by Tom Wood
They had begun a relationship after meeting one night in the self-same Hurdy Gurdy bar. They had met after Anna vanished but before her body was found many months later in remote Kintyre.
It may never be known what role, if any, Gordon Hamilton played in Anna’s disappearance but his connection with the Hurdy Gurdy and Anna’s friend, albeit after her disappearance, gave us a tantalising puzzle to consider. Not least was the question about Sinclair’s modus operandi. We now knew he had been with Gordon Hamilton at the scene of the World’s End murders yet, as far as we were aware, his other sexual crimes were committed alone. We knew from witnesses that he had certainly been alone in the murder of Mary Gallagher. The exception seemed to be the Edinburgh killings – the difference there of course being the fact that there were two victims.
However, one thing was certain – Wilma Sutherland had, quite unwittingly, married one of the men at the centre of the World’s End case. This strange twist became even more bizarre as we uncovered further details. Wilma only went back to the Hurdy Gurdy bar twice after Anna’s disappearance and, on one of those occasions, she had met Gordon Hamilton and fallen into conversation with him. It was just before Christmas 1977 and they soon began going out with each other. They got married in October 1978 and some six months later, on 23 April 1979, Anna’s remains were found in a shallow grave in a remote and beautiful area of Argyll at the start of the Kintyre peninsula. Only her skeleton remained but she had been bound just like Christine Eadie in the World’s End case. The long period of burial had removed the chances of finding significant forensic evidence.
Was Gordon Hamilton involved in the murder of Anna Kenny? If he was not, did he know who was? Was his meeting and subsequent marriage to Wilma Sutherland sheer coincidence? These are three questions I would dearly like to know the answers to. If he was not involved in the killing and did not know who was involved in Anna’s death, then the coincidence of his meeting and marrying Anna’s best friend is truly remarkable.
For Wilma, it was clear that her marriage to Gordon Hamilton had been a bad move almost from the start. On looking back, she admitted to us that she was simply at a loss to say why she had entered into this union – her only possible explanation was that the pain and puzzlement of Anna’s disappearance had left her disorientated and vulnerable. Her life with Gordon was difficult to say the very least. He drank heavily, he was violent towards her and he had extramarital affairs.
He was with her the day police came to their house to tell her that they suspected Anna’s body had been found on the west coast some couple of hours’ drive from Glasgow. Hamilton even accompanied his wife on visits to Anna’s distraught parents. Could a murderer be so detached, so callous, as to sit offering comfort to his victim’s family and her best friend, the woman he had made his wife?
During their short marriage, Wilma got to know various members of Hamilton’s large family. Her impression of the Hamiltons would have been the same as that of everyone else. Even to the casual observer, they were what might at best be described for the large part as a troubled family.
Gordon’s role in the World’s End murders had been established by the presence of his DNA and by excluding the other Hamiltons through comparing their profiles with the forensic sample. The scientists told us that DNA testing had shown it was a Hamilton sibling but not one of the living ones – so it had to be the dead one. However, much more proof would be needed to finally confirm Gordon Hamilton’s role in Helen and Christine’s murders. The first step would be to find a sample of DNA that we could prove beyond doubt came from him. He had only been dead a few years but as I have already described this was still not an easy job.
The search for details of Gordon Hamilton was complicated by the fact that most of Gordon’s male siblings were suffering from mental health or drink problems or both. Some of them were unaware of exactly how many brothers or sisters they had and there wasn’t one member of this family group, male or female, who had kept in touch with all the others. The only member of this sorry group who stands out as different from the rest of the family is Sarah, who was actually christened Sadie. Both before and since her marriage to Angus Sinclair, she struggled to make something of her life and succeeded in doing so as she pursued a long and valued career in nursing.
Family members appeared to have been aware of certain dark events in the past of Angus Sinclair, the young man who married their sister Sarah, but none was sure of the exact nature of the problem. As we interviewed them almost thirty years later with in some cases large parts of recall of their lives lost, some of the family thought Sinclair had spent time in jail for molesting children. No one was sure of the precise nature of his crime that was of course the sexually motivated murder of Catherine Reehill.
Of the males, the most lucid was one of the older brothers. He was as helpful as he could be considering he had lost touch with some of his brothers and sisters. Importantly, he was happy to supply us with a swab to allow his DNA to be examined. The test proved conclusively that he was not Sinclair’s accomplice in the World’s End.
He spoke of Gordon as someone who he did not get on with because he didn’t like his brother’s annoyingly condescending attitude. Gordon seemed to think he was rather better than the rest of his nine brothers and sisters and looked down his nose at them. Ian was able to confirm that Gordon was dead. He had been living with a woman in Glasgow and it was thought they had had a son. He had, however, no recollection of ever seeing either the wife or supposed son despite having been in fairly regular contact with Gordon prior to his death in 1996.
It is normal police practice in an interview like the one we were conducting with this man not to give precise reasons behind our questions for fear of silencing the witness, clouding answers or leading a witness in a particular direction. Officers listened to him quietly, gently probing as he tried his best to search his memory and recall details of his five brothers and four sisters. He was of course rather inquisitive as to what lay behind our visit. However, as soon as it became obvious to him that we were particularly interested in Sarah, he got the connection straightaway and said, ‘It’s about that animal she got in tow with, isn’t it?’
On having his suspicions confirmed, Sarah’s brother told us how he hadn’t cared for Sinclair from the very first moment he had met him. His sister had brought her then new boyfriend to their parents’ home in Tummel Street in Glasgow and, whilst he couldn’t put his finger on quite why, Sarah’s brother vividly remembered taking an instant and deep dislike to Sinclair – to the extent that, on future visits by Sinclair, if he was at home, he would immediately get up and walk out rather than spend time in what he regarded as his home with this new but disagreeable man in Sarah’s life.
This particular brother was serving a term of imprisonment in Glasgow when Sinclair was arrested in 1980 for the series of rapes and indecencies against children, the crimes for which he was eventually to receive his first life sentence. He told us that the news of the arrest and sentence of such a serious offender was the talk of Glasgow’s Barlinnie Prison with, no doubt, various practitioners of jail justice vowing to take revenge against Sinclair if they ever got the chance. For understandable reasons, he thought it best not to mention the object of all this interest was, in fact, his brother-in-law.
My years of experience in criminal investigations have taught me that speculating on what might have been is usually a fruitless pastime. At best, it can distract you from the more important task of establishing the facts. At worst, it can mislead and distort the course of an investigation. However, I must confess the motivation behind Gordon Hamilton’s marriage to Wilma was the source of much theorising and speculation based on what had to be a simple choice. The marriage was the strangest coincidence ever, the act of a man callous in the extreme or, more tantalisingly, the act of a man drawn back to the scene of the crime, compelled to stay close, stay in control to the extent that he sought a relationship with the person closest to the victim – we will never
know.
It is difficult to imagine the tensions that must exist in the relationship between partners in such a crime as the World’s End murders. Did it lead to a lifelong bond between Gordon Hamilton and Sinclair? Did they become confidants, bonded together by their shared experience, or was there distrust and tension? In serious crimes where there are a number of culprits, the danger is always that one will talk, to gain some advantage or through fear, and betray the secret. Angus Sinclair’s history made him a good bet to keep quiet but Gordon Hamilton must have represented a threat to Sinclair’s security. Had he known about his brother-in-law’s lifestyle, his heavy drinking and his decline during the 80s, Sinclair must have been concerned about the possibility of Gordon letting something slip. But, by this time, he was in prison and, if he was aware of Gordon’s condition, there was nothing he could have done to intervene or influence things.
If Sinclair heard about Gordon’s death, he must have breathed a sigh of relief. With the only man who could incriminate him for the World’s End murders dead, his secret was safe . . . or so he thought.
Gordon Hamilton was beyond our reach but what we know of him leaves intriguing questions. Could it really be that Gordon Hamilton was a one-off offender? Was a crime of such savagery as the World’s End murders his first serious offence and did he then just go back to his everyday life? Could it be that there was a master–servant relationship between the two men in which Gordon Hamilton was the subservient partner? This final possibility seems likely for it is clear that, throughout his adult life, no one told Angus Sinclair what to do. However, unless new evidence not available to our inquiry comes to light, these questions will have to remain unanswered.
Clues though were to be found in what the second youngest Hamilton brother was able to tell us. Unlike his older brother, he had a fairly good relationship with Angus Sinclair. Sinclair had managed to get him a job with one of the painting firms he worked for following his release after his first long prison sentence for the Reehill killing. Then Sinclair gave the boy a second job, so to speak – an apprenticeship as a junior partner in his violent crime enterprises.
The young Hamilton moved into the home where Angus and Sarah were living in Queenslie in the tough east end of Glasgow. He and Sinclair worked away from home from time to time and their friendship was not diminished even after he learned from others of Sinclair’s conviction for killing a child. The younger man was of the view that everyone deserved a second chance in life and, anyway, it was a long time ago.
He told officers frankly how he and Sinclair would often return at night to the business premises where they had been painting during the day to steal. This progressed to till snatches at various shops in and around Glasgow. The younger Hamilton admitted that he worried about the extreme violence Sinclair used in these raids. He remembered vividly the day Sinclair mercilessly beat a young girl who had got in his way with a hammer and then, shortly afterwards, he vented his rage at his apprentice for not joining in the cruel attack.
This member of the Hamilton family also told us that Sinclair had been involved extensively with prostitutes in the Glasgow area and on occasions had used information gleaned from them to select other criminal targets. We were able to verify his accounts of his activities with Sinclair as some of the old crime records still existed. Nobody would ever be prosecuted for these crimes – the passage of time was too great – but they were valuable nonetheless. They served to establish, beyond doubt, the character and nature of Angus Sinclair as a violent, ruthless, cool-headed man whose offences were premeditated. The traits he displayed in his crimes of violence were also present in his crimes against young girls and in the murders he committed.
As we progressed and began to piece together the jigsaw of Angus Sinclair’s life and criminal career, we started to focus on his means of transport. We knew he had to have the use of a vehicle during the World’s End abductions and murders and it had to be big enough to hold four people. Also, Sinclair was travelling fair distances throughout the country so he would need something reliable. As in all serious criminal investigations, we had numerous sightings of vehicles at or near the various crime scenes. Many were vague but some were not and, as it turned out, the cars Angus Sinclair drove in the late 70s were to play a major part in the jigsaw.
We were particularly interested in finding out details of a white caravanette we knew Sinclair had owned in the late 70s at the time of Anna Kenny’s disappearance. One such vehicle had been seen by witnesses near the site where her body was found in Kintyre. Other members of the Hamilton family told us that the younger Hamilton had been a passenger in this caravanette on many occasions. He himself had been helpful but we got the feeling that he was perhaps withholding information. Despite his admissions of criminal activity with Sinclair, the team felt fairly certain that his involvement went a great deal further. How much further? That was the question.
The caravanette had become particularly significant to Operation Trinity as we examined links between Sinclair, the area where Anna’s body was found and the other crime scenes. The Toyota caravanette would appear to have been Sinclair’s perfect murder vehicle. It seemed no accident that the period of his ownership of this vehicle coincided with the dates of crimes we were jointly investigating.
Locating the Toyota caravanette was of huge importance to us. We knew that Sinclair had sold it on shortly after Agnes Cooney had disappeared and, through vehicle records, we began to trace all its subsequent owners. We knew that it was unlikely that a vehicle of its type, which was registered in 1976, would have survived almost thirty years. Nevertheless, we had to make every effort to trace the caravanette or any parts of it. A wealth of forensic evidence could have been hiding in its seat covers and carpets which might have linked it to Helen and Christine or any of the other crimes we were investigating. In the event, we were unlucky. All the subsequent owners of the vehicle were traced – one was even able to provide an actual photograph of it. But we eventually learned that the caravanette had survived until a few years before our inquiry. Although not registered for the road, it had lain on blocks behind the last owner’s house – a restoration project that never was completed. Eventually, rust and decay took their toll and our potential forensic time capsule went to be scrapped. It was tantalisingly close but all we could do was track down carpets and materials identical to these used in the Toyota. We could use these to make comparisons with fibres found on Helen Scott’s clothes but they were nothing like as good as getting our hands on the real thing would have been. However, we were able to say that there was compelling evidence that fibres found on Helen matched those from the standard fabrics used in caravanettes similar to Sinclair’s one.
The caravanette posed another question. It might sound incredible but it occurred to us that Sinclair’s crimes could have been committed simply because he had a means of transport. Did he execute these awful crimes simply because he could?
The murder of Anna Kenny was always going to be difficult to resolve. The length of time between her disappearance and the recovery of her body meant that there was no significant forensic evidence, but there were interesting connections.
The pub Anna left that night, the Hurdy Gurdy, was in the Townhead area of Glasgow, an area of the city Sinclair knew well. His wife’s family lived in Stirling Road in Townhead in 1977 and much of the time Sinclair spent with the younger Hamilton and Gordon Hamilton would have been in this district. We also knew that Sinclair had visited the Kintyre area, where Anna’s body had been found buried in her shallow grave. He had the right connections, he had the means and, most importantly, we knew he had the will to abduct and murder – he had done it before. It was compelling but it wasn’t enough.
10
Two More Glasgow Killings
Taken in sequence, the next unsolved killing we examined was that of Matilda McAuley, another victim of 1977. Matilda, or Hilda as she was known, was separated from her husband and, along with her two young sons, she was living
at her mother’s home when she met her violent death. This is the stark summary of the facts and it doesn’t begin to hint at the immediate life-shattering effect a tragedy like this has on a family. But what often also goes unrecognised is that the consequences of such heartbreak would be felt by those closest to Hilda for generations.
Hilda McAuley was a conscientious and loving parent and, like so many women in her position, to make ends meet, she had more than one job. She did cleaning work at a city-centre hairdressers’ shop and at a local engineering works. Her main outlet of relaxation was going out with her friends just once a week, usually to the dancing at the famous Plaza Ballroom in Glasgow. It is one of the great sorrows of these cases that Hilda’s mother Martha died while the death of her daughter was being reinvestigated. Thankfully she did live long enough to know the process had started. By the time Hilda’s mum had died, in the summer of 2004, she had been told by the Operation Trinity family liaison officers that a full examination of the investigation of her daughter’s death was underway.
One of the most important factors in any cold case review is the attitude of the victim’s family – if there are any. On the one hand, they are often crucial to the success or otherwise of the investigation. Their recollection of the events surrounding the crime can sometimes become more focused by the years and the endless thinking and rethinking about all the facts and circumstances can lead to very different perspectives from those held at the time of the crime, when emotions and passions would have been running high. Loyalties can also change and, in unsolved crimes with domestic connections, this can sometimes lead to a breakthrough. Often, though, the reopening of an old case also reopens old wounds as the hurt and the pain of what happened in the past are once again recalled. It is understandable that, for many families, the overwhelming feeling is that things are best left alone. But, for some families and friends, the continued or revitalised interest in their case is welcomed – it validates the importance of their loved one. And it sends out a powerful message that there is no such thing as an unsolved murder – the police never give up.