by Ryan Green
Since preparation for the trial began, the cold case team had been working tirelessly to rebuild the timeline of Angus Sinclair and Gordon Hamilton’s whereabouts throughout the years. It was well known that the two of them were friends and it was a poorly kept secret that they went out trawling for women when they were meant to be on their ‘fishing trips’ every other weekend, but what was less well known was the fact that Angus had taken on Gordon as an apprentice to his painting and decorating business for a while when business was booming and the younger man was out of work. The cold case team had managed to identify the homes that the two of them had worked in, and with the consent of the homeowners and the help of the forensics team, they removed some plastering work that Gordon had performed to discover one of his hairs trapped behind it and perfectly preserved. It gave an equally perfect match to the second set of DNA. They had sufficient evidence to bring Angus back on trial for the murders, and with the evidence from the ligatures, they could prove that he was involved in the violence, too.
Three judges deliberated on whether the evidence was sufficient to overlook the existing rules of double jeopardy and concluded that it was, and a second trial date was set in 2014. Angus still denied all of his actions, entering three special defences this time: that his sexual encounter with the girls had been consensual, that Gordon Hamilton had committed the crimes without his knowledge, and that he had an alibi. The same lie about a fishing trip that he had fed to his wife was regurgitated verbatim in a court of law, and despite having no corroborating witnesses, Angus somehow thought that it was going to hold up.
The evidence was presented to the jury methodically over the course of several days, with Angus’ lawyer trying desperately to find a single fault in the narrative that the prosecutors were presenting. At one point the jury was driven out to visit the scene of the crime and have the events of the murder narrated to them by the prosecutors. The jury deliberated for only minutes after all evidence had been presented before returning their verdict that Angus was guilty of the murders. He was sentenced to yet another lifetime of imprisonment. He will become eligible for parole at the ripe old age of 106.
Conclusion
Angus Sinclair spends his time in bed or in his prison-issued wheelchair in Glenochil prison, Clackmannanshire. He will be lucky to survive the rest of the year after a series of strokes. He has gone from the haggard look that followed him through his last public appearances at the trial to appearing skeletal. His eyes are sunken into his head, but they still hold the spark of malice as they roll around to track anyone walking by. He has an emergency alert tied to his wrist in case he falls, and the prison staff dutifully care for him as they wait for him to die. He drinks from a sealed baby cup—the only source of nutrition available to him as he struggles to eat the restricted diet that the prison doctors have put him on. He cannot make the trip from his bed to the toilet in the corner of his cell unaided. He cannot change his own clothes. The man who was once so obsessed with power and control over the people around him has now been left unable to even control his own bowels. Age has stripped him of everything that he thought made him special.
The staff in the prison are mindful of their duty of care. They do not make him wait when he needs assistance, they treat him better than many sullen and silent old men in nursing homes are treated, but they are aware of who and what he is. They offer him no kindness beyond what is legally obliged of them. He will never see another smile. He will never hear another joke. He is dead in every way except for the fact that his heart is still beating, and his malevolent intelligence is still working away behind his expressionless face.
His family and friends have all forgotten and abandoned him, his wife has moved on to a new life, his son has changed his name so that he cannot be linked to his monstrous father. The only people still trying to draw sound out of his lapsing throat are the old policemen who come to visit, hoping that in what are clearly his final months on this earth, he might suddenly develop enough of a conscience to set some grieving family’s minds at rest. To date, Angus Sinclair has only been officially tried for four murders, including the one he committed as a teenager. The vast majority of his crimes remain unanswered due to a lack of surviving evidence.
The only way that the families of Frances Barker, Anna Kenny, Hilda McAuley, Agnes Cooney and Eddie Cotogno are ever going to know for certain what happened to their beloved daughters, sisters, and brother is if Angus confesses to his crimes. Of course, he will not do it because there is no advantage to him in admitting to more murders. Every word he speaks takes a great deal of effort after the strokes, and he certainly isn’t going to waste that effort on other people. He is a classic sociopath. A sadistic sexually motivated killer with no interest in anything except his own hedonistic pleasure.
At one point during the investigation into the World’s End murders, the police brought in an FBI profiler to assist them, and the pattern that profiler described was that of a classic serial killer. Someone who is incapable of empathy, interested only in what they can take from the world. A person not only devoid of empathy but aroused by fear and pain. At a very early age Angus Sinclair became obsessed with sex, and due to his poor social skills, he had no way to pursue it, so instead, he turned to rape and molestation. At that age, sexual encounters are formative experiences. He remained obsessed with sex, but for him, sex was no longer the consensual act between two lovers—it was an act of violence, and the more violent the act could be made, the more pleasurable it became for him. The wires in his brain got crossed and once he made that association there was no turning back. In the beginning, he may have killed as a means to cover up his crimes, but before long the killing was an end in itself. He revelled in murder and he drew joy from the painful death of his victims.
In the lifespan of most serial killers we see a pattern of escalation, where they go from one killing every few years to one every month, to a final berserk stage where they are killing every moment that they can, when they believe that they have become impossible to stop and there is no reason to restrain themselves. In Angus Sinclair’s case, that escalation happened within a seven-month period during which he committed almost all of his murders. It is for the best that he lacked the confidence of his kind, that Mary Gallacher fought back against him so valiantly that he was too frightened to go out hunting for more victims and that he was so cowed by just the memory of her that he could not bring himself to kill again.
The families of the World’s End murder victims feel no sorrow to hear that Angus Sinclair is on death’s door. They feel no sympathy for him and their only wish is that he had died a long time ago before he could inflict his own personal brand of evil on the world. Still, even they have asked him to reveal his secrets so that the other families of his victims will know peace. It grows less likely with each passing day, as his muscles weaken and the likelihood of one final stroke finishing him off grows.
The total death toll of Angus Sinclair’s campaign of terror will probably never be known. Even this book only recounts the cases for which enough information has been gathered for us to make reasonable suppositions. Any time that he went beyond his usual hunting grounds or murdered with different methods will have gone unnoticed. The full number of children that he molested and raped has never come to light, although the crime statistics for Glasgow showed a fairly significant drop after he was incarcerated. Soon he will be dead, and with him will go the only full record of the murders that he has committed and the children whose innocence he destroyed. Even in death, he will continue his legacy of misery: a trail of weeping families whose lives he has utterly ruined in the pursuit of his sick pleasure, his own family included in that number.
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Herb Baumeister was a husband, father of three, and successful businessman—but he was hiding a very dark secret.
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Four chilling true crime stories in one collection, from the bestselling author Ryan Green.
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Sinclair
You Think You Know Me
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About Ryan Green
Ryan Green is a true crime author in his late thirties. He lives in Herefordshire, England with his wife, three children, and two dogs. Outside of writing and spending time with his family, Ryan enjoys walking, reading and windsurfing.
Ryan is fascinated with History, Psychology and True Crime. In 2015, he finally started researching and writing his own work and at the end of the year, he released his first book on Britain's most notorious serial killer, Harold Shipman.
He has since written several books on lesser-known subjects, and taken the unique approach of writing from the killer's perspective. He narrates some of the most chilling scenes you'll encounter in the True Crime genre.
"Ryan Green is an incredible storyteller...he doesn’t just tell the story, he allows you to be part of it."
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“Mr. Green goes very deeply into the mind of the victim, and what is believed to be what she experienced in her final weeks of life. You have been warned! I was crying in pain by the time I had finished reading” –Jesser1975
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