Hey weirdos, it's Ash here, ready to share a little secret.
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Right now, I am listening to The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix, and I just cannot get enough of it.
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serve guys july 25th the paperback of the butcher and the wren is coming at you and this is a huge deal because paperbacks rule first of all and second of all paperbacks are awesome you can really shove them they're easy to carry around you can shove them in your bag and you can bring them everywhere she's motioning back i am i don't know why but that you know i think it's it's pretty pretty small so like you can put it in your back pocket i think you know you got a big back pocket shove it right in there uh you put it wherever you want i don't care just read it uh but read it first preferably
but do what you want because i support all of you but the cool thing about this one besides being able to put it wherever you want is there's a sneak peek of this sequel sequel the second book the second butcher in the wren book there is a sneak peek chapter in the paperback edition which comes out july 25th so go get it and then you can read a sneak peek chapter of the second one and you can be like i read that chapter none of you did and then everybody who else who got the paperback can be like i did too and then you guys can talk about it but everyone else will be like i don't know what that chapter
is and you'll be cooler and right now i'm one of of the only people that can say i read that chapter and nobody else did now you can too get on my level get on ash's level july 25th the paperback book edition of the butcher and the rent go get it everywhere i love you guys books and literacy hey weirdos i'm ash and i'm elena and this is morbid this is morbid it's the sun in my eyes .com is what it is it is you're bathed in a heavenly sunlight light aren't i always you always are because you're in on hell yeah i have a confession and i don't have my spf on today oh i know i forgot to put danger
this is disgusting of me i forgot to put any face moisturizer on today whoa but i put my bod moisturizer on today which is like very backwards how do you function if i don't put face moisture on i feel like i'm actually kind of oily right now to be honest well thanks but i would feel like the i feel the dryness i feel like no i did this morning i actually intended to steal some of yours when i got here this morning and then you commit theft it's not theft it's it's it's your stuff your stuff is my stuff theft and i would have reported it okay so i would have reported it don't you dare tell me
it's not it's theft oh fuck i meant to say it's not you just did some weird fucking voodoo the universe was like it is it's theft well maybe i'm just so glowy because i've been a three liter at least a day water girly lately look at you i got a fake stanley so i think i'm better than everyone you got a what uh you know those you know those cups that like influencers carry around that look like this oh and i i didn't know it was like a thing oh oh wow oh excuse me stanley's like overswept the nation i don't believe you that's just the name of the brand i honestly did not know that yeah it's like
a like it's like these cups but not i thought you were talking about like flat stanley remember when you used to send them around the world um i do but that's not where i was going with um yes yes your thoughts are valid but no um no like these cups with the handle with the handle and like the skinnier bottom and like it looks a little bit different than this because this is um a targe brand it's cute though it's um reduce brand and i think just as good it is i mean it can you drink water out of it there you go good as i just was good as a stanley in my book good as a stanley there you go i always
love um i always make fun of ash when she gets the clanky ones she does because there was one time when we were in a meeting oh my god it was actually really fucking embarrassing we hadn't even started the meeting yet we literally clicked onto the zoom and ash bumped into hers her little canteen there and it knocked onto the table with the loudest clang i've ever heard and not only that it rolled across the table so it went clang clang clang clang clang clang and then it went boom onto the floor and then went clang clang clang clang you know those ones too that like it's like like it like echoes
sort of it's like clang yeah that's that's like a reverb burp it did it was like a level five on the rick so i'll never let it go because i'm not one to let anything funny when i bought this water bottle i i literally thought to myself like it's gonna piss her off and then i was like look at my new water bottle trying to be a bitch and she was like no that's not a canteen no what are you talking it's not a big canteen jug elena's got weird rules when it comes to water bottles i do and don't fuck them up everybody and don't fuck it up.
Exactly. Cross you right off the list. Yeah.
That's who I am. Yep.
You know. Yep. But you know what we do have that we can all agree is great?
Oh my god! We have something actually really exciting to share with you guys.
Oh my old gods and the new.
Where are you at over there?
We were traveling through different realms a minute ago actually.
We were. That's why.
She's having a minute over there.
Because guys, we got to partner partner with goliath and launch a fucking board game we have a fucking board game morbid has a fucking board game this is the coolest shit alert alert alert alert it's the lunar dial yep i'm so fucking excited about it so you can pre -order it on amazon on july 17th which is super exciting and super soon if and if you don't pre -order it do you even love us do you even love us are you even a weirdo do you even care about the moon do you what like do you what do you just want to tell the moon to fuck off that's what you want to tell the moon you don't want to travel
and collect full moons you don't care about tides i don't understand why you would feel that way you collect like moon stones you collect moon stones and yeah like the and those are the full moons which is so fucking cool it's very like high vibration you just have multiple moons like doesn't like jupiter have multiple moons yeah jupiter has many moons that's what i thought i I think your kids have asked me once.
Yeah, just ask my kids.
Jupiter, how many moons?
Many moons. Yeah. So yeah, fucking look out for the lunar dial.
Pre -order it on July 17th.
Gather up your moons and your moonstones and have a freaking ball.
Send us pictures of you playing or else you're fake.
And that's the that on that.
So next. The vibe was a little off in this room earlier and the vibe has changed.
Yeah, I saw 333. I'm holding my rainbow obsidian.
Yeah. And I'm drinking.
water i brought my ghost chalice up with me i wish i could tell you that was a lie no she's not joking mikey found a ghost chalice it's a chalice it looks like the goblet of fire chalice with papa that i'm gonna drink from at all times has john seen that yet he sure has what what were his thoughts he literally said what's that and i said that's a chalice and he said why though?
And I said, why not?
And he was like, touche.
He let it go. Because he was like, whatever answer I get, I'm not going to like it.
So he just didn't ask any further.
No further questions, your honor.
You know what I want to tell you?
I'm happy for you. Thank you.
You're happy that I'm happy.
I'm happy that you're happy.
It's a great chalice.
We'll post a photo of it.
You're so weird. I think we're going to send one to Doug Bradley.
I think we already did.
Yeah, we're going to send one to Doug Bradley because he also loves ghosts.
Brad Dugley. uh but let's get into you know this is all fun and games let's get into the really awful thing that we're going to talk about did you do that on purpose fun and games i didn't but glad it happened but it's one of those things sorry i was stalling smile because it happened so this case is called often referred to as the world's end murders which is very chilling sounding there's a place called world's end in boston i think there you go there's also one in in scotland it's like a weird island thing oh yeah i mean it's a do you know this is i was gonna say it sounds familiar yeah my
friends went one time and i didn't go with them because i was being a bitch but i bet they were being a bitch yeah odds are odds are but anyways is this the one in scotland this is the one in scotland okay that's probably cooler in the united states so back in october of 1977 we're going to be talking about two 17 year old victims christine edie and Helen Scott they had met some friends and we're going to get into the whole story but at the time they had met some friends at the World Ends Pub in Edinburgh's old town neighborhood um it was basically a normal night it was a normal night but they
were selling celebrating something kind of exciting in their lives and as closing time came around their friends moved on to go to a party somewhere else and Christine and Helen started chatting with two men all right they They ended up leaving that night and never being seen alive again.
Oh, no. So let's talk about who Helen and Christine are.
Helen Scott was born in 1960 to parents Margaret and Moraine Scott.
She was the fourth child in the family, and that included two older half sisters and a brother, Kevin, who was one year older.
Or excuse me, one year younger.
After Helen was born, the whole family moved to an Edinburgh suburb known as the Comiston District.
district and moraine was an engineer with british telecom and he ended up getting transferred there for work that's why they ended up moving and according to an author and former police officer on this case tom wood he said quote helen was part of a close and loving family this was truly a family who loved each other like this was a safe place this was a family who encouraged her in every way they wanted to nurture her big bright personality that she had and they really instilled a self -confidence that allowed her to really flourish in her early years in primary school and become a really great young
woman that's awesome like this was truly one of those families that you're just like shit like that they they love each other that's a happy house like they take that's a safe house that's they're doing it right and it was in the early mid -1960s that helen started attending high school and she did so at edinburgh's fir hill high school i believe it's how you say it okay uh the school only had about a thousand students in the entire school and it was a largely working class section of edinburgh and like most teenagers this is when helen started coming into her own she was finding what she was interested
in she was really developing a love of fashion clothing you know makeup music films like she was really establishing who she was at this this point and despite being slightly underage at the time she was 17 and the drinking age in scotland is 18 she was there um as they reached their mid to late teens helen and her friends had really no trouble getting into the clubs and some of the pubs in edinburgh especially the less vigilant ones yeah um and by their senior year they were kind of regulars at some of them like the spider's web which was a pub in the city center oh cool what a fun name for a pub
yeah They have a lot of cool names for pubs here.
And the pubs here just look cool.
Yeah, they do. These old streets and they just look like a pub.
And they have history.
You look in there and you're like, oh, that place is haunted as fuck.
Yeah. Let's go in. And it's definitely not the same here historical wise.
But in Boston, we have a few streets that are super, super old, obviously.
And the places on those streets are where the cobblestone is still visible.
The one where we went to the other night?
Yeah, it just always has like a different vibe to it.
It's almost like you can feel the history.
Yeah, it just feels different.
Yeah. But Helen was a great kid.
She just was. Like she was a good kid.
She was a good teenager, a good young woman.
During her high school year, she got a solid reputation as a very reliable and trustworthy babysitter around her neighborhood.
Wow, good for her. She was great with kids.
And she often babysat for her older half -sisters' two children.
And because she spent so much time around kids and really, really enjoyed it, she had an interest in pursuing a career in child care.
Wow. So she had officially made the decision to start night classes, to start going down that professional road in 1977.
Oh, that's awful. Now, at the time, she had just gotten a new job working at a kilt shop on Princess Street in Edinburgh's like main shopping district.
Princess Street? Yeah, a kilt shop on Princess Street.
Dreams. so she was celebrating getting this new job when she went out on october 15th oh she had gone with her friend christine edie who had also just got a new job so they were like hell yeah working girls look at us now christine edie had also attended furhill high school with helen they met there in their first year and they immediately became great friends i can see why yeah christine was from a very similar background and she had actually been raised by her maternal grandmother in collington in mains green edinburgh and it seemed like christine was a very normal and kind teenage teenage girl
and her grandmother did literally everything she could to make sure that she had everything she needed and that included having a very stable and very loving household and environment to live in sounds like my grandma right christine was known to be very confident very kind she was very outgoing she was independent she could take care of herself herself because again her grandmother had instilled that in her yeah like she had taught and felt like she had given her that strength to be confident they sound like a couple of bad bees right and she was ready to take life literally by the horns and her
grandmother supported her every step of the way at the time of her death she had moved into a new apartment with some friends actually and was really enjoying the freedom and independence that came along with it now upon graduating from for her high school christine took a job with the department of education before getting a new job that october as a typist with a chartered accounting firm in edinburgh okay on the evening of october 15th she had agreed to join helen and a couple of other friends some newer friends for a pub crawl to celebrate their new jobs yeah that's like so normal yeah like
how many times have you gotten a text like hey we're going out tonight want to come oh yeah you head out this This was like every other time they had gone out, but this was just, they just had something to celebrate.
Right. So October 15th, 1977, like we said, very normal evening for them.
Helen met her friend Jackie Inglis at Jenner's store, which was a few doors down from the shop she worked at on Princess Street.
They were also really good friends since primary school, actually.
Oh, wow. And this was something that they often did together.
together so for um but for a night of celebrating a new job it felt a little more special so they got together first and the two of them stopped at the mount royal hotel for a drink and then around 8 p .m they met christine and their new friend tony kivlin at we windies which was a pub on the royal mile in which is edinburgh's like main street main drag yeah now they went to a few more pubs along along the Royal mile and made their way to high street in the old town district.
Now, shockingly old town district is the oldest part of Edinburgh.
I know that's insane.
The name doesn't give away the lead.
So it's old. So it is just a spider web of streets and alleys and tall buildings.
Like, you know, old streets are always wildly put together and there's not great lighting because of the olds.
and tom woods says that there's a gloomy effect because of this which i think sounds great among the businesses that were on in the old town district at the time were a number of the cities what they described as more gothic darker drinking halls okay again i was gonna say that sounds awesome sounds right up your alley and this included what would be the girl's final destination for the evening which was the world's end pub on high street okay again sounds so fucking awesome i know so around 10 p .m they arrived at the world's end pub and they all took over a space near the back of the bar next
to a payphone it was busy there that evening so they had to stand and wait for a table to become available and apparently christine and helen got some whiskeys and apparently they were kind of at each other a little oh really more whiskeys they had they kind of started it was like petty arguing it wasn't like they were like fighting you know like teenage girl shit like they were just annoying each other I think okay it's like shut up well sometimes your best friend annoys you honestly she's not your best friend if you don't like both be like fuck off exactly now apparently one of the biggest ones
that they got into like like arguments they got into was when helen used the payphone to call a boy she liked this boy was in cold stream and christine made a comment about her having to call him on a payphone because he didn't have a real phone at home helen found that comment pretty classist and she didn't like it because she likes this boy so she doesn't want to hear it well don't shit on your friends so she ended up storming out of the pub because of it and said that she was done for the night she don't she was like fuck you man oh i hate that this was their last night spent together well
don't worry because apparently Jackie ran after her and convinced her to stay for another drink.
And by the time she had convinced her to come back inside, I guess the rest of the group had secured a little table and they were joined with a couple of friends that they'd run into at the bar as well.
And in statements that were given to police in the following days, people at the world's end that night told investigators that Helen and Christine were, quote, at the heart of the crowd engaged in animated conversations and were happy and smiling okay so whatever they had been through in the beginning they were at each other a little bit they got over it and they were just like fuck it very classic best friend teenage girl oh we've had a couple of whiskeys we're at each other's throats a little bit and then we just go fuck it i'm sorry you're sorry let's have a good night so they were over okay
good yeah i'm glad that they got over it i know No, because when I first read this, I was like, I really don't want it to end this way.
And it's like, I don't want it to end at all.
But I was like, I don't want you to have that that last like, you know, bitterness with each other, you know.
So some of the friends began drifting away from the table as the night went on.
And finally, it ended up being back to the four core women that had started.
And it was nearing last call.
And Jackie and Tony decided they had to go to the restroom.
And when they came back, they saw that Helen and Christine had been joined at the table by two men that they'd never seen before hate hate hate live entirely later when speaking to police jackie described one of the men as unremarkable which i was like sick burn they usually are and he she said that one looked like he was in his late 20s medium height quite stocky but he had piercing brown eyes she said he was dressed in basically you know 1970s style he was was wearing a brown and white striped bell -bottom pants in a brown v -neck shirt and a jersey you know like very 70s and the other man was described
as being pretty much the same height same age as the first guy with short wavy hair a thick mustache and a fresh complexion oh i don't know what that means he was drinking three liters a day there you go i am absolutely obsessed with a sweet treat after dinner and my favorite sweet treat right now is my mochi it's mine not yours just kidding you can have some too this is a cool creamy scoop of ice cream wrapped in a soft chewy dough it's like a sweet little ice cream dumpling or ravioli i'm obsessed it's pillowy it's satisfying i feel indulged i just love it so much i really am obsessed with the strawberry
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now they said it appeared that the four were hitting it off like they were laughing with each other having a nice conversation so jackie and tony went to the bar and chatted with some friends there because they were like we're in a lot of happy moments yeah i think they're they seem to be having fun these friends that they were chatting with at the bar invited them to another party elsewhere so jackie and tony checked in with christine and helen at the table and were We're like, hey, we got invited to this other party.
Do you guys want to come with us?
And Christine said, no, thanks.
Helen either didn't answer or Jackie didn't hear it.
She said she didn't hear Helen answer.
Now, as she left the bar, Jackie said she turned around and looked back at her friends who were just getting another round of whiskey served to them by the two men.
And she said she looked at them and then she turned back to Tony and off they went to the party.
And that was the last time she saw them.
That's awful. Now, later that night, just after the bars were closing, apparently two police officers were patrolling the high street area just on a normal patrol, and they spotted two women and two men leaving the World's End after last call.
As they left the building, the police officer said that one of the girls tripped and was actually helped to her feet by the other woman.
The officer said they could hear the two girls kind of bickering a little bit about how they were going to get home, and one of the men said, I'll give you a ride.
Mm -hmm. So, in their statement to investigators, the patrol officer said that one of the girls sounded very uncomfortable with the idea of getting in a car with a stranger.
Yeah. But the other friend was convincing her and telling her everything would be all right.
Oh, no. Now, the light was low and they weren't really close to this group of people to get a really good look, so they said they couldn't say for sure that it was Helen and Christine and these two guys.
But it kind of sounds like that.
But they were pretty sure that was it.
and if it was then these two were the last two people to see helen and christine alive okay now on the morning of october 16th maurane and margaret scott helen's parents were a wreck helen had not returned home the night before and she had never stayed out all night without telling them margaret literally stayed up all night just worrying about her and just fearing for the worst oh no that same morning derrick and ruth taylor just random couple left their home to drive to east lothian for a picnic on the beach in long nidri i believe it is romantic you know afterwards they were planning to walk
on the beach together like a very cute afternoon so off they went they enjoyed a nice lunch together on the beach and then they went into the they went into their walk after that and after walking about a half an hour they reached a spot called gosford beach around 2 p .m derek looked ahead of them down the beach and saw what he said he thought was a tailor's dummy lying by the high watermark it's never a dummy never never a mannequin so they walked closer to it and realized this was not a dummy it was a human being and it ended up being the deceased body of christine evie oh no she was lying bound
and gagged on her back oh my god the couple ran to gosford house which was right on the way and it was very close to them and called the police to report it a few hours later john mckenzie was out walking his dog through a field in haddington which was five or six miles from gosford beach weird he also saw what he assumed was a taylor's dummy lying in the fields when he walked towards it he too realized it was the dead body of a human it was helen scott oh now helen was separated and that's what's so it's scary Helen's hands were tied behind her back with um what he thought was a cord and John
reported he believed she was nude from the waist down but someone had placed a black woman's coat across her torso and head now John McKenzie ran home to get his car and he drove to the police station to report everything it actually took a little time for them to make the full identifications for both the women but police very quickly noted that there were similarities between these two scenes it was first strange that two teenage girls were found at the same time essentially miles apart in very similar positions yeah but both girls had been bound at the wrist with an item of her their clothing
and gagged with their underwear oh god that's brutal they'd each been sexually assaulted beaten and strangled oh but had two they um the difference between the two was the method of strangulation.
Each was unique. Christine appeared to have been strangled manually, but Helen had, quote, an imprint left by a stocking which had been tied around Helen's neck and four bruises left by fingers under her jaw and a row of horizontal scratches in front of and behind her ear.
Something patterned, they said, was what made this happen.
Okay. So the news began reporting it quickly And after hearing a report on the news about a body being found on the beach, Maureen Scott called the police and reported his daughter missing.
He was told that they had no information on the identity, but they would contact him as soon as they knew more.
I can't imagine hanging up that phone.
Just having to wait for that phone call.
And being like, is this my child?
Is this my child on the news?
So he said, later Maureen said, later on we learned there had been another person found and then we had a phone call from the police oh it's so awful and then their fear was confirmed when a few hours later a police officer showed up at their door carrying helen's black coat oh god maureen said they brought helen's clothing and they told us they assumed it was her that they had been that they had found but she had to be identified by someone from the family no thank you i can't imagine having to do that it was maureen who had to her father had to go down and identify her at the morgue as recent
as last year detective sergeant douglas kerr talked about this case he was on this case and he just talked about how much helen's parents reaction affected him he talked about how he had unfortunately delivered many death notices in his career to loved ones but he said but this case has lived with me all my life i can still see the look of anguish and devastation on the face of mr scott as he looked on the body of his beloved daughter about the case he also later said this particular inquiry was unique in the fact that these two lovely girls had been taken away tied up and brutally murdered and sexualized
and discarded like a bundle of rags it was a horrible crime it was something that in all my 37 years in total in the police service i never came across at any other time wow now identifying christine edie's body was to be a bit more challenging for detectives because she had Moved into an apartment, like I said, a few Months earlier, so her absence Wasn't, like, immediately discovered And reported.
Right. She would eventually Be identified by her mother, Margaret Craig Oh, wow.
Who'd last seen Her daughter the day before she went out with the Friends at the World's End pub Oh, okay.
But they Didn't live together, so there wasn't an immediate Like, she's not coming home So their autopsy showed That they had been brutalized Whoever did this was an animal They had died of forms of asphyxiation with injuries showing that they had been throttled and choked with ligatures around their necks.
According to the Courier and Advertiser paper Dr. Robert Nagel who completed the autopsies testified later that Christine had pinpoint hemorrhages, abrasions, scratches, a ligature track around the neck, bruising to her mouth and pressure marks on her upper thighs.
Her cause of death was noted as asphyxia due to strangulation with a ligature and by gagging of of the mouth wow they were gagged with their underwear so she asphyxiated by being gagged with her own underwear that's so so horrific and helen's injuries were much the same but also she had an injury that was due to a shoe stomping on the left side of her head oh my god and both young women had been sexually assaulted oh no i knew you were gonna say that yep so the horrific The horrific discovery of Christine and Helen's bodies sent shockwaves through this small community.
I bet. Because it was just outside of Edinburgh.
This, again, the high school was like a thousand people.
Like, this is a small place.
Yeah. And it actually happened only a few days after another woman had been found murdered in Falkirk.
She was discovered in bushes with a bag over her head.
What? And everyone was pointing out that the murders seemed similar to the unsolved Bible John murders that had happened in Glasgow.
Oh, shit. yeah and that was only a few years earlier right and many locals were thinking another serial killer was around you imagine just coming off of that like and now this happens right and it's unsolved at this point now the deputy chief constable tom woods told the guardian because of the nature of the victims complete innocence and because of the nature of their death and because there were two of them it was a shocking shocking crime the sort of thing didn't happen here the police force was not equipped for a double homicide or a serial killer oh no so the investigation into both murders
became under the control of detective superintendent george mcpherson he quickly placed a commanding officer in east east lothian and another in edinburgh and investigators were now going to retrace christine and helen's movements the night before at world's end so they began interviewing as many patrons of the world's end as they could just in an effort to track down leads eliminate potential suspects anything they could get based on their interviews the investigators were able to make like a big map of the pub's interior and they used time logs and people's memory to place each patron in their
positions at the bar that night which is like they really went for it yeah i was gonna say that was smart detectives quickly learned that after jackie and tony had left the world's end christine and helen were joined by two men who they were were also seen leaving with a little after 11 p .m yep the descriptions that were given to them by patrons at the world's end and jackie and tony they matched okay pretty well so they were like these are the same guys right um and apparently they were seen leaving in a dark colored car near gosford beach a little before 3 30 a .m the day of the murder the same
description oh um so they were assuming these were all the same guys it at the very least it was a wild coincidence coincidence right so the fact that the girls have been seen with two men was enough to at least entertain the idea that there were more than one killer here but evidence of this is there's more compelling evidence of this in the case well the different like methods of strangulation for one they had been taken and killed around the same time with the same ish methodology but they were found miles apart so each was killed like we just said with a different method of strangulation and then
the strongest bit of evidence for the two killer theory was the knots used to bind the girl's hands oh christine's hands were bound with a reef knot something sailors use i guess okay and helen's hands were bound with a figure eight binding also a forensic scientist roger eyed later told a jury that the knots also showed different dominant hands oh lefty and a righty that's so interesting that you can tell that just from isn't that interesting yeah like it must be the way one thing goes over another you do it with that hand right wow interesting yeah similar differences were found in the ligatures
around christine and helen's necks uh christine's killer definitely had a familiarity with knots and helen's killer not super familiar okay so dr roger eyed who we just talked about he was 72 and a forensic scientist he was also an expert on knots hell yeah He testified also to the fact that Christine had very likely fought hard not to be tied up.
And it appeared that Helen was likely unconscious when she was tied up or threatened into staying still.
Christine's wrists had been bound with tights like her own tights.
And one hand was tied and bound first and then the other making it look like handcuffs.
OK. And they said this indicated to them that she was fighting back and made it very hard for them to bind her.
Like tie them together.
Yeah. And Helens were tied very close together in that figure eight thing.
So that her hands were clearly together.
They believe she was probably unconscious, especially because she had a shoe mark to the side of her head that she'd been stomped.
Right. Now, the investigation started out strong with nearly 80 full time officers tracking down a ton of information by witnesses, the general public, just anybody they could talk to.
Tom Woods said there was a genuine mood of public outrage fanned by an active and imaginative media.
There was a sense that this crime, above all others, was beyond belief.
It was the stuff of American cop fiction, not reality.
Yeah. Now, there was a lot of pressure as well to solve this crime, as often happens in these.
So detectives worked really hard to rule out Helen and Christine's male friends first. But they also had to rule out the suspects from the World's End Pub as well.
Right. Suddenly it occurred to investigators that despite the slight differences in the description of the men seen with the two girls, all were pretty consistent with describing them as being well dressed and having short hair.
Okay. This was different.
Tom Woods was, was quoted as saying in the late 70s, this was not typical for young men.
Long hair and straggly mustaches were still the rage.
Right. So this fact led detectives to wonder whether the suspects might be soldiers stationed at the military garrison and nearby Edinburgh Castle.
castle and one of them is good at knots exactly so a ton of time and energy was put into interviewing all the soldiers that fit that criteria but unfortunately it turned up nothing well that was the thing because one had like longer wavy hair yeah a little bit longer yeah now while detectives in east lothian east lothian i can't say that i keep saying east lothian because it's like your brain is getting ready to do the loaf east lothian um and edinburgh worked around the the clock to interview witnesses and get leads and crime scene technicians were also trying to find something from the evidence
they collected at both the scenes just something to to spark something in someone like anything and at the time the lothian and borders police had neither the resources or the experts really the skills yeah to properly analyze the evidence so experts were being borrowed from the neighboring strathclyde police okay um the mo at that point the most significant piece of forensic evidence that they got from either scene was semen found on helen scott's coat oh this would be great in the evidence later yeah but was just cataloged in 1977 but hey they got it good for them for cataloging they knew eventually
this could be helpful right now at the time detectives were hoping someone saw something somebody had to have seen something thing but the only real descriptions they were getting was just the men in their clothing right which again were unusual so there was that a small team of officers were dispatched at after they checked out like the military garrison they went to the fashion districts in and around edinburgh with descriptions and artist renderings of what they were wearing hoping that they could find somewhere where these men bought those clothes right unfortunately they weren't really getting
anything by the by mid 1978 what had begun as a very strong investigation and they were going full force it was kind of eroding into a colder and colder case losing steam frustrated by any lack of progress and without literally anywhere to take this case george mcpherson the superintendent made the decision to shelve the case that may that name sounds so familiar it does he made the decision to redirect the resources of the department okay but as a cold case it was going to remain open but the investigation would still be ongoing but until a new lead or piece of evidence came along they kind of just
shut it down because they can't have that many people on it when it's not they just redirected the resources so in 1988 10 years after the murders had occurred holy shit still hadn't found who did it nothing the case had been actually shifted to the doll doll keith criminal investigation division i think um from what we could find uh it looks like it was just like because it they had to get it off their their stuff like the reason for that was nothing more than just we had to clean house okay here you go it's your thing yeah maybe they had more like resources maybe and they ended up being contacted
by an inmate at sawton prison in edinburgh and this inmate said that his cellmate had confessed to the killing of christine and helen okay so the supposed confessing killer yeah actually apparently seemed to have knowledge of the crimes that hadn't been released to the public including how the bodies had been positioned so it gave a little credibility yeah but when questioned the man denied ever having confessed and they didn't really have any evidence to connect him to the crime so it was just dropped okay he was like i didn't confess to that all I'm like, OK.
Is that going to come back later?
I feel like that happens in a lot of these cases and they just never touch upon it again.
Like it's just like this inmate said that he did it.
Then he's like, nah, I didn't do that.
And he had information that we never released.
I'm like, why did he know that?
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So additional claims kept coming in throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, actually.
Oh no, it's going to last that long?
Including a lot of women who called in and claimed their husbands ran out on them just after the murders happened, and they thought that they were the ones.
Wow. But none of those were LEAD.
Damn, it's really upsetting that that many women thought that their husband was capable of that.
Right? But another possibly promising LEAD came in early 1997.
yeah and this happened so that's 20 years later 77 is when this happened holy shit yeah so this is when a bunch of underworld type figures were interviewed by the times like like gangster kind of figures like underworld you love when i say gangster but that's that's it that's what they are i know but it's just like it doesn't feel right coming from you but like i love it because they're not like that you call the like like a mob type thing would be gangsters like oh no i even when you just say gangster and you're supposed to it's just funny i don't know okay i was like i don't i was like i don't
understand i didn't want you to say gangsta well no because it wouldn't make sense no that's it yeah but it's just funny but you know so these underworld gangsters were interviewed by the times and claimed that the killer was actually an underworld figure known to be like a sexual monster yikes yeah according i'll just cut that in for 20 years like what the fuck is wrong with you they're underworld gremlins themselves i know so according to one of the informants the killer is quote a pure beast yeah a few years ago he abducted the wife of a friend of mine and the beast kept her prisoner for a month
he raped her repeatedly through that time yeah so a police source confirmed that the man in question was indeed a person of interest at the time of the murders actually oh shit and he said he had been in the frame because he was a thoroughly monstrous man at the time he was also known to frequent the world's end unfortunately it ended up being a dead end it wasn't him are you kidding me and later they would confirm through dna that it wasn't him uh did they check into the guy i hope they took care of it yeah like i was like does he currently still have a prisoner because it's like with this one
you're like yeah that's awesome that it's not him i guess but like um that sucks that he exists he's still a problem guys like he's he's a big old problem so i hope they took care of that but while the media and the public were focused on you know theorizing about underworld gangsters and deadbeat husbands yeah police in dalkeith started getting more familiar with the science of dna at this time we're in the 90s so we mentioned earlier that among the few pieces of evidence collected during the first investigation there was semen discovered on helen scott's clothing unfortunately in 1977 1977,
like we said, of little use, but very smart of them to catalog it.
By 1997, advances in science and technology had made it possible to not only identify a person with, you know, certainty using their biological materials, but it also made it possible to use those samples to prove or disprove their involvement in a crime.
What? what what in 1988 a dna profile was created from the semen sample but at the time all they could get was the killer's blood type but they were moving in the right direction okay now a decade later in the 90s there was more to be found from that sample and more was found from that sample during this time police and doll keith were eager to compare the new now more complete dna sequence in that semen to the dna of men in the world's end on the night of the murders so the dna profile was compared to over 200 samples taken from male patrons in the pub that night not one was a match they also found
no matches in the hundreds of swabs taken from known predators living in the area at the time it wasn't even hitting on any of the 1200 suspects flagged in the police national computer are you shitting me right now yeah this was so frustrating but luckily it wasn't for nothing because during this whole process they were able to use the dna to discover that while helen and christine were likely killed by two men one of those men sexually assaulted both girls so there was likely two killers but one man raped both of those girls oh yeah which was was new information and shocking information yeah
so after 18 months of backbending work trying to get this dna to nab their killer they really weren't closer to finding him this is solved right it is okay at a press conference held in march 1999 stop it we're nearing the 2000s right now doll keith superintendent john mcgowan told reporters i'm disappointed for the families that we have not solved these murders it's a mystery and it it remains a mystery.
I hope one day that another detective will solve it.
McGowan didn't know at the time, but investigators would not have to wait for another detective to solve this case.
Now, in the spring of 2001, a man named Angus Sinclair went on trial for the 1978 rape and murder of a 17 -year -old girl named Mally Gallagher in Glasgow.
Sinclair had a long criminal history and it dated back to the late 1950s damn beginning with like you know home invasion housebreaking charges in his early teens and he escalated to sexual violence and child murder before he even entered his 20s holy shit yep what's his name angus sinclair yep when he was 16 years old he lured his neighbor katherine katherine rehill who was only seven years old into a stairwell where he sexually assaulted and strangled her oh my god he then called an ambulance and told them a wee girl has fallen down the stairs what called an ambulance oh he's a scary looking
motherfucker yep he was only given 10 years for that and served six what at the time a psychiatrist who he was being forced to see had this to say about him when he was 16 years old i do not think that any form of psychotherapy is likely to benefit his condition and he will constitute a danger from now onwards he is obsessed by sex and given the minimum of opportunity he will repeat these offenses and they released him anyway what the so they were just like yeah this psychiatrist literally said therapy won't help him if you let him out he will 100 repeat these offenses and the justice system said
let him out i guess we'll see and then he was like yep and he did the same exact thing the therapists that like take the time to first of all have to sit there and talk with these people and study these people and then write a report like that must just feel so slapped in the face when the legal system's like yeah sorry we're uh because they're probably gonna fuck around and find out i guess and the psychiatrist is probably like yeah fuck me right like i just have a degree i just sat with this person for hours and hours on end and they're probably like why did you ask me to do this in the first
place like you just gave me nightmares and fucked with my mental health for no fucking reason to totally disregard my feelings on this and also not for nothing now that person knows me like yeah and like knows that i've played in a will in their sentence somehow so after serving that joke of a sentence he was out got married to a wife sarah might i just say he has the yellowest fingernails i've ever seen in my life he's fucking heinous don't worry he's dead now die bitch he also had a son oh yeah now he was thought to have also murdered francis barker 37 hilda mccauley 36 agnes cooney 23 and anna kenny
20 years old all in similar ways to helen and christine they just weren't able to prove it they were all left with ligatures of their own clothing just like christine and helen and it was all around the same time and after helen and christine's murders he was identified by a witness in the rape and murder of 17 year old mary mary gallagher right now after this he suddenly started raping because after he got like a close call with mary gallagher he suddenly started raping and assaulting children all over the area it's like he decided like i'm getting too close to getting caught with teenage girls
so i'm just gonna do it with children oh my god this guy's fucking horrible in fact later in 1982 when he was finally caught for the rape charges he said the amount of rapes he had committed was probably in the hundreds jesus christ what the fuck happened into this guy he was sentenced to life in prison in 1982 when he got caught for the rapes oh wow so he was in prison when they found out yeah so he was known to police in edinburgh at the time of christine and helen's murders in 1977 when he was not in prison obviously yep and he was but he was never considered a suspect that's interesting i
wonder why it's wild in fact despite his having provided a dna sample in 1999 when he was arrested for the gallagher murder you're shitting me it It wasn't until 2004 that his profile was flagged as being a match. Why did it take that long?
For the unknown DNA in the semen found in the world's end case.
How does that happen?
It must have just like...
In oversight? Yeah.
I have no idea. I mean, that shit takes forever.
And in the beginning, I'm sure it took a lot longer.
But by the time Dalkeith detectives made the match with Angus Sinclair for the semen found on the coat, so now we know he's the one who raped both those girls.
Yeah. Angus Sinclair had been tried and convicted at this point for the Gallagher murder and was serving a life sentence at Peterhead Prison.
And that's where he had been serving since he was convicted for three rapes in the 1990s.
So this man was just, he was just, his cup overfloweth with prison sentences.
With nasty. Chillingly, through their investigation, detectives began to see Sinclair developing many, like, they watched through his history, where he developed a lot of the elements that became evident in the edie and scott murders like sexual assaults committed with a partner which he did beginning in the at an early age and his method of strangulation and abuse was was uh also present in the gallagher murder and he was like really honing these skills right and was it the same partner the whole time so it was definitely this guy for at least a couple of them okay and we'll talk about who he
is i was gonna say who the fuck is this guy that like yeah has no conscious whatsoever so they didn't want to tip sinclair off to their investigation or alert the public to the suspect before they were ready to really mail him so doll keith detectives worked very quietly but many journalists and crime reporters had contacts within law enforcement by may of 2004 and so the tabloids started reporting that sinclair was the top suspect in the world's end killings so hoping to get ahead of them police held a press conference in edinburgh that month and they told reporters that they had been alerted
to sinclair through the science of dna and were looking at his possible connection to at least seven unsolved murders in the area though they didn't at that time reveal any of the names of the victims like it was pretty obvious who they were talking about yeah following that press conference journalists from a ton of scottish and british news outlets a lot of them tabloids put the pieces together and concluded that sinclair was definitely one of the two men who had killed christine edie and helen scott so the other big task was now finding the identity of the second suspect they had a dna profile
but nothing to compare it to so they looked to sinclair and they just built the case around him looking to his friends his family his associates anybody around him to be like who's this person he obviously knows them yeah of course it was tough because sinclair had had spent a lot of time in prison since the early 80s, so there was a little bit of a gap in his social life.
And after working closely with forensic scientists, detectives discovered that the second semen sample had, quote, come from the same paternal line as the five brothers of Sarah Hamilton, Angus Sinclair's wife.
So his brother -in -law?
Mm -hmm. What? Now, like I said, they're claiming that Angus was the one who raped both girls, but they do believe that this other suspect had something to do with it because they were able to find dna from him right from that point it was simply a matter of probability because they have narrowed it down with familiar familial dna of the five hamilton brothers only one gordon hamilton was unaccounted for his fucking brother -in -law that's so twisted nearly certain that their second suspect was gordon hamilton his wife's brother detectives were pretty disappointed because they found out that gordon hamilton had
died in 1996 i hope it was really fucking awful for him so he was never going to be held accountable for this crime wow that's really really fucking make me angry but as much as that sucked investigators needed to confirm his dna was was a match for the profile they had which was a little difficult hamilton's body had been cremated of course they could not exhume him yeah i wonder why that was his fucking wish yeah exactly so detectives determined a personal possession would be probably the next best thing they could get unfortunately they quickly found that gordon hamilton was a very difficult
man to pin down and even his family members didn't really have any of his possessions or items that really could give them a biological sample we would want them after months of dead ends edinburgh detectives had to get kind of creative so they located a house hamilton had worked on many years earlier and after getting permission to do a thorough search of the house from the homeowners investigators found a small section of like this some kind of stripping in the house that contained a trace of hamilton's dna oh shit and despite the relatively small size of the sample they were were able to successfully
match the sample to the DNA that they had collected in 1977, proving conclusively that Gordon Hamilton was the second killer in the world's end case.
Even though he was dead, they did look into his background because they were like, what the fuck?
And they discovered he was raised in a pretty large Scottish family where the father was very domineering and very violent.
The children all came out of the home with addiction struggles, A lot of criminal tendencies, a product of their environment.
Yeah. So, of course, only a couple of his siblings were even willing to talk to police.
Right. Angus's wife, Sarah, and a younger brother were really the only ones that were willing to talk to them.
And it was through the younger brother that investigators learned Gordon had begun his criminal careers with Angus Sinclair.
Wow. Which included acts of violence and theft occurring before and after the Edie and Scott murders.
What's crazy is this was apparently a surprise to some people who knew them.
Like they were like, wow, I didn't see that for them.
What? Like Scott and...
Yeah. Like they were like, wow, they were violent.
That's crazy. And it's like they were the most violent.
Right. Sorry, I didn't mean Scott.
Yeah, it's wild. But together they were brutally violent.
They had not only committed the rape and murder of Edie Scott, but also a home invasion robbery the year prior where they robbed and viciously beat a man and his daughter as well as their landlord holy shit what the fuck were they doing monsters were they like on shit no they were just they just are evil they just are shit by the time detectives sat down to interview angus sinclair in october of 2004 they had assembled a pretty vivid picture of his personal and criminal history as well as that of gordon hamilton yeah in addition to the murders of christine edie and helen scott they were now even
more convinced that he was involved in the unsolved murders of anna kenny matilda macaulay and agnes cooney um and as well as tons of other assaults i bet so sinclair denied any connection to gordon hamilton or the murdered girls just spent the interview sessions trying to intimidate or like like assert dominance over the interviewer kind of thing dude you're in prison for the rest of your life shut up and tell us what happened and when he couldn't intimidate them he quote according to tom wood he used all sorts of tricks to exasperate interviewing officials to the point where they lost any chance
of obtaining meaningful progress what a douchebag he was a steel trap he wouldn't say anything angus sinclair had spent nearly three decades in a long -term very serious relationship with the justice system yeah and he was essentially a professional criminal by the the time investigators got to him in 2004 right so of course detectives were unsuccessful in getting any useful information or even so much as a hint of emotion from him about it fortunately they felt they had more than enough physical evidence to get a conviction and on january 26 2006 angus sinclair was indicted for the murders of christine
edie and helen scott good i'm glad he had to face the justice system even because like you know when they're in prison sometimes you're like are Are they going to try it?
Oh, no, they did. And he entered no plea.
I didn't even know that was an option.
He just said, no, thank you.
The trial of Angus Sinclair for the murder of Christine and Helen began at the high court in Edinburgh on August 27th, 2007.
Wow. Sinclair, of course, he said he was innocent, maintained his innocence, and lodged a special defense incriminating his brother -in -law, Gordon Hamilton.
I thought you guys had no connection.
Yeah, all of a sudden he knows.
the special defense said that if any sexual relations took place they did so with consent fuck right off so he was just trying to explain away the semen found at the scene he was like we had sex consensually crazy that you're in here though for uh rape and murder that's weird and i love that he was like if if there's any any dna found or any of me found there just know that it was consensual it's like oh so you don't even know you're just like i'm just covering my bases this year now among the witnesses heard in the first few days of the trial was helen's father who told the jury of being informed
of his daughter's death and jackie thompson uh who recounted the girl's night out that ended with her leaving her two friends at the bar apparently in the company of sinclair and hamilton also on the witness stand was john rafferty who was one of the police officers who'd seen christine and helen with the two suspects outside the world's end according to rafferty's testimony he'd been he'd been helping christine off the ground after she'd fallen when he noticed a shifty man watching him he said i assumed he was with the girls so this was another police officer and he told the jury he wasn't making
any kind of eye contact he was looking away from me you get the impression when you're a police officer that some people don't like police officers and the way this chap was looking at me he didn't like police officers yeah i bet now also on the stand was sinclair's now former wife sarah i was hoping you were going to say that because you kept saying wife and i was like she legally separated she was like bye bitch good and she told the jury she married her husband in 1970 and they had a pretty decent marriage she didn't have a lot of like she was like i wasn't abused it wasn't like i did not expect
you to say that she was like that's why she was like this really fucked me up as soon as you brought her up in my head i was like oh my god i can't imagine what that poor woman went according to her that's why she was so shocked right she was like i this wasn't like oh i could see him doing this but that's the thing that happens like yeah like btk's wife oh yeah there's plenty what there's plenty of them it's so sad and it's so scary to think that that's how they walk among us they can just shape shift so scary at will but she also told the jury that her husband and brother jordan gordon would often
go on weekend fishing trips in the couple's toyota a high -ace car and i think it's a caravanette which i've never seen it's like a caravan but like a little but a net um but he that was believed to be the vehicle that the girls were transported in oh wow um but that vehicle had since been sold and scrapped huh imagine that now the investigators found what they believed were fibers from the caravanette upholstery on helen scott's coat they didn't have it to match but they could at least make a an assumption right Right.
But without an interior to match it to, it was pretty circumstantial, if even that.
Now, the trial was moving along as expected, and the prosecutor, Alan McKay, gave his closing remarks.
And it was all thrown into turmoil on the 10th day.
The judge halted the proceedings and suddenly dismissed the charges, citing insufficient evidence.
I'm sorry, what? what in his statement judge lord clark said there was no forensic evidence to link the accused to the items used to kill the girls i'm not satisfied that the evidence relied on by the crown can overcome that absence of crucial evidence like what about the semen though yep but remember he's claiming we had consensual sex this motherfucker is already convicted of rape and murder the The decision outraged the families, investigators, prosecutors.
The prosecutors really thought they had a strong case, because they did.
I was just going to say, because they fucking did.
But because the jury was barred from several key pieces of evidence, including Sinclair's DNA on the ligature used to kill both women, the only remaining evidence was the semen, and Sinclair claimed they had a consensual sexual encounter.
That does not prove I killed her.
except that your dna is on the ligature they even brought up and this is like pretty graphic but i think it's important to show you how fucked up this is because they found evidence in the autopsy of trauma sexual trauma absolutely i'm sure and they had the fucking nerve in this trial to be like well can you really say that that's rape or could it just be from oh they use the rough the rough defense thing literally anybody that uses that defense go fuck yourself yeah truly Like, honestly, from the bottom of my heart, go fuck yourself.
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but yeah so they they barred a lot of evidence the only one allowed was the one that sinclair was claiming consensual you can't prove that i killed her with that i'm unfortunately at its core yeah you can't prove that she that he killed her with with that piece of evidence if we're looking at it in a legal pinpointed thing but it's like yeah then why are we barring the evidence that That shows that he killed her.
That was evidence on the ligature.
That's the thing. We're relying on one piece of evidence when we have several pieces of evidence.
The piece of evidence in that says he was there at the very least, and that something occurred.
What the fuck? You're barring the piece of evidence that clearly shows he killed her?
But I'm like, what did you even have to gain from dismissing this case?
If anything, it's like an outrage.
It's an outrage. And by dismissing the charges against Sinclair, the judge basically ensured that double jeopardy laws protected him from ever being held responsible for the deaths of christine edie and helen scott fuck this judge so the decision by judge lord clark to return a verdict of no case to answer outraged literally everybody yeah but then everybody started blaming each other for the decision police officers were blaming the prosecutor the public blame the police and just no y 'all everybody's blaming each other i'm like blame that fucker that's the judge he made the final call and you
guys all worked up there because you guys all work together to get that evidence to get it into trial he's the motherfucker that says what what goes and what doesn't go fuck him it's like you all did your job he didn't do his like do you have a daughter sir like can you imagine if they do you have a cousin do you have a woman that you love in your life yep can you imagine so following the decision by the judge a spokesperson for the lothian and borders police released a statement to the press and said there have been numerous reviews of the brutal murders of christine edie and helen scott over
the past 30 years and we have always taken very careful steps to review all the evidence which have been kept since the bodies were found on october 16th 1977 we put together a thorough and detailed case for the crown office to take to trial and today's announcement is disappointing to say the least the prosecutor's office responded with their own statement essentially claiming that the dna evidence that links sinclair to the ligatures was not collected or analyzed by forensic experts from the prosecutor's office and therefore a decision was made to exclude it from the evidence presented to the jury
fuck that they said the crown considered that there was sufficient evidence to indicts angus sinclair for the appalling murders of helen scott and christine edie there's no doubt that he was involved in events which preceded the deaths of these young women the purpose of the prosecution was to establish whether he was criminally involved in all trials the prosecutor has a duty continually to consider and review the available evidence with a view to deciding how best to proceed with the trial low copy low probability dna evidence found on articles of underwear which have been used to bind the victims
was not led by the crown laying aside the evidence which was consistent with sexual contact with the victims with consensual contact with the victims the crown was of the view that there was sufficient evidence on which to base a prosecution further given the basis upon which the judge approached the evidence which was led we do not consider that this evidence relating as it did to items of underwear worn by the deceased would have persuaded the judge that there was sufficiency so they're basically like yeah sure now after 30 years of investigation dedication grief horror nothing nightmares the family
of helen scott and christine edie were just robbed of justice when the trial judge just dismissed the charges yeah while the decision was heart -shattering for anyone directly involved in the case it also brought up a lot more questions like how sinclair's very obvious guilt could be circumvented by a legal technicality and poor prosecutor prosecutorial performance hard to say like what like it is obvious to literally anybody that he is guilty yeah but because of a tiny little loophole we're just gonna say fuck it whatever and that doesn't like it's like the prosecutor the prosec the prosecutor's
office yes fault like that just feels like the judge was like nah sorry there was it was loopholes and it was like little fuck -ups that's like and i'm like dude what do you have to gain number one this guy's in prison forever anyway so you're not fucking saving his life but because of this let me let me hear it the then cabinet secretary for justice kenny kenny mccaskill sent the case against sinclair to the scottish law commission for review let's go scottish law commission hell yeah after years of review and analysis the commission produced tons of reports that directly influenced the double
jeopardy act passed by scottish parliament in 2011 among other things this act allowed for the retrial of acquitted persons under certain circumstances particularly those relating to decisions made in bad faith and questions of mishandled evidence yeah that one was made i love that it's like made in bad faith they were like you fucked up so following the passage of the double jeopardy act of 2011 the crown instructed lothian and borders police to reopen the world's end murder case fuck yeah as if the evidence they had collected for three decades wasn't enough detectives discovered additional evidence
that challenged sinclair's alibi in the previous child including soil samples that placed angus sinclair at the sites of both murders soil samples they went hard i love that they were like if semen samples don't work for you let's get some fucking soil samples we'll use maybe i'll get some maybe i'll get some air samples while i'm on i will get all the elements against you fucking go girl so this with the dna found on the ligatures around the necks of christine and helen the soil disproved angus Sinclair's claim that he was fishing at the time of the death yeah go fuck yourself there's soil in your
shoes and was nowhere near any murder scene based on this new evidence and now a much stronger case the crown was granted permission to retry the case against Angus Sinclair I'm doing my gotcha dance so the second trial of Angus Sinclair began October 13th 2014 oh my god at At the High Court in Livingston.
At this time, Sinclair pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder.
According to the defense submitted by Sinclair, he was fishing on the banks of the River Forth, somewhere near Cackenzie Power Station, when both McGurls were murdered by his brother -in -law, Gordon Hamilton.
Doubt it! As he'd done in the last trial, he again claimed that he'd had consensual sex with both girls.
Fuck right off with that.
this time the prosecutor frank mcholland he built a stronger case against sinclair that very different from the first trial included the damning dna evidence that implicated sinclair in both murders the jury was also shown very graphic photographs taken at the time the bodies were discovered and were given tours of both crime scenes and heard testimony from the experts and witnesses that it testified in the first trial too wow and since it was seven years later after the first trial everyone's understanding of dna was a little more robust definitely in his testimony forensic scientist martin fairly
told the jury that there was a one in a billion chance dna on the coat could have come from anyone other than the accused angus sinclair one in a billion that'll sell it similarly forensic scientist geraldine davidson like good good for you geraldine forensic scientists let's go girl explain the process used to test the samples found on the bindings of both young women as being quote beyond anything you would normally do in a normal dna test so she was like we went above and beyond men yeah according to her the findings provide extremely strong support for the view that gordon hamilton and or angus
sinclair were involved in restraining and strangling both helen scott and christine edie rather than an unknown and undetective individual in our opinion the findings are fitting with our range of expectations had jordan hamilton and angus sinclair been in contact with most if not all of the ligatures examined in this case wow on the final day of testimony angus sinclair took the stand to testify in his own defense like a little bitch sinclair told the jury that he and hamilton had met the girls at the world's end pub and after last call the four drove to sinclair include sinclair's toyota cam
whatever it is Kara Vanette to Holyrood Park where they he had consensual sex with both girls doubt it then he left both young women with Hamilton and he wanted to go fishing what really just went fishing in the middle of the fucking night we are decades later and you can't come up with something better than that gone fishing on cross -examination the prosecutor challenged this version of events saying two 17 year old girls taken somewhere they didn't want to go in the dark in the back of a van with two strange men with sex on the mind they must have been terrified absolutely you didn't care that they
wanted to go home and in response to him sinclair said no i just wanted to have sex ew go fuck yourself he's a fucking demon he's filthy yeah he's literally filthy that's a perfect word for it he is a filthy fuck otherwise he stuck to that previous story he pinned the murders on his brother -in -law who is dead and can't face the charges and just that's it on november 14th 2014 the jury deliberated for less than two hours and came back with a verdict of guilty hell yeah and sentenced angus sinclair to life in prison with a minimum of 37 years and he was already in there for life if you told me anything
else i would quite literally fucking riot yeah it was a big relief to everybody it was a big relief to the family members of edie and scott the detectives in a statement to the press, former deputy chief constable of the Lothian and Borders police, Tom Woods said, when it happened in 1977, it was like the turning of a page.
They looked like young women in their photographs, but really they were little more than children.
The nature of the crime and the brutality of their deaths meant that a real shock ran through Scotland.
People still remember it and have it as a point of reference.
As each generation came up, they became infected with the determination to see this through the officers who have devoted themselves to the case will see this as a debt repaid you know what makes me so sad her grandmother probably went to her grave yeah and never got to see justice i hope wherever she is she knows i hope she knows her granddaughter was yeah like what happened you know was at least like you know like justice was justice so angus sinclair was the first person to be retried and convicted with after after the passage of the double jeopardy act and frank mahalin told reporters the day
after sinclair's conviction i can assure the public that there is now no longer such a thing as a closed case in scotland i love it just because a murder took place many years ago it is no less important in the eyes of the prosecution service than one which took place last week good it was also the longest sentence handed out by a scottish court at that time wow in early 2019 in 19 angus sinclair suffered a bunch of strokes he ended up being bedridden and incontinent until his deaths on march 11th of that year i am dancing in these streets yep fuck you angus that guy at the time of his death he
was serving life sentences for the murders of christine edie helen scott and mary gallagher but police still suspect him of those other murders oh absolutely Absolutely.
Now, Helen's father, Moraine, did he did pass away in 2015?
So he did. He was able to see a lot of this happen.
Right. And he was 85.
He lived to be 85. But the year before his death in 2014, he said how anybody could do that to another human being.
I sit at nights and I think, well, just what did she go through?
How did she suffer?
I mean, it's frightening.
I just remember Helen as she was and keep wondering where she would have been today.
would she have been married would she have had a family would I've had grandchildren where'd she be living that's so awful I hate that he had to spend the rest of his life thinking things like that but I'm so glad they finally got you I mean my god when you got to like the part where they didn't I was like is this how this is gonna end and she gave me Teresita Bassa and this I could not because I mean these families and and the detectives and investigators in the case they all deserve to have this fucking wrapped up in a bow at the end and i hate that it took that long i know because for those
those families and those detectives because it really affected a lot of them they were all talking about like this killed us everybody involved in it they all had to sit through it for decades and just have frustration and brick wall and watch that asshole get off the first time and those the first people that put it together to spend that long doing that and then to get like like slapped in the face yeah exactly but luckily it does eventually have justice in the end thank goodness and whatever at least one of them what a like awesome way to get justice to with the the uh double jeopardy i know
that that's the thing it's so like theatrical the way that it all came together i love that it all came together that way me too it was like Like Christine and Helen were like working things.
Yeah. They were like making it happen.
Hell yeah. I mean, they made shit happen on this plane.
Exactly. Wow. Yeah.
That was wild. So wild.
And I think there was a few other cases mentioned in this case that Angus Sinclair was thought to be a part of and is definitely a part of.
And I'm going to look into those and see if we can do another episode talking about those ones because I want to make sure I can find some information about them.
but I think they I was interested to see what those were about yeah definitely yeah wow yeah well stay tuned for that hopefully and we hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird but not so weird that this yeah it'll be this fucking weird don't keep it as weird as Angus If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad -free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
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