by Tom Wood
At the conclusion of the 2004 investigation it was Allan who was left to argue against the ‘single strand evidential approach’ that was the fatal weakness of the prosecution case in the 2007 trial. He saw that without DNA evidence from the ligatures the case would always be vulnerable to the ‘consensual sex’ defence. However, in the end he was forced to concede, then had to watch as our fears were realised and the trial collapsed. No single officer had been more involved in the long investigation, and no officer took the collapse of the 2007 trial harder. But he wasn’t finished. Allan is nothing if not resilient; he had proven that over the years and he wasn’t about to give up now. Allan wasn’t alone in his dedication. His contemporaries, Detectives Andy Ritchie and Jim Shanley, were still very much involved, as was a rising star in the CID in Lothian and Borders, Gary Flannigan. Gary had been a young sergeant attached to the National Crime Faculty when they had helped us so much with our investigation in 2004. Now he was progressing through the ranks and would eventually replace Allan Jones as Detective Superintendent, Major Crime, in Lothian and Borders Police. Eventually Gary, by 2011 a member of the new National Police Force of Scotland, would head the last successful part of the World’s End investigation.
But this was still some years away when Allan Jones took stock following the 2007 trial and tried to plot a way forward. By that time the political temperature around the case had risen, and Politicians and Senior Law Officers at the Crown Office were moving to change the double jeopardy rules.
By this time the World’s End case was very widely known, and Allan and his colleagues spoke and made presentations about it at police conferences throughout the UK. Following retirement I wrote the first edition of this book (2008) and also spoke on the investigation to a wide range of groups. This all helped keep the case in the public consciousness and high on the agendas of the police and legal establishment.
Eventually it was at a police conference in England in 2010 that a breakthrough came. Allan Jones was attending and saw a trade display by Cellmark Forensic Service. A commercial company, Cellmark is in the forefront of DNA development and had been involved in the early days of the World’s End case. In the interim it had been developing ground-breaking, ultra-sensitive techniques. Allan and his colleagues were determined to see whether these could be of use in the World’s End case.
But it was expensive, and before further steps could be taken the Crown Office, as well as Police Chiefs, needed to be convinced. There were, after all, many new, as well as old, cases that competed for scarce resources, and the World’s End had arguably had its share. But the murders of Helen and Christine had become totemic and would not be forgotten as long as any avenue of enquiry or new development remained.
With the agreement of the Crown Office a forensic case evaluation was progressed, only fifty hours’ work in the initial agreement, but it was a start as it confirmed the Crown’s commitment. The initial case review by Cellmark was so promising that in 2011 the Crown agreed to an overarching forensic strategy which allowed Cellmark to examine all the forensic evidence connected with the case. This was a bold move as it placed the responsibility for this material with a commercial company in England rather than with the newly formed Scottish Forensic Science Service. The decision might have been politically sensitive but it simply emphasised the cutting-edge work that Cellmark was doing.
Leading the efforts at Cellmark were two scientists, the husband-and-wife team Geraldine and Andrew Davidson. In a piece of remarkable good fortune they had worked in Scotland, knew the Scottish Justice System and were even accredited by the Scottish Courts.
While the forensic case was developing, another interesting piece of evidence emerged. During an interview with a long-term prisoner about another case, it was revealed that this prisoner had shared a cell with Angus Sinclair in the period following the 2007 trial. During the long hours behind closed cell doors it is difficult to avoid conversation, and of course the subject of the World’s End came up. Sinclair reputedly made a remarkable statement – ‘They didn’t have to die.’ After the years of silence, at last he betrayed knowledge of Helen’s and Christine’s deaths. He perhaps thought he was safe in making such a comment after the collapse of the trial, but he was wrong, for as he spoke new forensic developments were emerging which would provide exactly the kind of evidence required to bring him finally to justice.
These included Crime-lite®ML, a filtered light source capable of screening for the presence of materials exhibiting fluorescence, which are not always visible under white light, particularly body fluid stains and cellular material. Not only does it identify stains, it also allows scientists to interpret their distribution and concentrate examination on areas where staining is heaviest. Crime-lite was only introduced to forensic casework in 2009 and accredited in 2011. In the case of the murders of Helen and Christine it proved to be a revelation. Extended Acid Phosphate testing and Sperm Elution were both new techniques for screening for the presence of semen then separating the chemical elements to allow accurate DNA profiling. These new techniques provided a degree of sensitivity unavailable even in 2007, and they are particularly valuable in the examination of old or degraded forensic samples, exactly like the ones in the World’s End case. MiniFiler® was another new DNA technique which increased the ability to get profiles from very weak or old samples. Highly specialised, it was only developed in 2008, and like the other new technologies seemed purpose-made for our case.
And there was more. The techniques for examining low-copy number DNA had improved greatly since 2007, as had the computer software which analysed results and probabilities.
Making use of all these new techniques, the Davidsons began their painstaking examination of the old materials, particularly Helen and Christine’s tights and underwear. It had been a long journey full of progress and setbacks but now with all the best people and ground-breaking science focused on the task there was a feeling that at last we would see justice done.
We were not disappointed. Using Crime-lite, Extended Acid Phosphate testing and Sperm Elution the tights used to bind and strangle Christine were carefully unwrapped and examined. Samples of DNA from Christine herself, Hamilton and Sinclair were found. Areas of Christine’s bra, also used to strangle her, were examined, with the same result.
And so it went on. Slowly Helen and Christine’s clothing gave up its secrets. Just as significant, there was no trace of any other person’s DNA. We always knew that Sinclair’s claim that someone else must have killed Helen and Christine was absurd – now we could prove it.
More importantly the DNA had been found in folds and creases of the garments which made it obvious that the deposits had been left when the clothing had been ripped and torn to bind and kill Helen and Christine. This showed that not only had Hamilton and Sinclair had sex with the two girls but had bound and killed them as well. This was the new and compelling evidence we had been searching for.
In March 2014 the Lord Advocate, Frank Mulholland, appeared at the High Court in Edinburgh in the case of Her Majesty’s Advocate v Angus Robertson Sinclair in the first ever application under the Double Jeopardy (Scotland) Act 2011. It was an important moment in Scottish legal history, and a panel of three senior judges, including the Lord Justice Clerk, sat to hear the application. After a full disclosure of the evidence and lengthy consideration, Lady Dorrian delivered the opinion of the Court.
The judges had recognised the new evidence as meeting the standards of the new double jeopardy legislation, and, given the seriousness of the case, a new prosecution was authorised. It was a legal first. After all the setbacks, and the huge effort by everyone in the Justice System and forensic science community, Angus Sinclair would once more face justice and be called to account for the deaths of Helen and Christine.
The new trial was set for 13 October 2014, almost thirty-seven years after Helen and Christine were brutally murdered. It was to be heard in the new court building in Livingston, West Lothian, a few hundred yards fr
om the old Livingston Police Station, where our 2004 investigation had been based. The case of the World’s End Murders had come full circle.
15
Retrial, 2014
Week 1
On 13 October 2014 the High Court was convened in Court 2 at the new court building in Livingston, West Lothian to hear the case of Her Majesty’s Advocate v Angus Robertson Sinclair.
The court building in Livingston is almost as far as you can get from the traditional image of a High Court. It has no dark mahogany or canopied judge’s bench, so typical of the old High Courts in Edinburgh and Glasgow. With light wood used throughout and an air of informality it almost belied the seriousness of the case about to be tried.
Livingston had been chosen for a number of reasons. First, although only a few miles away from the capital it wasn’t in Edinburgh, which was important to help counter the probable defence objection of prejudice due to pre-trial publicity. It is always a problem in notorious cases – and in the case of the World’s End it was a serious issue. Since late 1977, acres of newsprint had been devoted to the case, and latterly Angus Sinclair’s name had been firmly linked with it. He had been found guilty – if not in a court of law then in the court of public opinion – in 2007, so it was important that all possible measures were taken to ensure a fair trial. In the three years since the double jeopardy legislation had been passed, many regular commentators on the case, myself included, had refused to say anything about it in order to avoid prejudice. Even so, the jury in the retrial would be specifically directed by the judge to ignore all information other than that presented in the court.
But Livingston Court had also been chosen for another reason. As one of the most modern courts in Scotland it was fully equipped with the latest audiovisual and technical support. The Lord Advocate, Frank Mulholland, would lead the prosecution personally, and he would use the latest technology to lay out a compelling case against Angus Sinclair. Thus the scene was set, in one of the country’s most modern courts, for one of the oldest cases in Scottish Criminal History to be retried.
Sinclair appeared from custody where he had been continuously since 1981. Now almost seventy years old and heavily bearded, he looked like any other plump little old man, and nothing like the powerful menacing individual he had been in 1977.
Already convicted of the murder of Mary Gallagher and the rape and sexual assault of ten children and young people in the 1980s, he was serving two life sentences, so whatever the outcome of this trial he would spend the rest of his life in prison. Of course these convictions were inadmissible as evidence – to all intents and purposes, Sinclair appeared as a man without a stain on his character.
Sinclair pled ‘not guilty’ to the charges of murdering and raping Helen and Christine and, as he had done in 2007, lodged special defences of incrimination, consent and alibi. Once again he incriminated his dead brother-in-law Gordon Hamilton, and in a bizarre move claimed that having met the girls earlier in the evening of their murder he had consensual sex with them both before leaving them in the care of Hamilton while he went fishing nearby. It was a far-fetched scenario, but it was the only way he could explain why his DNA was found at the crime scene, admit his own presence nearby and yet claim he had nothing to do with the rape and murder of the two teenagers.
The Crown opened the case as it always must in murder trials. The Lord Advocate had to prove that a crime had been committed, and that meant the jury had to see the photographs of Helen and Christine as they were found that bleak day in October 1977. The old black-and-white pictures still had the ability to shock, and Frank Mulholland was careful to warn the jury and Helen and Christine’s families that the images were disturbing. Also shown were photographs of the articles of clothing used to bind the girls. It was these scraps of material that contained the crucial new evidence.
On the second day came another difficult part of any murder trial. Family members had to speak of their dead loved ones, and as they had done in 2007, describe them and recount their last contacts with them. Helen’s and Christine’s parents must have relived the nightmare thousands of times, and in the courtroom at Livingston, in the presence of the man who killed the girls, they did so again.
Sinclair behaved as he had always done at his various court appearances over the years. In the best traditions of hardened criminals he sat sullenly listening intently to the evidence while his defence QC, Ian Duguid, picked over the evidence, trying to find faults and inconsistencies in witness statements and during cross-examinations. It’s easy to do this in historical and complex cases – memories fade and minor facts become distorted. The burden of proof in a criminal trial in Scotland is to establish guilt ‘beyond reasonable doubt’, hence the defence’s objective is always the same: to sow doubt in the minds of the jury.
But despite this, as the first week of the trial was closing the prosecution was steadily presenting a solid case. Lord Advocate Mulholland was painstaking in his presentation of the facts; nothing was missed, no detail overlooked.
As the trial proceeded and the police witnesses spoke, it was clear that the case had not come to court a moment too soon. Some retired officers that I remembered as being highly capable in the past were now uncertain in their recollections, their memories failing badly with the passage of time. It was obviously difficult for many of the original investigators, who were now mostly over seventy. Although all the documentary and forensic evidence was in place, the jury still needed to hear from the witnesses themselves.
Week 2
The second week of the trial opened with the evidence from the pathologists. Despite the passage of time it was still difficult – especially for the victims’ families and friends – to hear once again how the girls had been brutally murdered, and how their bodies displayed the signs of strangulation, suffocation and blunt force trauma to the neck and head. Dr Bob Nagle, one of the pathologists at the time of the crime and now ninety, gave his evidence, supported by Professor Tony Busuttil, one of the best known forensic pathologists of his generation. While Professor Busuttil had not been involved in the original investigation, he had comprehensively examined all the post mortem results and his evidence was crucial. He concluded that the same two people had been involved in both murders, so similar were the victims’ injuries, and to those who knew Angus Sinclair’s background, the blunt force injury to the head was typical. A small but powerful man in his youth, he had frequently used extreme violence during his robberies and sexual crimes.
A forensic odontologist followed, giving an opinion about a bite mark on Christine’s arm. It was an attacking bite rather than an amorous one. It had been done to hurt and subdue – not during an act of consensual sex.
Then came the expert on knots – the same man who had been ready to give evidence in the 2007 trial but hadn’t been called. He compared the symmetry of the reef knots tying Christine with the more haphazard tying of Helen’s ligatures. It was in his opinion likely to be the work of two men. It was damning evidence, for it directly contradicted Sinclair’s claim to having had consensual sex with both girls but nothing to do with their deaths. Two men had been involved with the tying-up of the girls. Christine had fought and had been bound by someone with experience of tying knots while Helen had shown less resistance and had been bound by a person with little or no knot-tying skill. It all fitted. Sinclair had led the attack and had bound Christine with the reef knots he had learned to tie all those years before in prison. We know from the difference in blood alcohol levels that Helen had died after Christine. Knowing what fate had befallen her friend, Helen must have been paralysed with fear.
DNA was always the foundation of the case against Sinclair, and having heard all the supporting evidence the jury now were now presented with complex but crucial interpretation of the DNA samples left on Helen and Christine’s bodies and clothing that dark night in 1977.
The early part of the evidence was both sensitive and disturbing as it focused on the intimate samples taken from the
girls during their post mortem examinations. Of course it was essential but it was gruesome in its detail. The main DNA samples found were those of Gordon Hamilton, but there were also traces that matched Sinclair’s profile. Sitting in court, Helen’s younger brother Kevin, who was present throughout the trial representing the Scott family, listened intently to the details of this very intimate evidence.
The trial was now in the hands of the expert witnesses, scientists whose training and professional reputations demanded the highest standards of objectivity. There are few absolute certainties with such evidence, only degrees of probability, and words must be chosen carefully. On the lining of the coat Helen had been was wearing on the night she died were small stains that when examined proved to be Sinclair’s semen. The statistical probability was one in a billion that the semen was anyone else’s. Knowing of this evidence, Sinclair had of course lodged his special defence of consent – that both girls had had sex with him willingly. To anyone knowing Helen and Christine and the characters of Sinclair and Hamilton this was ludicrous – even so, this had been enough to seriously derail the 2007 trial. But this time it was different. All the supporting evidence – the knots, the eyewitness accounts, the traces of DNA on the intimate samples – helped to paint a vivid and precise picture of the events of that night. And the jury of nine women and six men were taking everything in. They had already visited the lonely spots where Helen and Christine had been found, and by the end of the second week, it was all starting to add up.