00:00:05
-Edinburgh, Scotland.
October the 16th, 1977. The body of a 17-year-old girl
was found in a deserted beach.
00:00:15
She'd been raped, bound,
and gagged. Discovered in a field
a few miles away was the body
of a second teenage girl,
00:00:23
later identified
as the first woman's friend. She, too, had been bound, raped,
and murdered.
00:00:33
-It was the death of innocence
within Edinburgh. It was the sort of thing
that didn't happen here.
00:00:38
-The two young women had last
been seen alive the previous day at The World's End pub
on Edinburgh's famed Royal Mile.
00:00:47
-These two 17-year-old girls,
one day they're there, and the next day they're not.
00:00:51
-Their dreadful murder
prompted one of the biggest manhunts
in Scotland's history.
00:00:56
It ended after almost four
decades with a known pedophile and convicted child killer,
a man called Angus Sinclair.
00:01:04
-Sinclair was known
to the police. They knew he was a violent man, but they didn't
connect the dots.
00:01:11
-The World's End murders were
the actions of a callous, cunning, and wicked man.
00:01:15
They made Angus Sinclair one of
the world's most evil killers. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Edinburgh, Scotland.
00:01:48
November the 14th, 2014. 37 years after the senseless
murder of two teenagers, the perpetrator, 69-year-old
Angus Robertson Sinclair,
00:02:01
was finally found guilty
of committing the crime. -The legacy of the World's End
murders, for me,
00:02:09
is that actually justice
will catch up with you. If you are somebody who has
committed a horrendous crime,
00:02:16
a violent crime in the past and there's been
some physical evidence, then it's only a matter of time
00:02:22
before
you're brought to justice. -Back in 1977, the press
and the public were transfixed
00:02:28
with the awful mystery
surrounding the deaths of 17-year-old girls
Helen Scott and Christine Eadie
00:02:34
after a night
in The World's End pub. -They effectively disappear
off the face of the Earth.
00:02:40
No one knows
what's happened to them. Their families
report them missing. It is as if they have been
whisked off the street.
00:02:50
-Helen's younger brother
Kevin recalls those trying times
for the family. -When Helen and Christine died,
I was 11 at that point,
00:03:00
so young but old enough
to know what was happening. My parents dealt with it sort of
quietly and with dignity.
00:03:12
My father dealt with it
slightly differently. I remember passing his bedroom
one day, and I heard him crying.
00:03:18
That was something
that he wouldn't have done right in front of me. -Former homicide detective
Tom Wood was on duty the day
00:03:26
after the bodies
of the two missing girls had been discovered. -We received information
00:03:31
that a dog walker
down on the beach at Aberlady had found
the body of a young girl
00:03:38
lying on the tide line
at Aberlady Bay. We were pretty sure that
we'd found Christine
00:03:43
from the description. And just an hour or so later,
we got a call from a farmer just a couple of miles away
to say
00:03:50
that he had found
the body of a girl lying in the middle
of one of his fields. And we went up there
straightaway, of course,
00:03:57
and we found
that that was the body of Helen. -Their bodies were found
in two different locations,
00:04:04
Christine's in Gosford Bay and Helen's
in a hamlet in Haddington, both less than 25 miles from the
pub where they were last seen.
00:04:13
-They had both been killed
in an identical way, and we were pretty certain
from the outset
00:04:18
that what we were looking
for here was someone, an experienced criminal,
an experienced murderer.
00:04:25
Someone who had done this before
and would do it again. -In the wake of the discovery,
00:04:30
the police assigned
hundreds of officers to investigate the killings
in and around Edinburgh.
00:04:37
The horrific deaths of the
teenagers were reported by the press the following day.
00:04:42
The Scottish public
were left terrified. -It was seen as a --
almost like a milestone --
00:04:47
the death of innocence
within Edinburgh. It was the sort of thing
that didn't happen here.
00:04:53
And there was a little shock. -Local journalist Marcello Mega
was caught up in the hysteria
00:04:59
when he was a child. -I was nearly 12 years old when Helen
and Christine were murdered,
00:05:06
and I remember following it
on the news and in the newspapers
over those days, and I remember it had
quite a big impact in Edinburgh.
00:05:14
-Sinclair's heinous acts were
not confined to the two young women he abducted
from The World's End pub.
00:05:21
By 1977, the 32-year-old
painter/decorator had already served time for the rape and murder
of a 7-year-old girl,
00:05:29
and in time he would kidnap,
rape, and kill again. -Angus Sinclair saw women and
children as disposable objects,
00:05:37
essentially there
for his own pleasure. He was a predator. He made that choice time
and time and time again
00:05:43
to harm other people,
and never felt bad about it. -This killer's story
begins in 1945.
00:05:51
Angus Sinclair was born in
Glasgow, Scotland, on June the 7th. The youngest of three children,
00:05:58
Angus was raised
by his hard-working mother and father in a tenement block
on St Peter's Street
00:06:05
in the St. George's Cross area
of the city. -Sinclair was born in Glasgow
in the post-war years.
00:06:12
And this was a time
of real change and real upheaval for the city. There was a lot of poverty,
00:06:17
and there was quite
a significant gang culture, so violence was part and parcel
of everyday life
00:06:22
for many young men. -Angus had two older siblings,
a brother and a sister, but this didn't stop him
from being picked on.
00:06:32
-He was the runt of the litter,
but he was also small. By the time he'd
reached puberty,
00:06:38
he was constantly being bullied,
knocked about, thrown about. -Tragically,
Sinclair's father died
00:06:47
when he was just 4 years old. -I think that certainly
increased his feeling of depression,
00:06:54
of being an outsider, of not
being like everybody else. And he chose to identify with
petty theft and petty crime
00:07:02
as his revolt against the world. -In 1959, when Sinclair
was just a young teen, he committed his first offense.
00:07:13
-He was only 13 when he stole
the offertory box at the local church. And that led to him having
a criminal conviction.
00:07:23
-At the same time,
he became preoccupied with sex. -Now, the early sexualization
of young men
00:07:32
is a clue to problems later on. And we start to see this pattern
in Angus Sinclair.
00:07:39
-By the age of 15, Sinclair's
bad behavior escalated and became increasingly violent.
00:07:46
He viciously attacked
an 8-year-old girl. -If there was a trigger
to the career that he then went on to found,
as a rapist and a murderer,
00:08:00
1961 was probably the moment
in which it started, because later in the year, he committed
the first serious attack,
00:08:07
on a neighbor,
a young girl that lived nearby. -On July the 1st,
Sinclair was home alone
00:08:14
when he decided to strike again. This time,
the victim was a child who lived in a neighboring flat
in the tenement block --
00:08:22
7-year-old Catherine. -He's 16 at the time. And there's quite a lot
of respect amongst children
00:08:29
for older children, so he asks her
to run an errand for him, and she goes out
and she does it.
00:08:35
Now, when she comes back,
he attacks her. -Sinclair took the girl up
to his flat,
00:08:41
where
he viciously assaulted her, then in the middle
of his heinous act, he suddenly stopped.
00:08:51
-There's a knock at the door, and he just literally stops
what he's doing and goes and answers the door
and sends the neighbor away.
00:08:58
-Sinclair got rid of the visitor and went back
to attacking the girl. He raped her, he killed her
using a ligature from a bicycle,
00:09:06
inner bicycle tube. It's a vicious,
premeditated, calculating, callous attack, on an utterly
innocent young girl.
00:09:18
-The callous killer quickly
came up with a plan to dispose of the child's body. -I think most 16-year-olds
would panic.
00:09:27
But what he did was, he sorted
out all of her clothing to try to hide the fact
there had been a sexual attack.
00:09:35
He rolled her body
down the stairs, and he left it there
to be found, obviously hoping
that it would look as though
00:09:43
she had fallen downstairs
and injured herself. -Left at the bottom of
the communal staircase
00:09:50
inside the tenement block, Catherine was quickly found
by neighbors. By the following day,
she was confirmed dead.
00:09:59
Neighbors reported Sinclair's
strange behavior when Catherine was discovered. -Knowing that he left
a dead body there
00:10:07
and went off and made a point
of speaking to people, and he paid a visit
to his older brother,
00:10:12
which was clearly an attempt
to establish an alibi. He had been seen out and about,
talking to people,
00:10:18
and appearing
not to have a care in the world. -The police picked Sinclair up
and questioned him.
00:10:24
Initially, he denied
any involvement in the crime. But police enlisted the help
of Angus' older brother.
00:10:31
The following evening,
he began to talk. -Eventually, he confesses. His older brother persuades him
that he should tell the truth,
00:10:38
and he confesses. And because of his youth,
he's not convicted of murder. He's convicted
of culpable homicide,
00:10:44
and he's sentenced
to 10 years' imprisonment. -At his sentencing
in Edinburgh's high court,
00:10:49
on the 25th of August, 1961,
the judge, Lord Mackintosh, calls Sinclair
"callous, cunning, and wicked."
00:10:59
-The assessment said that
his lust for sex was so great that nothing would stop him
from re-offending in the future,
00:11:07
and that he'd shown no remorse. -Even though Sinclair
was just 16, the judge sent him to an adult
prison to serve his sentence.
00:11:16
-He doesn't seen affected
by the fact that he's just taken somebody
else's life for the first time.
00:11:22
If anything, he's probably
quite enjoying it. He knows that
he's created this chaos.
00:11:26
-In my examination
of sexual offenders, I have never found a pedophile who attacks young girls
to be genuinely remorseful.
00:11:36
What they have is what I call
"judicial remorse." That's the remorse that sets in
00:11:42
when you're facing
a judicial officer. -In prison, the 16-year-old
Angus Sinclair
00:11:47
was surrounded by older men
and seasoned career criminals. Inside, he was not only schooled
in crime,
00:11:54
he learned how
to paint and decorate. After serving 7 years
of a 10-year sentence,
00:11:59
Sinclair was released
from prison. He began working
in the decorating trade, but used it as a cover
00:12:06
for his passion
for causing harm to others. -Typically, we found he was
doing a painting job,
00:12:12
and during lunch hour,
he goes out and does a very,
very serious and violent assault
00:12:17
and robbery
on somebody with a hammer. And he goes back
in the afternoon to put
on the second coat of paint.
00:12:26
-Edinburgh, Scotland, 1968,
he moved into a flat in Hill Place
in the heart of the city,
00:12:33
and a five-minute walk
from The World's End pub. Sinclair had started his own painting-and-decorating
business and settled down.
00:12:42
-It's common in many prisoners. Many people will develop
some kind of skill and some kind of thing
when they're inside
00:12:48
that they'll be able
to use afterwards. He was a painter and decorator. So this enables him access
to people's homes.
00:12:55
It allows him, you know,
into people's private spaces. -In 1978, 25, Sinclair
married a training nurse.
00:13:05
18 months later, they had a son, and all seemed normal
with the young family. -He has a flat.
He gets married.
00:13:14
So it looks like this veneer of
respectability, this facade of normality. And you could look back and say,
00:13:21
"Well, hey,
he's turning it around here." -It is very common for people
who have paraphilias,
00:13:28
sexual psychopathologies to have
almost two different selves -- the self that they manifest
00:13:35
when they're engaging
in a predatory attack and a marriage and a family. And some of them, by the way,
are good husbands.
00:13:43
Some of them are good fathers. None of these things tells us
anything about the proclivity
00:13:49
to engage in sexual misconduct. -Despite the outward
appearances, Sinclair was still lusting
after his violent past,
00:13:57
and he begins to develop
his double life. -What he's doing --
he's actually being quite instrumental.
00:14:02
He's taking care
of his own needs. Because he wants dinner
on the table, he wants a roof over his head,
00:14:08
and he wants to be able
to go out in the evening on the weekend
and do what he likes.
00:14:14
-Now part of a happy family,
Sinclair met new people, and one of them he felt
was a kindred spirit.
00:14:22
-His wife had a brother
called Gordon Hamilton, who became Sinclair's
partner in crime.
00:14:29
-He moved in with the couple, and Sinclair purchased
a Toyota Hiace caravanette that they would use
for weekends away together.
00:14:40
-They would go fishing together. But this relationship
was incredibly toxic because both of these men
had a particular view
00:14:47
of what women were there for, who women are,
how they should behave. -Soon, Sinclair could
00:14:54
no longer contain
his violent sexual urges. -He starts off very early
on having young-child victims,
00:15:01
I suspect for no other reason than that's all
he has access to, but he rapidly moves on to
adolescent young-adult victims.
00:15:08
-Though it wasn't proved
at the time, Sinclair and Hamilton
would come to be suspected
00:15:13
of committing a series of crimes
across Scotland in the 1970's. These included robbery
and sexual assaults.
00:15:21
-Angus Sinclair's a thief.
He's a robber. He's a painter and decorator. He's a family man.
00:15:28
And he's a sexual predator. And he keeps all of these
activities discreetly within little boxes in his life.
00:15:38
Never the twain shall meet. Highly organized. He executes his plans well. -Then in 1977, the pair
escalate their offending.
00:15:51
-What happens to most sexual
predators is, from their perspective,
the impulse to attack again
00:15:59
comes out of nowhere. It just bubbles up out of
the depth of their evil soul. They begin to engage
in hunting behavior.
00:16:08
-As the duo grew in confidence, it's believed
they turned to murder. -There were three murders
in and around the Glasgow area
00:16:17
in that same time period
that we were convinced were committed
by the same people,
00:16:23
and in particular,
Angus Sinclair. -The first of these murders
occurred in August 1977.
00:16:29
A 20-year-old woman called
Anna was last seen having a drink in a Glasgow pub. -She was with a friend
called Wilma,
00:16:36
and Wilma went on to marry Gordon Hamilton,
Sinclair's partner in crime. She disappeared
when she was looking for a cab.
00:16:45
Her body was finally found
in a shallow grave, two years later, in Ayrshire, not far from where Sinclair
had gone on his honeymoon.
00:16:56
-Two months later,
another local woman from Glasgow disappeared
in similar circumstances.
00:17:02
-In October, before -- two weeks before
the World's End killing, Hilda, who was 36
and a divorced mother of 2,
00:17:10
disappeared from
the Plaza Ballroom in Glasgow. -Both women went missing whilst on their way home
after a night out.
00:17:19
When police discovered
their bodies, both had been raped, strangled,
and their hands and feet bound.
00:17:26
Just two weeks after the murders
in Glasgow, the killers moved cities
and targeted Edinburgh.
00:17:33
On October the 15th, 1977,
two school friends, Helen Scott and Christine Eadie, were drinking at The World's End
pub in the center of the city.
00:17:43
-These two young girls,
Helen and Christine, they were children, really. They were firm friends.
00:17:49
They'd been brought up together. And they were inseparable. -We know that Helen
and Christine's evening
00:17:57
was one that involved, you know, a pub crawl
and lots of drinks with friends. They ended up
in The World's End.
00:18:04
That was the last port of call. -Also in The World's End pub
that night, sexual predator Angus Sinclair
and Gordon Hamilton.
00:18:14
-Helen and Christine
were approached by two men. We know from witnesses
who were there that night,
00:18:20
and who were interviewed
at the time, that they appeared to be, you know,
quite happy, having a laugh.
00:18:26
-As part of his investigation,
Detective Tom Wood gained a unique insight into
the young women's personalities.
00:18:34
-Christine was very bubbly
and could be quite feisty. Helen, on the other hand,
was just a lovely, soft girl.
00:18:43
Just seemed very much
the leader of the pair. She was slightly older
by a few months.
00:18:50
They both came from
very good families. The families loved
and cared for them. They certainly didn't have
any experience
00:18:56
of the kind of dangers
that lay there for them. And they were innocents, really.
00:19:03
-Kevin Scott remembers
the last time he saw his sister
before she died. -Helen left school at 15,
and then she went on
00:19:13
to get a job
with a kilt maker's company, which is where she was working
up until the day that she died.
00:19:23
Christine
was working as a typist, I think,
in an accountant's office. I believe she had done that
for some time.
00:19:30
On the day in October,
Helen was working. I remember her leaving the house
that morning.
00:19:35
And her plans were to meet
her friends straight from work, and then just go out
for a few drinks in Edinburgh.
00:19:43
A normal Saturday. And nothing out of the ordinary. -Investigators would later
interview everyone
00:19:51
who came in
and out of the pub that night. -It took a long time to do, but we managed
to really boil down
00:19:58
who most of the people
were during that night. And they remembered distinctly
Helen and Christine
00:20:04
falling into conversation
with these two young men. They were smartly dressed,
short-haired,
00:20:10
which was quite unusual
at the time because the late-1970s were a time when young men
frequently had long hair.
00:20:18
-Around closing time,
Sinclair and Hamilton set their cruel
plan into action. -Their friends last saw them
leaving the pub
00:20:26
in the company
of these two young men. I don't mean they went off
as two couples.
00:20:32
They just left the pub together,
walked out of the pub, down into Victoria Street.
00:20:38
-These two men are people that
the locals didn't recognize, so they did appear
to be strangers.
00:20:43
-At approximately 11:15
that night, the group of four was seen
heading into the city.
00:20:50
-The best witness statement
to indicate that they were together
came from a police officer
00:20:56
who was on duty that night
in the High Street, which is part
of the Royal Mile, and it's where
The World's End pub is based.
00:21:04
-In these days, we used to,
quite routinely, make sure there was no problems as pubs
spilled out onto the street.
00:21:12
So actually, there was
a young constable there who saw them leaving. Helen was wearing
a distinctive coat.
00:21:17
She had bought a
very good quality Burberry coat with one of her first wages. -They were last seen
leaving the pub,
00:21:27
on their way to a party
with these two men. -Sinclair and Hamilton were
about to commit
00:21:34
one of the most shockingly evil
crimes in Scottish history. -Sinclair usually
operated alone,
00:21:42
but he was also a social killer. And he would sometimes hunt like
a specific animal, the wolf.
00:21:50
Wolves hunt in packs. Wolves have learned that
if you move in packs, your chances of success
in predation are greater,
00:22:00
and so he picked up Hamilton. -That night, the two women
got into Sinclair's camper van,
00:22:06
and he and Hamilton drove them
far away from the city. -It's pretty clear that Sinclair
and Hamilton abducted the girls,
00:22:15
put them into the caravanette,
which they'd gone fishing in, and drove them
to remote locations.
00:22:22
And it's painful to say, they
were abducted, raped, strangled. -Their bodies were discarded
at different sites.
00:22:31
They had been bound with items
of their own clothing. -Where the violent crimes
took place remains a mystery.
00:22:38
All the investigators knew
was that Sinclair and Hamilton drove to Gosford Bay, Aberlady, where they left
Christine's body.
00:22:47
-Christine Eadie's body was
found dumped on the foreshore. Her hands were tied
behind her back.
00:22:54
-They then drove to the small
hamlet of Haddington in East Lothian. -Helen's body was found
some miles away,
00:23:00
six or seven miles away,
near Coates Farm. Again, she was naked,
but only from the waist down.
00:23:06
She had a new coat,
which she was still wearing. Her hands also had been
tied behind her back.
00:23:10
And Christine's belt
was around her neck. She, too, had been strangled. She had been raped.
00:23:17
A footprint mark was found
on her face, and handbag disappeared. -These two 17-year-old girls,
one day they're there,
00:23:25
and the next day they're not. -Helen's parents knew
something was very wrong when she didn't return from her
night out with Christine.
00:23:33
-On Sunday morning, obviously
Helen hadn't come home, and I remember my parents
making a number of phone calls
00:23:41
to the girls that she had
been out with that night, to see if she had happened
to stay the night,
00:23:48
which she'd never done before. And when that became clear
that that wasn't the case,
00:23:53
clearly my parents were
very, very worried, so we went to
a local police station
00:23:58
where they reported
Helen missing. -Christine's body was found
in the afternoon,
00:24:04
on October the 16th, 1977. -In about the middle of the day, we had received information that
a dog walker down on the beach
00:24:14
at Aberlady had found
the body of a young girl lying on the tide line
at Aberlady Bay.
00:24:21
-That afternoon,
Helen's family were told they had found Helen's body. -I honestly don't remember
what was said,
00:24:28
but at that point,
my father went away with the police officer to then
go in and identify Helen's body.
00:24:36
But it was clear at that point
it was Helen. -Kevin was 11 years old
when his sister died.
00:24:42
-I remember the day after Helen
was murdered and just sitting on the steps
in the house
00:24:49
just looking at the front door, trying to get my head
around the fact that she's,
00:24:54
you know, she's never gonna walk
through that door again. Our family was broken
for a period of time,
00:25:00
and I think that's natural. We still got on day to day
and so on and so forth, but I don't recall any sort
of family holidays thereafter,
00:25:14
or not for
a very long period of time. -The police launched one of
the largest manhunts
00:25:20
in Scottish history
to find the killers. Crucial evidence was gathered
from both the crime scenes
00:25:27
and taken to a new police
forensics lab in Edinburgh for analysis. -We were only a year in
00:25:37
to actually establishing
a laboratory. -Forensics scientist
Lester Knibb was one of the lab's
first employees.
00:25:45
He was there when the World's
End case was brought in. -I was 25. I'd been working at Lothan &
Borders Police in Edinburgh.
00:25:53
I was the third person
into the lab, and there was a fourth, so there
were chemists and biologists,
00:25:58
and I was
the assistant biologist. -Lester Knibb analyzed deposits
found on the bodies
00:26:03
of the two women and on the ropes
used to tie them. He and the forensic team
also paid special attention
00:26:10
to the brand-new coat Helen was wearing
when she was attacked. -On the inside of the coat,
00:26:15
we found quite a large amount
of seminal staining, consistent with
sexual intercourse,
00:26:22
and this of course would have to
come from an attacker, and so the main concentration
was on that,
00:26:28
in terms of blood grouping. First of all, proving it was
semen and finding spermatozoa
00:26:33
and then doing the
blood-grouping tests that we had available. -Forensic testing was still
in its infancy at the time,
00:26:40
but with such key evidence, scientists hoped that analysis
could help pinpoint the killer.
00:26:46
-Now, blood grouping
on these materials should be fairly straightforward
when it's that fresh,
00:26:51
but it actually proved
quite difficult to get good, clear results. Honestly, we had to kind
of abandon those results.
00:26:57
We weren't able to get terribly
clear results on that. -Scientists at the time
could not help the police
00:27:04
find the culprits, now branded "The World's
End killers" by the press. Lestor Knibb and the team
at the lab held onto the samples
00:27:12
in the hope
that future advancements in forensic technology
would later solve the case.
00:27:18
-Relatively early, in 1978,
the police kind of drew a close. We produced a report,
an interim report,
00:27:25
to keep the police up to date
with what we'd found. And effectively,
all the exhibits were taken away
00:27:33
for storage by the police. -But just over a year
after the World's End murders, Sinclair struck again.
00:27:40
On November the 19th, 1978, he was prowling
near Barnhill Station in the suburbs of Glasgow.
00:27:48
There, he spotted a target -- a petite 17-year-old machinist
called Mary Gallacher.
00:27:55
-Mary Gallacher was
in her late teens, but the significant thing
about Mary is that she was tiny.
00:28:00
She looked like a child. -Mary Gallacher was going
to meet a friend over the other side
of the railway tracks.
00:28:07
And her mother saw her set out. Her sister saw her set out,
as well. -Mary was last seen
leaving her home at 6:45 p.m.
00:28:16
-Sinclair threatened Mary
with a knife. He demanded that
she took her clothes off.
00:28:22
And he slit her throat
with a knife. This was a really,
really nasty attack. -It would take more than
20 years to prove
00:28:29
that Sinclair was Mary's killer. Meanwhile, he continued to commit a catalog
of cruel offenses.
00:28:36
-One of the extraordinary
things about Sinclair, it was known to the police
he had a reputation as a mugger.
00:28:42
At one point,
he got a handgun conviction. They knew he was a violent man, but they didn't
connect the dots.
00:28:50
Sinclair was a man who got away
with it for a very long time. -Between 1978 and 1982,
a total of 11 children
00:28:59
reported being
sexually assaulted by Sinclair. -Over a number of years, we think exclusively targeted
children
00:29:06
because there aren't
any unsolved rapes or rapes and murders
of that time from about 1978 to 1982
that match his M.O.
00:29:17
-Sinclair would ask them to run
an errand for him, and then when they returned,
he would attack them.
00:29:23
-Sinclair used his job
as a painter and decorator as cover
for his despicable deeds.
00:29:29
In 1982, Sinclair
was finally caught out. In June, Sinclair was
in the woodlands area of Glasgow
00:29:37
where he assaulted
a 6-year-old girl. But this time,
the alert child was able to identify her attacker.
00:29:45
-One girl, a 6-year-old girl,
who he carried out a really serious
sexual assault on,
00:29:50
recognized the smell
of turpentine on him. He was dressed as a painter, and flecks of paint
were on his hair and shoes.
00:29:57
-Sinclair, now age 37,
was arrested and subsequently stood trial
at Edinburgh's high court.
00:30:03
On August the 31st, 1982, he was convicted
of three charges of rape, seven charges of lewd
and libidinous practices,
00:30:12
and a breach of the peace. -He was charged with sexual
assaulting 14 children, and pleaded guilty
to 11 of them,
00:30:19
and three of them were rapes, and that was enough
to get him a life sentence. -He was sent to serve his time
in Peterhead Prison
00:30:28
on Scotland's east coast,
just north of Aberdeen. The convicted pedophile
and killer was off the streets.
00:30:36
But he and his partner,
Gordon Hamilton, had not yet been proven to be
the World's End murderers.
00:30:42
It would take intelligent
police work and a trailblazing breakthrough
in forensic technology
00:30:48
to finally bring justice
to serial killer Angus Sinclair. Glasgow, Scotland. 1997.
00:30:57
After several previously
unsuccessful attempts to solve it, Strathclyde police force
reopened the oldest
00:31:05
unsolved murder
in their cold-case files -- that of Mary Gallacher. She'd been found dead
in November of 1978,
00:31:14
19 years earlier. -The Mary Gallacher crime
had been left unsolved. They lucked out and they
found forensic samples
00:31:25
which had been kept from
the Mary Gallacher killing. -The police ask their
forensic lab
00:31:30
to re-analyze the crime-scene
evidence from the victim using their new
cutting-edge DNA technology.
00:31:37
The results were run through
a database of DNA samples the lab had on file, and what was revealed
was a shocking surprise.
00:31:44
-Sinclair, who had been
in prison, had given a DNA sample
whilst he was in prison,
00:31:50
and that DNA sample
matched some semen that was found
on Mary's pubic hair. So it was, without a doubt,
00:31:57
he was the offender
in this case. -The evidence was clear, and Angus Sinclair was charged
with her murder.
00:32:04
On June the 1st, 2001,
he stood trial, just weeks before he was
eligible to apply for parole.
00:32:11
With concrete proof that he was
with Mary Gallacher the night she was killed, Sinclair came up
with a cover story.
00:32:18
-Sinclair produces the excuse
which is going to become his signature
in the next decade.
00:32:26
He says, "The sex with Mary
was entirely consensual." -But after 12 days on trial
in Glasgow's high court,
00:32:34
the jury took just five hours
to return a guilty verdict. Sinclair was once again
convicted of murder
00:32:41
and was given
another life sentence. His conviction was a victory for both Mary's family
and the police.
00:32:49
But Sinclair and his former
accomplice, brother-in-law
Gordon Hamilton, had still not been tied
to the World's End murders.
00:32:57
More than 30 years after
the vicious double-murder of 17-year-old
friends Helen and Christine
00:33:04
after a night out in Edinburgh, the police were still
on the hunt for the killers.
00:33:09
-After a year of intense
investigation, with the biggest murder team we ever put together
in northern borders,
00:33:15
we literally ran out of clues. We ran out of anything
useful to do. But we still had
the forensic samples.
00:33:25
We still had Helen's coat. -Spurred by the conviction
in the Mary Gallacher case,
00:33:30
based on DNA technology,
in 2004 Tom Wood and his team
reexamine the forensic evidence.
00:33:38
Their prime suspect
was Angus Sinclair. -We sent samples of the coat
for another analysis,
00:33:46
and this time,
the scientist could tell us that there was not one DNA
sample on this coat,
00:33:55
but there were two. So we sent the second sample
away to be compared with the database,
00:34:03
and straightaway, within hours,
we got back a hit. It was Angus Robertson Sinclair.
00:34:12
-Then the police tried
to identify the second male whose DNA had been found
on Helen's coat.
00:34:19
-Very quickly we found out that there was a familiar line
running through the DNA sample
00:34:24
we had found which led back
to the Hamilton family, so we knew that the person
who had been with Angus Sinclair
00:34:33
at the time of the World's End
murders was his brother-in-law. -To prove that Gordon Hamilton
was the second male
00:34:40
and Sinclair's accomplice
in the double-murder, the police needed
a sample of his DNA,
00:34:46
but by 2004, Hamilton had been
dead for over seven years. -He died in 1996. Now, it was incredibly unethical
00:34:56
because there was nothing left
of Gordon Hamilton. He had been cremated.
He hadn't been buried.
00:35:00
We couldn't exhume his body
to take DNA samples. -Then detectives discover
that Hamilton had decorated
00:35:06
a house in
Glasgow's Dennistoun district. -We had eventually to track down a piece of handiwork
he had done
00:35:14
and managed to retrieve
old DNA samples from that. -The test came back
conclusive --
00:35:20
Hamilton's DNA matched
what was found on both victims. -And at that time, we stopped
and we gathered ourselves
00:35:29
and gathered all the information
and set up Operation Trinity. And I was appointed to lead
Operation Trinity.
00:35:36
-In what was one of the largest
criminal investigations in Scottish history, Tom Wood led a team
of over 60 retired officers
00:35:44
from three police forces. In the monumental effort to
solve the World's End murders,
00:35:50
Wood and his officers
reviewed over 1,000 murders that took place across Scotland
between 1968 and 2004.
00:35:59
-There were several murders
in Glasgow that also bore a resemblance
to the World's End murders.
00:36:04
They all had been committed
within about six months during late 1977, early 1978.
00:36:15
Once we completed
Operation Trinity, we put in a report
to the Crown suggesting that Angus Sinclair be charged
with the World's End murders.
00:36:24
-Due to lack of strong evidence, the prosecution decided
not to pursue Sinclair for the Glasgow murders,
00:36:31
but focus instead on the murders
of Helen and Christine. On August the 27th, 2007,
00:36:38
at the High Court
of Judiciary in Edinburgh, Angus Sinclair
finally stood trial for the World's End murders.
00:36:47
-The Crown decided to take
a very, very simple approach
to the case. They decided not to bother with
all the supporting evidence,
00:36:54
the hairs and fibers,
the knots, nothing like that. They decided just to go on
the simple straightforward DNA.
00:37:00
Here's a girl
that's been murdered. Here's her coat. On that coat is DNA. And the DNA belongs
to Angus Sinclair.
00:37:09
End of story. -Sinclair and his lawyer
saw a chance to deny the murder. -Eventually, in 2004,
00:37:18
the DNA evidence points
conclusively to Sinclair as part of
the World's End killings.
00:37:27
Sinclair stands trial,
but comes up with what to him I'm sure
seemed a perfect defense --
00:37:34
"Oh, yes, I am --
well, I mean, this DNA proves I had sex with Christine
and Helen after The World's End,
00:37:42
but of course,
it was entirely consensual, and when I left them
with my brother-in-law Gordon,
00:37:47
they were alive and well and, as far as I was aware,
in fine spirits. It was all Gordon's fault."
00:37:54
That was his defense. -Sinclair's testimony was enough
to prove reasonable doubt.
00:38:01
-The judge decided that because
of the suggestion of consensual sex, then the whole of the DNA
evidence
00:38:09
which was being put forward
by the Crown was no longer relevant. None of the supporting evidence
had been included by the Crown,
00:38:17
and therefore,
the case fell in 2007. -Without any other
forensic evidence, Judge Lord Clarke
threw the case out.
00:38:27
-It was one of the worst days
of my life. I mean, I can remember
it distinctly, yeah.
00:38:31
It was just this sense
of total disbelief. -The families of Helen
and Christine had been waiting
30 years for justice.
00:38:40
Helen Scott's father
was there that day. -Absolutely shattered. Words can't explain how I feel.
00:38:49
30 years of trying
to get a conclusion. -The decision also sent
shock waves across Scotland.
00:39:00
-When the trial collapsed, a lot of journalists,
politicians, and, significantly,
the Lord Advocate themselves,
00:39:08
who's in charge
of all prosecutions in Scotland, said, "Whoa, stop. Something about
this isn't right."
00:39:16
And that started a pretty
root-and-branch review of the justice system, particularly when it comes
to double jeopardy.
00:39:26
-Scotland was one of the last
countries in Western Europe to have a law that stated
00:39:32
you could not be tried
for the same crime twice. It was overhauled in the wake
of the 2007 trial.
00:39:39
-So, the law changed,
and then Angus Sinclair was the first person
to be retried
00:39:46
under the double-jeopardy
legislation. -When the go-ahead
for the second trial was given,
00:39:52
I came out of the court and I found my dad
straightaway to tell him. It wasn't about celebrating.
00:39:59
None of this has ever been
about celebrating. But what it did do was just give
that opportunity
00:40:05
to bring this chapter to an end. -On the 13th of October, 2014, 69-year-old Angus Sinclair
stood trial again
00:40:17
for the murders of
two 17-year-old friends, Helen Scott and Christine Eadie. This time, the Crown prosecutors
used all the latest
00:40:27
forensic technology
to make their case. -The trial lasted weeks.
I attended every day.
00:40:33
And this time, the Crown
got it absolutely right. I mean, there was
compelling evidence
00:40:41
from knots to soil samples
to DNA to -- just a whole picture
was put together. Exactly what should've
happened in 2007 and didn't.
00:40:53
And the jury convicted him
unanimously. There was no question
whatsoever. -The judge, Lord Matthews,
00:41:01
gave Angus Sinclair
37 years in prison, the longest sentence
in Scottish legal history.
00:41:08
-For me, it took 24 hours
to sink in, and it was the following day where all of a sudden you just
felt different, lighter.
00:41:16
It was so massively important. I was so pleased,
for my dad as well, that we saw justice for Helen
and Christine in his lifetime.
00:41:27
-Sinclair will be over 100 before he is considered
for parole, therefore unlikely
to ever be free again.
00:41:36
-A few days after
the guilty verdict, I went to Helen's grave,
and there was... I didn't count
the number of roses,
00:41:45
but there could well
have been upwards of 30, with a small card which said,
"From our nation.
00:41:55
We will never forget." It was mind-blowing. -It took nearly 40 years
to solve the mystery
00:42:02
of the World's End murders. And though his partner in crime
in the brutal act died
00:42:07
before he could face justice,
the sexual assault and callous killings
of children and young women
00:42:13
makes Angus Sinclair one of the world's
most evil killers. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪