The painstaking
work of the police
over the years
is reviewed by
Raymond Duncan.
IT WAS a most poignant sight and one seen by millions of television
viewers the length and breadth of the country.
A videotape showing a pretty schoolgirl reading poetry to her
classmates should have been an occasion for enjoyment. Its purpose,
however, was never intended to delight.
The police were pinning their hopes on jogging the public's memory,
believing that someone somewhere could hold a vital clue to the
whereabouts of the missing child.
It was to no avail. Susan Maxwell was some days later found brutally
murdered and more than likely the little Girl Guide was dead when she
was seen and heard on the nation's television screens. The police now
made a new plea to the viewers: ''Help us find her killer.''
That appeal signalled the start of a murder investigation that was to
become the biggest manhunt ever by police in Britain. It was to last
nine years, have unparalleled manpower resources, and cost an estimated
#5m to mount.
Eleven year-old Susan, who lived with her parents in the Northumbria
village of Cornhill-on-Tweed a few hundred yards from the
Scotland-England Border crossing, had vanished in the summer of 1982.
That July day she had been playing tennis in the Borders village of
Coldstream. After the game and dressed in a distinctive yellow T-shirt
and tennis shorts she headed back to her farm home, her route along the
A697 taking her across the Coldstream Bridge.
It was the first time that her parents had allowed their daughter, who
had been carrying a tennis racquet, a plastic vacuum flask, and a tennis
ball, to walk home alone. She was never seen alive again.
Two weeks later on August 12 her body was found 200 miles away in
Staffordshire in the undergrowth of a copse adjacent to the A518 road
from Uttoxeter to Stafford at Loxley Wood.
The murder investigation that was launched in the wake of the
discovery involved one Scottish and two English forces.
Officers from Lothian and Borders teamed up with colleagues from the
Staffordshire and Northumbria forces to track down her killer.
Hundreds of people including those who were attending an agricultural
show in Kelso and a dog show in Stafford during the weekend she
disappeared were interviewed.
Despite the intense efforts of the investigating team the killer
remained at large. Twelve months or so after the murder of Susan Maxwell
he struck again.
Caroline Hogg, from the Portobello area of Edinburgh, was snatched
from a local funfair only hours after attending a friend's birthday
party. She had left her home about 7pm on July 8 to play nearby.
Like the Maxwell case it happened on a balmy Friday night in July at
the height of the tourist season and like the 11-year-old's abduction it
happened in a public place.
The striking similarities, as it sadly turned out, did not end there.
Eleven days after her abduction from the promenade along the Firth of
Forth, Caroline's badly decomposed body was discovered in a lay-by in
the Midlands.
Her identity finally confirmed by dental records, Caroline had been
dumped in the countryside between the villages of Twycross and Sibson in
Leicestershire, about 30 miles from where Susan was found.
Both girls' bodies had been found, unclothed and partially hidden by
undergrowth, within easy access of main trunk routes to the South and
the Midlands of England. Both Caroline and Susan had been seen by
witnesses in the company of strangers just before they disappeared.
Liaison between the Leicestershire force and the officers working on
the Maxwell investigation was immediate and other swift action followed.
Shortly after the discovery of Caroline's body one of the country's most
experienced police officers was appointed to co-ordinate what was now
Britain's biggest ever manhunt.
Hector Clark, who had risen through the ranks to the post of assistant
chief constable of Northumbria, had the reputation of always getting his
man.
At a news conference after his appointment he called the deaths of the
two schoolgirls ''the vicious, nasty, despicable acts of unnecessary
violence against two children incapable of properly protecting
themselves''.
Three years later the Hogg-Maxwell investigation was to be widened
even further. In March 1986 10 year-old Salvation Army choirgirl Sarah
Harper was making her way to her home at Morley near Leeds after going
to a corner shop for a loaf of bread and some crisps.
Like the other girls Sarah never saw her home again. Her body was
found almost four weeks later in the river Trent about 70 miles from the
house. She, too, had been sexually assaulted.
Within days of her body being discovered 15 police forces attended a
Scotland Yard summit into a series of child murders and abductions
including the Maxwell and Hogg cases.
Unable to rule out the possibility of the river death being linked to
these two incidents, officers from the Nottingham force joined what was
to become the largest computerised murder hunt ever in the UK.
In 1987 a Child Murder Bureau was set up and this led to to West
Yorkshire becoming the sixth police force directly involved in the
manhunt.
Already at the disposal of Mr Clark had been computer equipment
installed by Lothians and Borders Police two years earlier. He and his
colleagues now began using a new computer system to crosscheck the
evidence from each inquiry.
Holmes -- Home Office Large Major Enquiry System -- was housed at
police headquarters in Bradford and linked the investigations by the six
forces.
With the mountain of paperwork which had gathered since the Maxwell
murder this facility was an invaluable asset for references and cross
references to documents.
By early 1988 in the Caroline and Susan inquiries alone 48,000
vehicles had been traced, 33,000 people interviewed, and 19,000
statements taken.
In the Ripper investigation there had been criticism that officers had
got bogged down in paperwork. The capabilities of Holmes freed
detectives on the child murders inquiry to spend more time on the
ground.
At one point in the Hogg murder investigation detectives looked
towards Australia for a possible breakthrough.
A video taken by an Australian tourist while in the Portobello area
was flown to Britain where officers, armed with witnesses accounts of a
figure seen sitting on a sea wall and a description of a man seen with
Caroline, hoped by a stroke of luck that it might have captured a vital
clue.
As well as relaying an appeal in buses fitted with audio systems in 14
towns and cities throughout Britain police also sought the help of the
Asian community.
An Asian family had been seen in a swing park near Caroline's home and
announcements were made in the city's Sikh temple and mosque. The
national Urdu and Punjabi newspapers printed in London but circulated
widely throughout the UK were contacted to carry a description of the
family group.
An appeal also went out to people from the West of Scotland who had
spent their holidays in and around the area of Portobello's Fun City at
the time of Caroline's disappearance. As in the Maxwell investigation,
police organised a reconstruction. A policeman's daughter retraced the
girl's known steps.
Detectives also turned for help to the FBI where a team of crime
investigators at their base in Virginia worked on a psychological
profile of Caroline's killer.
Hypnosis, too, was used in the Hogg investigation after a lorry driver
who was returning from holiday with his wife reported that he had almost
collided with a Ford Cortina being driven at speed north of Coldstream
about two hours after Caroline's disappearance.
In a bid to recall the sighting of the car in which he said a girl
answering her description was in the rear seat, the driver volunteered
to undergo hypnosis.
After providing details of the car, experts from Ford travelled to
Edinburgh from Dagenham to help the police identify the model and year
in what was the largest vehicle search ever mounted at the time in the
UK.
Within eight weeks of Caroline being found police had logged more than
56,000 entries in its vehicle and nominal index. In the case of Susan
Maxwell the figure had exceeded 200,000.
Despite the countless hours of work put into solving the murders and
the huge manpower employed on the task the investigation drew a blank
although on at least one occasion police believed they were close to
identifying the murderer.
In May 1987 a Northumbria man, questioned for more than two days, was
eliminated and the relentless pursuit was on again.
While the file stayed open and the investigation remained live, its
scale at that point -- a murder squad in excess of 40 detectives -- had
to be, not surprisingly, reduced the following year as lead after lead
went cold.
However Mr Clark, who had made a public appeal on the BBC's Crimewatch
programme, regularly brought together representatives of the forces
involved for conferences and briefings to update progress.
In 1990 they got the breakthrough they were looking for and as in the
Maxwell and Hogg cases the month of July figured prominently.
A six-year-old girl walking to her friend's house in a Borders village
was pulled into a van and sexually assaulted. Her hands had been tied
behind her back, two pieces of plaster were stuck over her face and a
bag had been placed over her head.
Her escape was due to the vigilance of a villager who had spotted her
being bundled into the vehicle. The incident had been over in seconds
but just one glance had been enough for the unemployed potter to note
the registration and alert the police who intercepted the van.
Robert Black was arrested and less than two months later appeared at
the High Court in Edinburgh. He was jailed for life for abduction and
sexual assault.
The packed courtroom listened as Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, the Lord
Advocate, accused Black of acting ''with chilling, cold calculation and
cunning with no regard to the little girl or her life.'' The killer of
Susan Maxwell, Caroline Hogg, and Sarah Jane Harper had shown the same
sickening characteristics. Hector Clark sat only feet from the dock.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article