Gone Fishing: The Unsolved Crimes of Angus Sinclair

Angus Robertson Sinclair, one of the worst killers the UK has ever seen, was convicted of four murders. His first took place in his home city of Glasgow in 1961, when he raped and murdered his seven-year-old neighbour Catherine Reehill when he was just sixteen. But after spending a mere six years in prison, he was released in his early twenties to kill again. Teenagers Helen Scott and Christine Eadie were last seen at the World's End pub on Edinburgh's Royal Mile in October 1977. The next morning both were found murdered; not together, but a few miles apart on the East Lothian coast. They had both been raped before they were killed. The largest investigation in Scottish police history didn't find their killer. Several years later, in 1982, Sinclair was jailed for life after he was charged with and admitted eleven charges of rape and indecent assault. However, twenty years after this, as Sinclair was beginning to be hopeful about being released on parole, a cold case review showed that Sinclair's DNA had been found on the body of 17-year-old Mary Gallagher, a 1978 Glasgow murder that had been previously unsolved. These discoveries lead detectives to examine the link between Sinclair and several other unsolved cases. Scientific advances put Sinclair and his brother-in law Gordon Hamilton who died in 1996 firmly in the frame for the World's End pub murders of Helen Scott and Christine Eadie. In 2007 Sinclair stood trial for these murders, but a lack of evidence saw the case collapse. But following the change in Scotland's double jeopardy law, Sinclair again faced trial for the World's End murders in 2014, and this time was found guilty. The judge said the words 'evil' and 'monster' were not enough to describe Sinclair, as he sentenced him to a minimum of 37 years in prison for the murders of the two teenagers. This is the longest sentence issued to anyone in a Scottish court, and ensured that Sinclair would die in jail. But there were more victims. Many more. Sinclair was convicted of four murders, but we believe he murdered at least twelve people, maybe fourteen. And in this book, we tell their stories.