SIR Ian Rankin has told how his parents feared for him in “the big bad city” as a young student in the wake of one of Scotland’s most infamous double murders.
The Fife-born crime writer was aged 17 in 1977 and about to start studying at Edinburgh University when the World’s End murders took place.
The bodies of Christine Eadie and Helen Scott, both 17, were found on October 16, 1977, six miles apart in East Lothian.
The school friends, last seen the previous night leaving The World’s End pub in Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, had been bound, sexually assaulted and strangled with their own clothing.
Angus Sinclair, who was originally acquitted in 2007, would eventually be convicted of both murders in 2014 following amendments to double jeopardy laws and was given a life sentence. He died in HMP Glenochil, near Stirling, in 2019, aged 73.
Speaking in a two-part TV documentary, Rebus writer Rankin tells how his parents feared for him in the capital.
And he reveals how he felt uneasy drinking in the pub where the teenagers had last been seen.
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Sir Ian said: “The World’s End murders had for me a resonance that a slightly earlier generation would have got from the Bible John killings – the notion that there was a killer or killers out there who were preying on the innocent. They were just ordinary girls on a night out who’d wandered into a pub for a drink.
“I was the same age as the two girls and suddenly my parents have got this 17-year-old son who’s about to go to the big city for the first time – the first member of the family to go to university.
“I do remember them being slightly edgy and fearful that... what were they sending their son into? Would he be much safer just staying in Fife, getting an apprenticeship and not going to college and not going away to that big bad city in Edinburgh?”
Sir Ian, 62, who studied English Literature during the early years of the investigation, said that, like all students, he attended pub crawls in Edinburgh, but never felt comfortable in The World’s End, where Christine and Helen were last seen talking to their murderers.
He added: “When I arrived in Edinburgh in October 1978, that’s a year on and still nobody’s been arrested for these crimes.
“The first thing you do as a student, of course, is go on pub crawls. There are organised pub crawls and you either go to Rose Street, which had dozens of pubs on it at that time, or you headed to the Old Town and you did the more gothic, darker drinking holes... and of course straight away you’ve got The World’s End. It’s got an apocalyptic resonance to it.
“I don’t think we lingered though. There was still that slight atmosphere; that sense that you were walking in the footsteps of murder victims.
“The thing about the World’s End murders was we didn’t have any sense of the suspect or suspects. Old-fashioned policing, I’m afraid, was thrown into sharp relief, it just did not work in the case of the World’s End killings and really was dependent on science making advances that would allow them to go back and revisit the case.”
Sir Ian also revealed that, as he found fame as a crime writer, he got inside information on the hunt for new evidence that would snare Sinclair.
He said: “Being a crime writer and having written a few books meant that I did have friends in the police force, and so I did become aware of what was going on; that there was a retrial coming and new evidence was coming to light; that technical advances meant that there was a good chance of getting Angus Sinclair, finally.
“But you’re never sure. You go back to Bible John – so many times the police thought they had somebody, they thought DNA would prove it was somebody that turned out not to be the case. And so, until the jury reaches a guilty verdict, you’re never sure.”
The new documentary, produced by Firecrest Films, features testimony from detectives and forensic scientists who worked on the World’s End investigation and psychologists who studied the murders.
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Archive footage reveals how policing underwent a revolution fuelled by advances in forensic science, DNA fingerprinting and information technology that would eventually help solve the case.
Forensic scientists succeeded in obtaining a clear DNA profile from Ms Scott’s coat. When detectives originally tried to match it with existing DNA profiles held in police records across the UK, no match could be found.
However, further advances led to a second sample being examined, which matched with Sinclair, a notorious sexual offender who was serving two life-sentences in Peterhead Prison by that time.
Sinclair was eventually convicted after Scotland’s double jeopardy law was scrapped and new evidence was presented to prove his evil involvement.
Retired Deputy Chief Constable Tom Wood, who worked on the case, said: “As it transpired, Angus Sinclair was in my view the most dangerous man that walked the face of Scotland in the 20th century.”
The Hunt For The World’s End Killers is on BBC1 at 9pm tonight and tomorrow.
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