Episode 479: World's End Murders

I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at a high school in upstate New York. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast. What's the answer, and what do you do if they tell you it's all in your head?

Hysterical, a new podcast from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios, binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free on Wondery Plus 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 pockets, I am, I don't know why. I think it's pretty small, so you can put it in your back pocket. I think, you know, you got a big back pocket, shove it right in there.

Put it wherever you want, I don't care, just read it.

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 the sequel, Woo, the Second Book, The Second Butcher and 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 the only people that can say I read that chapter and nobody else did. And now you can, too.

Get on my level, Get on Ash's level. July 25th The paperback book edition of The Butcher and the Wren Go get it everywhere.

I love you guys, books and literacy.

Hey weirdos, I'm Ash and I'm Alayna, 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, aren't I always? You always are.

Cause 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, 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 for me. 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 to 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.

And 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 on me. 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, I, I didn't know it was like a thing, oh wow, oh, excuse me. Stanley is like, over swept the nation. I can't believe you didn't know that.

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 it. 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 target brand. It's cute, though.

It's some reduce brand and I think it's just as good it is. I mean, it. Can you drink water out of it? mm-hmm.

There you go, good as a Stanley, I just was. That's why I couldn't answer it. Good as a Stanley, good as a Stanley.

There you go, I always love, um, I always make fun of Ash when she gets the clanky one she does. Because there was one time when we were in a meeting and 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, clang onto the floor. You know, those ones too, that, like, it's like, like it, like, echoes, sort of it's like clang, clang, clang, clang.

That's like a reverb it does. It was like a level five on the rickshaw. So I'll never let it go because I'm not one to let anything go. It's funny. When I bought this water bottle, I literally thought to myself like, it's gonna piss her off, and then I was like, Look at my new water bottle. Try to be a bitch. And she was like, No, that's not a canteen, and I was like, What are you talking about?

It's not a big canteen jug. Melina'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, 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 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 preorder it on Amazon on July 17th, which is super exciting and super soon, and if you don't preorder 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 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 moonstones, you collect moonstones, and yeah, and those are the full moons, which is so fucking cool.

It's very like high vibration, you get to have multiple moons. like, doesn't like Jupiter have multiple moons? Yeah, Jupiter has many moons. That's what I thought.

I think your kids said that to me once, Yeah, just ask my kids. Jupiter has many moons, so yeah, uh, fucking. Look out for the lunar dial. Preorder 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, that is.

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, straight up chalice with Papa, that I'm gonna drink from at all times. Has John seen that?

Yet he sure has. 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. Whatever answer I get, I'm not gonna like it.

He just didn't ask any 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 gonna send one to Doug Bradley.

I think we already did. Yeah, we're gonna send one to Doug Bradley because he also loves ghosts.

But let's get into, you know, this is all fun and games. Let's get into the really awful thing that we're gonna talk about. Did you do that on purpose? Fun and games. I didn't, but glad it happened.

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. Hmm.

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 Scotland. It's like a weird island thing.

Oh, yeah, I mean, it's a.

Do you know about that? 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, 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 gonna be talking about two 17-year-old victims, Christine Eadie and Helen Scott. They had met some friends and we're gonna get into the whole story. But at the time, they had met some friends. At the World End's pub in Edinburgh's old town neighborhood, it was basically a normal night.

It was a normal night, but they were 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, Oh right, 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 Maureen 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. And Maureen 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.

Like, this was truly one of those families that you're just like, shit, they love each other. That's a happy house, that's a safe house, 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 Firhill High School. I believe, is how you say it. The school only had about 1,000 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 point. And despite being slightly underage at the time, she was 17, and the drinking age in Scotland is 18. She was there 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.

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 centre. What a fun name for a pub. They have a lot of cool names for pubs here, and the pubs here just look cool. They're on 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, and it's definitely not the same here, like historical-wise. But in Boston, we have a few streets that are super, super old, obviously, and the places on those streets are out there. Like the cobblestone is still visible, it just always has a different vibe to it.

It's almost like you can feel the history. Yeah, it just feels different, but Helen was a great kid, she just was, she was a good kid.

She was a good teenager, a good young woman. During her high school years, she got a solid reputation as a very reliable and trustworthy babysitter around her neighbourhood. She was great with kids, and she often babysat for her older half-sister's 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 childcare.

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. Aww. She had gone with her friend Christine Eady, who had also just got a new job.

So they were like, Hell yeah, working girls, look at us now. Christine Eady had also attended Firhill 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, Maine's Green, Edinburgh. And it seemed like Christine was a very normal and kind 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 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 Firhill 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, wanna come? Oh yeah, and you head out? 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, 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 8pm, they met Christine and their new friend Tony Kivlin at Wee Windies, which was a pub on the Royal Mile, which is Edinburgh's like main street, main drag.

Yeah, now. They went to a few more pubs 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. What 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 old, and Tom Woods says that there's a gloomy effect because of this, which I think sounds great. Among the businesses that were 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, that sounds awesome.

Sounds right up your alley. And this included what would be the girls 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 whiskies, and apparently they were kind of at each other a little. Oh, really, the more whiskies they had, they kind of started....

It was like petty arguing. It wasn't like they were like fighting, yeah, you know, like teenage girl shit. like they were just annoying each other, I think.

Okay, they were just 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 arguments they got into, was when Helen used the payphone to call a boy she liked. This boy was in Coldstream. 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, man.

So she ended up storming out of the pub because of it and said that she was done for the night. 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. We've had a couple of whiskeys and we're at each other's throats a little bit and then we just go, fuck it, everything's fine. I'm sorry, you're sorry, let's have a good night. So they were over it. Okay, good, yeah, it's in them that way.

I'm glad that they got over it, I know, 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 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, love 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 twenties, medium height, quite stocky, but he had piercing brown eyes. Hmm, she said. He was dressed in, basically, you know, 1970s style. he was wearing a brown and white stripe bell-bottom pants and 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, which, I don't know what that means, but it sounds great. He was drinking three liters a day, there you go.

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Exhibit C Live presents Dr. Death A Closer look. Tickets go on sale August 9th, so get your truest true crime fans together and get tickets before they sell out. I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York.

I was like, at my locker and she came up to me and she was like, stuttering, super bad. I'm like, stop f***ing around. She's like, I can't. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast, it's like doubling and tripling, and it's all these girls.

With a diagnosis, the state tried to keep on the down low. Everybody thought I was holding something back. Well, you were holding something back intentionally. Yeah, well, yeah, oh, it's hysteria.

It's all in your head, it's not physical. Oh my gosh, you're exaggerating. Is this the largest mass hysteria since the Witches of Salem, or is it something else entirely?

Something's wrong here, something's not right. Leroy was the new dateline, and everyone was trying to solve the murder. A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios. Hysterical follow Hysterical.

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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 going to let them have a moment. Yeah, they seemed 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 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.

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. But the other friend was convincing her and telling her everything would be alright. 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 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. Now, on the morning of October 16th, Maureen 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.

That same morning, Derek and Ruth Taylor, a random couple, left their home to drive to East Lothian for a picnic on the beach in Long Didgery. 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 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 Taylor's dummy lying by the high water mark. It's never a dummy, never, it's 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 Eady. 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 5 or 6 miles from Gosford Beach. Weird. He also saw what he assumed was a Taylor's dummy lying in the field. When he walked towards it, he, too, realized it was the dead body of a human. It was Helen Scott.

Oh, now, Helen, they were separated, and that's what's, so it's scary.

Helen's hands were tied behind her back with 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 their clothing and gagged with their underwear. Oh God, that's brutal. They'd each been sexually assaulted, beaten and strangled.

But had two.

The difference between the two was the method of strangulation each was unique. Christine appeared to have been strangled manually, but Helen had 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. Oh, no, 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? oh?

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. Ugh, it's so awful it truly is. 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 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 Eady'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 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 it 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 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 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.

Right, 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. Can you imagine just coming off of that? Yeah, like a corner.

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 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 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 going to say that it 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 also seen leaving with a little after 11pm.

The descriptions that were given to them by patrons at the world's end. And Jackie and Tony, they matched pretty well, so they were like, these are the same guys, right? And apparently, they were seen leaving in a dark-colored car near Gosford Beach a little before 3.30am, the day of the murder. The same description.

Oh, so, they were assuming these were all the same guys. At the very least, it was a wild coincidence, right? So, the fact that the girls had 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 methods of strangulation, exactly 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 girls hands. Oh, Christine's hands were bound with a reef knot, something sailors use, I guess. Oh, okay, and Helen's hands were bound with a figure-eight binding.

Also, a forensic scientist, Roger Ide, later told a jury that the knots also showed different dominant hands. Oh wow, a lefty and a righty. That's so interesting that you can tell that just from looking at the knot, isn't that interesting?

It must be the way one thing goes over another. You would do it with that hand. Wow, interesting. Similar differences were found in the ligatures around Christine and Helen's necks.

Christine's killer definitely had a familiarity with knots, and Helen's killer not super familiar. So Dr. Roger Ide, 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, right? 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, okay?

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 together, yeah, and Helen's 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 had 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. 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, this was different.

Tom Woods was quoted as saying In the late 70s, this was not typical for young men. No, not at all. 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 at nearby Edinburgh Castle.

Ah, 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 no, 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, it's hard to say, I keep saying East Lothian.

Because it's like your brain is getting ready to do the loth, yeah. East Lothian and Edinburgh worked around 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 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 to properly analyze the evidence. So experts were being borrowed from the neighboring Strathclyde police. Okay, at that point, the most significant piece of forensic evidence that they got from either scene was semen found on Helen Scott's coat.

Ooh, this would be great evidence. Later in the 90s, yeah, but was just catalogued in 1977..

But hey, they got it good for them for cataloguing it, they knew eventually this could be helpful, right?

Now, at the time, detectives were hoping someone saw something, somebody had to have seen something. 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 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. Damn it.

By mid-1978, what had begun as a very strong investigation and they were going full force 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 gaining traction, they just redirected the resources.

So in 1988, ten years after the murder site occurred, holy shit, they still hadn't found who did it? Nothing. The case had been actually shifted to the Dahlkeith Criminal Investigation Division. I think from what we could find, it looks like it was just like because they had to get it off their stuff.

Like, the reason for that was nothing more than just we had to clean the house. So here you go, it's your thing now. Maybe they had more resources too, maybe. And they ended up being contacted by an inmate at Sauton 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 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. Oh right, so can I come back later? I feel like that happens in a lot of these cases and they just never touch upon it again, yeah.

It's just like this inmate said that he did it, and 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 exactly?

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She struck him with her motor vehicle, she had been under the influence, and then she left him there. In January 2022, local woman Karen Reed was implicated in the mysterious death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe. It was alleged that after an innocent night out for drinks with friends, Karen and John got into a lover's quarrel en route to the next location. What happens next depends on who you ask.

Was it a crime of passion? If you believe the prosecution, it's because the evidence was so compelling. This was clearly an intentional act. And his cause of death was blunt force trauma with hypothermia. Or a corrupt police cover-up, if you believe the defense theory, however, this was all a cover-up to prevent one of their own from going down.

Everyone had an opinion, and after the 10-week trial, the jury could not come to a unanimous decision to end in a mistrial. It's just a confirmation of just how complicated this case is. Law and Crime presents the most in-depth analysis to date of the sensational case in Karen. You can listen to Karen exclusively with Wondery Plus. join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

So additional claims kept coming in throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s.

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. But none of those were lead. Damn, it's really upsetting that that many women thought that their husband was capable of that. But another possibly promising lead came in early 1997, and this happened.

So that's 20 years later. 1977 is when this happened. So this is when a bunch of underworld type figures were interviewed by The Times, like gangster kind of figures you love when I say that.

But that's it, that's what they are. It doesn't feel right coming from you. I love it.

Like, a mob type thing would be gangsters, even when you just say gangster and you're supposed to. It's just funny. I didn't want you to say gangsta. Well, no, because it wouldn't make sense, but it's just funny.

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, and y'all just kept that in for 20 years. What the fuck is wrong with you? They're underworld gremlins themselves.

So, according to one of the informants, the killer is a pure beast. 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. So, a police source confirmed that the man in question was indeed a person of interest at the time of the murders. Actually, 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, and later they would confirm through DNA that it wasn't him.

Did they check into the guy? I hope they took care of it. Yeah, 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, that sucks that he exists.

He's still a problem, guys, 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, 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, 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. Whoa?

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 in Dalkeith 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. What?

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 1,200 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 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, Dahlkeith Superintendent John McGowan told reporters. "...I'm disappointed for the families that we have not solved these murders. It's a mystery, and 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, yup, what's his name? Angus Sinclair? Yup? When he was 16 years old, he lured his neighbor, Catherine Rehill, who was only 7 years old, into a stairwell where he sexually assaulted and strangled her to death.

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.

Yup, he was only given 10 years for that and served 6. 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. EW and they released him anyway. What the f 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, yup, 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, we're gonna f around and find out, I guess. And the psychiatrist is probably like, Yeah, f 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 f-ed with my mental health for no f-ing reason to totally disregard my feelings on this. And also not for nothing. Now that person knows me like and like, knows that I played a role 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 have ever seen in my life? He's f-ing heinous. Don't worry, he's dead now. Die b-tch.

Um, 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 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. EW 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 now. Oh my god, this guy is f-ing horrible, yeah.

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 f-ck happened to this guy? And 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 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 an oversight. Yeah, I have no idea. I mean, that shit takes forever. F-ing clerical errors. But and in the beginning, I'm sure it took a lot longer.

But by the time, Dahlkeith, 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, 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 also present in the Gallagher murder.

So 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, has no conscience 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 nail him. So Dahlkeith 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 Eadie 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. Of course, it was tough because Sinclair 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 he, 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 familial DNA. Of the five Hamilton brothers, only one, Gordon Hamilton, was unaccounted for. Mm-hmm, 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 makes me angry.

But as much as that sucked, investigators needed to confirm his DNA was a match for the profile they had, which was a little difficult. Hamilton's body had been cremated, of course, so 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 who 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, 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 able to successfully match the sample to the DNA that they had collected in 1977..

So he was there, 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.

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, 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 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. 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 McCauley and Agnes Cooney.

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, 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, yeah, 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 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 Eadie 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 they going to try it? or, oh, no, they did. And he entered no plea.

I didn't even know that was an option. Yeah, 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 27, 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 with that.

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 rape and murder. Yeah, that's weird, and I love that, he was like.

If there's any DNA found or any 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 here 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, 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 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. 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.

No, 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 through. According to her, that's why she was so shocked, right?

Because she was like, this wasn't like, Oh, I could see him doing this, but that's the thing that happens. Yeah, like, B.T.k.'s wife and daughter were like, what? Oh yeah, there's plenty.

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 shapeshift, so scary.

At will. But she also told the jury that her husband and brother Jordan would often go on weekend fishing trips in the couple's Toyota Hiace. And I think it's a Caravanette, which I've never seen, it's like a caravan, but like little but a net. That was believed to be the vehicle that the girls were transported in.

Oh, wow. But that vehicle had since been sold and scrapped, huh? weird, 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 an assumption, 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? 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 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 ligatures 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. 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 used the rough sex defense thing. literally anybody that uses that defense go fuck yourself, like, honestly, from the bottom of my heart.

Go fuck yourself.

But yeah, so 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 shocked, which, unfortunately, at its core, yeah.

You can't prove that he killed her with that piece of evidence, if we're looking at it in a legal pinpointed thing. But it's like, then why are we barring the evidence that shows that he killed her? It 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? But 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 Eadie 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. But then everybody started blaming each other for the decision. Police officers were blaming the prosecutor, the public blamed the police.

At the end of the day, I'm like, blame that fucker, that's the judge. He made the final call, blame the court up there because you guys all worked together to get that evidence, to get it into trial. He's the motherfucker that says what goes and what doesn't go.

Fuck him, it's like you all did your job, he didn't do his. Do you have a daughter, sir? do you have a cousin?

Do you have a woman that you love in your life? 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 Eadie 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, they said the Crown considered that there was sufficient evidence to indict Angus Sinclair for the appalling murders of Helen Scott and Christine Eadie. There is 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 had 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, nightmares. The family of Helen Scott and Christine Eadie were just robbed of justice when the trial judge dismissed the charges. 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 illegal technicality and poor prosecutorial performance.

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, they don't get justice.

And that doesn't even feel like it's the prosecutor's office's fault. That just feels like the judge was like, Nah, sorry. It was loopholes and it was little fuck-ups. 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, the then-cabinet secretary for Justice, 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 in bad fucking faith. 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 in 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 trial. Loves it?

Including soil samples that placed Angus Sinclair at the sites of both murders dude soil samples. They went hard, that's nuts.

I love that. They were like, if semen samples don't work for you, let's get some fucking soil samples. We'll use the fucking earth. Maybe I'll get some air samples while I'm at it.

I will get all the elements against you. Let's fucking go girls. 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 deaths. Yeah, go fuck yourself, there's soil in your shoes.

It 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 gosh.

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 Kockenzie Power station, when both girls 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, Yeah, right. This time, the prosecutor Frank Mulholland. 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 Fairley 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 for you, Geraldine, forensic scientist Let's Go Girl, explained 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.

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 Eady. Rather than an unknown and undetective individual. In our opinion, the findings are fitting with our range of expectations. Had Gordon 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's Toyota.

Caravanette to Hollyrood Park, where 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?

You 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, dude, he's a fucking demon. He's filthy. yeah, he's literally filthy, like filthy.

That's a perfect word for it. He is a filthy fuck ugh. 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 and 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 went to her grave and never knew what happened. I hope wherever she is, she knows that her granddaughter was.

What happened was at least honored with justice. So Angus Sinclair was the first person to be retried and convicted after the passage of the Double Jeopardy Act. And Frank Mulholland 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, Angus Sinclair suffered a bunch of strokes. He ended up being bedridden and incontinent until his death on March 11th of that year.

Oh, baby, I am dancing in these streets. Yep, fuck you angus, fuck that guy.

At the time of his death, he was serving life sentences for the murders of Christine Eadie, Helen Scott and Mary Gallagher, but police still suspect him of those other murders. Oh, absolutely, now. Helen's father, Moraine, did. Um, he did pass away in 2015, so he did. He was able to see a lot and he was 85. Wow. 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 have 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, I mean, when you got to the part where they didn't. I was like, is this how this is going to end? And she gave me Teresita Basa and this. I could not. Because I mean, these families 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 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, slapped in the face. Essentially, yeah, exactly. But luckily, it does eventually have justice in the end. Thank goodness.

For at least one of them, what a awesome way to get justice, too, with the Double Jeopardy Act. I know that's the thing, it's so theatrical, the way that it all came together.

I love that it all came together that way, me too. It was like Christine and Helen were working things. yeah, they were making it happen. Hell yeah.

I mean, they made shit happen on this plane. Hell yeah, exactly wow, yeah.

That was 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 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, don't be this fucking weird, don't keep it as weird as Angus.

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