Calls for inquiry after World's End trial collapse

Answers sought to claims that Crown did not lead all available evidence

News, 11 September 2007

There have been calls for an inquiry into the Crown’s handling of the World’s End murder trial after the collapse of the case against Angus Sinclair yesterday.

Sinclair, 62, was cleared of murdering Helen Scott and Christine Eadie, both 17, after judge Lord Clarke ruled that there was insufficient evidence from the Crown to entitle a jury to hold beyond reasonable doubt that Sinclair carried out the murders.

Sinclair had been accused of raping and killing both girls in October 1977 after meeting them on a night out in Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, which ended in the World’s End pub. He was said to have acted with his brother-in-law Gordon Hamilton, who has since died.

The bodies were found on a beach in East Lothian. They had been beaten and strangled.

Sinclair has returned to Peterhead Prison where he is serving life sentences for the murder of seven-year-old Catherine Reehill in 1961 and 17-year-old Mary Gallagher in 1978, and 11 sexual assaults.

Lothian Independent MSP Margo MacDonald has called for an inquiry into the acquittal, saying she had been told that only a fifth of the Crown’s evidence was led by advocate depute Alan Mackay.

It has been suggested that the Crown took a decision not to charge Sinclair also with the murders of three other women in Glasgow in 1977 which police believe were carried out by the same person as in the World's End case. However there was a lack of forensic evidence in these cases.

Margaret Curran, the Labour justice spokeswoman, said the families of Helen Scott and Christine Eadie had been forced to relive the events of the past for nothing.

It is believed that the jury was not told about samples of DNA that could be linked to Sinclair were found on the ligatures used to kill both women.