Bible John's Secret Daughter

by David Leslie

  The fact that experts at the faculty were examining these cases was sensationalised in the News of the World in September 2003. Police had been desperate to keep the faculty’s role a secret and officers who might have had access to this information were surprised and in some cases not a little amused to receive visits from colleagues asking questions about any links they might have had with the newspaper. There were a number of reasons why, in this case, it was advantageous that the role of the faculty was kept under wraps, not least because if it was determined that the killings could be the work of one man, or the same men, then evidence taken at the time would have to be brought out for re-examination – if any of that evidence had been mislaid or lost, it could prove highly embarrassing for those responsible.

  It was clear to police that the News of the World knew that the faculty experts believed there were connections between the murders. Eventually, the newspaper would give some of the reasons why this view had been arrived at and in a further report it would state that there were at least ten points that gave rise to it.

  Meanwhile, the hand of the police had been forced. A series of high-level meetings was arranged, at which the September article was high on the agenda. The result was that in early 2004 three forces – Lothian and Borders, Tayside and Strathclyde – announced the setting up of Operation Trinity to re-examine the killings dating back to the late 1960s. It was a long-awaited development that would mean both heartache and hope for the families of the victims. They faced the agonising ordeal of having to recount the lives and last hours of those they had loved; but there was hope that whoever had taken these lives would finally be held accountable.

  Therefore, teams of specially chosen detectives began going over ground that had been covered years earlier, realising that memories were sure to have faded in that time and many witnesses might have died. To reassure themselves that the faculty was on the right tracks, the police decided to seek a second opinion by looking across the Atlantic. Not so many moons earlier, to have sought assistance from a force 30 miles away would have been unthinkable; now officers 3,000 miles off would be called in to help.

  The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is tasked ‘to protect and defend the United States against terrorist and foreign intelligence threats and to enforce the criminal laws of the United States’. It is also a tool that frequently helps turn cogs in the law-enforcement agencies of many other nations, priding itself on good relations with the UK in particular. Security-conscious America does not stint on supporting organisations such as the bureau and, as a consequence, it can boast the finest crime study and investigation facilities to be found anywhere on the planet.

  The FBI’s National Academy is housed on the United States Marine Corps base in Quantico, 40 miles south-west of Washington. Here the Investigative Computer Training Unit offers highly specialised training in how to use computers for criminal investigations, research and in the analysis of evidence. It runs a Violent Criminal Apprehension Programme – VICAP for short – which among other things collects, collates and analyses crimes of violence, specifically murder. It studies, for example, unsolved homicides that involve an abduction and are apparently random, motiveless or sexually oriented, or are suspected to be part of a series; or missing persons, where the circumstances indicate a strong possibility of foul play.

  Only police forces existing in the Dark Ages are unaware of the existence of VICAP. What it offered was manna from heaven to the officers engaged in Operation Trinity. When the FBI was approached for help, it immediately made the latest and most powerful computer equipment available to the officers from Scotland.

  The Scots force suggested that details of the crimes the Operation Trinity team had been asked to look into were fed into the FBI computers. It sounded sensible and practical, but the Americans had other ideas. Why not put details of every murder committed in the last three or four decades into the system, they suggested? It was a staggering proposal. The computer was being asked to analyse literally thousands of murders and decide which had been committed by individuals and which were the work of serial killers. Some, such as those that had been the work of the likes of Black and Archibald Hall, would be obvious and in any case they were already solved. The Lockerbie bomber, too, would be classified as a serial murderer.

  Early on in the work of Operation Trinity, it was decided that the Dundee deaths were not connected to the others and could be discounted. Now, the FBI computer was being asked to find series of other murders that appeared to have clear similarities. The search offered a remarkable conclusion.

  Had the computer been human, it would have been accused of stating the obvious by putting forward that the 1977 atrocities were the work of the same person or team. But in doing so, it confirmed what was now suspected. Tens of thousands of words had already been written pointing the finger at two men, accusing them of being the killers, naming one but not the second. But what staggered Scots police was that the computer added another name to the list of their victims, that of Frances Barker. Thomas Ross Young had been jailed in October 1977 for her murder in the July of that year. Young, despite his deteriorating health due to a heart condition, was then being held at Peterhead prison.

  If the computer was correct and all the killings were down to the same culprit or culprits, it of course meant that Young must not be that man. It was a complication the police could have done without but one that could not deflect from the fact that, as far as the other deaths were concerned, they were on the right track. The FBI involvement proved how computers had become the new detectives.

  Cyber science would now take a further hand and seek out from the life of Hannah Martin a night in April 1969 near a Glasgow dance hall.

  The Operation Trinity team asked scientists to examine every exhibit still held from the 1977 murders to ascertain whether any would give up DNA. Whose DNA that was could vary. It might have been from the victim, the killer or someone not involved. The findings were then matched against all the DNA samples held by police in Scotland on the computer.

  It is correct that no two people, with the exception of identical twins, have exactly the same DNA. But in seeking to compare samples, scientists carry out a number of tests, with the result that some may match in every one, while others in most but not all. This means that the odds of a match being correct can be worked out, although there are categories of similarity; some are completely identical, others nearly the same, yet more pretty similar, and so on. The experts told bosses of Operation Trinity that around 200 samples held by police in Scotland from men and women taken at some stage into custody matched closely enough those taken from the murder scenes to warrant a more detailed investigation. The time had come to begin knocking on doors.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  WORLD’S END

  As detectives were tracking down men whose DNA may have, though not necessarily, put them at one of the murder scenes, Isobel was trying to get her life back in order after the traumas that followed the violent end to her relationship.

  There were times when it was hard for her to fight her tears, but she was a practical woman and knew putting her head in the sand and pretending it had never happened was not the answer. She still had her job, her family and her friends; however, she felt she needed to fill her empty house with belongings and memories that would make it a home.

  Her good looks ensured she had no shortage of candidates to entertain her, but with the hurt left by the previous experience still fresh she was wary of offers. Finally, she struck up a friendship with another young man but, for the time being anyway, decided against making it a live-in arrangement, so each day she went off to work, returning in the evenings to solitary meals and thoughts of what might be. Through the letterbox would have come the usual handful of cheap money offers, vouchers guaranteeing cheaper boxes of soap powder, applications for credit cards . . . junk mail that she binned. As she arrived home one evening in 2004, though, as the lightening skies signified the coming of another spring
, she found a neighbour waiting for her.

  ‘Two men were at your door, Isobel,’ she said. ‘They were asking where you were and what time you’d be back from work, but I thought it best not to tell them. They did not say who they were but put a card through your letterbox. I thought you should know. They didn’t look like Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses, or like they were selling something, but they didn’t knock at any other doors.’

  Isobel thanked her and went inside. On her doormat lay what looked like a yellow postcard. But immediately she picked it up she saw the heading ‘Lothian and Borders Police’. Mystified, and already beginning to worry, she carried it into her living room, sat down and examined it. The card asked her to contact the police station in Dalkeith, the town to the south-east of Edinburgh, and gave a telephone number.

  On a printed line beginning, ‘If possible on . . .’ had been written the single word ‘Anytime’. Another starting with the word ‘Regarding . . .’ had written after it ‘An ongoing inquiry’. It requested her to ask for two detectives, whose names were given. Baffled, she turned the card over. It appeared to be a standard message asking for information about stolen property.

  ‘A police officer called to speak to you to find out if you saw or heard anything suspicious, but there was no reply,’ it read. ‘If you have any information that you think may be of help in solving this crime, please contact . . .’

  She stared in bewilderment, with not a little anxiety, as she read the word ‘crime’. Had someone living close by been burgled and the police thought she might have seen or heard something? One of the neighbours would have been sure to mention it, she figured. Had she been involved in a car accident, perhaps nudging another vehicle without knowing it and driven off? She frantically began running through places she had been, people she’d met and things she’d done in the past few weeks. It could not be, she was sure, anything that had arisen from the incident involving her boyfriend. That had been almost a year earlier and, as far as she knew, it was over, if not forgotten.

  She switched on her television and began watching the evening news, still uncertain as to what to do. She was reluctant to call the police without knowing why they wanted to speak to her. Should she first speak to a lawyer, she wondered?

  The lead item on the news programme concerned the arrest that same morning of 15-year-old Luke Mitchell, who had been seized at his home in a dawn raid by police and charged with murdering schoolgirl Jodi Jones, aged 14. Immediately, she was convinced she knew why the detectives had called. The key lay in the reference on the police message card to Dalkeith, a town she knew well, frequently travelling through it on her way to England. In June 2003, Jodi had left her home in the Easthouses part of the town, telling her family she was visiting Mitchell and would be home later. When she failed to return, a huge search was mounted with Mitchell joining in. He was among those who found her body on a woodland path. It was clear she had been the victim of an appalling attack. Her hands were tied behind her back, her body had been mutilated and her throat cut. The police immediately appealed for witnesses.

  Mitchell was accused of killing her and in February 2005 was convicted of murdering Jodi. He was sentenced to life imprisonment by the judge, Lord Nimmo Smith, who described it as ‘one of the worst cases of a single victim to have come before the court in many years’ and ordered Mitchell to spend at least 20 years behind bars.

  Isobel speculated that CCTV footage had shown her van as having been in Dalkeith at around the time of the murder and, she mused, the police wanted to jog her memory in case anything significant lay hidden in her subconscious. She desperately tried recalling where she might have been at that time, but when nothing came to mind she decided to take the bull by the horns and dial the number on the yellow card. It rang several times, then her call was automatically switched to an answering machine. To her surprise, the message revealed she had been diverted to the World’s End murders’ inquiry unit.

  Almost in a panic, she hung up, thinking she had dialled the wrong number, then desperately worried if her own number would show as having called. She thought she had heard of the World’s End murders but was uncertain, and in any case could not recall what had happened. What she was sure of was that this could have nothing to do with her. Carefully, she rang the number again and listened to the same announcement before hanging up a second time. She reckoned it unlikely the detectives would have left a wrong number and decided, before trying to phone once more, to find out about the World’s End murders.

  Switching on her computer, she connected to the Internet, where she found scores of references to the tragedy. Reading the words on the screen before her telling the awful story brought back recollections of hearing it discussed by her adoptive parents when she was a schoolgirl. But Isobel was still baffled as to why the investigators wanted to talk to her. Deciding there was only one way to find out, she dialled the number in Dalkeith a third time, leaving a message to say who she was and where she lived, quoting the names of the two officers on the card and giving her home telephone number.

  Promptly, at eight the next morning, her telephone rang and one of the two officers whose names she had given identified himself. ‘Thank you for calling us back, can we come and see you?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure, but what’s it all about?’

  ‘Well, we’d rather not say anything on the telephone, but when we see you everything will be explained in full.’

  ‘OK, but should I get a solicitor?’

  ‘Oh no, there’s absolutely nothing for you to worry about. We simply believe you can help us.’

  ‘It’s all a bit mysterious. When do you want to come?’

  ‘How about right away?’

  A little over two hours later, a car pulled up at her house and two men stepped out. Considering the distance involved, she guessed they must have ignored speed regulations. She opened her door as they introduced themselves and showed her their warrant cards; she invited them inside. One of the men was tall with dark hair; the other smaller, stockier. She could not remember which name to attach to which, but it was the stockier of the two who seemed to be doing most of the talking. The men exchanged pleasantries with her, she made them coffee and then the talking started in earnest.

  ‘We’re with a unit which is part of an investigation taking a look at a series of unsolved murders going back to the 1970s: 1977 in particular. Very shortly, there will be an official announcement that three forces, ours, Tayside and Strathclyde, have set up a joint inquiry called Operation Trinity. We are told about 100 detectives will be working on it, so that’s an indication of how seriously this is being taken. Do you buy the News of the World?’

  ‘No, why?’

  ‘Well, in September last year the newspaper carried an article suggesting that there was evidence to suggest an individual it named might be responsible for a number of these deaths. The article was extremely accurate and some of the top brass have actually been trying to find out where the reporter got his information.’

  ‘I didn’t see it.’

  ‘Well, you might want to go to your local library sometime and look it up.’

  ‘But what has this to do with me?’

  ‘Officers from Lothian and Borders police are looking into two of the murders, those of Christine Eadie and Helen Scott. You might have heard of them, they’re usually known as the World’s End murders.’

  ‘Yes, I looked them up on the Internet.’

  ‘And naturally you want to know what could be your connection. These girls were brutally attacked and raped. Their families have a right to find out who was responsible and so do we.’

  ‘I still don’t see . . .’

  ‘Don’t worry, we’re coming to that, but as this is a murder inquiry our hands are pretty much tied when it comes to giving out information. We can assure you this is important, however.’

  ‘But you can surely tell me something.’

  ‘We’ll tell you as much as we are allowed to and try to fill y
ou in on the background to all of this. You remember going to a police station last year and having your fingerprints taken and giving a DNA sample?’

  ‘I can hardly forget it.’

  ‘Well, your DNA closely matches a sample found at the scene of one of the World’s End murders. That sample did not belong to the victim, so it had to come from someone who was there.’

  ‘Such as who?’

  ‘Well, perhaps a suspect or even the killer.’

  ‘You’re saying I know the killer?’

  ‘No, nothing like that, this is just a routine check of everyone whose DNA is similar to that found at one of the scenes. It’s a process of elimination.’

  ‘But you think I could be involved?’ Isobel instantly felt cold and frightened, and the detectives realised the impact of what she had just been told.

  ‘Please don’t get upset or worried. We know you can’t possibly have had anything to do with what took place.’

  ‘So why are you here? How could my DNA be there? I was only about seven when the girls died.’

  ‘You got your DNA from your parents. It’s your mother and father we’d be looking to speak with.’

  ‘So you think it was one of them?’

  ‘No, not at all, we’d just like to speak with them.’

  ‘But I was adopted.’

  ‘Yes, we know that. You had to give details about yourself when you were arrested last year. Do you know the name of your natural mother?’

  ‘Yes, when I was younger I decided to get my birth certificate. It said she was called Hannah Martin and that I was born at Rottenrow.’