A FORMER senior detective has denied bullying a teenage boy into telling how Elaine Doyle died at the hands of would-be rapists.

A murder trial has heard how Colin McIntyre allegedly "confessed" to being at the scene - just yards from Ms Doyle's Greenock home - when a planned 'gang bang' went wrong. But, giving evidence at the High Court in Edinburgh, Mr McIntyre, now 44, claimed he had been threatened by murder hunt detectives, who then wrote his 'statement' of the events in June 1986 themselves.

Michael Langford-Johnston, 64, who retired from Strathclyde Police in 2001 with the rank of detective inspector, denied Mr McIntyre's claims, saying: "I certainly didn't threaten."

John Docherty, 49, now of Hunters' Quay, Holiday Village, Dunoon, denies murder and claims that at the time he is alleged to have stripped and strangled Elaine Doyle, 16, he was with his parents in Anne Street.

The trial continues.