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[audio logo] [tense music] ♪ ♪ narrator: In September
1984, 58-year-old Mary McLaughlin was
walking home after
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a night out at her local pub. - Mary met her
killer on that route, and we don't know how
or why, but that killer
00:00:27
ended up in Mary's home. narrator: The stranger was
22-year-old Graham McGill, a convicted sex offender
who was on temporary
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release from prison. Once inside Mary's flat,
McGill brutally murdered the popular grandmother.
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- McGill overpowered
her quite easily. He beat her up. It was a horrific murder.
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narrator: Mary's body was
discovered six days later, by which time her
killer had seemingly
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vanished without a trace. - We were looking
for a perpetrator of a sexually motivated crime.
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There was no doubt about it. But we got nowhere. ♪ ♪ narrator: The case went cold
for nearly four decades,
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until DNA evidence left
behind at the scene would expose McGill. - The probability of the DNA
which was discovered
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was one in a billion. Narrator: Graham
McGill had finally been revealed as one of the
World's Most Evil Killers.
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[theme music] ♪ ♪ [somber music] ♪ ♪ narrator: It was justice
37 years in the making.
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In April 2021,
59-year-old Graham McGill was found guilty of the
1984 murder of Mary McLaughlin.
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- It was a cold
case that hadn't been covered
for a number of years by any journalist in Scotland.
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And in 2016, I
decided to feature it in an Unsolved
Murder series I was running in the Daily Record.
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Mary's case hadn't
been in the newspapers for quite a long time when I
decided to have a look at it.
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narrator: Detective
Iain Wishart worked on the original
murder investigation in 1984.
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- What I remember
of Mary was that she was well liked in the area, and
she was an absolute character.
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She had 11 children. Anyone who knew her said
she was a wonderful person. It was evidence collected
at the crime scene by Iain
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and his team that would prove
crucial 37 years down the line. - Graham McGill
probably thought
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he got away with his murder. He felt that 30
years have gone by and nobody has
come to arrest me.
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He lived a full life, never
being held liable for what crimes he had committed. - It only proves that murders
and very serious crimes
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are not forgotten. narrator: This killer's story
begins in Scotland on the 30th
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of September, 1961. [tense music] - We don't know very much about
Graham McGill's early life.
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- There isn't a lot
known about his past. We know that he's from
the West of Scotland.
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Iain Wishart: But I do
know that in later life, he was charged with attempt
to ravish or attempt to rape.
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narrator: In 1981,
aged around 20, McGill was sentenced
to six years in prison for the assault.
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- The younger that men
like this start to offend, the more likely it is that this
offending is going to continue
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on and on into the future. Misogyny is a much
bigger problem than people think it is.
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And starting
at that young age is predictive that
there are going to be big problems in the future.
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narrator: By September
1984, Graham McGill was in Edinburgh
prison, three years
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into his six-year sentence. 50 miles away in Partick,
a suburb of Glasgow, 58-year-old Mary
McLaughlin, a mother of 11
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and grandmother
of 26, was a popular member of the neighborhood. - Mary McLaughlin
was a divorced woman.
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She lived in a flat alone. She was well known
in her local community. She liked to go to the local
pub, where she'd
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play a game of dominoes,
and then quite often she'd stop for chips on the way home.
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And she would
talk to everybody. Everybody knew her as wee Mary. She was really quite a popular
member of our community.
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narrator: One
of Mary's 11 children is her daughter, Gina McGavin. - And from the area
where she would go and do
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her socializing at night, there
was a lot of people liked her. She was well liked.
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Don't she had any
close friends, but she was well liked. She liked to have
a little drink.
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She liked the company
of people. I feel she didn't
ever like being alone, and that was her way.
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It was her escape. narrator: Mary's need
to be surrounded by people may have stemmed from
her tough start in life.
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Jane Hamilton: Mary had
a very tragic upbringing. Her mother died when she
was only five years old.
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And her dad was
a merchant seaman, so he was away quite a lot. So what he did was he
left Mary in the charge
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of his two sisters, who
weren't very kind to Mary. There was no affection. There was nobody
that cared about her.
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So she was basically left
just to her own devices. And quite frankly,
if Cinderella
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was a real-life story,
Mary fitted that bill. narrator: Mary's
troubled upbringing
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may have been why
she struggled when she had children of her own. Gina McGavin:
My Mum wasn't there.
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I was mostly brought
up by my father, and I have vague
memories of her coming and going in my life,
having my first child.
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She wasn't there
when I got married. She wasn't there at the crucial
points in my life.
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I never understood why. The memories that
I do have of her, she to me always seemed
happy outward, but inward,
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I always had that
feeling she wasn't happy. She was lonely. narrator: Although
Gina and her mother
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had a challenging relationship,
Mary was thriving in her role as a grandmother.
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- The times that they did see
their granny, they loved her. They loved her humor.
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They loved her fun. She was always making jokes. But I knew deep down
that was all just
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a front for the sadness
that she was feeling and the loneliness
that she was really feeling.
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narrator: By September 1984,
Mary and Gina's relationship showed signs of improvement
after they crossed paths
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at Gina's father's funeral. - She explained a lot
of things about her life and my dad and her life
with her other relationship.
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And I understood her more
because I was married, and I had children
myself, so I understood
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where she was coming from. And she opened up quite a bit. And we did arrange to meet,
but it didn't happen
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because she was murdered. That just was cut short. narrator: Just a few
weeks after Gina's dad's
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funeral in early October 1984,
Mary McLaughlin was found murdered in her Partick home.
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[tense music] Jane Hamilton: Mary's body lay
in her flat for six days before she was discovered, so it's
suspected through forensic
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examination that she
died on either the 26th or the 27th of September 1984. Her body was discovered
when her son, who
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used to visit her
maybe once a week, went into the flat with
his girlfriend at the time,
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and she ran out screaming. - Martin finds his
mother lying on the bed. She has her dressing gown cord
tied round her neck three times
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and double knotted. And her dress, her green
dress is on back to front. Jane Hamilton: And they
called the police.
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And that's when the murder
investigation started. narrator: News of Mary's
horrendous murder
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left her daughter
Gina distraught. - My maternal half
brother called my house to say that
he'd been in her mum's,
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and she'd been murdered. I was in shock, stunned,
but I just couldn't believe what I was hearing.
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[suspenseful music] narrator: The investigation
into Mary's murder began immediately.
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Who would want to kill
the popular grandmother? Detectives needed
to find the killer fast,
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but with minimal evidence
and few witnesses, it would be like finding
a needle in a haystack.
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[tense music] narrator: When
Mary McLaughlin was found murdered in her
Glasgow home in October 1984,
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Detective Iain Wishart was
one of the first investigators at the scene. Iain Wishart: When I arrived
at the house, obviously,
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there was a policeman
at the door. The scene was Mary lying
on her bed, partially clothed
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but clearly strangled
by what looked like the tie of a dressing gown. There was no sign
of the house being ransacked,
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but what was rather
obvious was an ashtray full of cigarette ends, plus
a partially smoked cigarette.
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Obviously, a very
quick inquiry revealed that no one had heard her
entering the house that night,
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so it would have appeared
at a very early stage that she may have
known her attacker
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because obviously, there
was no kerfuffle, no noise, whatsoever. narrator: Mary's family,
including her daughter Gina,
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needed to rule themselves
out of the inquiry. Gina McGavin: We were directed
to Gullane Street police
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office in Partick
to get fingerprints taken for, obviously,
elimination purposes.
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I just was totally-- I was babbling. I couldn't get
my head round it. And it was just awful.
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Awful. An awful experience. When you hear of murder and you
read it in the newspapers
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or you hear it
in the media, and you think, oh, that's awful, that's sad. But when it actually
is close to home,
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the impact is unbelievable. And you start feeling all
sorts of mixed emotions, and you can't think straight.
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Your head just
can't get around it. narrator: Mary's partner
also had an alibi.
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He was working away at sea. Iain Wishart and his
team had no early leads. - The following day, I
gave a television interview
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and naturally appealed
for witnesses. Obviously, we would like
to get in touch with anyone
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who lived in the area
who may have been in the area of Crathie
Court over the past week,
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or who may have seen
Mrs. McLaughlin alive after last Wednesday. This was very positive
because it turned out
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that we were able
to establish, first of all, she had been
in a local chip shop.
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narrator: Mary
had last been seen on the 26th of September
1984, six days before her body was found.
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Tracing Mary's final
footsteps, detectives, with the help of locals,
soon pieced together
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the story of the night
of her murder, which began at a local pub in Partick. - The Hyndland bar wasn't
far from Mary's flat.
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She probably had about a 5
or 10-minute walk, if that. Mary probably stayed there that
evening until roughly about 9
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o'clock, half past 9:00,
and she decided that she wanted to go and get some fritters.
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That was part of her routine. She enjoyed a bag
of fritters, which is basically fried
potatoes instead of chips.
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She said to her
friends that she was time to go home,
about 45 minutes maybe, an hour before the pub
was closing for the evening.
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narrator: Witnesses placed
Mary in the fish and chip shop at around 10:45 PM. Jane Hamilton: She
was in the chip shop,
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very chatty, very happy,
speaking to the people that worked there. They knew her.
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She was a familiar
face to them. There was nothing in her
manner to suggest that she
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was worried about anybody. She didn't tell anybody
she was being followed or that anybody
had approached her.
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So there was nothing there to
suggest that anything untoward was going on that night.
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Iain Wishart: We were left
with a lot of interviews with the people in the chip
shop, the people
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in the public house. Nothing ever came of that. narrator: After
leaving the takeaway,
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witnesses saw Mary
talking with a stranger. Iain Wishart: Two
witnesses state that they saw her
walking along the road,
00:14:47
accompanied by a young man. But they only take her
accompanied by this young man
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as far as Crow road or Ashley
street, which are two roads that lead up to Crathie Court.
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No one saw her going
up to her house, and no one saw
her in the house. So at that stage, yes,
we have witnesses,
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but it becomes
very, very difficult to track down this young man. And indeed, we
cannot, at that stage,
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say that this young man was
a perpetrator because we have absolutely no evidence
that he had accompanied
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her up to her house. narrator: It's impossible
to know what happened Next, But at some point,
a killer was invited
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into Mary McLaughlin's home. - I think what we
need to remember about Mary is that she's
mum to, like, 11 children.
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This is a woman whose my whole
identity is around being mum. And she meets a young
man in the street.
00:16:08
Now, this is a mum. She may have been very
maternal towards him if he was saying things to her
like, I've got nowhere to stay,
00:16:17
or I'm feeling really sad. I need someone to talk to. It's quite possible that
it's that kind of thing
00:16:23
that got Mary to trust him. - The tragedy of this story is
that she encountered a predator
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and didn't recognize
the predator when she saw one. narrator: When Mary's
body was eventually found,
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it was hard to determine
exactly what had happened. - The scene is
quite problematic
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because there is a dead woman
in the house for several days. This is where now they have to
be very careful what they bring
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into the scene and what
they take out of the scene because the killer
probably walked
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in and out of that scene. Are there footprints
on the floorboards? Are there any marks
of shoe prints?
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Everything needs
to be carefully examined, carefully documented,
and carefully removed.
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narrator:
A post-mortem revealed that Mary had been strangled
to death with the cord
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from her own dressing gown. Jane Monckton-Smith:
It's a very personal way to kill someone.
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You're right up. You're really close to them. They are going to fight you. You're going to have to watch
them struggle for breath.
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So this is somebody
who's quite happy to be up close and personal. He hasn't gone up
behind her and hit her.
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It's like there's some
sadism involved here, and he wanted
to see her suffer. He wanted to know what it felt
like to watch somebody die.
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narrator: Any relevant
items at the crime scene needed to be handled
with care by the forensic team.
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- If you went
to a murder scene-- and I have been at quite
a few, unfortunately--
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anything that was
relevant to the murder had to be taken possession of,
bagged, labeled, and preserved.
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Because you might catch
someone one day, and you would have to present
this evidence in court.
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narrator: Items
bagged and taken away included
the dressing gown cord, a discarded cigarette,
and an item of clothing
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found in Mary's garden. Geoffrey Wansell:
One of the things they discover a few days later
in the garden behind the flat
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is a bra of hers. It's not on the body. It's been dumped in the garden,
but they have got
00:18:47
no idea of how it got there. [somber music] - Due to the passage
of time, it was inconclusive whether they
would say she had been raped.
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They couldn't say. But when you picture
the scene of the crime, you felt, even then,
there was some form
00:19:11
of sexual motive in this
because of the way the body was dressed. narrator: The revelations
coming from the crime scene
00:19:20
were hard for Mary's large
family to comprehend. - Although Mary had
a complicated relationship
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with her family and her
children, her death, particularly
the violence of it and
00:19:33
the brutality of her
murder, it absolutely devastated her family and quite
literally ripped them apart.
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- I went home that night
and wasn't expecting when I put on the TV
for it to be on,
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and I remember shaking
and things like that and going, I can't watch this
because I didn't
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really want to accept in really
bad had happened to her. Oh, it was horrible. narrator: After ruling
out family members,
00:20:05
detectives were still trying
to find a potential suspect. And there was no sign
of a break in at Mary's flat.
00:20:15
- When police began
their investigation, one of the most striking
things that stood out
00:20:20
at that very, very early
stage in their murder hunt was that Mary's front
door was locked,
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and the front
door key was gone. It was missing. Iain Wishart: The man
who lived next door,
00:20:32
he had the keys for the house. He had the ability to have
entered that house. We interviewed him at length.
00:20:42
And, well, we were quite
satisfied at the end of the day that he was not who
we're looking for.
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[tense music] - They exhausted every avenue,
and no one came forward. They couldn't pinpoint anyone.
00:20:59
They couldn't arrest anyone. narrator: As the investigation
continued, detectives were left stumped.
00:21:08
There appeared to be no
ill will towards Mary and no evidence of an intruder. As the leads dried
up, there was
00:21:17
a real concern that
Mary's killer was going to get away with murder. [suspenseful music]
00:21:32
narrator: As investigators
widened the net in the search for Mary McLaughlin's
killer, there
00:21:36
appeared to be no
obvious suspects linked to the brutal murder. [suspenseful music]
00:21:45
Jane Hamilton: There were
eight different police forces in Scotland
at the time, and
00:21:49
communication,
shall we say, was not particularly brilliant
between every fourth area.
00:21:54
And Iain Bishop told me
that they put a dragnet around the media area, and they
pulled in known sex
00:22:03
offenders, housebreakers. Iain Wishart: So you
look at the family. You look at the neighbors.
00:22:10
You look at people who
have access to the house. You also look at people
who have motive.
00:22:16
There was just nothing
that we could say, oh, yes, it's this type
of person, it was that person.
00:22:24
We had no way to go. The minute a stranger,
a complete stranger comes into the picture,
we have difficulties.
00:22:34
narrator: Not
knowing who may have killed Mary was an extremely
difficult time for her family.
00:22:40
- When I was told by one
of the CID officers that they had
exhausted every avenue,
00:22:46
but the case would still lie
as a cold case on the shelf, and when they said that
to me, don't give up hope.
00:22:52
And I said anything at all
that you hear, if you think it's relevant, let us know.
00:22:57
And I just went on a mission
myself to end, I felt, would have been relevant to
solving my mum's or identifying
00:23:07
who her killer was. And I thought I
was getting older, and I would go
to the end of my life
00:23:14
without knowing what
happened to her. [unsettling music] ♪ ♪ Jane Monckton-Smith:
I work with a lot
00:23:23
of bereaved families,
bereaved through homicide. And the one thing that
they all consistently say
00:23:29
is, we just want
to know what happened. We need to know what happened. And Mary's family, they
just kept the fight up
00:23:39
year after year after year. They were not going
to let Mary get forgotten. narrator: As the days turned
into weeks and the weeks
00:23:48
into months,
by the summer of 1985, detectives were no closer
to tracking down Mary's killer.
00:23:56
Iain Wishart: I would say
about six to nine months later, you realize you're not getting
anywhere, but it's never dead.
00:24:07
If someone gave
some information, there had to be
an officer nominated who would look into that case.
00:24:16
Jane Hamilton:
Murder investigations nowadays are typically
solved very, very quickly.
00:24:20
Back in the 1980s
and the '70s, there was a bit more legwork needed
before anything was solved.
00:24:27
But police did not
have endless resources, so the hunt for Mary's
killer was scaled down.
00:24:36
Iain Wishart: People
put things to you. Should you have done this? Could you have done this?
00:24:40
No. Nothing came out of it. For some reason, I always
remembered her name, and I always remembered that
case because of the fact
00:24:51
that when I was
in charge of murders, this was the only one
that hadn't been solved.
00:24:59
narrator: The investigation
into Mary's murder remained cold for decades. It appeared it would
never be solved.
00:25:09
Journalist Jane
Hamilton began looking into the case over 30 years
after the horrific attack.
00:25:18
- By 2014, there had been four
case reviews into Mary's murder by police. Unfortunately,
DNA prior to 2014
00:25:28
was not advanced
enough for the police to make any significant
breakthroughs in Mary's murder.
00:25:35
And I read an interview
that Gina had given. And in it, she had spoken
about her devastation
00:25:40
and how she couldn't
move on until her mom's murderer had been caught. And I just wanted to see if
there was anything I could do.
00:25:51
narrator: Jane's article
in the Daily Record, published in 2016, shone
a light on the case again.
00:25:59
But unbeknown
to her, investigators had already begun the process
of retesting the evidence
00:26:06
collected at the murder scene. - Mary dies in 1984,
and the DNA is eventually revisited 30 years later.
00:26:17
Now, in those 30 years, the DNA
sensitivity and specificity capabilities skyrocket.
00:26:25
We have better
technologies, and we can actually identify
more specific genes on every DNA profile that can
pinpoint one person as opposed
00:26:36
to many, many, many others. And so, in this
case, in 30 years, we go from looking just
a handful of DNA markers
00:26:44
to over two dozen DNA markers. Narrator: Forensic
scientists began by analyzing the murder
weapon, the makeshift ligature
00:26:55
that strangled Mary to death--
her dressing gown cord. [unsettling music] When recovered from
the crime scene in 1984,
00:27:07
there were two knots
along the cord. One was untied during
the original investigation,
00:27:13
while, crucially, the other
was left untouched. ♪ ♪ - Anybody's DNA
was on that knot
00:27:24
had to be at that death scene. Mary and her killer are more
likely to be the only people
00:27:32
whose DNA would be
found on that second never-touched-before knot. Jane Hamilton: I
got a phone call
00:27:39
from a contact who
said that police were interested in a man
for Mary's murder, and that they
believed that they
00:27:47
had a DNA match
to a man because of Mary's dressing gown cord. - The search on the sex
offenders database
00:27:56
gives us a name. It's Graham McGill. ♪ ♪ And his DNA is on the database
because many years
00:28:07
before, he was convicted
of a sexual crime. So 30 years after Mary's
death, we get a match.
00:28:18
narrator: Graham McGill had
been jailed for assault and attempt to rape in 1981,
and was supposedly behind bars
00:28:25
at the time of Mary's murder. But in the light
of the DNA results, a new revelation
was discovered.
00:28:33
Jane Hamilton: McGill
was on day release from Edinburgh
prison, where he was serving a six-year
sentence for attempting
00:28:39
to rape women in 1981. He was on a two-day training
for freedom program. ♪ ♪ narrator: During his
trial release from prison,
00:28:53
McGill had traveled 50
miles from Edinburgh to Glasgow to kill Mary. Investigators had no way
of knowing that back in 1984.
00:29:06
Iain Wishart: It's all very
well in hindsight to say, should we have known
about Graham McGill?
00:29:11
Well, no. There was just no way that
we could have at that time homed in on Graham McGill.
00:29:19
- There's never, ever been any
real explanation as to why, back in 1984, when transport
wasn't as reliable as it
00:29:28
is nowadays, why he
decided to get a bus, why he decided to do
that when he only
00:29:33
had two days out of prison. ♪ ♪ - He'd have been
obsessing about this whilst he was
in prison, thinking
00:29:43
about the type of woman
he's going to attack, how he's going to do it, almost
enjoying the thought of it.
00:29:50
So by the time he
gets out, he's ready. He's ready to go. And that's exactly
what he did do.
00:29:56
♪ ♪ narrator: The motive
for McGill's apparently unprovoked attack on Mary
has never been established.
00:30:07
Jane Hamilton: It's
always been a bit of a mystery as to why
McGill targeted Mary,
00:30:11
and nobody quite
knows how they met. Did he see her in the street? Was he in the Hyndland bar that
she was drinking in that night?
00:30:19
And did he see her,
or did he follow her? It's thought that when Mary and
McGill got back to her flat,
00:30:26
he's attacked her
almost instantly. Mary wasn't
a violent person, but she did try to defend herself,
and she would have fought quite
00:30:35
ferociously for her life. But she was 58 years old. McGill was 22. He was quite
a strong young man,
00:30:43
and it would have been very
easy for him to overpower her, which is what he did.
00:30:48
narrator: After murdering
Mary, Graham McGill casually returned
to Edinburgh prison
00:30:54
until he was released just a
few days later in October 1984, after serving half
of his six-year sentence.
00:31:03
McGill lived a seemingly normal
life working as a welder, but his misogynistic
behavior never went away.
00:31:13
[unsettling music] - In 1993, he gets married
to a lady called Suzanne, and at one point in a
conversation with his wife,
00:31:25
he tells her that he's killed
a woman and says to her, I wanted to know what it
felt like to kill someone.
00:31:32
And he also says, if you
tell anybody about that, I'll kill you. It's a good indication
of McGill's attitude.
00:31:40
He didn't care
for women, and he was prepared to use violence. - He's probably been dying
to brag about it for years.
00:31:50
This is not the type
of person who worried about what
he's done in the past, but he will use it to control
people in the present.
00:32:00
Geoffrey Wansell:
McGill actually said to her that
no one was going to come after him for the
murder of Mary McLaughlin
00:32:05
because, and I quote,
"because she was on her own, she didn't have anybody. And she may be more
like a prostitute."
00:32:11
Oh, it was a dreadful thing
to say about the poor woman. She certainly
wasn't, but that's
00:32:17
the way it occurred to him. Jane Monckton-Smith:
He said she had no one. That was not true.
00:32:23
She'd spent that evening
with her daughter. Her family have
fought and fought and fought over the years to
find out who Mary's killer was.
00:32:32
He could not have
been more wrong. narrator: By the time
DNA revealed McGill as Mary's killer, he
had already been back in prison
00:32:46
and subsequently released
for another sexual assault on a woman. ♪ ♪ - In 1999, McGill is
convicted of the attempted
00:32:58
rape of a 24-year-old woman
and is sentenced to life. He does not serve a life term.
00:33:05
In fact, he's released
on license in 2008. narrator: In December 2019,
over 35 years after murdering
00:33:14
Mary McLaughlin, Graham McGill
received an unexpected knock at the door. - Unsurprisingly,
perhaps, McGill
00:33:24
is astonished when
the police arrive at his door to charge him with
the murder of Mary McLaughlin.
00:33:29
♪ ♪ - I was delighted,
but don't forget what was at the back of my mind. Had I made a mistake?
00:33:41
Had the person they were
about to arrest been someone we had interviewed? I was delighted they
caught the murderer,
00:33:51
and I was delighted that
it wasn't somebody we had let slip through our fingers.
00:33:57
Jane Hamilton: I spoke
to Gina, Mary's daughter, in the immediate
aftermath of the news,
00:34:02
breaking that there had
been a man arrested. And she was
relieved but nervous and didn't want
to get her hopes up
00:34:12
that finally she would
get justice for her mum. Gina McGavin: When
he was arrested,
00:34:19
some of the newspapers
were saying that he had committed
previous crimes of rape,
00:34:25
and the parole
board felt that he was able to go back
into the community and he wasn't a danger
to other women again,
00:34:33
when, in fact, he went
on and murdered my mother. narrator: Despite
the overwhelming evidence
00:34:40
against him, Graham
McGill, now aged 58, wasn't going
to confess to anything. As preparations were made
for his upcoming trial,
00:34:50
McGill refused to admit
to murdering Mary. In a final insult
to her family, McGill was going
to plead not guilty.
00:35:03
[somber music] ♪ ♪ - Graham McGill was
absolutely convinced that he would take
Mary's murder as a secret
00:35:15
to his grave. He thought that he
would get away with it. It possibly made him quite
cocky and quite arrogant.
00:35:22
And as time went
on, he probably just thought that nobody was ever
going to look at Mary's murder
00:35:27
again, and therefore, he
would get away with murder. narrator: 36
and 1/2 years after
00:35:32
the murder of Mary
McLaughlin, Graham McGill finally faced justice. - It wasn't until
April 2021 that he
00:35:42
appeared in the Glasgow
High Court to face trial. McGill pleaded not guilty. narrator: Mary's
daughter, Gina McGavin,
00:35:50
was in attendance at the trial. She finally got to look
Graham McGill in the eye.
00:35:55
The 59-year-old
welder was now aged one year older than
Mary McLaughlin was when he killed her.
00:36:03
- I seen him because I was
sitting two rows behind him. I just looked at his face.
00:36:08
But how can you tell what
a murderous face looks like? They can just look like nobody.
00:36:13
You can look at somebody
or-- you can't see it. You say, oh, he looks
like a murderer to me,
00:36:17
because you can't tell. Geoffrey Wansell:
The prosecutor during the trial said-- and I think it's
very telling-- that Mary
00:36:25
was friendly and trusting. And I would suggest
that ultimately, this brought about her death.
00:36:31
These were different times. We have to accept that. The awareness of stranger
danger of vulnerable women,
00:36:39
which is so clear
to us all now, was much less evident then. narrator: Although McGill
pleaded not guilty,
00:36:48
the DNA evidence against
him was indisputable. - McGill's DNA is
on the database.
00:36:56
And when compared
to other people's DNA, we get a statistical
probability of 1 in 85,000
00:37:07
chances of any other
male depositing that DNA at the scene of Mary's death. McGill's DNA is found
in multiple items.
00:37:17
Each one of them has its
own statistical probability of belonging to somebody else.
00:37:23
But when you combine his DNA on
the bra, his DNA on the knot, his DNA on a cigarette
butt found
00:37:32
near the scene, the probability
of any other human being depositing that DNA
on that day at that scene
00:37:40
skyrockets to 1 in a billion. It is no small number,
and it points that our killer
00:37:50
is definitively McGill. narrator: McGill
appeared unmoved as the overwhelming DNA
evidence against him,
00:38:00
collected when he was
just 22 years old, was presented in court. - McGill chose not to give
evidence at his own trial.
00:38:11
He reportedly sat with his
head bowed throughout, not, I think, from very much
in the way of remorse,
00:38:16
but more from the sense
of embarrassment. After all, by this
point, he's an old man
00:38:20
and is being tried
for something that happened 37 years ago. But it doesn't disguise,
not for one moment,
00:38:26
nor does it is
excuse the utterly wicked nature of the crime. [somber music] narrator: On the 9th
of April, 2021,
00:38:35
the jury had unanimously
reached their decision. ♪ ♪ Gina McGavin: I felt relieved.
00:38:43
When I heard
the guilty verdict, I felt relieved that
it was coming to an end and someone's been
held to account.
00:38:53
And family can get
on with their lives. For me personally, I
didn't have closure.
00:39:02
- In my experience
as a crime reporter and having dealt with
literally hundreds of families of murder
victims, I don't think
00:39:12
closure is the right word. I don't think
that they ever get such a thing as closure
because they know
00:39:19
their relative isn't here. narrator: Graham
McGill got away with Mary McLaughlin's
murder for nearly 37 years.
00:39:30
But in the end, he could
not run away from the DNA evidence he left behind. - In order
for a conviction to happen,
00:39:39
jurors have to believe
beyond a reasonable doubt that we're talking about
the correct suspect.
00:39:47
Without DNA matching,
this would not have been the case in this case. - The thing is, when
a lot of these men
00:39:56
were committing their offenses,
there was no such thing as DNA. They would have had no idea
that leaving behind all
00:40:04
of these things
at the crime scene would eventually come
back to get them. But they are starting
to realize it now.
00:40:12
And I think that there's a lot
of serious offenders sitting in their homes waiting
for that knock on the door,
00:40:21
because it's almost inevitable. Gina McGavin: For anyone
considering committing crimes
00:40:27
like this, then hopefully,
that's a deterrent that you will get caught. No matter how long it
takes, you will get caught.
00:40:35
narrator: In May 2021
at Aberdeen High Court, 59-year-old Graham
McGill was sentenced
00:40:42
to 14 years in prison for the
murder of Mary McLaughlin. Geoffrey Wansell:
The family, not surprisingly,
00:40:49
were upset at what they saw
was a very short sentence, and it's difficult not
to sympathize with them.
00:40:56
♪ ♪ Jane Hamilton: There was 37
years between Mary's murder and McGill's conviction.
00:41:06
And in that 37 years,
he was able to lead a very full life, which
included getting married.
00:41:14
He was able to work,
socialize, have lots of jobs and move around the country and
basically just live his life.
00:41:23
And unfortunately, he
took that away from Mary. Gina McGavin: 14
years is nothing.
00:41:30
And I think life should
mean life for people who do heinous crimes. But there's nothing really
compared to the last nearly 30,
00:41:40
40 years of family had gone
through, but nothing at all compared to the torment
that my full siblings and
00:41:49
my maternal half siblings
had gone through. ♪ ♪ Narrator: McGill has never
confessed to Mary's murder
00:41:57
or spoken about it on record. What exactly led him
to kill the 58-year-old grandmother on that night in
September 1984 remains unknown.
00:42:11
- There is nothing about the
killing of Mary McLaughlin that really makes sense to me,
except that it was a man,
00:42:17
a 22-year-old man, anxious
to fulfill his sexual desires. And if that was really
the only reason, why on earth
00:42:25
would he wind her dressing
gown cord around her neck three times and then double knot It?
00:42:30
I find it very, very hard
to find any possible excuse for Graham McGill's actions.
00:42:38
They are truly wicked. Jane Hamilton: I see
McGill as somebody who is just particularly
depraved for the fact
00:42:46
that he not only got away
with murder for 37 years, but in the intervening
years, he actually
00:42:53
bragged to somebody that
he had killed a woman just to see what it felt like. And for somebody to have such
a callous disregard for life
00:43:02
is just evil personified. [unsettling music] ♪ ♪ narrator: McGill
was a convicted sex
00:43:12
offender who traveled
50 miles to kill a stranger in September 1984. ♪ ♪ We may never truly know
what happened that night,
00:43:24
but we can be sure
that innocent victim Mary McLaughlin was
simply in the wrong place
00:43:30
at the wrong time. It took almost 37 years and an
advancement in DNA technology
00:43:40
to finally unmask Graham McGill
as one of the World's Most Evil Killers. [theme music]
00:43:48
♪ ♪ [audio logo]