by Tom Wood
All in all, the Hamiltons were as helpful as they could be about Gus. It was clear that, while they knew of his involvement in crime, they had no idea of the violent nature of his activities and they certainly had no knowledge of his sexual offending. His wife’s strongest indication of Gus’s other side came during a police investigation into the strange case of Edward Cotogno. A Glasgow man, he was a clever, able, but seamy individual who used his photographic hobby to deal in home-produced pornography, much of it involving very young local women. He was found dead in the charred remains of his Glasgow home after a fire. He had met a violent end before the fire had been started and police concluded he had been murdered. Extensive inquiries were carried out over many months but no culprit was found. Angus Sinclair and Eddie Cotogno were connected and what happened to Eddie and why remain intriguing parts of this story. At the time of Eddie’s death, however, the police knew that Angus Sinclair was one of many of Eddie Cotogno’s seedy contacts so he had to be traced, interviewed and eliminated – or become a suspect.
At the time of Cotogno’s death, Glasgow detectives were frequently at Gus and Sarah’s door wanting to speak to Sinclair because they suspected he was involved in robberies or other crimes about the city. On this particular occasion, they had phoned to make an appointment to see him and Sinclair had straight away told his wife he though it would be about the death of a man he knew. He said he could not tell the officers where he actually was at the time of the killing for unspecified reasons and asked Sarah to provide a false alibi for him and say he had been at home with her. This she did despite her concerns and fears. Once again, it seems the old rule about not setting too much store by wives’ alibis proved true.
We also learned that Sinclair secretly tape-recorded the officers speaking to him, so worried was he about the police investigation. However, we uncovered no hard evidence to connect Sinclair to the death of Eddie Cotogno but the investigation into his murder got close to Gus and that certainly unnerved him.
The more we found out about Sinclair’s life from his family, the more we realised what a difficult situation it had been. One of his first extramarital affairs had been with one of his wife’s relatives and it started not long after they married. His wife was kept in the dark about her husband’s history by members of both her own family and his – several of whom knew only too well the details of Sinclair’s past.
During Sinclair’s married life there had been frequent periods of time when he’d lived away from the family home. Typically, he worked at his painting jobs through the week in and around Glasgow and then went off at the weekends, regularly staying away until the Monday morning. He was away so often that he didn’t find out about the birth of his son, which had occurred on a Saturday, for twenty-four or more hours because he was out and about in Edinburgh.
The pressures mounted and eventually, completely frustrated at Sinclair’s inability to assume the role of a normal husband and father, the family split. Time passed and healed some of the problems. Sarah knew of Sinclair’s numerous affairs and she had to bear the additional burden of his self-confessed relationships with prostitutes but, despite this, she would allow Sinclair to come back home time and again for the sake of their child.
It was during this rocky period in their marriage that the younger Hamilton moved in with the Sinclairs and his crime career of theft and robbery with Gus began. By then, Sinclair had the caravanette that was to become enormously important to us as it was the vehicle he owned when the World’s End murders were committed.
It was also about this time that Sinclair developed an interest in photography. It was thought fairly benign until the day his wife Sarah found pornographic snaps of Sinclair and a girl taken with a timer device. This caused a huge family row but the photos were burnt and his convoluted explanation for having them was accepted. In hindsight, this new behaviour was significant – especially since it linked Angus Sinclair with a like-minded character, the murdered Eddie Cotogno.
Some people might find it difficult to sympathise with Sarah Sinclair – after all, she knew of some aspects of his criminality and she tolerated it and that may be seen by some as tacit approval. I do not agree with this view. Like many wives and partners of criminals, Sarah found herself sucked into the vortex by an evil and manipulative man. She struggled free and now she deserves to be able to put this awful part of her life behind her. In truth, Sarah Sinclair is another one of Angus Sinclair’s victims. She wasn’t murdered, raped or even seriously physically attacked but she will bear the scars inflicted by him for the rest of her life.
8
Operation Trinity
In early 2004, as soon as we had DNA linking Angus Sinclair with the World’s End case, we began to examine all other murders and disappearances of young women in the late 70s and early 80s very closely – especially those that bore a resemblance in method or modus operandi to the World’s End killings. From the start, we were surprised just how many killings there had been in that very narrow time frame. Later, when ‘Scothom’, the name given to the comprehensive database of homicides of women in Scotland from 1968 to the present, was constructed – a huge and important piece of work done by Strathclyde Police – the picture was even more alarming. We tend to assume that, in the twenty-first century, we are living in the most violent of times. While comparisons are sometimes difficult, the 1970s was no haven of tranquillity either.
After detailed study, however, it appeared that the cases of three women murdered in the Glasgow area – Anna Kenny, Matilda (or Hilda as she was usually called) McAuley and Agnes Cooney – and two in Dundee – Carol Lannen and Elizabeth McCabe – bore close similarities to the World’s End ones. Together with Helen and Christine, we had a total of seven victims – young women, from three areas of Scotland, who had all been murdered during the period from August 1977 to February 1980 – and all seven cases remained unsolved. Because of the three distinct areas in the investigation and the three forces involved, the name ‘Trinity’ was chosen for our combined investigation and, despite the fact that the Dundee cases were quickly eliminated from the inquiry, to subsequently go their own way, the name stuck. I was appointed by the three Chief Constables to be the Officer in Overall Command, tasked with leading the joint effort and ensuring close co-ordination by the different investigation teams from Lothian and Borders Police and Strathclyde Police.
The role of the Officer in Overall Command is a relatively recent innovation which had come about as a result of the inquiry in the aftermath of the Yorkshire Ripper case and had proved successful in several linked cases since. The main criterion for appointment as an Officer in Overall Command was holding the rank of chief officer, having a background in major criminal investigation and having extensive experience in leading large teams. I was fortunate to be qualified for I would have hated to miss the last phase of the World’s End investigation. It wasn’t, however, the easiest of roles. On the one hand, I was ultimately responsible to the Chief Constables and directly accountable for all aspects of the inquiry. On the other hand, I could not interfere with the individual investigations too much or impede the senior investigating officers in the individual cases. They were highly experienced and senior detectives. Detective Superintendents Ian Thomas and Eddie McCusker, backed by Allan Jones, in Lothian and Borders and Colin Field in Strathclyde, were an impressive mix of old heads and young potential. Added to that was the fact that, frankly, they had a lot more recent experience in murder and major crime investigation than I had. In any joint investigation, there will be tensions and competing priorities, with pride and frustration sometimes boiling over but, in the many months we were together, these were always managed and overcome.
I had other advantages. I knew most of the members of the Lothian and Borders team, both police and civilian, personally. Lastly, but importantly, I was given a very good bright young staff officer in Detective Sergeant Stuart Hood and I managed to take my personal assistant Jeanette Shiells with me. Jeanette and I had
worked well together for twelve years and she knew my every thought. These details may sound mundane but, in the careful balancing act of the Officer in Overall Command, they were immensely important.
Running a linked investigation, particularly one focused on historic undetected homicides – cold cases – may sound fairly simple but it is not and strict rules and protocols have to be followed if the process is not to become confused and ineffective. For that reason, all police forces in the UK closely follow the ‘Cold Case Review Guidance’ given by the Association of Chief Police Officers in England and Wales which is based on the long and sometimes bitter experience of murder squad detectives. It may surprise some people that historic undetected homicides are a problem requiring such a complicated response but they are. In the ten years up to 1979, there were over 700 cases of homicide where either no one was charged or the accused was acquitted and that was only in England and Wales.
It is a surprising total but, with new techniques and ever-improving forensic science, I am sure many of these cases will yet be resolved. Now, when police forces embark on a historic re-investigation, it is not only with new forensic tools but with the benefit of the accumulated experience of scores of cases. We now have a better understanding of the value of new forensic techniques, not only in DNA but in how useful fingerprints, hairs and fibres can be to us. The use of lasers, digital imaging and computerised databases all mean that materials recovered from crime scenes and considered worthless may yet have enormous evidential value. But it is not only in new science that advances have been made. The role of expert independent advisers can be of enormous advantage. In our case it was an expert forensic adviser, Professor David Barclay, who was of huge assistance while the advice given by our behavioural psychologist gave us insight into the predicted behaviour of witnesses and suspects, all of which gave us an edge.
A major element in the World’s End case was of course the DNA samples and the hairs and fibres recovered from Helen’s clothes. But even this was not straightforward for we had to demonstrate that, over the thirty years they had been in our possession, there had been no opportunity for contamination of the productions. A thirty-year audit trail had to be carried out to prove every movement of materials and the supervision that attended them. It says much for Lester Knibb and his colleagues that this did not defeat us for the records had been meticulously kept.
In linking our inquiries, we always followed the latest guidelines and best practice. In TV dramas and fiction, the officer in charge of murder investigations usually confronts the suspect, dazzling all with his or her deductive skill. In reality, the Officer in Overall Command of a linked investigation must pay more attention to policy files and processes if the investigation is to succeed.
Thankfully, in all of these difficult areas we were helped magnificently by the National Crime and Operations Faculty based at Bramshill in Hampshire. Their knowledge and network of experts provided all the help we needed. The advisory team of experts established to assist us was first class. None of these structures or systems was there to help the detectives in 1977. It would not have occurred to them, even in their wildest dreams, that such methods of working could be possible.
By the summer of 2004, it was clear that we were building a compelling case against Angus Robertson Sinclair for the World’s End murders. There was a growing sense of achievement amongst the teams involved in this major, complex and long-running inquiry. We had started the journey with some hope of reaching our goal but, in the early days, there were inevitably doubts that we would be able to reach back through the long passage of time and find the supporting evidence we needed to once and for all allow us to achieve justice in this truly iconic case.
Our trump card was the DNA evidence from the World’s End killings but we also had some circumstantial evidence in the cases of Anna Kenny, Matilda McAuley and Agnes Cooney. We lacked any forensic evidence in these cases, however, and this was crucial. In the end, it was judged by the prosecuting authority in Scotland, the Crown Office, that we simply didn’t have a good enough case to prove the matter beyond reasonable doubt and this was a bitter disappointment to all of us. It was especially felt by the Strathclyde team who had done so much to prepare a case against Sinclair for these three murders, based on the little evidence that had survived the passage of time. The lengths they went to in trying to make up the evidence gap were remarkable and their commitment was total.
In the aftermath, much has been made of the lack of forensic evidence in the Glasgow cases. Where were the samples from these cases, were they lost, were they destroyed and, if so, why? We will never know for sure what happened to that forensic evidence but, before the armchair experts and journalists with perfect hindsight begin their critiques, it is worth remembering the state of forensic science back in the 1970s. Forensic work on blood, hair and fibre was already being done but, although the presence of DNA had been proposed by a Swiss doctor in the nineteenth century and Crick and Watson had developed the theory further in 1953, in those days, it was unknown as an investigative tool. Even ten years later, in the late 80s, when I studied at the FBI Academy in Washington, a faculty with limitless resources and cutting-edge forensic facilities, DNA was only beginning to emerge as an aid to detecting crime.
In the late 1970s, the future of DNA was unknown and forensic samples were often tested to destruction during their examination. This may have happened in the Glasgow cases or they may have simply been destroyed, having been deemed as being of no further apparent evidential value. During the investigation in 2004–5, the team from Strathclyde Police had carried out extensive searches for these samples. No stone was left unturned by Detective Superintendent Eddie McCusker and his team but without success. It was a major disappointment to these determined and professional officers, but who knows, the missing forensic samples may yet be discovered, they may yet give up their DNA secrets – stranger things have happened.
The second question was why the senior detectives of the late 70s had not linked the cases back when they were first being investigated and when all the evidence was fresh. The publicity generated by the murders in Edinburgh and Glasgow had been immense. Reading the news clippings of the day, it was clear that there was a public outcry in the truest sense. In addition, some crime reporters were openly linking the cases and claiming that one man was responsible.
On the face of it, the police were not so convinced but formal linking was, in fact, considered as early as 1980. That year, heads of CIDs from Scottish forces with unsolved female murders on their patches held a conference in Perth – a convenient point for them to gather from throughout Scotland. They met to decide if any joint action should be taken by their respective investigations. Should they be linked either publicly or internally in an effort to pool information and speed up detection? In effect, they had to decide whether the crimes were likely to be the work of one man.
No minutes survive from those discussions but the outcome is certain. They decided to continue the inquiries as separate entities with no formal element of linkage. This, I rather fear, was a decision taken out of operational and political pragmatism rather than sound policing instincts.
When seen from the time of Operation Trinity, I believe the judgement of those senior officers was probably influenced by the ghost of the man known in the press as ‘Bible John’. There had been a series of three killings of women connected to the Barrowlands dance hall in Glasgow during 1968 and 1969. A single culprit had been created in the minds of journalists and, through them, the public at large. The image of a serial killer had been formed and he had been given the nickname of Bible John because witnesses in one of the murders had spoken of a strange and creepy individual using biblical quotations in his everyday speech at the dance hall on the night of the killing. It was a classic case of the press headline selling the story and, at the time, there was real and widespread public alarm at the thought of Bible John stalking the streets of Glasgow looking for his chance to pounce – a twen
tieth-century Jack the Ripper.
The true facts of the case are rather different. Whilst many suspects have been in the frame over the years as a potential Bible John, it is entirely possible, even likely, that one man was not responsible for all three killings and there was no Bible John. This, of course, was not a theory favoured by the newspapers that had rather warmed to a homicidal maniac’s positive effect on their circulations. The Bible John case has been reopened and reinvestigated on several occasions – a long-dead suspect was even exhumed – but, to this day, there has been no resolution, no real evidence to say that a serial killer ever existed. It may well be that Bible John’s victims were in fact murdered by different men in unconnected incidents.
The hysteria of this case would still be fresh in the minds of those senior detectives as they met in Perth and I think they came to the decision not to link the cases until such time as they had overpowering evidence to the contrary, at least in part to prevent another Bible John character being hyped by the press. They didn’t need anything that could increase the pressure on them to force their hands or create panic in the community.
What we now know about Angus Sinclair, Gordon Hamilton, the death of Mary Gallagher, the World’s End murders and the deaths of Anna Kenny, Hilda McAuley and Agnes Cooney should not be used to condemn the conclusions of the 1980 conference. The officers in charge then made a pragmatic decision, based on their knowledge at the time. It is easy to be critical in retrospect but we should remember that our discoveries were brought about by the latest scientific techniques which were unknown and inconceivable in 1980. Our unearthing of Angus Sinclair relied on techniques that would have been undreamt of twenty-five years ago.