In the time since Moira McCall Anderson – to give her her Sunday name – vanished, I have served twenty-six years in the police, spent seventeen years working for the Federation Against Copyright Theft and a further four years working for A Search for Justice. In other words, it happened a long, long time ago but the sadness of the case, the public interest at the time, the mental image of a wee girl alone in the snow and a series of bizarre twists over the years have conspired to keep Moira firmly at the centre of industrial Lanarkshire’s folk memory – and Glasgow’s, too.
Eight years ago the publication of a book, Where There Is Evil (Pan), caused a sensation. In it, the author claimed her father, Alexander Gartshore, had murdered wee Moira. The author was Sandra Brown, a woman I was to get to know well. I urge you to read Sandra’s book – it is an astonishing account of Moira’s background, her family and her disappearance. I do not intend to dwell on the book’s content in-depth – I simply want to tell the story of Moira Anderson as it emerged, step-by-step, after I was drawn into this enduring mystery as part of my work with A Search for Justice.
In April 2005, I attended a conference of a voluntary organisation called Crisis and there I met a member of the Moira Anderson Foundation who introduced me to Sandra. We had much to talk about and we also went on a walking tour of the area where Moira had disappeared. It was as grim as ever and we went to a place where Sandra believed Moira’s body had been dumped by Gartshore and possibly one or two other men.
Gartshore’s background was interesting to an experienced detective like myself. Some months before the Anderson case began to dominate the headlines, he had been in deep trouble with the local cops. He was accused of the rape of a twelve-year old babysitter – the girl was same age as Moira was when she disappeared – and other sexual offences. Gartshore earned his corn as a bus driver with the firm Baxter’s, which ran short local services in the Coatbridge area. While the crimes he was accused of before Moira went missing had little to do with his job, that is probably far from true in the case of Moira.
For years, the authorities have taken the line that Moira’s disappearance was simply a missing person inquiry. It might have been different if the cops at the time had been more on the ball. In my opinion, the word ‘murder’ should have replaced ‘missing person’. It is incredible to discover that, although Gartshore had been locked up on the rape charge, he was actually out on bail on the day of the disappearance and driving a Baxter’s bus past the stop where Moira had been seen near to the time of her disappearance. This was a man who had had been accused of raping a twelve-year-old!
He should have been a prime suspect right from the start of the hunt for the missing wee girl. But, no, the cops in Coatbridge did not twig there might possibly be a connection. It gets worse. Eventually the bus, which had been seen by witnesses around the shop at the time, came into the inquiry and the police got round to visiting the company’s headquarters and speaking to the drivers and staff. Naturally, this was the talk of the area and Gartshore’s wife even asked him if he had been interviewed. He told her he hadn’t but that he would put that right and left the house. He returned some time later and told her that he was ‘in the clear’.
Early in my 2005 inquiry, I established that Gartshore was not interviewed as a suspect at the time – he was, however, jailed for eighteen months for the rape of the babysitter.
Looking right back at the start of the case, one thing is puzzling – why would Moira go on a bus when she was almost at the shop she had been sent to by her granny? Some light was to be shed on this after the publication of Sandra’s book.
Gartshore had subsequently moved to Leeds and the allegations in the book led to Detective Chief Inspector Ricky Gray of Strathclyde Police and another detective visiting him there. He, of course, denied killing Moira but did tell the investigators that she had been on his bus that afternoon. He claimed she had boarded the bus as it was her mum’s birthday the next day and she wanted to go and buy her a card. I checked this out and, sure enough, the following day was Moira’s mother’s birthday. How did Gartshore know this? To me, a likely explanation is that he had invited Moira up to the front of the bus to talk to him and she had told where she was going and what the purpose of her journey was.
The weather was vile that day and road conditions bad – so much so, that the buses were ordered to stop running. I surmise that, on reaching the terminus, the buses unloaded the passengers and headed back to the depot. Whether Moira stayed on or got off at this point is still a vital unanswered question.
The police investigations at Baxter’s tuned up a surprise. A man called James Gallogley was another of the drivers. On the surface, he was a man leading as blameless life – a pillar of so-called respectability, he appeared to be above suspicion. But this Jekyll-and-Hyde type was to be convicted of abusing five schoolgirls. In 1997, he was sentenced to ten years and this wicked man died of cancer in Peterhead. But, before he went to meet his maker and answer for his sins, he wrote a fifteen-page confession indicating that Gartshore and another man were Moira’s killers. It is my suspicion that Gallogley is that other man. Intriguingly Gallogley was a married man with four children, an elder in Calder Parish Church in Coatbridge. Seemingly above reproach, he had access to young children in the Sunday School and four of his victims had grown up by the time he was arrested for interfering with a young girl. The earlier victims came forward at this time. He eventually admitted eleven charges including attempted rape and indecent behaviour. Nice friends Gartshore had.
When news emerged that I was interested in the case, the e-mails started to fly. One of Moira’s sisters even got in touch from Australia and was delighted that I might shed some new light on the mystery. A retired Lanarkshire police sergeant, now in Canada, got in touch to say that, at the time of the initial investigation, a number of officers were busy painting and cleaning up the station prior to a VIP visit. I reflected that they might have been better looking at the usual suspects.
As with the rapes at Butlins Holiday Camp in Ayr that I covered in the previous chapter, I got some help from officers in Leeds. These were valuable contacts and I got in touch with them regarding Gartshore. I gave them a recent address and suggested that, since he was a convicted paedophile, it might be worth checking him out in connection with any unsolved incidents they had on their hands. They came back with news that shocked me. Gartshore, it seems, had been living with a young woman who had been found dead in the back garden, apparently having jumped from the multi-storey flat. I wonder …
Back in Scotland, it emerged that, before Gallogley died, he had confided what he knew about the Anderson case to a fellow inmate, who, by then, had been released and was living in Inverness-shire. There was a lot of detail in this confession. Gallogley told of Gartshore overpowering Moira with chloroform while on the bus and said that he had hidden her in a compartment in the bus which could also be accessed from the outside of the bus. My inquiries have confirmed that the bus Gartshore was driving on the day of Moira’s disappearance had just such a feature. When he arrived back at the depot that fateful snowy day, Gartshore and another unknown man were said to have found that Moira had died. The unknown man was probably Gallogley and the fact that Moira had died is consistent with her being drugged and left in an unheated enclosed place in freezing Scottish weather. This ex-con said that Moira’s body was dumped in an area of Coatbridge known as Witchwood Park. Anyone familiar with the area will confirm this is an ideal place to conceal a body. A stretch of ground that, in parts, is almost impossible to penetrate, it is something like a mini version of the Florida Everglades without the sun or the alligators.
As aficionados of crime fiction know, at some stage in any long-running inquiry, a mystic or medium of some sort is likely to make an appearance. I have never used them at any time in my career and take them all and their alleged mystic powers with the largest possible pinch of salt. But others disagree and some will tell you that such folk have helped solve crimes. For w
hat it is worth, I can tell you that Sandra Brown took a well-known mystic to this muddy, bedraggled and overgrown area of Lanarkshire and that he announced, ‘Moira’s broken body was dumped here!’ and broke down with emotion. The body, however, was never found and, even with Sandra’s assistance, all my investigations were getting us nowhere. We were not helped either by announcements from the legal establishment to the effect that there is no murder without a body.
Over the years, the Sunday Mail had taken an interest in the case and Sandra Brown and one of their top reporters Marion Scott, who specialised in crime, went south to interview Gartshore. Both women had a right go at him but, as you might expect, he denied any involvement in the disappearance. But he threw another stone into the pond by claiming that, although he admitted Moira had been on the bus, she had left it in the company of another young girl. It was a smokescreen, of course, as no one else in the whole story has ever mentioned such a girl.
We were not making much progress but Sandra was still in touch with A Search for Justice and, in August 2005, she dropped a bombshell. She told me that a woman who owned a house and a stable near the place where Moira’s body might have been concealed had found bones protruding just above the ground, adjacent to a small stream. This could be vital evidence and I was almost afraid to ask what had happened to the bones. Sandra said, ‘Oh, I have them. I got them three months ago – they’re in a plastic bag.’ I immediately asked if anyone else knew about the bones and Sandra told me that a friend had expressed the view that they were human remains. At that moment, I had visions of Sandra being in deep trouble for hanging on to such material but I did what I had to do. One of the world’s leading authorities in identifying bones is Professor Susan Black of Dundee University. She’s a real expert on forensics, anatomy, anthropology and skeletal analysis and identification. When I told her what we were doing, she sounded incredulous – as well she might.
We arranged for a friend of Sandra to take the bones east to Dundee University but there was a bit of a mix-up and the bones did not arrive. However, eventually they were delivered. Much to my relief, Professor Black wasted no time phoning to say that, after examination, she was certain they were not human. If they had been, we would all have had a problem. But it looked as if the bones found at the possible dumping site were those of a dog or some other animal so now we were back to getting nowhere fast.
The next line of inquiry was to try to have a look at the police file on the disappearance and the subsequent investigation. Discreet inquires confirmed that the file was held in an office in Motherwell. I asked to have a look but formal procedure demanded that I should request access through the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002. The Strathclyde Police Disclosure Unit, based in the force’s HQ in Pitt Street in the centre of Glasgow, was in charge of all requests of this kind.
I was well aware that this was a sensitive case and that the police would not be particularly happy for it to be reinvestigated for the reasons made obvious earlier in the chapter but, despite this, I applied in writing for access to the file. I did not get to see that file on the case and the official reason is bizarre to say the least. A letter told me of the refusal and I can condense its contents into one sentence – to allow access to the file you requested could be prejudicial to any ongoing inquiry. The reader will not need me to point out that, at this time, the case was nearly fifty years old and the prospects of Gartshore being brought to justice were slim to zero.
I appealed and, a couple of weeks later, a parcel was delivered to my home and I thought we were getting somewhere at last. However, the parcel didn’t contain the file but newspaper cuttings on the case. And, as an indication of the lack of concern and care that had gone into this, I can tell you that one of the cuttings was on a police raid of a lap-dancing club in leafy Wiltshire.
By now, A Search for Justice was becoming expert in requesting information, under the Freedom of Information laws, on the Moira Anderson case and other cases. But Strathclyde Police were not keen on us getting files relating to unsolved murders and other crimes and our requests were rejected.
The next step in the Anderson case was to appeal to the Scottish Information Commissioner based in St Andrews. I wanted to see these files. In October 2005, I received a letter, part of which read, ‘I can confirm that your request is valid in terms of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.’ Any joy at this was short-lived. I phoned St Andrews and an official confided to me that the system was unable to cope with the demands for access. They were bogged down by appeals galore and the fact that some forces, Strathclyde in particular, were not playing their part.
All this was at the time of national furore over the shooting of the Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes in the wake of the London tube bombings. It made me furious to read that a London reporter had used the FOI act to gain immediate access to correspondence between the Commissioner of the Met and the Home Office just hours after the terror attack. He got what he wanted and we could not get a file on forty-nine-year-old case. In April of 2006, we learned that Alexander Gartshore had died of cancer in Leeds. Scottish newspapers asked what my thoughts were on hearing the news. I said that I hoped he had died an agonising death.
This whole tale could have had a different ending if the local cops had acted with more skill originally. And if, almost fifty years later, Strathclyde had let us have the file, both Gartshore and Gallogley’s old prison mate could have been interviewed and light shed on a crime that has endured in the public memory in the years since a cheery little girl headed out into the snow on a routine errand. Access to the file might now be of lesser value but, be in no doubt, it will be pursued.
6
THE GIRL WHO WENT TO THE PUB
In my years with A Search for Justice many tormented people turned to us for help in a desperate search for peace, for what is now called ‘closure’. To have had a son or daughter murdered and to live for month after month, year after year, with the uncertainty of what happened to that loved one is mental torture. Folk who have lived through such a nightmare have told me that it dominates their lives in a way that is almost inexplicable to someone who has not experienced it. One such tormented soul is Margaret Waters, mother of Tracey Waters, an eleven-year-old who died on St Valentine’s Day 1983.
I felt for Margaret who, as the parents of victims often do, seemed almost to have blamed herself for the death of young Tracey. It is easy now, in the more enlightened days of the twenty-first century, to be critical but 1983 was a long time ago and life was lived to a different pattern then. What happened before the murder of Tracey was quite clear; what happened after it complex and, as such, demanding for an investigator at the time. And, if investigating Tracey’s death was difficult not long after it happened, it was even more so for someone like me, trying to piece together the story more than twenty years later.
Margaret Waters came to us for help and we tried to give her it – after all, that was what our organisation, now sadly disbanded, was all about. For Margaret, it didn’t matter how long ago this tragedy occurred – her search for justice was ongoing. The murder happened in Johnstone, a place, then as now, with plenty to keep a police force busy. With its mixture of well-kept bungalows, sturdy detached buildings redolent of past prosperity and many council houses, it’s a rather strange little town – a place without much heart, at least to the visitor. Life in such a town back in the eighties could be bleak and dispiriting. It is not surprising then that there was something of a pub culture, especially in the less salubrious areas, and, on the night of her daughter’s death, Margaret Waters had left Tracey to go for a drink in a local pub.
The eleven-year-old got bored, left the warmth of her home and wandered out into the cold February night in search of her mum who she believed would possibly be in the pub. They never met up. Tracey was found strangled behind a garage near to the pub. The grim discovery happened only hours after Margaret had returned home to find no sign of her daughter. In a state of anxiety,
the mother had rounded up members of her family and they searched the area around her home and the pub with no success. This brought home the possibility of something serious having happened and all hope of Tracey being found playing or visiting a friend disappeared. Reality had to be faced and the missing youngster was reported to the local police who promptly mounted a major missing person search.
A body was found in a garden at the rear of Shanks Crescent. It had to be properly identified and, in an effort to spare her mother the pain of doing so, an uncle, Adam McDermott, agreed to help the police in the grim task. The police were later to take stick from the press and others for letting this happen when McDermott was later charged with the murder. The police were accused of lack of responsibility as this could be presented as allowing a suspect access to a crime scene. But, of course, at the stage McDermott offered his help, for apparently humanitarian reasons, he was not a suspect. Hindsight is, as they say, a wonderful thing. And I have to say clearly that, had I been investigating the murder at the time it happened, I would have done exactly what the investigating cops did. In good faith, they accepted what seemed like a genuine offer of help.
Fans of true crime and classic detective fiction are well aware of the importance of things like the footstep in the mud or snow and the state of the grass or the ground near where a body is found. Detectives these days don’t wander around wearing a checked cape and with a pipe glued between their jaws and a huge magnifying glass in hand, gazing at displaced grass or gravel. However, it is undeniably true that the evidence of your eyes alone, if you look at a crime scene correctly, can help you piece together what might have happened.
And it was relatively easy for the police in the Tracey Waters case to put together a picture of what had happened. They had a witness – a man walking his dog who had seen a man running and stumbling along Janefield Avenue away from the murder spot at about the time the crime was committed. Lone dog walkers, out at night when others are glued to the telly, do tend to see some interesting sights. The witness said he saw the man taking a route through adjoining gardens. A footprint had been left in newly dug ground and hedges, too, showed signs of a man having broken through them and, in the process crashing though the hedges, he had generally made a mess of the gardens. To me, it doesn’t take much of a genius to work out that somebody would have been scratched by going through hedges like this.
Real Hard Cases Page 6