A former taxi driver walked free from court yesterday, cleared of the murder of a nursery nurse whose naked body was dumped in Dundee�s Templeton Woods more than a quarter of a century ago.

A former taxi driver walked free from court yesterday, cleared of the murder of a nursery nurse whose naked body was dumped in Dundee's Templeton Woods more than a quarter of a century ago.

Vincent Simpson, 61, greeted the not guilty verdict with "Thank you very much", before being shown out through a side door.

The jury's majority verdict meant that the mystery of Elizabeth McCabe's last hours remains unsolved 27 years after her death.

Her mother Anne, 67, and other members of her family had been at the High Court in Edinburgh almost every day for the past seven weeks hoping for answers which never came.

Their distress at the verdict was clearly visible but they made no comment.

For the second time in three months the same courtroom has witnessed trials resulting from murders committed many years ago end without conviction.

In September, Angus Sinclair, 62, was cleared of the 1977 World's End murders of 17-year-old friends Helen Scott and Christine Eadie when the case against him collapsed.

After yesterday's verdict, Detective Inspector Alastair Reid, who had interviewed Mr Simpson about the murder in 1995, said: "Elizabeth's family are understandably disappointed at today's verdict.

"They have been in court each day of the trial, an experience they have found both distressing and upsetting. Their only motive was to seek justice for Elizabeth."

Mr Reid said the family understood and appreciated the efforts which had been made to bring the matter to court.

Detective Chief Inspector Ewen West, who led the reopened inquiry, said he respected the verdict in what had been a difficult and complicated case for them.

But police and the McCabe family felt the decision to reopen the inquiry was the right one - using 21st century techniques. "A great deal of time has been spent on the inquiry and rightly so. No price can ever be placed on investigating the murder of a human being," he said.

Thirty days of evidence and legal debate began with Mrs McCabe telling how she was asked to identify her daughter's clothes on what would have been the girl's 21st birthday in February 1980.

The trainee nursery nurse of Lochee, Dundee, had left home two weeks earlier to enjoy a night out with friends - and disappeared.

At that time Vincent Simpson was living in Newtyle, near Dundee, and operating a private hire taxi firm.

Five days after Ms McCabe's body was found hidden in woodland on the outskirts of the city he was first pulled in for questioning by police.

A quarter of a century later he was charged and his trial finally began last month.

Father-of-three Mr Simpson, now of Camberley, Surrey, denied murdering Ms McCabe by hitting her head and strangling her.

Although he did not give evidence, his defence team lodged details of an alibi for the night Ms McCabe disappeared. They also claimed murder hunt detectives had ignored 13 other possible suspects in a shoddy and mishandled inquiry.

The list submitted to the court included a rapist murderer, a vicious thug, a man convicted of abduction and others who had been "of interest" to the police in 1980.

The Crown was pinning its hopes on DNA tests - the root of a hair found on the black plastic sheet which probably wrapped her body on the way to the morgue yielded DNA which partly matched Simpson's profile. Other DNA links were discovered on the jumper which had been draped across Elizabeth's body.

The Crown claimed that the chances of the combined DNA coming from anyone other than Simpson and unrelated to him was 1:40,000,000.

But Mark Stewart QC, defending Simpson, argued that the DNA "match" was the result of contamination while items of evidence were carelessly stored in Dundee's police HQ over the years.

There were no witnesses to say what happened after Ms McCabe left the club. The only certainty is that her body ended up in Templeton Woods.

No-one suggested any motive Mr Simpson might have had for murdering her.

After yesterday's verdict, Mr Simpson was driven away in a car with a reporter from a tabloid newspaper.

DNA is put under the microscope by defence lawyers
IN 1980 when Elizabeth McCabe was murdered "deoxyribonucleic acid" was virtually unheard of outside the world of genetic science.

By 2007 when Vincent Simpson walked into the dock at the High Court in Edinburgh it had been shortened to its initials - DNA - and had become a powerful investigative tool for police.

DNA profiles, teased out of blood and semen stains, have solved murders and rapes since the late 1980s. In the early days, a stain the size of a 2p coin was needed in order to extract enough material for a good DNA profile.

Now a world-renowned lab in Wetherby, Yorkshire, uses a technique which can match DNA from as little as 30 human cells. The Forensic Science Service is the only lab in Britain using the technique but critics say it leaves too much scope for "interpretation" of results.

The DNA may come from an act of murder. It may equally come from something as innocent as a sneeze or a casual contact in a crowded bar. In short, ultra-sensitive DNA tests at a crime scene might show who was there but not what a suspect did.

In this case, Mr Simpson's defence team were able to dismiss the DNA as "rogue evidence" which didn't fit with other facts in the case.

Tayside Police turned to the lab for help. But Sinclair's defence was able to convince judge Lord Clarke that the DNA findings did not amount to evidence of rape or murder.

The Templeton Woods trial heard that items of evidence obtained from Mr Simpson were put into the same box as items from Ms McCabe.

As defence QC Mark Stewart told the jury: "The question is not whether the DNA came from Mr Simpson. The question is how it got to where it was found."