EXCLUSIVE
By CARLOS ALBA
THE murders of two women in Tayside more than 16 years ago are included in a secret investigation into possible Yorkshire Ripper attacks, The Herald has learned.
The cases bring to six the number of unsolved murders in Scotland which West Yorkshire Police chief constable Keith Hellawell believes bear the hallmark of killer Peter Sutcliffe.
In March 1979, the body of Miss Carol Lannen, 19, was discovered in Templeton Woods, on the outskirts of Dundee.
Less than a year later, the partially clothed body of 20-year-old nursery nurse Elizabeth McCabe was found in a spot just 150 yards away.
The cases form part of a confidential dossier of 60 unsolved murders and attempted murders carried out across the UK which, Mr Hellawell believes, may have been the work of the Ripper.
The list, later reduced to a shortlist of 20 ``probables'', also includes three murders in Glasgow and one in Argyll carried out in the late 1970s.
Mr Hellawell is believed to be taking at least one of the cases, the murder of Glasgow teenager Mary Gallagher in November 1978, ``very seriously''.
He visited Sutcliffe in Parkhurst, accompanied by Scottish detectives, to question him about Miss Gallagher's murder.
Her body was found on a pathway, half a mile from her home in Springburn.
The other cases under investigation include the murder of Miss Anna Kenny, 20, who was last seen alive leaving the Hurdy Gurdy bar in Townhead, Glasgow, in August 1977. She was missing for almost two years before her body was discovered in a shallow grave near Skipness, Kintyre.
In October 1977, the body of Ms Hilda Miller, 36, was found covered by bushes at Langbank, near the M8 motorway.
Two months later, children's nurse Agnes Cooney, 23, was found stabbed in woodland near Caldercruix, Lanarkshire.
Strathclyde Police claim Sutcliffe was eliminated from their inquiries at the time of his conviction. It is believed work records failed to establish he was in the area at the time of the murders.
Yesterday, Mr Hellawell, speaking after his appearance on a Yorkshire TV documentary, said: ``I have not said, and didn't say in the TV film, that I accuse Peter Sutcliffe of specifically committing any crimes. What I have done, and what I continue to do, is to look as those which, for various reasons, could well have been committed by Sutcliffe, which is different.''
Sutcliffe was convicted of 13 murders and seven attempted murders in 1981. In 1992 he admitted responsibility for another two attacks.
Sutcliffe's solicitor, Kerry Macgill, insists that the killer is now so mentally ill that he has no memory of any other attacks.
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