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World's Most Evil Killers - Season 3, Episode 6 - Angus Sinclair - Full Episode

July 29, 2021 / 42:54

This episode covers the World's End murders in Edinburgh, Scotland, where two 17-year-old girls, Helen Scott and Christine Eadie, were abducted, raped, and murdered in 1977. It discusses the investigation that led to the eventual conviction of Angus Sinclair, a known pedophile and child killer, in 2014.

The episode begins with the discovery of the bodies of Helen and Christine on October 16, 1977, after they were last seen at The World's End pub. The murders shocked the local community, marking a significant loss of innocence in Edinburgh.

Former homicide detective Tom Wood recalls the investigation, which involved hundreds of officers and extensive media coverage. Despite initial leads, the case went cold for decades, until advancements in forensic technology allowed for a re-examination of evidence.

Angus Sinclair, who had a history of violent crimes, was eventually linked to the murders through DNA evidence found on Helen's coat. The episode details the challenges faced in bringing Sinclair to justice, including a failed trial in 2007 due to insufficient evidence.

In 2014, Sinclair was retried and convicted, receiving a 37-year sentence, marking a significant moment for the victims' families and the justice system in Scotland.

TLDR

The episode details the 1977 World's End murders and Angus Sinclair's eventual conviction in 2014 after decades of investigation.

Episode

42:54
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. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪

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This episode stands out for the following:

  • 90
    Most shocking
  • 90
    Biggest twist
  • 85
    Most heartbreaking
  • 85
    Most surprising

Episode Highlights

  • The World's End Murders
    The brutal killings of two teenage girls in Edinburgh shocked the nation.
    “It was the death of innocence within Edinburgh.”
    @ 00m 33s
    July 29, 2021
  • Justice Delayed
    After 37 years, Angus Sinclair was finally found guilty of the murders.
    “The legacy of the World's End murders, for me, is that actually justice will catch up with you.”
    @ 02m 06s
    July 29, 2021
  • A Predator's Early Years
    Angus Sinclair's violent tendencies began in childhood, leading to a life of crime.
    “He was a predator.”
    @ 05m 41s
    July 29, 2021
  • Helen's Disappearance
    Helen didn't return home after a night out, leading to a police report.
    @ 23m 33s
    July 29, 2021
  • Discovery of Bodies
    Christine's body was found, leading to the tragic news for Helen's family.
    @ 24m 01s
    July 29, 2021
  • Forensic Breakthrough
    New DNA technology linked Angus Sinclair to the murder of Mary Gallacher.
    @ 31m 37s
    July 29, 2021
  • Sinclair's Conviction
    After years of waiting, Angus Sinclair was convicted for the World's End murders.
    @ 40m 59s
    July 29, 2021
  • A Nation Remembers
    Roses were left at Helen's grave, symbolizing national remembrance.
    @ 41m 55s
    July 29, 2021

Episode Quotes

  • Angus Sinclair saw women and children as disposable objects, essentially there for his own pleasure.
    World's Most Evil Killers - Season 3, Episode 6 - Angus Sinclair - Full Episode
  • He was a predator.
    World's Most Evil Killers - Season 3, Episode 6 - Angus Sinclair - Full Episode
  • She's never gonna walk through that door again.
    World's Most Evil Killers - Season 3, Episode 6 - Angus Sinclair - Full Episode
  • It was one of the worst days of my life.
    World's Most Evil Killers - Season 3, Episode 6 - Angus Sinclair - Full Episode
  • Absolutely shattered. Words can't explain how I feel.
    World's Most Evil Killers - Season 3, Episode 6 - Angus Sinclair - Full Episode
  • It was mind-blowing.
    World's Most Evil Killers - Season 3, Episode 6 - Angus Sinclair - Full Episode

Key Moments

  • Death of Innocence00:33
  • Justice Served02:06
  • Abduction02:12
  • Predator's Origins05:41
  • Brutal Murders22:22
  • Missing Person23:30
  • Body Found24:01
  • Forensic Evidence26:40

Tension Over Time

Words per Minute Over Time

Vibes Breakdown