A case of hit-and-run is no different from any other crime and Constable Kevan expected to find a piece of smashed headlamp or other pieces from the car but here there was nothing. Only the tyre marks in the road bore testimony to the presence of a vehicle. But, to his experienced eye, those tyre marks revealed a great deal. There were two sets of tracks, both showed signs of a car braking. Peering closely in the torchlight, he saw blood and bits of flesh between the treads and noted that the two streaks met beyond the body. On looking closer he was able to tell that the car had driven over the body more than once. In fact, he calculated that it had bumped over the poor woman no less than eight times, forward and back, forward and back, forward and back, forward and back.
Professor Andrew Allison, who had appeared in the Peter Queen case, and Dr James Innis carried out the post-mortem. Professor Allison later stated that the injuries were ‘more gross than I have ever met with in an accident due to a private car’. PC Kevan felt that the woman had been knocked out somehow and placed in the road prior to the car being driven over her and the doctors agreed. They found a mark on her right temple that suggested she had been rendered unconscious by a blunt instrument. They also believed the injuries were not consistent with the woman being knocked down by a vehicle. Although the face, torso and pelvis were badly mangled by the wheels, the injuries to the legs were not what they would have expected if the woman had been hit by a speeding motor.
So, the medical evidence was that the woman had first been hit over the head with some form of club and then laid on the road before the killer drove the car over the body time and time again. It was an act of cold-blooded murder.
At 2.10 a.m. on the day the body was found, Constable 138D of the City of Glasgow Police force stood in the police box on Cumberland Street in the Gorbals and noted in the logbook:
At 12.50 a.m. today a woman was knocked down and fatally injured in Prospecthill Road near Aikenhead Road. The motor car, believed to be a small, blue Austin, maybe 10hp, was driven by a man wearing a light-fawn Burberry coat. The car did not stop and was last seen driving eastwards on Aikenhead Road.
That police officer knew far more about the incident than those few lines would suggest. Unlike Constable Kevan, however, his knowledge did not come from deductive reasoning or even many years of experience. He knew because he had been there before anyone else.
He knew because he was the killer.
The dead woman was forty-year-old Catherine McCluskey, an unmarried mother of two who lived virtually on the breadline in Nicholson Street, in the Gorbals. When last seen alive, she had been dressed in her best clothes and was heading off to meet her boyfriend, leaving a friend to look after her children. When she did not return, her friend alerted the police after reading about the dead woman in Prospecthill Road.
Inquiries, naturally, focused on the identity of her gentleman friend and, within hours of the body being discovered, police had a strong lead. Catherine had told her friends that the man she was seeing was the father of her younger child and was, in fact, a police officer. Witnesses who had seen her in a dark Austin motor car with a man in police uniform confirmed this. Catherine had also told her girlfriends that the man was married but paid her an allowance of nine shillings a week for young John. But inquiries at the Public Assistance Office, the forerunner of the DSS, revealed that the woman had refused to identify her married lover by name. She had told them she was merely trying to obtain a weekly payment from him so that her unemployment benefit of 33 shillings (£1.65) per week or her supplementary benefit of eight shillings and sixpence (around 43 pence) would remain unaffected.
Then they hit pay dirt. Catherine had confided to one close friend that the officer’s second name was Robertson and that he was stationed locally. Suspicion fell on James Robertson, based in the then Southern Division Headquarters in Oxford Street. He certainly looked the part of a ladykiller. A former aircraft engine inspector, six-feet-one James Ronald Robertson – Big Ronnie to his pals on the job – was a good-looking, well-built man. With his dark hair and neatly trimmed, pencil-thin moustache, he would not have looked out of place in a lounge suit, sipping cocktails and wooing ladies of uncertain age but of comfortable means. But Big Ronnie wasn’t like that. He was a teetotaller and deeply religious, often attending meetings of the ultra-strict Plymouth Brethren. He was also married with two children. Looks aside, he was not the kind of man you would immediately associate with extra-marital flings, illegitimate children and murder most foul.
But Constable 138D James Robertson had been absent from his beat on the night of the murder. And of late he had been driving a dark Austin motor car.
In the eyes of Chief Inspector Donald ‘Tiger’ MacDougall, Big Ronnie was worthy of a tug.
Police officers generally work in pairs and Robertson’s neighbour, or partner, that night had been a PC Dugald Moffat, who told Chief Inspector MacDougall that they had left Oxford Street headquarters in Robertson’s car to drive to their Gorbals beat. Robertson drove an Austin 16 and, at the briefing before they left to begin their nightshift, they had been told that such a car, registration number CVD 350, had been stolen from a city centre street in May and was still missing. Of course, no one thought that the car Robertson was driving was nicked. The registration was different – DYS 570 – and, anyway, he was a copper and coppers are above suspicion.
With the car parked in its usual spot in a lane near Cumberland Street, the two officers set out for their tour of duty. But, after quarter of an hour, Robertson told his partner that he wanted to leave the beat for a while. This was not an unusual request. Officers often attended to personal business during working hours and expected their neighbours to cover for them. Robertson had done this before and, when asked by PC Moffat what he was going to do, he stated, ‘I’m taking a blonde home but I won’t be as long as I was last night.’ He then went off to retrieve his car, leaving his pal walking the streets alone.
Later, PC Moffat saw the light flashing on the top of the police box in Cumberland Street. At that time, the boxes were commonplace in the city streets but they have now vanished. In the days before personal radios, the police box was vital in keeping response times to crimes as swift as possible. Each box had a telephone and a logbook inside and, when the beat officers passed and saw the light flashing, they knew they were needed somewhere. The boxes were also handy for storing sandwiches, flasks of hot tea or soup and, on occasion, a nip of spirits to keep the cold nights at bay.
PC Moffat used his key to unlock the box and telephoned the station. There was a disturbance in Cavendish Street, he was told, and he and his neighbour were needed. But, at this point, Robertson was nowhere to be seen so PC Moffat attended the shout himself and, along with other officers, made a number of arrests. The prisoners were whisked off to Oxford Street for processing where Duty Sergeant MacAllister asked Moffat where PC Robertson was. The unwritten law of any police force is that you back up your fellow officers no matter what so PC Moffat told the sergeant he was in the toilet. However, when Robertson failed to show up, it was suggested that perhaps he’d gone back out on his own. PC Moffat went out to find him, accompanied by the no doubt suspicious Sergeant MacAllister. At just after one in the morning, a much-relieved Dugald Moffat saw his partner hurrying along the street towards him. The quick-thinking Robertson told the sceptical sergeant that he had been in the station all along but had missed them.
Robertson was not as dapper as normal. PC Moffat saw sweat marks on his collar and, when he took off his hat, dark, wet stains could be seen on the band. He could also see dirt on the man’s shoes and trousers. When they were alone again, Robertson told his partner his exhaust had broken off in Cathcart Road and he must’ve roared down it sounding ‘like a Spitfire’. He’d had to stop and tie it up to the handle of one of the doors with a piece of rope, which was why he had been away for so long. Robertson later told another policeman the same story. This officer believed that Robertson was merely looking after the car for a frie
nd of his brother who was out of the country.
Tiger MacDougall learned all this before he went anywhere near Robertson. But, within a day of Catherine McCluskey being found dead in the road, he felt he had enough to confront him and so, at 1.45 a.m. on July 29, he and Duty Sergeant MacAllister cornered the murder suspect while he was walking the beat in Eglinton Street.
‘Is there any need to tell you who this is?’ asked Sergeant MacAllister.
‘Oh, no,’ replied Robertson, ‘it’s Mr MacDougall.’ Tiger was a well-known face on the force – and he had, somewhat embarrassingly, been given a lift in Robertson’s car on occasion. He told the man why he wanted to speak to him and delivered the formal caution. He told him he thought he had murdered Catherine McCluskey.
‘That, sir,’ said Robertson, ‘is entirely wrong.’ But the experienced detective was unconvinced by this and, after the initial interview, he had Robertson formally charged in the police station. Robertson, who knew how to play the game, said for the record, ‘There is nothing more I can say. I have already replied to Mr MacDougall.’
Before being locked in a cell, Robertson was searched and a non-standard issue rubber baton was found in his pocket. Although it was not uncommon for officers to carry makeshift weapons for additional protection on the streets, they also knew Catherine McCluskey had been rendered unconscious by a blow to the temple with such a weapon – and there was a suspicious looking stain on this one. The truncheon was sent to the forensic boffins who tested the stain. However, the most they could say was that the mark was possibly blood but the sample was just not large enough to allow them to be more specific.
Robertson’s car was also sent for analysis. The exhaust was damaged but it had not simply dropped off as Robertson had suggested. The considered scientific opinion was that it had struck a ‘soft-bodied object’ which had snapped the silencer from the chassis, forcing it upwards, where it wedged against the propeller shaft. The ‘soft-bodied object’, they believed, had then been bounced towards the rear wheel and had come out from under the vehicle from underneath the front wheel. Of course, the ‘soft-bodied object’, it was suggested, was none other than poor Catherine McCluskey. They found blood and what appeared to be hair on the underside of the car – although some of the hair was described as being only ‘closely similar’ to the deceased and the rest of it undoubtedly came from an animal, possibly a dog. However, fragments of human flesh were found clinging to the bottom of the car, as were fibres which matched the dead woman’s clothes.
Professor John Glaister had now become involved in the scientific investigation. In the yard of Oxford Street police station, he recreated the crime using the car and a policewoman volunteer who was similar to Catherine McCluskey in weight and build. On studying the medical reports, he learned that the only injuries to the deceased’s legs were on the inside of her knees and not on the front or back, as he would have expected in a road accident. His findings, along with the medical reports, proved that the woman had been lying down on the road, insensible, before the car had run over her up to eight times.
Meanwhile, officers had searched Robertson’s home and, in a tallboy, they found two motor registration books and a key ring with eighteen different car keys. They also discovered a wireless set and a number of other registration books which, they later learned, had been stolen from a Cumberland Street garage on 23 April. When confronted in an interview room, Robertson said he’d found the radio and books in the backcourt of a tenement. When questioned about the car, he said he’d found it abandoned in Hillington Road. He claimed it had been sitting there for two days before he decided to take it. He admitted passing the car off as his own and changing the number plates, using the registration of an Ayrshire farmer’s tractor. He was, after all, facing a capital murder charge and putting his hands up to the relatively minor offence of ‘taking and driving away’ would have seemed attractive.
However, things were still looking black for James Robertson who continued to deny all knowledge of Catherine McCluskey and how she had died. But, as the evidence mounted against him, he changed his story. He admitted that he and Catherine had been romantically linked but he had not killed her. His solicitor, Laurence Dowdall, and defence counsel, John Cameron KC, told him his only hope of avoiding the gallows was to be perfectly honest about his involvement with the dead woman. At first, Robertson agreed. But, like many another accused before and since, he thought he knew better than his advisors.
So the case was ready to go to court. It had all the ingredients to make it the most talked about trial of the year in Glasgow. There was sex, there was death and there was a killer cop. Naturally, the crowds wanted to be in on it all. Outside Glasgow’s High Court on the Saltmarket, the queues began to form at 7.30 a.m. on Monday 6 November 1950. Across the road stood the site of the old public gallows where Dr Pritchard had breathed his last but it is unlikely that anyone thought about that as they waited on that chilly morning for the doors to open on the latest murder sensation. They waited patiently, many knowing they were unlikely to grab a space in the public gallery first time round but, so keen was the interest, they were willing to wait for someone to leave. Seasoned trial-attenders had come prepared with sandwiches, flasks and even blankets.
The entire affair had to be settled by Wednesday 16 November. This was because, at the time, one of the distinctive aspects of the Scottish Criminal Procedures Act was that a trial had to be concluded within 110 days of a person’s arrest – which, in this case, had been 29 July. Nowadays, the rule has been relaxed so that the trial need only begin within the 110 days. In the end, though, the Robertson case would only last a week and, despite the strong prosecution case, based largely on the scientific evidence, things were looking pretty hopeful for the accused.
But then, unexpectedly, the Crown was handed its best witness. The Crown case was that he had removed a troublesome mistress who had threatened the security of his marriage. His defence team valiantly tilted at the prosecution windmill, trying hard to suggest an alternative to their assertion that their client had first battered Catherine McCluskey then repeatedly ran over her unconscious body with his car. They suggested that the woman could have been knocked down accidentally by the car reversing on the hill. But, in order for a jury to accept that possibility, they had to push their legal lance through the scientific evidence.
Professor Glaister and John Cameron faced each other across the courtroom and discussed the flesh that had been ripped from the woman’s legs. The astute forensic scientist pointed out the wounds were not on the knees. ‘They are on the inner aspects of the knees and my experience of the female anatomy is that a woman does not stand presenting that part to an oncoming car.’
However, there was a small bump found on the rear bumper of the car and the equally as astute KC asked, ‘So far as the motor car is concerned, there is evidence on the rear which is at least consistent with collision between the car in reverse and a human body?’
‘Among other things,’ replied Professor Glaister.
But Mr Cameron was not to be put off. ‘But it is at least consistent with a human body?’
For his part, Professor Glaister was not going to be drawn quite so easily. ‘That is one of a vast collection that could not be eliminated.’
‘You cannot eliminate it?’
‘No.’
It was a telling exchange and went some way to raising doubts over the prosecution case. However, try as they might, the defence could not completely undermine the prosecution claim that Catherine had been knocked out first – although they did produce their own expert witness who testified that it was possible the death was accidental. Mr Cameron also showed, using Laurence Dowdall as an assistant, that it was nigh on impossible for a right-handed man to stun a car passenger while sitting in the driving seat. Also, they had managed to cast doubts on at least some of the identification evidence, which is often the weakest part of any prosecution case. In this trial, although witnesses had picked out the accu
sed at identification parades, one failed to recognise him in court and pointed instead to a journalist in the press box. Such court testimony is usually laughable at the best of times as the accused is generally the only one sitting between two big police officers. In this case, that particular piece of testimony reached the level of farce.
By the fifth day, the defence felt they had done a good enough job to at least merit a guilty verdict on a lesser charge and save their client from the hangman’s tender mercies. But then the Crown was handed its star witness – James Robertson himself. He had been advised to come clean about his affair with the dead woman but, on the eve of taking the stand, he decided he could not embarrass his family. Laurence Dowdall and John Cameron tried to talk him out of this suicidal course of action but he was adamant. They had done a terrific job on his part and he was confident he would not be found guilty of murder. The jury would believe him.
In court, he said he had met Catherine McCluskey while on duty and attending a disturbance in Nicholson Street. After that, his acquaintanceship with her was merely a passing one – although he had once given the woman and her children a run home but had not gone inside.
Bloody Valentine Page 13