Police who missed Emma Caldwell killer must be 'ashamed' - cop who cracked case
A retired detective who solved an infamous murder case says several of his former colleagues should be “ashamed of themselves” for years of incompetence.
Emma Caldwell, 27, had vanished in on April 4, 2005, before her body was found in Limefield Woods, near Roberton, South Lanarkshire, the following month. Her sudden disappearance had come days after telling her mother her hopes to kick a heroin addiction, which began following a family bereavement in her early 20s. A dog walker found Miss Caldwell’s body in woodland, with a “garotte” around her neck, on May 8, 2005.
Yesterday, serial rapist Iain Packer, 51, was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 36 years for Emma’s murder. Now ex-cop Gerry Gallacher has said the sad case should have been solved much earlier as the case against Packer was “on a plate” for them.
Emma Caldwell vanished in 2005 and was found dead a month later (PA)He told the Daily Record: “To put it bluntly, there are officers from this case who should be utterly ashamed of themselves. They were happy to take the promotions and their fat police pensions and allow Emma’s family to live in ignorance while they were denied justice.
"This was the Gong Show of all police inquiries, a farce. In all, the first murder team wasted more than £4million, they took two-and-a-half years, they projected Emma’s image onto high flats and used screens at Ibrox to ask witnesses to come forward. All those efforts were a collapsed case against men who had nothing to do with the crime. The investigating team committed the cardinal sin.
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"They adopted a tunnel vision, they focused solely on the Turks as perpetrators, to the exclusion of every other possibility. But the answer – and the killer – was staring them in the face all along."
Gallacher launched his own private investigation into Emma’s murder in 2013 and comprehensively laid out the case against Packer. It still took another nine years for Packer to finally be brought to justice, during which time he committed other grave sex offences.
Gallacher said: "Police Scotland may be keen to stress they doggedly stuck at the case and finally got their man, all these years later. But, plainly, that is not the real story.
"What we are left with here, 19 years after Emma’s death, is a tale of police incompetence, played out over many years until they finally get it right. This is not a case to have required a Sherlock Holmes to investigate it and it is not a Taggart-style convoluted murder mystery.
"It is a simple, straightforward case where an extremely obvious suspect made admissions linking him incontrovertibly to rough outdoor sex, to the murder scene and to the victim Emma Caldwell The case had been cracked at a very early stage but they were too blind to see it. And when it was put on a plate for them, they still refused to abandon their catastrophic focus on the wrong killers."
Even after the case against the Turks broke down, the man leading the initial inquiry – Detective Superintendent Willie Johnstone – remained convinced they were the killers.
Gallacher said: "When I was doing investigations into Emma’s murder around 2013, Willie Johnstone, who’d retired by then, agreed to meet me at a park in East Kilbride. He told me he was still convinced, 100 per cent, it was the Turks.
"Even then, he couldn’t let them go. This was nearly 10 years after Emma’s death and, even after Packer’s witness statements, the man who’d been at the helm was still stuck on that wild goose chase."
Assistant Chief Constable Bex Smith said: “Police Scotland launched a re-investigation of the case in 2015 after instruction from the Lord Advocate. It is clear further investigations should have been carried out into Emma’s murder following the initial enquiry in 2005. The lack of investigation until 2015 caused unnecessary distress to her family and all those women who had come forward to report sexual violence.
“It is the courage, resilience and determination shown by Emma’s family, in particular her parents William and Margaret, and all those who survived Iain Packer’s horrific catalogue of offending that got us to where we are today. William is, sadly, no longer here to see this day, but I hope this verdict gives Margaret and all those affected by this case, the justice they deserve.”
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