The Lawkillers

by Alexander McGregor

  Lord Weir did not suffer the same inhibitions. He fixed the slightly built man who stood defiantly before him with an unwavering look and almost spat the words:

  The jury have convicted you of nauseating and barbaric crimes. The sentence is imprisonment for life.

  In view of the fact you have previously been convicted of murder and in view of the wicked nature of these crimes, it is my duty to recommend to the Secretary of State that you should not be released on licence until at least twenty years have elapsed.

  After Thompson was removed from the dock, the judge turned to face the jury. With sympathy replacing the venom he had directed at the accused man, His Lordship told them softly, ‘I would not have wished your task on my worst enemy. You have had to listen to distasteful and horrendous evidence and have stuck to your task manfully. Your part in this sordid affair is now at an end.’

  It was not the finish of the story, however, as far as the man who had been incarcerated for his second life sentence was concerned. Three months after ending up once more in Perth Prison, Thompson revealed to an acquaintance where he had taken some of the other body parts, even drawing on a biscuit wrapper a map pinpointing the location under a disused rail bridge in Strathmartine Road, near Kirkton. They were discovered precisely where he had indicated. But despite a massive citywide search, the head of his victim was never found, though it was suspected it may have been deposited in a rubbish skip near the killer’s home in Haldane Terrace.

  Nearly two years later, Thompson was back in the dock in Edinburgh, this time to hear the Court of Criminal Appeal turn down his plea that he had been the victim of a miscarriage of justice. He was well used to protesting his innocence. Four days after beginning his second life term, Thompson had penned an eloquent, perfectly punctuated, 3,000-word letter to the Courier newspaper – which went unpublished – the thrust of which was that he had not killed his grandmother. He also gave a detailed, and in places, moving account of his largely institutionalised life.

  Turning to the murder of Gordon Dunbar, the butcher of Butterburn Court concluded:

  The jury reached a verdict and though I could argue that it was the wrong one I cannot but accept it and in accepting it I accept that I am likely to die in prison. There is nothing else that can be done to me than that and it is a punishment I would not wish on my worst enemy.

  During his second life term, Thompson apparently ‘found God’ and he pursued his new interest with zeal, occasionally causing other inmates to complain about his ‘bible-bashing’ activities. In 2002 he designed a Celtic cross t-shirt which was worn by schoolchildren during the Pope’s visit to Scotland. The double-killer even dreamed of becoming a Church of Scotland minister after his hoped-for release.

  That did not materialise. In December 2010, having served more than seventeen years of his minimum 20-year term, Alastair Thompson’s earlier prediction came to pass. He died, aged 61, in Perth Prison. Most of his life from the age of twelve had been spent in one form of custody or another.

  12

  BABES IN THE HOUSE

  When the curtain of rage that had descended over her at last lifted, the child-killer smoothed her dress and walked from the room, not even looking back as she gently closed the bedroom door behind her. The injuries she had inflicted were violent, sustained and quite deliberate. Pretty Helen Laird had been hit, repeatedly bitten and strangled. She was found in bed in her home in Blacklock Crescent, part of the Linlathen timber-house estate on Dundee’s north-eastern perimeter, at 1.20 in the morning and to this day no one knows why she had to die. She was only just three and the birthday presents she had received four days earlier still lay in the room beside her.

  The person who caused the little child to suffer was also in the house, sleeping on a couch, and she couldn’t explain either what little Helen had done to bring on such a ferocious attack. Whatever it was, the unaccountable fury that detonated inside her that September night in 1972 thrust upon Annette McGowan the kind of infamy that usually exists only in the dark pages of horror stories. At thirteen years of age, Annette that day became the youngest killer her native city had ever known; indeed, she was, and remains, among the most tender-aged females to have taken a life anywhere in Britain. If this notoriety conjures up images of a juvenile monster, evil beyond words and capable of the worst kind of unspeakable atrocities, that would be a mistake.

  For in reality Annette was the second victim in this wretched encounter when death came calling. By any definition, she deserved much of the sympathy that came her way. Some even thought she should not have been alone when she came to sit in the dock of the High Court to answer for her actions.

  The events that took her there were straightforward enough. The mothers of the two girls were friends, living in neighbouring estates with unhappy marriages behind them. Between them they had ten children – Annette was one of seven to her 37-year-old mother, Mary McGowan, and Helen was the youngest of three daughters to 32-year-old Sheila Laird. The two women who bore these offspring were like many others of their generation – young mothers in post-war Dundee, a city struggling to come to terms with high unemployment and doing its best to house much of its population in new, but soulless, housing developments far from the city centre. Broken marriages abounded and the women left with the children sought an outlet from their boredom and enforced poverty with nights out at bingo parlours, or on drinking binges. The age had passed when women did not enter a public house without the company of a man and, like the bingo palaces, lounge bars with live music were flourishing in the city. That Saturday night the mothers of the two children went to visit one of them, The Blair, halfway down Princes Street and on the bus route from Linlathen into town. Thirteen-year-old Annette, not for the first time, was called upon to babysit for the Laird children – Helen (3), Susan (5) and Elizabeth (7).

  The mothers departed in mid-evening and, in their terms, the night turned out to be a resounding success. They met two men and went off with them to a party in another part of town. At 1.20 the following morning, the pair finally returned to Blacklock Crescent. When they entered the house, Annette, who had been sleeping on a settee in the living-room of the flat, woke up. Mrs Laird went to check on her three daughters but could not find Helen in either of the two bedrooms. The two older children, who shared a bed, were roused and when Elizabeth was asked where her youngest sister was, she pointed to the bottom of the bed and answered, ‘There. She’s there.’ Anxiously pulling back the blankets, the mother saw the still, cold figure of Helen huddled in a corner at the base of the bed. She knew instantly that she was not sleeping.

  ‘Helen’s dead,’ she shouted over and over. By this time Mrs McGowan was in the room and she desperately lifted the little girl into her arms and tried as best as she knew how to administer the kiss of life. It brought no reaction from the child who had long stopped breathing.

  Later that day, Annette was charged with her murder.

  Eleven weeks on, and with Christmas just a week away, Annette McGowan sat nervously in the dock of the High Court in Dundee as the whole bewildering panoply of a trial in the most solemn court in the land was played out before her. She wore a dark coat and bright, multi-coloured dress and tightly clutched the hand of the policewoman seated beside her.

  The question of who had killed little Helen was never really an issue. A dental expert told the jury that he ‘did not entertain the slightest doubt’ that the many bite marks had been inflicted by the 13-year-old babysitter. What required to be determined was the level of guilt that should attach to the child perpetrator of the manual strangulation that had brought on the death. Was it culpable homicide, as had ultimately been libelled, or should the charge be reduced to assault because of the special circumstances surrounding the case?

  There were plenty of those. Psychiatrists explained to the court that Annette suffered from a mental disorder linked with epilepsy and also an unusual genetic eye condition which was known to be associated with other defects. She was of
diminished responsibility. Mr R. D. MacKay, the prosecuting advocate depute, told the jurors they faced a task more difficult than the one usually confronting juries, because they could not allow the facts to be clouded by sympathy and emotion.

  ‘You may feel sympathy for the accused, her unhappy background, her physical disabilities,’ he said. ‘On the other hand, you may feel a certain horror and shock that an attractive little girl should die in this way.’ However, he urged them to put their feelings aside and accept their responsibility of looking only at the facts.

  Mr Charles McArthur, QC, defending, described the case as ‘particularly tragic’ and asked the jury to find Annette guilty of assault only. He pleaded: ‘It is extremely tragic and very distressing for you and for me to find myself responsible for the little girl of thirteen sitting in the dock.’ He agreed that the case depended on the facts, but said sympathy could not be put out of mind. Then, as though reading the minds of many of those who sat in the High Court that pre-Christmas day, he struck out, saying:

  Perhaps one is a little less sympathetic to those who are responsible for their small children being looked after. I find it very distressing little children should be left to be looked after by a young girl to a very late hour. That may just be part of the whole tragic set-up.

  When the jury returned after an absence of only seventeen minutes to find her guilty of culpable homicide, Annette started to cry quietly in the dock and turned to cuddle closer to her policewoman escort, gripping her hand even more tightly. Her mother, seated in the public benches, sobbed loudly and was assisted from the courtroom by friends.

  Most of the court time was taken up in discussion about where the tearful 13-year-old could be held to serve her sentence. Mental health experts said the State Mental Hospital at Carstairs was the only place in Scotland suitable for Annette, though it was not ideal, and there was no room there for her. One consultant in child psychiatry explained that Annette required long-term, consistent care in ‘graduation security’. He thought the security would be at the beginning rather than the end of her period in detention and that ideally the prognosis would be satisfactory enough to allow her ‘eventual return to responsibility’. ‘Regretfully, I know of nowhere in Scotland which can provide this treatment,’ he said with some resignation.

  Another consultant psychiatrist opined, ‘I think it is necessary for the girl’s own safety, and possibly the safety of others, that she be in conditions of security before one should begin a plan. That would mean she would be long enough in one place to develop satisfactory relationships, at least with adults and perhaps with people of her own age.’

  Lord Keith on the bench, who had listened intently to the medical experts, continued the case to allow more time for a suitable place of detention to be found. He looked gently at the weeping Annette and told her that no one could avoid feeling very distressed about the nature of the case or a great deal of sympathy with her about the circumstances, problems and sad events that brought her to the court, or the fact she was there at all. Three weeks later, at the High Court in Edinburgh, at the resumption of the hearing, His Lordship was informed that little real progress had been made and there was no place in Scotland which was suitable from the point of view of security and the kind of assistance Annette required. Ultimately, it was decided that the tiny figure who sat in court with a bright red ribbon in her hair should be accommodated in a new special care unit for disturbed adolescents forming part of Balgay Approved School in Dundee.

  Lord Keith ordered that she be detained for ten years. But he told her that while the order he had made specified that period of time, it did not necessarily mean she would be held for that duration. The Scottish Secretary, he said, had the discretion to allow her release on licence when he thought fit.

  Annette McGowan disappeared from public view that day, 5 January 1973, and what ultimately became of her is not commonly known. She vanished beneath the cloak of anonymity given to offending juveniles and there is nothing to suggest she ever appeared in a court again. Nor is it publicly known for how long she was detained. That is not surprising. What is remarkable, given the deep interest in more contemporary times of the activities of children who kill, is that the case of Annette McGowan did not attract more attention than it did in her home town when the unusual and disturbing events were played out. A quarter of a century later, there are few in local police or legal circles who are aware she even existed.

  13

  THE CARRY-OUT KILLER

  The approach of Christmas 1970 seemed to signal a change in fortunes in the troubled life of Leah Bramley. Twice married and with three young children, she had moved away from Yorkshire five weeks earlier to seek a new start in Dundee, leaving her miner husband Bernard back in Castleford.

  The move hadn’t begun well. After spending a few days residing with her sister, the 33-year-old took up the tenancy of a small flat in Springhill. But it was too cramped to accommodate the whole family and the three children – the products of her first marriage – had to be split up. The oldest girl, aged fourteen, remained with her, but her 9-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son were sent to live temporarily in a Salvation Army hostel in Lochee. Then things suddenly took a turn for the better. Out of the blue and to Leah’s surprised delight, she was given the keys to a brand new council flat in Dundee’s developing Whitfield housing estate. She moved at once into the first-floor maisonette at 389 Ormiston Crescent and wrote excitedly to her husband with the news, telling him how he could help her get established when he came north for a Christmas visit. ‘Dundee has been lucky to me at last,’ she enthused.

  A few days later, as the fairy lights twinkled in the recently occupied houses in the new estate, the small, attractive blonde was found dead in the flat she had been so proud to occupy.

  She was slumped in a rocking chair, an imitation fur coat over the shoulders of her green jumper, and her lower body was naked with a broom-handle protruding from her intimate parts. Although there were signs of manual strangulation and three superficial cut injuries to her neck, these did not appear to be the main cause of her death. That had come after a series of severe sexual assaults by the broom-handle and a drinking glass, which were both found nearby, heavily bloodstained. Among other items scattered near the body, and the large pool of blood which had formed under the chair, was an empty McEwen’s Export can and a tin-opener. A number of pieces of burnt paper were also on the floor beside the corpse.

  Detective Superintendent William Melville, the head of Dundee CID, whose distinguished career was to see him successfully solve more than forty homicides in the city, described the killing as ‘one of the worst sadistic murders I have ever seen’.

  Murder squad detectives made two significant discoveries. There was not a fingerprint to be found in the room, not even of the victim, with every surface seemingly having been wiped by a damp cloth; and there was no evidence of a break-in, suggesting that Leah had known her killer.

  Although the body of the petite blonde had been found at 5.30 p.m., the city’s senior police surgeon said he believed she had died many hours before – probably in the early hours of that day. His post-mortem indicated that the light cuts on her neck could have been made by a tin-opener and that the violent injuries to her private parts had been carried out while she was still alive, but that she had probably been rendered unconscious a short time before the intimate assault by blows to the chin, combined with a form of strangulation. If she had not been insensible, she would have screamed out because of the intolerable pain caused by the massive internal injuries.

  Enquiries quickly established that at about 7 p.m. on the previous night Leah had gone with a woman friend to the Heather Bell bar in William Street, where she consumed more than half a dozen lagers. As the mood became merrier, she had asked the guitarist who entertained in the pub to play a particular song. He obliged, then she asked him to join her for a drink.

  Witnesses told police that Leah had become ‘very friendly’ with t
he singer and had proceeded to invite him to a party, requesting that he bring some drink along in the form of a carry-out. Others described how a little later that night, just after closing time, Leah had knocked on the door of the pub to ask for the musician, who had stayed behind for an after-hours drink. After apparently expressing some annoyance at being disturbed, the musician, who used the stage name Ron Gibson, bought a dozen cans of export and twenty cigarettes and left. He was last seen driving off with Leah in his two-tone red and grey Ford Zodiac.

  Eighteen hours after the presumed time of the murder, the guitar player – who in reality was Alexander Stuart, a 25-year-old married man who also lived in the Whitfield estate – was invited to police headquarters to make a statement. He was a character with a complex life. As well as using assumed names to dodge the taxman when he sang round the city’s pubs, he worked as a hairdresser and also as a part-time taxi driver with Handy Taxis (one of the leading companies in town). Stuart related how the woman who had earlier asked him to sing had requested that he drive her to her sister’s home in Mid Craigie, which he did. When they arrived, the sister was walking in the street and Leah had left the car to briefly speak to her, before returning to ask him to drive her home to Ormiston Crescent. Halfway there, however, in Pitkerro Road, she wanted him to stop the car. He did so and she got out. He had not seen her since.

  Stuart went on to explain to detectives how he had subsequently gone taxi-ing and had driven round various estates on the northern edge of the city but hadn’t landed a single fare. He had even tried several times to phone the taxi company headquarters seeking work, but the phone had been constantly engaged. Eventually, he had gone home to Whitfield and called at a neighbour’s house, where he knew his wife had been spending part of the evening with a couple who were friends. He had taken his carry-out of twelve cans of McEwan’s Export with him, he said.