by Tom Wood
Back in 1977, however, two incident rooms were established and the best teams were picked to run them. In Edinburgh, one of the most experienced admin sergeants, David ‘Yogi’ Brunton, got the call. David, whose nickname arose from his bear-like physique, was a frontline officer with a tough exterior but he had also built a reputation for his deft handling of administration work for murder squads. This was to be his greatest test but years later, when, long after his death, his manual index was computerised, the quality of his team’s work shone through.
Armed as I am now with 20/20 hindsight, it is not valid for me to criticise the steps taken in those early days but everyone in the service will agree that back then standards were very different from the ones in place today. Search techniques, for one, were rough and ready. There is no suggestion anything was missed by the officers out combing the crime scenes in 1977 but from studying the records of the time and seeing photographs of what went on, it is clear that it would be done differently today. Many years later it became clear that the job of gathering of forensic evidence and its protection from contamination was done properly, giving us the basic materials we needed in later investigations.
In the city, detectives were making frequent appeals through the press for people who had visited the World’s End that night to come forward even if they believed they had not seen anything relevant. Scores of them did and thankfully many of them had seen the girls. Some paid passing attention to the men who had befriended them but nothing in their behaviour in public that night would have given reason for any concern to bystanders.
Like many teenagers who had been on a night out, the girls were showing signs that they had been drinking. One part of that initial inquiry was to try to discover exactly how much each of them had drunk during the course of the evening. The significance of this was to give officers an estimate of how long after leaving the World’s End they had met their deaths. A fairly accurate account of the lapse of time can be given by determining what their blood alcohol level would have been when they left the pub and what the level was in the body when it has found. A straightforward calculation can be made of the time that had elapsed by the reduction in that reading. The girls drank about the same that night but Helen’s blood alcohol level was considerably lower than Christine’s, suggesting quite powerfully that she had been alive rather longer than her friend.
One of the first lines of inquiry at the city end of the investigation involved the local beat officers whose patch included the World’s End. In this day and age, this may sound odd but, in the 70s, the foot-beat system was still the backbone of city policing. Back then, the constables knew their beats and they took pride in their ownership of a particular patch and felt a very real responsibility for it. There was a system of day and night foot beats across the city centre while, on the outskirts, panda cars operated a system much more like the one we have today. In the centre, however, the beats were still based on a 1930s system which used police boxes, flashing beacons and lines of sight – a method of working that had been in existence long before portable radios became the norm. The day beats were usually fairly big and divided into hourly and half-hourly turns. Each turn would have a very detailed route of patrol that made sure the whole area was regularly policed and, in the days before radio when policemen patrolled alone, this meant that they could be found and supervised by their sergeant. During the night, the system was different in the city centre as each nightshift officer would only have a very small area to patrol so that they could check the security of property, provide a constant visible street presence and be on hand to supervise the emptying of the pubs and clubs. Because of this, the chances were that, when Helen and Christine left the World’s End late on 15 October, a police officer would have been near at hand and this indeed proved to be the case.
Coincidentally one of the very young policemen working in the vicinity of the High Street that night was Malcolm Dickson. Later, as deputy chief constable and assistant inspector of constabulary, he would become a close colleague and friend of mine. We often discussed that night and, although he saw nothing of significance himself, neither he nor any of the officers on duty that night ever forgot 15 October 1977. In fact, the beat men who were patrolling outside the World’s End gave valuable information to the inquiry team for they had seen two girls like Helen and Christine that night – in the company of two men; it was a small step but an important one. The two men had appeared to be hanging around outside the World’s End but not in a threatening kind of way. Two police officers, casually observing closing time in the High Street, spoke of how it seemed that the men were trying to engage with the girls. Those sightings were probably the last time Helen and Christine were seen alive.
It is extraordinarily difficult for the senior officers in charge of a large inquiry like this to keep control of all aspects of the case and monitor with exact precision the various directions in which it is going. It remains difficult to this day but would have been even more so in 1977 when, without computers, there was a huge reliance on the recollections of individual officers and the primitive card index systems to try to ensure the key threads of the investigation were identified.
There is huge pressure on them from both within and outside the police service to come up with results and to do so quickly. The danger always is that, in the absence of any clear leads and direct evidence, it is too easy to be distracted by hunches and suspicions not born of hard evidence or to be led astray to pursue inquiries that do not justify a priority. In a recent example, the hunt for the so-called Washington sniper was predicated on the fact that he drove a white van to the scenes of his shootings. This threw a cloud of suspicion over every white van man in the DC area. Of course it was later discovered that the presence of the van was coincidental and the sniper drove no such vehicle. Decisions have to be taken when weighing up the quality of evidence and which lines of inquiry are to be pursued. It would be possible to start tracing the owners and drivers of all white vans in order to eliminate the innocent. But it’s easy to see just how quickly this could engulf the whole inquiry and ultimately a sizeable part of the nation’s police service.
The World’s End had something of a white van lead, only it was slightly more manageable. All the descriptions of the two men given by the various witnesses agreed on the fact that one of them had short cropped hair – a soldier’s haircut. This man was also said to be of very smart appearance which added to the impression that he could have a military background. The Royal Mile was popular with off-duty soldiers from the various barracks in and around Edinburgh and the view was taken that the man with the short hair may well have been in the army. So it was that, early in the investigation, a substantial part of the inquiry team’s manpower was devoted to speaking to soldiers based at Dreghorn, Glencorse and the other camps near the capital who had been out that Saturday night. The soldier scenario was an appealing one. It could explain why the pair were strangers in the pub on a Saturday night and, such is the transient nature of life in the army, they could be well out of the area by the time the murder inquiry was underway. Naturally, checking out this possibility was a demanding task. The fact the events under examination had taken place late on a Saturday evening did not help the recollections of many of the young soldiers being interviewed.
Christine Eadie’s body had been found first and Helen Scott’s just a few hours later. All of Christine’s outer clothing had been removed and, to this day, has never been found. She had been bound and gagged in a very precise fashion. Helen’s body was partially stripped and she had been bound and gagged in an almost identical manner. There was extensive forensic evidence to be gathered from both bodies and also body fluids from the attacker or attackers. DNA profiling had not been discovered in those days so there were no leads there but fate intervened in those first hours in a way that eventually contributed significantly to the investigation. One of the forensic team at the scene was a young South African by the name of Lester Knibb who remained with th
e Lothian and Borders force for the rest of his career. Lester personally saw to the care and preservation of the evidence from the crime scenes for many years. This meant that, when DNA testing was developed as an investigatory tool, we had the samples retained in a professional manner, with their legal integrity intact and ready to form the very core of the case that would eventually be brought to court.
The various leads that came up from the interviews with soldiers, friends of the girls and other witnesses were pursued with vigour but, despite the commitment of the officers directly involved and the huge manpower deployed, the World’s End inquiry was soon running out of steam. As well as the many red herrings, there were also the false witnesses, ranging from fantasists to clairvoyants, who tend to be drawn to major police investigations of this kind. This category includes people so fascinated or horrified by events that they imagine themselves to have key roles in the drama.
One case in particular highlights this phenomenon. I was a detective inspector involved in the investigation of the abduction of five-year-old Caroline Hogg from the promenade at Portobello, a seaside area of Edinburgh. Her disappearance, coming as it did just a short time after the abduction and murder of another little girl, Susan Maxwell in the Borders, turned into one of those missing person inquiries that instantly had all the resources of our force thrown at it. I became fascinated by the emergence of a number of witnesses who, on the face of it, seemed perfectly credible and who had been in the area that day. They had become so overcome with grief and the emotion of the whole case – Caroline was missing for a considerable period of time before her body was found – that some imagined themselves into positions of importance in the investigation. They amassed substantial knowledge of the events surrounding this little girl’s disappearance by avidly reading every newspaper article and soaking up the details of the case. Such was the volume of knowledge that these false witnesses built up, they could appear to be central to events until they had been subjected to time-consuming interviews. Sometimes these people are deluded through mental illness and sometimes they cannot be characterised as liars or fakes because they are well-motivated people who actually believe what they have imagined to be true. Whatever category they fall into, these people are extremely dangerous to an investigation that is desperate for new leads and lines of inquiry. They can be difficult to deal with and can tie up huge amounts of manpower as officers try to get to the bottom of false stories. And, worst of all, they can lead the investigation down a completely wrong track.
In the World’s End case, avenues of inquiry turned into dead ends and information dried up. The teams were slowly wound down as their work came to an end and, within the relatively short time of about seven months, it was decided there was insufficient prospect of a breakthrough to continue to devote large resources to the investigation. The massive card indexes were boxed up and the inquiry was put on a care and maintenance basis but the public pressure on the police to solve this case did not let up. It was added to over the following months by the murder of a young woman called Agnes Cooney in Glasgow on 2 December of that year. It was not long before the press were linking the World’s End murders directly with that of Agnes Cooney and two other girls who had been murdered in the west not long before Helen and Christine died. They were Anna Kenny, who had disappeared and was feared killed in August 1977, and Hilda McAuley, who had been killed just thirteen days before the World’s End murders.
Whilst the press were quick to ask whether the killings could be connected, the police were anxious to play down any possibility that the cases were linked. In hindsight, it seems a strange course of action for murders with such apparent similarities not to be investigated together or at least for them to be the subject of enhanced cooperation and liaison between the forces involved. Equally one can understand the reluctance of officers to create what would undoubtedly have become widespread public alarm until such time as they could be absolutely certain the five had all met their deaths at the hands of the same killer or killers.
Strathclyde police were facing the same challenges as Lothian and Borders as they struggled to amalgamate smaller forces into one cohesive organisation. Officers in the west of Scotland were faring little better with their three cases than we in the east were doing with ours and soon all the various inquiries had run out of new leads and, one by one, the investigations were slowly being wound down.
Just how unacceptable it would have been to the public and politicians for a line to be drawn under these inquiries if it was generally thought all five murders were by the same hand is clear to see. However, the fact is that, if an inquiry is exhausted, no amount of goodwill or pressure will rekindle it without new information to go on. Over the next few years, in the case of the World’s End murders, senior officers who had been unconnected to the original inquiry carried out thorough reviews of the evidence and the investigations to date generally. These inevitably concluded that everything that could have been done had been done and there was no new information important enough to justify reopening the case.
Such was the desire within Lothian and Borders Police to solve the World’s End murders that, whilst the case may have spent long periods of time not as an active inquiry, it was never a forgotten one. A senior officer within the force CID was always responsible for monitoring the investigation and was required to be aware of possible connections or new breakthroughs. Briefed by those who went before them and ever eager to find a good reason to reopen inquiries, many detectives on their way up through the ranks of the force were given responsibility for the case. Typically the case spent long periods seeing little, if any, activity and then some event would happen – some breakthrough or arrest of a potential suspect be made known – and it was up and running again.
On down the years, the World’s End was never a dead case. For close on thirty-seven years, it was truly ‘under investigation’.
2
Helen and Christine
Victims of crime, and sadly in the case of the World’s End their bereaved family and friends, invariably ask themselves one question which goes right to the heart of their emotions. Did they do anything to make themselves vulnerable? In simple terms the answer always has to be no – offending is always the responsibility of the offender. ‘Did they act in a reckless fashion to put themselves more at risk?’ is sometimes a tougher question. There is no doubt that, in some cases, people do make themselves vulnerable by being in the wrong place at the wrong time or, more likely, being in a condition where they cannot look after themselves. This is not to justify or to excuse the perpetrator – it is just plain common sense. We all have the responsibility to take reasonable care of ourselves.
In recent times, this area has become sensitive as heavy drinking among young women becomes more common and allegations of sexual assault and rape rise. While some women’s groups take strong exception to this view, the connection is inescapable. The fact is that, if a woman is drunk, she is less able to protect herself and is more likely to fall victim. This is not a moral position and it is not right – it is simply a fact and one of the reasons we urgently need to think carefully about our relationship with alcohol and other substances that can increase vulnerability, as well as damage our health.
In the World’s End case, however, this was not a major factor. Helen and Christine had enjoyed an evening out. They had been drinking but this probably didn’t contribute in any significant way to their fate. I believe they simply had the tragic misfortune to meet two of the most evil and predatory people that have walked the streets of our nation in modern times. They created their own downfall no more that the slowest of the herd falls victim to a predator on the African plains. When the perpetrators of these crimes walked into their hunting ground, be it in a pub or a disco or a dance hall, I believe, from the very moment they crossed the threshold, they would be callously weighing up the potential of all the young women in the room. They would be looking for the girl or girls that would fit their bill. They had pr
obably unconsciously created a target profile in their own minds of who would make an ideal victim. They would quickly dismiss those who presented problems that could stand in the way of their intended control and violent sexual gratification.
Casting an eye round the room, they would instantly exclude the female halves of obvious couples. Out too would be the quiet group of young women who were deep in conversation. The picture soon becomes clear. The target would be girls in high spirits, the ones who have had a drink or two which leads to their guard being lowered – in fact, the sort of girls you see every night of the week in pubs and clubs in every part of the country. Normally, girls on a night out owe their safe return home at the end of these evenings to the simple fact that they did not have the misfortune to bump into a predatory criminal before their front door closes with them safely on the inside.