The Law Killers (32 page)

The tale of their posthumous introduction began on the afternoon of 21 March 1979 when a couple walking in the snow in Templeton Woods on the outskirts of Dundee came upon the body of a young woman. She was naked and had been strangled. A huge murder hunt was launched but it led nowhere.

The investigation had all but petered out when 11 months later two men hunting rabbits in the same wood discovered the body of another young female. She too had had been asphyxiated and all of her clothing had also been removed. The locations in the forest where the two corpses had been found were only 150 yards apart.

From that day hence, the hellish fate of the two young women, who never knew each other, has joined them together like sisters, their untimely passing creating the most enduring murder mystery their home town has ever known.

Did they perish at the hands of the same serial killer? Or were their deaths, like their lives, disparate and unconnected? Judge for yourself …

CAROL

When the car eased to a halt at the pavement corner in the centre of town, the young woman in the black velvet jacket who stepped out of the shadows to open the passenger’s door exchanged few words with the pale-faced driver.

‘Are you looking for business?’ she asked with a mixture of nervousness and defiance.

‘Aye,’ the driver replied, nodding an invitation for her to take the seat beside him.

The 18-year-old slid thankfully into the warm interior of the vehicle, saying no more but glad to escape the freezing cold of the March night. Moments later the car was clear of the Red Light area and was lost in the mid-evening traffic in central Dundee. The two occupants only spoke again to discuss the teenager’s range of services and their cost. Then they headed out of town towards Templeton Woods on the northern edge of the city where lovers found romance in secluded lanes and strangers performed loveless acts of intimacy, with money taking the place of passion.

Nobody, except the man who took her on that emotionless journey, knows exactly what happened next. But Carol Lannen never returned to the streets of Dundee or the three-month-old baby son she had left at the home she shared with her sister.

The following afternoon, a young couple strolling through the snow-covered woods found her unclothed body 150 yards into the forest, her last breath of life having been throttled out of her.

No one would have believed then that the grim discovery on 21 March 1979 would launch the most intensive and long-lasting murder hunt the city had ever known, with more man-hours being devoted to its solution than any other homicide before or since. More than a quarter of a century later, after scientific advances gave the investigation fresh impetus, detectives were still sifting evidence, still seeking witnesses – and were still no further forward in tracking down her killer.

Yet it had not seemed in the first days of the inquiry that the case would prove particularly baffling or find a prominent place in the record books of Dundee’s black museum of violent death. When Carol Lannen stepped into the car at the corner of Exchange Street and Commercial Street at 7.50 p.m. to be driven quickly away, her movements had been noted by a fellow prostitute. ‘Working girls’ know only too well that their chosen profession places them in the front line to become the victims of men who find pleasure in attacking women who sell their services, so the band of sisters who walk the streets look out for each other. They take casual note of the cars each of them depart in and if there is a dodgy punter on the prowl the word is put around. It isn’t much, but it’s a safety net of sorts.

That night, one of the girls paid particular attention to the driver who anxiously pulled away from the pavement with Carol seated next to him. She was later to describe him as being aged between 25 and 30, of thin build and with a pale complexion, short dark hair, short sideburns and a moustache which needed trimming. The description led to the murder team issuing a photo-fit picture of the man, the first time police in Dundee had ever released such a picture.

This information was better than the detectives might have hoped for. By definition, prostitutes and their customers operate in a shadowy, anonymous world of false identities and fleeting encounters, where there is a brief exchange of cash and carnal activity before the participants disappear back into the night. They seldom swap business cards and even ‘regulars’ don’t give much away.

Unexpectedly perhaps, the witness was unable at first to offer much assistance about the type of car the man had driven. That was as frustrating as the fact that snow had fallen later that night, causing difficulties for forensic specialists hoping to take casts of footprints and tyre tracks in the wood. The evidence they sought melted away almost as fast as the fresh snow. Tracker dogs growled and sniffed but trotted in aimless circles in the sodden conditions. In addition, the victim’s clothing and handbag, which might have yielded clues, were missing.

The random nature of how the two people who had gone together to Templeton Woods that night, had met, made it vital for police to find some kind of clue to the make and colour of car the couple had shared.

The helpful fellow prostitute was questioned at length but little progress was made. She knew more about faces than automobiles. Finally, she agreed to submit to hypnosis by a local dentist who used the technique in the treatment of some of his patients. It produced the result that the woman believed the car was red and possibly a Ford Cortina estate.

That formed the linchpin for almost the entire police inquiry. Scores of detectives were drafted in to track down the drivers of such vehicles. Registration records were minutely examined and in the weeks that followed more than 6,000 men all over the country, who drove that type and colour of car, were questioned. The exhaustive research drew a blank. So did the offer of confidentiality for kerb crawlers who were invited to come forward with information.

Eleven days after the launch of the murder hunt, events took an unexpected – and in many ways – unwelcome turn. Carol’s handbag and some of her clothing were found 85 miles away on the banks of the River Don near Kintore, 17 miles north of Aberdeen. That added a new dimension to the inquiry. No longer could it be assumed that the killer was probably local. Now the investigation had to be widened, and significantly. It was never established how long the bag, which contained money and a family allowance book, had lain before being found, but some reports suggested the items had been seen there at least a week earlier. That fitted. Reasonably, police assumed the killer would have disposed of them soon after the murder since he would have been reluctant to drive around with such incriminating evidence for any length of time. The question was raised that the hunted man may have had strong links in the north, for unless it had been an elaborate red herring, he would have been unlikely to have driven 85 miles in heavy snow and on difficult roads just to dispose of the bag and clothing. Could he have been a worker in the oil industry, which linked Dundee and Aberdeen in so many other ways? Or could he have been a taxi driver, say one who had taken a fare – perhaps an oilman – north and used the distance to dispose of the incriminating items in his boot?

Yet, despite the minor breakthrough of the riverside find, it yielded nothing of assistance to the investigation. It served only to widen and complicate the murder hunt.

The slaying of the 18-year-old mother was not the first killing in Dundee to go undetected. But it was the first to be the subject of such a prolonged and meticulous hunt for the person responsible. Within weeks, more than 7,000 people had been interviewed and every hotel, boarding house and bed and breakfast establishment in the city had been visited by police officers. The inquiry attracted national media interest but nothing produced the breakthrough that had initially appeared to be so imminent.

As the months passed and the leads dried up, the size of the operation was scaled down. It regained impetus twice within the space of a few weeks some 20 months after it began, first with the discovery of a woman’s blood-stained clothing in a lay-by on the outskirts of Aberdeen, seemingly deposited by the driver of a red Ford Cortina. Then, a woman reported that she had been picked up in the centre of Aberdeen and assaulted, but not injured, by someone said to be driving a red car.

Those heading the Dundee murder hunt were alerted to both incidents. But, once more, seemingly promising developments dissolved into nothing as quickly as they had materialised. Every other unsolved murder of young women across the country brought inevitable comparisons and close scrutiny for similarities. None yielded the unmistakable fingerprints – actual or metaphorical – to confirm the killing was part of any serial spree.

After several years passed without a breakthrough, some began to question the wisdom of allowing almost the entire focus of the Carol Lannen inquiry to be devoted to finding the driver of the red Ford Cortina estate car, who was widely assumed to have been the killer. Since there was little else for police to go on, such a concentration on the ownership of the vehicle was understandable. But what if the categoric description of the car by a fellow prostitute, probably no expert in car identification, under hypnosis, had been wrong, perhaps drawn from her by well-meaning but untrained interrogators? It meant that the drivers of anything but that model and colour of vehicle were unlikely to have a policeman knocking at their door.

Despite the passage of time, the mystery continued to attract headlines and every newspaper article or TV broadcast surprisingly brought forth fresh scraps of information and new witnesses with tales to tell or fingers to point in particular directions.

A television documentary featuring the case 25 years after Carol’s naked body was found lying in the forest snow produced a flood of more than 100 phone calls to the hastily reconstituted incident room. Astonishingly, 17 people provided possible identities for the photo-fit picture of the driver who had taken the young mother on her final journey.

The new murder squad pursued every lead – and met with the same lack of success as their dogged predecessors.

Unusually in such a sustained and intensive inquiry, not a single serious suspect emerged. Given the detailed description of the pale-faced man who prowled the red light district that night, the vast number of car drivers interviewed, and the finding of the victim’s belongings 85 miles from the murder scene, these things by themselves make the case particularly remarkable.

It didn’t help that there was no obvious motive. Prostitutes are easy prey and a distressing number meet their end at the hands of a certain type of man who simply finds gratification in killing women. Those driven to murder on these occasions frequently cannot stop at a single victim – in which case the man who drove into Templeton Woods that cold winter night, may have succumbed to the same irresistible urges before or since. If he wasn’t one of these unfathomable people, what other reason could he have had for so brutally ending the life of a young woman? Did his victim recognise him and threaten to expose him, or was there an accompanying blackmail demand that required a violent response? Police considered these possibilities but there was no one, at least then, who fitted the profile.

ELIZABETH

When Elizabeth McCabe stepped out into Union Street from Teazers nightclub around 12.30 a.m. that freezing February morning in 1980, an air of despondency hung over her. A weekend that had promised so much had ended with her having a tiff with her best friend and in a few hours time she would be back on duty at Law Nursery where she was an assistant. It was another Monday and nearly a week would pass before her next night out. She pulled up the collar of the short jacket that covered the blue V-neck jumper she had bought on the Saturday afternoon, smoothed her matching denim jeans and walked slowly away, the bright lights and dull beat of the discotheque fading behind her as she threaded her way through the knots of other late night stragglers. Within seconds she was lost to the sight of other revellers filtering out of Teazers.

From that moment on, she simply vanished. Not a person on earth has ever come forward to positively say they saw her again, though, for one person at least, her final movements will be the most indelible memory of their life.

Despite the 20-year-old disappearing into the night, her non-arrival at home did not immediately sound alarm bells. When her mother Anne went to rouse her for work at 6.30 that morning and found her bed still freshly made, she was concerned but not overly worried, believing she had probably stayed the night with Sandra Niven, the friend she had gone clubbing with the previous evening. But by teatime, having phoned the nursery to be told Elizabeth had not turned up for work and that none of her pals, including Sandra, had any idea of her whereabouts, she was filled with apprehension. With growing anxiety, she went with her husband Jim to their nearest police station to report their daughter missing. The details of Elizabeth’s last movements were noted, mild assurances were given that she would likely re-appear soon and officers promised to be in touch if there were any developments. Beyond that, not much happened. Young women not turning up for a day or two after a night out was not particularly unique. Besides, there was nothing to suggest she might have come to harm. It was an understandable reaction from the police, even if her parents were convinced their daughter’s failure to return home was far from ordinary.

Two weeks passed without any hint about what might have happened to the attractive student nursery nurse. Family and friends were recruited to tour the pubs Elizabeth was known to visit and customers were asked if they had seen her and requested to look out for her. Nightly, her distraught father trailed the city streets in search of his vanished daughter while her mother sat fearfully by the phone awaiting the call which would end their misery. She prayed it would come from Elizabeth, but as the days passed she knew in her heart that was unlikely. Her missing girl was the first-born of her four children and was a responsible, considerate daughter who had never caused her any trouble. There did not seem the least likelihood that she would stay away from home without any kind of explanation or contact. Nor was there any possibility that she might have taken her own life. Elizabeth enjoyed her work and the Dundee social scene and had been excitedly looking forward to her 21st birthday in a few days time. Her disappearance made no sense at all.