Neil MacKay: Scotland's unsolved murders

As well as appealing for information about the missing suitcase, detectives also say they are interested in Leanach Quarry near Culloden and a lay-by on the A9 where MacRae’s car was found burned out. Just last month, around the same time that police put out an appeal for Andrew MacRae’s missing pushchair, officers from the major investigations team and the marine investigations team spent several days at the quarry. Police have not ruled out draining the quarry.

No matter how old or difficult a case may be, there is always hope – whether through old fashioned police work, cutting edge science, or the ending of the double jeopardy rule, which now allows prosecutors to put a suspect on trial for a crime even if they’ve been acquitted previously.

In London, a man is currently being tried in an infamous cold case involving the alleged murder to two nine-year-old girls. Russell Bishop is on trial for a second time charged with killing Karen Hadaway and Nicola Fellows in Brighton in 1986. He was initially cleared of the girls’ murder in 1987. The Court of Appeal ordered a fresh trial in light of new DNA evidence. Bishop denies the two charges of murder.

In Scotland, there are dozens, if not hundreds of cases waiting to be cracked, some stretching back a century and more. He are five of the most notorious:

BRENDA PAGE

THE brutal murder of Dr Brenda Page remains one of Scotland’s most notorious unsolved cold cases.

It is 40 years since the brilliant geneticist was found beaten to death in her flat in Aberdeen. It later emerged that Page, aged 32, also worked as an escort - fuelling speculation that her murderer was one of her clients.

In early July 1978, Page had dinner with William Austin, who ran the Capital Escort Agency. Austin recalled that Page seemed frightened and “concerned about her safety”.

On July 13, she went as an escort to the Treetops Hotel in Aberdeen to meet two business men. Page is spotted leaving the hotel at 2.30am - the last time she’s seen alive. Page failed to show up for work the next day, and her body was discovered when a colleague called at her home looking for ‘material for a research programme’.

She had been working at Aberdeen University on a project for the Department of Energy, investigating dangers facing divers in the North Sea oil industry. There have been claims that her death could have been linked to her research.

Marius Reikeras, a Norwegian human rights campaigner who represented oil industry divers working in the 70s and 80s, referred to a number of Norwegian cases where people investigating corruption in the North Sea died.

Reikeras said: “There are various parties that stand to lose a lot so perhaps her research was a factor in her murder.”

However, a more prosaic explanation for her death than industry conspiracy or escorting, is that she was murdered after disturbing a burglar.

By the end of July police ruled out Austin, the escort agency boss, as well as the two men she’d met prior to her death, and her ex-husband Dr Christopher Harrison, who later left Scotland.

A cold case review was launched in 2015, and has so far gathered 800 individual pieces of information, on top of all the evidence gathered at the time.

Her sister Rita, 84, said: “Not a day goes by when we don’t think about Brenda and the horrendous ordeal she must have suffered that night. Brenda was an extremely intelligent woman with her whole life ahead of her. It pains us to think of the great things she would undoubtedly have achieved.”

Detective Inspector Gary Winter of Police Scotland’s major investigation team, said of Page’s time as an escort: “Most people’s accepted definition of being an escort in 2018 is very different to what it was 40 years ago. Nowadays, if we use that word, people assume the person is involved in the sex industry – that was not the case in 1978.

“It was a means for Brenda to meet people, get companionship and company and go out socialising in an era before the internet, dating websites and apps.

“Escorting was something Brenda spoke about widely with friends and colleagues – it was no secret. People connected to that part of Brenda’s life have spoken to us and what that has unearthed is that it wasn’t a seedy business.”

RENEE AND ANDREW MACREA

IT was a case which both scandalised and shocked the Scottish highlands in the 1970s - and has continued to baffle and obsess the nation ever since.

The story begins on Friday, November 12 1976, when Renee MacRae left her home in Inverness with her sons Gordon, 9, and Andrew, 3. Renee, who was 36, was separated but she left her oldest son with her husband Gordon, before travelling south on the A9 towards Perth - apparently to visit her sister. She and her son Andrew were never seen again.

Later that night, a train driver saw Renee’s car, a BMW, burning in a lay-by. Police were notified and when they got to the smouldering wreck, there was nothing to be found apart from a rug with a blood stain matching Renee.

A huge hunt was launched for Renee and her son Andrew - but to no avail. Witnesses reported seeing a man dragging something described as a dead sheep, not far from where the car had been found. On the night of her death, Renee was wearing a sheepskin coat. Witnesses also said they had seen a man with a pushchair near a local quarry.

Detectives soon discovered that Renee had a complicated private life. She had been having an affair with a man called Bill McDowell - he was marred with two children and worked for Renee’s husband Gordon. He was also the biological father of Andrew. The only person who knew about the affair was Renee’s best friend Valerie Steventon. She explained that Renee had in fact not been on the way to visit her sister on the night of her disappearance, but was going to meet MacDowell.

Renee was ‘besotted’ with MacDowell, according to Steventon. He had told her that he’d got a job with an oil firm in Shetland and found a house for them all to live together. Stevenson said, however, that this was a ‘pack of lies’. MacDowell has vehemently denied any involvement in the case.

How the case was investigated became as bizarre as the disappearances. Officers searching Dalmagarry quarry came across a strong smell. Digging began but was stopped when police ran out of funds for the hire of a bulldozer.

Digging restarted in 2004. Some 20,000 tonnes of earth were removed at a cost of £122,000 however all that was found were some crisp packets, men’s clothing and rabbit bones.

Police have also followed lines of inquiry that the bodies may be buried under the A9 - the road was getting a major upgrade at the time. An 80-year-old farmer even used divining rods to search for the bodies. He marked a spot on the A9 which he believed to be a grave.

Just this week, officers said they were searching for the brown suitcase Renee had with her on the night she vanished, and described it as a ‘significant’ piece of evidence. Last month, on what would have been Andrew’s 45th birthday, cold case detectives appealed for information on the whereabouts of his pushchair.

MOIRA ANDERSON

SHE would be 73 years old today - but instead Scotland remembers her as a smiling child of 12, forever frozen in time on the day of her disappearance .

Moira Anderson left her grandmother’s home on Saturday February 23 1957 to buy some butter for her family at the local co-op in Coatbridge. The shop was ten minutes away but Moira never made it, nor did she ever return home.

As is so often seen with the disappearance of children, a huge search party swept the local area. Local cinemas were asked to check their premises in case the child had accidentally become locked in overnight. Council workers who were on strike, called off their protest to help with the search.

There were reports of Moira being seen on a bus near her home not long after she left her grandmother’s house. But the claims led nowhere. However, if police had followed the lead up, they would have found out that the driver of the bus was a man called Alexander Gartshore, on bail for raping his children’s babysitter.

His daughter, Sandra Brown, believes Gartshore was Moira’s killer. She described a conversation in which Gartshore said his own father would never ‘forgive me for Moira Anderson’.

When Gartshore was spoken to by police in 1992, he said Moira had taken the bus in order to buy her mother a birthday card as a surprise. Police eventually decided that they did not have enough evidence to charge Gartshore. He died in 2006. In 2014, prosecutors said Gartshore would have faced trial if he were still alive. Moira’s body has never been found.

BIBLE JOHN

IF Scotland has a case which haunts the collective memory like Jack the Ripper, then it is the Bible John murders in the late 1960s. The killer was responsible for at least three unsolved murders: Patricia Docker, Jemima McDonald and Helen Puttock.

Patricia’s body was found naked in the doorway of a lock-up garage in the Battlefield area of Glasgow in February 1968 - just yards from her own home. The 25-year-old nurse had been beaten, raped and strangled. She had spent the night before her death dancing at the Barrowland Ballroom.

The night of Saturday August 16 1969, also saw 32-year-old mother of three Jemima McDonald dancing at the Barrowland Ballroom. She was seen leaving with a young, well-dressed man who slipped quotes from the Bible into conversation.

By Monday, Jemima had still not arrived home. Rumours had been circulating that children were coming in and out of a derelict tenement on MacKeith Street and talking of a dead body. Jemima’s sister Margaret was so worried that she walked to the building and inside discovered her sister’s corpse. Jemima had been beaten, raped and strangled with her stockings.

On Halloween 1969, the body of Helen Puttock was found in her own back garden - she too had been beaten, raped and strangled. Like Patricia and Jemima, she had been menstruating at the time of her murder - a possible psychological motive for the killer.

On the evening before her murder, Helen had also been at the Barrowland Ballroom with her sister Jean. Helen danced with a man called John. The three of them later got a taxi across the city, during which John repeatedly quoted from the bible. Jean got out of the taxi near her house, and Helen and John continued in the direction of Helen’s home.

Later that night, a man matching the description of John got on a local bus - his clothes were stained and there was a bruise on his face. He was noticeably playing with his shirt cuff. A cuff link was found by Helen’s body.

With three women now dead in disturbingly similar circumstances, a huge man hunt was launched. The suspect had short hair - something quite unusual for a young man in the late 60s, so 450 barbers were contacted; the suspect also had overlapping teeth so every dentist in Glasgow was spoken to by detectives. Some 5000 suspects were interviewed, by more than 100 officers, and 50,000 witness statements taken. Helen’s sister Jean would attend 300 identity parades. Undercover officers mingled with dancers at the Barrowlands. It was all to no avail. Bible John, as the killer was now dubbed, was never caught.

Many now believe that serial killer Peter Tobin is most likely Bible John. In 1993, he was convicted of raping two 14-year-olds. In 2006, two years after his release from prison, he was working as a handyman at a church in Glasgow when he raped and murdered Angelika Kluk, a Polish student. He was later convicted of the 1991 murder of 15-year-old Vicky Hamilton from Falkirk. Tobin was also convicted in 2009 of the murder of 18-year-old Dinah McNicol from Essex in 1991. However, it is unlikely any DNA connection can be made between Tobin and the Bible John killings due to the deterioration of forensic samples.

ALISTAIR WILSON

IT begins with a ringing doorbell on a Sunday night in November 2004. Alistair and Veronica Wilson are at home in Nairn, getting their children ready for bed. Veronica answers the door. A man stands there. He says only two words: ‘Alistair Wilson’.

Veronica goes back inside, and tells her husband someone is at the door for him. Alistair speaks briefly to the visitor and then returns, closing the door behind him. He holds a blue envelope bearing the name ‘Paul’. The envelope is empty. Alistair returns to the front door to see if the man is still there. The visitor has remained on the door step.

Veronica hears a loud noise, she races to the front door and her husband is lying in a pool of blood. He has been shot twice in the head and once in the body and is barely alive.

Veronica sees the killer walking away. An hour later Alistair is dead, murdered in what seems like a gangland-style execution - to this day no-one knows why. The envelope which Alistair had in his hands is never seen again. Ten days after the killing an antique gun is found in a drain not far from their house. It is the murder weapon.

The Wilsons seemed a perfectly normal happy family. Alistair was a banker, Veronica a graphic designer, and the couple had plenty of friends. He was devoted family man. Why would someone kill him?

Suspicions as to the motive for his death have centred on his work as a banker, with many seeing the mysterious blue envelope as the key to the case.

His wife insists there was no dark secret in her husband’s life. She believes the killer may have got the wrong ‘Alistair Wilson’. There was another Alistair Wilson in Nairn, just a few minutes walk away from the murder scene. He was in his 60s and later died.

There have been claims Alistair borrowed money linked to the underworld, and even reports connecting the case to Irish paramilitaries. On Wednesday, a former detective claimed in a new book that the killing could be linked to the finances of Livingston FC which went into administration in 2004. The extent of speculation underscores just how incomprehensible the crime remains.

As Alistair’s widow Veronica says: ‘For us as a family, we need to know why. This is just so senseless. Our life just won’t ever be anything without answers.’

COLD CASE FILES

Emma Caldwell, May 2005. She and six other women who were sex workers on the streets of Glasgow were murdered over a decade. There was speculation the murders were the work of a serial killer. Police dismissed the claim.

Billy Sibbald, October 2002. Sibbald vanished after telling his wife he was meeting business associates. His decomposing body was found three months later in woodland near Mussleburgh.

Alex Blue, June 2002. Blue was found outside his home in Glasgow’s west end with head injuries, and died in hospital. He ran a lucrative taxi firm. He told friends he was viewing a house on the day he was attacked. It later emerged the home was never on the market.

Frank McPhee, May 2000. McPhee, a Glasgow gangland figure, died from a single shot to the head from a sniper in Maryhill. Police investigated links to Irish terrorism, drugs and dog-fighting. McPhee had twice been cleared of murder himself.

Caroline Glachan, August 1996. The 14-year-old left her home in the Vale of Leven to meet friends. Her battered body was found the next day, the victim of a seemingly motiveless attack. There had been no sexual assault.

Ann Ballantine, November 1986. The 20-year-old was found in a canal in Edinburgh, wrapped in a carpet. She had been raped and strangled by her attacker. It is believed that her murderer kept her somewhere before dumping her body.

UNSOLVED MURDERS FROM HISTORY

Marion Gilchrist, 1908. The wealthy 82-year-old Glaswegian was beaten to death and the only thing taken was a diamond brooch. Oscar Slater, who had gone to America and pawned a brooch, was convicted, but the sentence was eventually quashed. The creator of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, was involved in securing his release.

Emile L’Angelier, 1857. In one of the most sensational murder cases of the Victorian age, L’Angelier’s lover Madeleine Smith, from a wealthy Glasgow family, was accused of poisoning him with arsenic. The verdict was ‘not proven’. Smith fled Scotland after the trial and died in New York in 1928 under the pseudonym Lena Sheehy.