by Tom Wood
The families of the World’s End murders never lost hope and never lost faith with the police. Neither did Martha McAuley. Her daughter’s killer has not yet been brought to justice but I hope that the commitment she saw the Strathclyde team give to the reinvestigation brought her some comfort. We all hoped that our continued efforts gave her some peace of mind during her final days, after so many years of heartache.
Hilda lived with her mother in the Maryhill Road area of Glasgow. It was the district that kept cropping up during the many facets of this inquiry. It was the centre of Angus Sinclair’s territory, near his former home in Daisy Street and a short walk from the scene of at least one of his attacks on children. Hilda, who was thirty-six when she died, had a bad habit – one that, in the end, may have cost her her life. For convenience, she was in the habit of accepting lifts home from men she had met after a night out in the Plaza. Sometimes they were men she didn’t know. Saturday, 1 October 1977, two weeks before the World’s End murders, may have been just such a night.
Hilda had gone out with the intention of ending up at ‘the dancing’ in the Plaza with three close friends. The four of them had met in the early evening and had a drink in a couple of pubs before arriving at the Plaza shortly after ten o’clock. Jackets were left at the upstairs cloakroom and they walked down to the dance floor where the little group parted company, as they often did on nights like this. Police would eventually trace and speak to most of the people who were in the dance hall that night and no one saw anything that stood out as unusual. It was just another Saturday night at the Plaza.
Hilda, as far as we could ascertain, spent a lot of the two hours or so that she was in the Plaza on her own. The only fix that officers were able to establish was at about quarter past midnight when the cloakroom attendant remembered Hilda reclaiming her jacket. This woman had got to know Hilda on her regular visits to the dance hall and recalled quite clearly her leaving, and told officers she appeared to be sober and showing no signs of being the worse for wear after a long evening.
Hilda had left the Plaza at about the time the place usually started to empty, with revellers heading off to catch last the buses home, so no one paid too much attention to her departure. In fact, no one remembers seeing anything of Hilda either inside the Plaza or outside after she reclaimed her jacket. We may never know exactly what happened in those moments on Sunday, 2 October 1977 after she left the dance hall. She may have been alone or she may have been with a man who was offering her one of these convenient lifts home. The next fact that we can be certain about in the story of Hilda McAuley is that she was found brutally murdered some twelve hours later. Sometime, somehow, in those moments after midnight, she met her killer and was carried away.
Hilda’s body was found dumped in trees on waste ground at Langbank in Renfrewshire beside what was to become in later years a motorway. In those days, it was the main road between Glasgow and the Clydeside shipbuilding town of Greenock. The area was beside the entrance to a caravan park and was the sort of place that a vehicle could remain unnoticed for some time as traffic raced by on adjacent roads. It was an obscure spot – the kind of place that courting couples might know. It would certainly have required a degree of local knowledge both to know it was there – you wouldn’t find the place by accident – and to appreciate what a good place it was for disposing of a body.
As the case of Hilda McAuley was re-examined by the Operation Trinity team, potential coincidences and significant clues emerged from the pages of the old statements they were combing through. That is not to criticise those involved in the original inquiry in any way at all. It is much easier to spot similarities if you know exactly what you are looking for. For instance, we knew by this time that Angus Sinclair owned a very distinctive white caravanette during this period so, while sightings or references to such a vehicle would be significant to us, they wouldn’t have been significant to the original inquiry team, who had no leads regarding any suspect’s vehicles and would have been trying to make some sense of hundreds of car descriptions, some accurate, some vague, without a clue as to the relative importance of any of them.
The small details contained in statements given at the time took on a new meaning for us as we tried to piece together the jigsaw. We had the luxury of being fairly certain what the final picture would look like. We were also aware that Sinclair knew the area well. His sister lived nearby and a former girlfriend of his told us how they used to go for runs in his car to other places very close by. We learned from one of his old criminal pals that, years before, they had travelled to a spot near Langbank for a very specific purpose. They went to test-fire a pistol that they planned to use in future crimes. The exact spot could not be identified but Sinclair’s pal remembered it was littered with burnt-out cars that had been dumped as scrap or by joyriders. We knew that when Hilda’s body was found the area nearby was known as a dump site for cars. It was a tantalising connection. The spot was hidden yet accessible from the roads close by. It was ideal for dumping cars or for any other activity that you wanted to go unnoticed.
Hilda’s body was found by a father and his two sons out shooting rabbits at lunchtime the day after she went missing. She, like the other victims, had been bound securely, gagged and strangled. Hilda had been left partially stripped and the rest of her clothing in disarray. Some items Hilda was known to have with her when she left home to go dancing were never found. Her coat, handbag, shoes and a hairpiece were missing and they were the subject of a massive search and public appeals by the original inquiry. By the time Operation Trinity was revisiting the case, the bindings, the gag and Hilda’s clothing could not be traced. It was a huge setback for we could only speculate what forensic evidence they might have yielded.
Some documents did, however, survive. The original investigation had been extensive, as had the examination by forensic experts. We were able to make full use of our predecessors’ work. Some 1,200 people were interviewed in depth about the night of the disappearance but, despite this intensive operation, they had been unable to find anyone who had seen Hilda McAuley leaving the Plaza Ballroom or at any time afterwards.
Re-examining the case all these years later was, of course, made very much more difficult by the fact that none of the productions had survived the passage of time. In the World’s End case, traces of DNA in items recovered from the crime scenes had led to Sinclair and Gordon Hamilton being identified. In the case of Hilda McAuley, we had no such advantage. Such was our need to trace these items that an inquiry within the inquiry was launched and the Strathclyde team painstakingly retraced the steps of the original investigators – dozens of detectives and scientists over nearly thirty years. No stone was left unturned in the examination of record books and evidence schedules. Even the old cabinets at forensic laboratories were searched. It was a magnificent effort but it yielded nothing. We even made contact with surviving detectives and scientists from 1977. This may sound like a bizarre long shot or the plot of TV fiction but it is more valuable that you might first think. Detectives and scientists tend to remember unsolved cases. When long hours, weeks and sometimes months are devoted to individual cases, it becomes personal and you never forget the details of crimes that have become etched on your memory.
During Operation Trinity, we made great efforts to contact retired detectives and scientists who had been involved in the various cases. We had considerable assistance and I was hugely impressed by the recall and enthusiasm of these long-retired men and women. It was clear that they still felt an ownership.
By this time, the investigation into Sinclair was being progressed under three main headings. There was the probe into his connections with friends and family, including the various addresses at which he had lived as a free man. There were the vehicles he owned and lastly his links with the places where each of the victims was last seen and where their bodies were eventually found.
In the case of Hilda McAuley, the second and third strands of the investigation were coming to
gether. We learned of a car that had been dumped in 1978 in a disused quarry near to where Hilda’s body was discovered by the rabbit shooters. A huge amount of time and manpower were expended digging through the scrap and stone lying about in the former Glenboig quarry and, sure enough, Strathclyde Police’s hugely experienced underwater search team found the car. Most interestingly, in the boot of the car, we found various lengths of string. Could this be the same kind of string used to bind Hilda McAuley? How would we ever know for certain while the original materials were untraced?
This string, however, provides a wonderful example of just how, with care and attention to detail, it is possible to reach back through time and discover evidence of a vital nature. The actual string from Hilda’s body had gone. However, all the documentation of the original forensic investigation survived and, amongst it, there was a report from the University of Strathclyde identifying the type of string that had been used. It had been concluded that the string was of a unique manufacture. In fact, there was only one company making this particular type of string and it was in Co. Kildare, Ireland. In 1977, detectives had discovered a business in Glasgow, Henry Winning & Co. in Caroline Street, that was an outlet for the Irish string.
Then officers were hampered by a lack of suspect. When they had visited Winning’s, they found that this product was sold to a large number of trades folk all over the west of Scotland. Sales were plentiful and many untraceable. Short of interviewing every person who had access to this string in every company that bought it and then checking their alibis for the night of Hilda’s murder, there was no way forward. Even if only 100 balls of this string had been sold, just consider how impossible a task this would be. Not all of those balls would be traceable for a start. Then, for companies that were known to have bought the string, trying to establish exactly who would have access to it. We were more fortunate as we had a clear focus for our investigation.
So the Strathclyde team went back to reinterview the man who ran Winning’s in 1977 and he recognised the string. He also recalled being interviewed by the original investigation team almost thirty years before. But what was the connection? Next Strathclyde interviewed the boss of the company Gordon Hamilton worked for about this time, a manager of the button-dyeing firm A. M. Robb Ltd. He recalled the string and said they used it for tying up small parcels – and had purchased it from Winning’s. Examination of Robb’s records found bills from Winning’s at this time. For good measure, a second Glasgow company that stocked the Irish twine was also checked and they too supplied Robb’s with it. We even managed to find a little parcel which had lain around for all these years unopened and which was tied up with the very same twine. In the end, this is nothing but an interesting tale but the story of the string is a very good illustration of the intricacy and depth of our inquiries and how it is possible to fill in seemingly unbridgeable gaps even after nearly thirty years.
Fascinating though these details were, we could not be distracted by them for the main thrust of our investigations at this stage still centred on a detailed re-examination of the five murders, looking at them in the fresh light provided by having a good suspect for two of them – Angus Sinclair for the World’s End ones.
What we initially thought was the last in the series of killings was that of Agnes Cooney. She was a 23-year-old house parent at a children’s home in Bellshill, Lanarkshire, on the outskirts of Glasgow. Agnes was, by all accounts, one of life’s caring individuals who took her responsibilities very seriously and went out of her way to help those in need. The last photograph of her shows a cheery, cheeky face full of life and fun.
She was just seventeen years old when her mother and grandmother both died during 1971 and the young Agnes took on the mother role to her five younger brothers and sisters at their home in Coatbridge, Lanarkshire. Everyone who knew her spoke of how well she carried out this difficult surrogate role. Words like ‘strong’, ‘dependable’ and ‘fiercely protective’ were used to describe Agnes.
To fulfil this caring role, Agnes had had to put her ambition to become a nurse on hold so she could stay at home where she was needed. But Agnes also found time to work at a department store in Glasgow until her younger brothers and sisters were older and independent. That day came soon enough, though, and it would have been with great excitement that Agnes gave up her job at Bremner’s store in Glasgow city centre to begin her nursing training at a hospital in Mauchline in Ayrshire, living in the nurses’ home nearby.
The caring, committed nature of Agnes’s personality is clear from the original statements and reports compiled by officers after her murder in December 1977. This kindly disposition had led her to take up a job as a house parent at a children’s home in Lanarkshire when she completed her nursing training and that was the job she was doing when she was killed.
Agnes also spent some of her spare time at a house in Glasgow looking after an aged aunt. She was staying at this address at the time she was murdered. Her father died without the satisfaction of seeing his daughter’s killer brought to justice. Her brothers and sisters survive and are still deeply affected by the tragedy.
As in all these cases, the events leading up to the murder were unexceptional – normal people leading normal lives only brought into prominence by a chance meeting with a brutal murderer. On the day she vanished, Agnes had been to see a flat she was considering renting in the Maryhill area of Glasgow with a friend. The pair had done their nursing training together and had become very good friends. Agnes’s potential flatmate was going out with a man who was a member of a local band and he joined the two young women as they viewed the flat. The three went on to have supper together at a city centre restaurant and eventually made their way to a club where the band was due to play that night.
The two girls helped the young musician and other members of his band as they unloaded their gear into the Cladda Club in Westmoreland Street in the city centre. After they had set up their amplifiers and speakers, Agnes and her friend settled down to watch the show until it finished in the club about 11 p.m. With the entertainment over, the girls once more lent a hand and lugged instruments and amps back out to the band’s van, which was parked outside.
A band member told detectives in 1977 that, as they were packing up, he’d noticed a white Transit-like van with windows at the rear parked across the road. It had taken about fifty minutes or so to load up the band’s van and, just before midnight, Agnes was seen leaving the Cladda Club by herself. She seemed to be perfectly normal. She was not upset and had appeared happy as she wished staff goodnight. Not long afterwards, the band members and Agnes’s pal realised she had gone without saying goodbye and they were concerned she had just wandered off in an area of Glasgow that was not well known to her.
Agnes’s friends first looked round the club and then moved outside to see if they could spot her in the street or standing at a bus stop. There was no sign of her. Later there was a sighting of someone looking very much like Agnes walking in the city centre. Witnesses were to describe her clothing very precisely, leaving officers in no doubt that the sighting was of Agnes walking off into the night and that she was quite alone.
Glasgow is bisected by the M8 motorway and, on either side of it, there are areas of wasteland between the road and the shops and houses. The next series of possible sightings of Agnes were all either on or near this busy route. She appeared to be trying to hitch a lift. There were numerous reports of a woman seen in various locations round the M8. Much of this no-man’s-land is made up of a series of underpasses and slip roads which can be daunting enough in daytime but are no place for a young woman alone in the early hours of the morning. Officers worked on the basis that these sightings were of Agnes and they continued to receive further reports of sightings of the lone woman over the next hour or more after she’d left the club. The last was from a motorist who saw someone who may have been Agnes at about 2 a.m. We will never know if any or all of these sighting were really of Agnes. In the clamour of publicity fo
llowing a high-profile murder, there can be many well-intentioned but misleading reports of potential sightings. If it was Agnes, her behaviour was as untypical as it was dangerous. Walking alone in a strange part of town in the dark was risky behaviour for a young woman and Agnes was not a risk taker.
The band members and friends eventually gave up their searches and, believing nothing was seriously wrong, they went their separate ways. What had been puzzling for her friends turned to outright concern when Agnes failed to turn up at work the next morning. Her absence sparked a series of frantic phone calls to friends and family but all drew a blank as to her whereabouts. Eventually the decision was made to raise the alarm and Agnes was reported missing to the police on the afternoon of Saturday, 3 December 1977.
She did not remain a missing person for long. At nine o’clock on the morning of Sunday the 4th, her body was found on farmland near Caldercruix in Lanarkshire. A local farmer was driving his tractor along a minor road past his fields when he saw what he took to be a bundle of rags lying about fifteen yards out into the grass. As he continued to drive along the narrow road, it slowly dawned on him that it was probably not just rags but a human body. He raced to his neighbour’s farmhouse and raised the alarm. On returning with his neighbour, they confirmed that it was indeed a body lying in the field and the police were called. The farmer told officers he had been working in the area where the body was discovered throughout the previous day and so was certain it had not been there when he’d finished on the Saturday.
Agnes had been bound and gagged with items of her own clothing. The gag was no longer in place when the body was found but the bindings that had been used to hold it in place were still tied round her mouth. She had died from a stab wound.