in our family had died and been interred there, and when we checked with the cemetery there was no record of any additional burial. It happens. The child was moved to consecrated ground elsewhere. I did feel a little uncomfortable about it but my grandmother had to go somewhere, and space needed to be kept at the top for my father, when his time came.
I had a dream team for the job at Old Monkland Cemetery. Dr Lucina Hackman has been with me at Dundee for sixteen years, Dr Craig Cunningham for over ten and Dr Jan Bikker I have known since he was a PhD student. Having developed a high level of mutual trust and respect, we are so used to working together that we are all attuned to the tasks the others are performing and able to anticipate what our colleagues need without a word being spoken.
Before we began we had to ensure that the memorial headstone was secured; in the end, we had to remove it temporarily because of the risk of it keeling over into the hole on top of us and adding another four dead bodies to those already in the ground. To gain access to Mr Upton’s coffin we first had to dig down to Mrs McNeilly, who had been buried in 1976. The clay-based soil was solid and although machinery was brought in to scrape off the surface layers down to the lid of her coffin, the rest had to be dug by hand in case this became a forensic investigation.
We had permission to undertake a brief anthropological examination to determine whether the occupant of the first coffin fitted with the description and age of Mrs McNeilly, who had been seventy-six when she died. The coffin was classic 1976 thin veneer with a chipboard shell and, given the degree of waterlogging of the soil, we knew it was likely to be in a poor state of repair. We found that indeed it was. Mrs McNeilly was carefully removed and placed in a heavy-duty body bag, which was housed securely until she could be laid in a new coffin and returned to her resting place. We were satisfied that her remains were consistent with her identity.
With barely six hours of daylight each day we needed generators and lights to complete a normal ten-hour shift. Heaters would have been brilliant but they never materialised. It was a bitter west of Scotland winter, freezing cold and so, so wet. As we worked in the sodden clay, we began to sink. If we tried to step back we’d find we’d left our wellies behind, sucked into the mire, so our feet were permanently muddy, wet and cold. Such conditions make for a very long, miserable day. Anyone who thinks forensic anthropology is sexy should spend a day in Old Monkland Cemetery in January, chilled to the bone, up to their knees in mud and clay with the excavation walls continually in danger of collapsing around them and creating their own tomb.
When we lifted the base plate of Mrs McNeilly’s coffin we expected the next discovery to be the lid of Mr Upton’s. Sure enough, a glimpse of a metallic sheen and a change in the sound made by the spade as it hit wood indicated that we were there. The coffin was solid wood, as was usual for its time, and perfectly intact. The metal turned out to be the fragile remains of a coffin nameplate. This was carefully removed and dried slowly so that it could be cleaned, which revealed his name, age and the month and year of his death. Mr Upton was exactly where he should have been and all the information was correct. What we did not know was whether Moira might be within the coffin, underneath it, to the side of it or indeed possibly in the coffin below his, in which his wife had been interred six years before him. A
ll were viable options, given the possible scenarios, and so all had to be investigated.
We removed the lid of Mr Upton’s coffin to find his perfectly preserved skeleton. We laid out his remains meticulously to ensure that there were no juvenile bones present (there were not) and he, too, was then placed, bone by bone, in a heavy-duty body bag and stored safely until he could be returned to his lair. The sides of his coffin were delicately dismantled to expose the base plate. The most likely place for Moira to have been concealed now, if Sandra’s theory was correct, was under the base plate of Mr Upton’s coffin and above the lid of that of his wife. As we lifted the base plate, we found there was barely space for a cigarette paper to be slipped between the two. Wherever Moira was, she was neither in Mr Upton’s coffin nor in the gap between his and Mrs Upton’s.
This did not mean, though, that she had not been ‘tucked’ around the sides of the grave, so we excavated outward laterally and to the head and foot ends of the coffin space. Nothing. Our last task was to examine Mrs Upton’s coffin. When the grave had been opened prior to Mr Upton’s funeral, it was possible that his wife’s coffin could have been broken into and Moira placed inside. Like her husband’s, Mrs Upton’s coffin was in perfect condition. When we lifted the lid, all we found were the remains of an elderly lady. We cleared around the margins of this coffin, too, but again discovered nothing. Wherever Moira is, she is not in that grave in Old Monkland Cemetery.
Having to break the news to Sandra, who had been so hopeful of a resolution for Moira’s family and the whole Coatbridge community, and whose strong conviction had driven her to campaign so tirelessly for so long for the grave to be excavated, was hard. It was also distressing for Mr Upton’s family, unwittingly caught up in a case with which they had little connection. Their involvement is an illustration of how far the ripples of such events spread out. They, too, had hoped Moira would be found in the grave as it would have made the exhumation worth the upset it caused. As it was, they shared the disappointment felt by everyone in their town. Their relatives were reburied and the family held a memorial service at the graveside.
The little girl who vanished into thin air in Coatbridge in 1957 remains missing and her case remains open. Given that she has been missing for sixty years, the number of people alive who might hold key information is diminishing. It is unlikely that we will be able to prosecute anyone else now in connection with her disappearance, but the race is on to provide some peace to her elderly sisters by finally bringing home their wee sister.
Very recently, the cold-case team drained and searched an area of the Monkland Canal after receiving information suggesting that on the night in question someone had been seen throwing a sack into the water. Radar showed some anomalies in the canal floor and divers were sent in to investigate. Our team was again present, but all we had to identify were the bones of a large dog, possibly an Alsatian. Other locations will be considered and maybe one day we will get lucky, through either intelligence or happenstance.
In the case of Renee and Andrew MacRae, who disappeared twenty years later than Moira, there is a little more time for someone to come forward and ease the suffering of their family. The not knowing is one of the most debilitating burdens for those grieving for the missing. If the work we do brings them some little comfort and relief, then it has great value. And if, by chance, the perpetrators of crimes that become cold cases such as these are still alive, they can be brought to justice. There is no statute of limitations on the crime of murder.
CHAPTER 8
Invenerunt corpus – body found!
‘True identity theft is not financial. It’s not in cyberspace. It’s spiritual’
Stephen Covey
educator (1932–2012)
A facial reconstruction of the man from Balmore.
WITHOUT A BODY, investigating what has happened to the missing can be extremely difficult. It can be just as problematic when a body is found and there are no obvious clues as to the person’s identity.
Unfortunately, as we have seen, the idea that for every unidentified body there will always be a corresponding report of a missing person, and all we need do is connect the two, is a vast over-simplification of reality. A report may have been made in a different country, to a police force distant from where the body was found, or may have been recorded many years before, archived and forgotten. Perhaps there has been no report at all because nobody realised the person was missing, or there was no one who cared sufficiently to raise the alarm. Some may see that as a sad indictment of society but the fact is that some people do not want to interact with others or to be part of a community, and as long as they are doing nothing illegal, their right to privacy and anonymity has to be respected. When those who prefer to live alone and unknown also die alone and unknown, reconciling them with their identity can be challenging, and, in some cases, sadly, unachievable.
A time lapse between death and the body being found can complicate matters. We were once called to a council flat in London occupied by a Chinese gentleman. He had not paid his rent in over eighteen months and eventually the council entered the property to repossess it. They were shocked to find the tenant in bed, wrapped tightly in his duvet like a cocoon. He had died in his sleep over a year before and was almost totally skeletonised. The bedding and mattress had acted like a wick, drawing away all the moisture produced by decomposition, leaving the remaining soft tissue desiccated and effectively mummifying him.
This man had lived alone and died alone, unmissed and anonymous. Neighbours told the police conducting door-to-door inquiries that they hadn’t registered his absence, though some said that, come to think of it, they had noticed rather a lot of dead flies on the inside of his windowsill a few months previously, and a bit of a bad smell, but they had put it down to kitchen rubbish rotting during a summer heatwave.
Cause of death could not be established and there were no fingerprints, DNA or dental records on file for the occupant that might have been able to confirm that the body was his. His identity was accepted by the coroner on the basis of his ancestry and age. Sometimes, in the middle of a big city, surrounded by millions of people, you can simply be hidden in plain view.
With no clear starting point, and no immediate links to family, friends or colleagues who may be able to shed some light on what has happened to the deceased, no police investigation can truly get into its stride. In an ideal world, our police forces would have unrestricted budgets and unlimited personnel to devote to searching for missing persons and matching them with unidentified bodies. However, we are all aware of the restraints imposed by the real world and, given the ever-increasing numbers of people who go missing, there will be those who are never found, dead or alive. Virtually every UK police force holds human remains which, despite their best efforts, remain unidentified (‘unidents’). Every year some of these will be buried without their given names, unbeknownst to their families and friends, because the investigative authorities have been unable to establish who they were in life.
When most of us die, our identity is not in question. The vast majority of us will do so under medical supervision at home or in hospitals, care homes or hospices. Those of us who die suddenly, for example as a result of an accident, will usually be carrying evidence of who we are, such as a wallet or handbag containing bank cards, driving licence or other documents bearing our name. Even when a body turns up out of the blue, most of the time it will be possible to name the deceased because they have died, say, in the house they occupied or the car they owned, and there will be clues in the paper trail that almost everyone leaves behind them. In such situations, the next of kin can be traced swiftly to verify their identity and assist with the investigation.
The biggest challenge is posed by a body found unexpectedly in an isolated place, maybe decomposed, and carrying no circumstantial evidence that could lead easily to their identification. There may be no hits, either, on DNA or fingerprint databases. This is when forensic anthropology comes into its ow
n and offers the best and sometimes the only chance of reuniting the deceased with their identity in life.
The process we follow is well documented and involves a lot of common sense, logical scientific interpretation and attention to detail. As outlined in Chapter 2, there are two types of identity that we seek to secure when we are confronted with human remains: biological identity, which pertains to general classifiers, and personal identity, which should allow us to confirm the name of the deceased. One may lead to the other, but even when it does we have to be prepared for this to take a lot of time and patience. Obviously, we will process DNA and fingerprint information immediately in the hope that we might be able to skip straight to personal identification via a quick match. Often, though, that is a pipedream and we need to fall back on old-fashioned anthropological legwork.
Humans fall into several different general descriptor categories that can help to narrow the range of possibilities. The more recent the death, the more likely we are to be able to accurately determine the four basic components of biological identity: sex, age, stature and ancestry. These are the characteristics that allow us to put out a missing person notice to say that we have found the remains of a white female between the ages of twenty-five and thirty who was approximately 5ft 2ins in height. It is important that we get all of these broad-brush indicators right, as major mistakes may result in the deceased not being identified or a significant delay in the investigation. We may also end up in court as expert witnesses, so all of our opinions must be supported by sound scientific underpinnings and we must resist the temptation to stray into the realm of supposition.