Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
If you like, Hello, Holly, Hi, Gamma. How's it going tonight?
It's fine.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
The weather's turned so it's back to lockdown indoors, which
is zero fun.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Oh it's quite sunnier today. What well, there's a little
bit of rain but now it's sunny.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Oh shitty over here.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
It ends Edin broh.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Yeah yeah, so that's Scotland.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Yeah, it can be a difference in weather just a
mile away. So yeah, understandable. We are which murderer we are,
and we are. I just got some thumbs up from
producer Craig.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
What's his name again, Producer Craig.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
I think it's composer.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Composer. Well, now he's not giving me the thumbs up
because I even say.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
His name right, he's still fussy.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
So tonight we're speaking about our well not our hometown,
but our current towns that we live in and unsolved murders.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
It's came from Edinburgh, that's right. But before we jump.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Into that, there's just a quick shout it we wanted
to give. Someone replied to one of our posts on Facebook,
a leader called Katrina who lives in Ireland. She wanted
to just let us know that both the cases that
we did in the murders that Shocked the world. Episodes
were really well known, particularly James Bulger's case. I think
(01:55):
she said that she was particularly affected by that, but
she did give us a compliment seeing that we had
a great podcast.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
So that's good to know. Thank you, Katrina, Thank you, Katrina. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
I made Gemma say that because I didn't know how
to say your name because you spell it irishy.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Fingers crossed. I've got it right, Anime, I'm sure I have.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
You're like half Irish. I think you're supposed to get
it right.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Yeah, I mean we thank so, but.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Well I'm blaming you either way.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
All right, so I'm going first this week. According to
producer Craig's system.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
He's got a system.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Yes, I know, he loves a system. Yes, awesome, I'm
talking about Anne Valentine.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Cool.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah. So Anne Valentine was born in Edinburgh in nineteen
sixty six. I hope it's nineteen sixty six because I've
scored out the last number and overwritten it a few times,
which makes me think there was math involt when I
was researching this. Okay, her mother was only eighteen at
the time, like when she had her and as Anne
(03:00):
grew up. She and her mother were very close, almost
like friends growing up. They kind of grew up together,
which I suppose happens. Yeah, and she had two other siblings.
Her mother described Anne as a good, happy baby and
she when she was growing up she was kind hearted.
When as she got older, she volunteered with this is
(03:24):
sable the disadvantage, Like she was just had a really
really good heart wanted to give back. She volunteered with
youth at the Kendogate Youth Projects. So like she was
just really really helpful for her community, Okay. And was
also a heavy metal fan and yeah, yeah, she sounds
really cool actually, and had tickets to an Alice Cooper
(03:47):
concert when she was murdered, so she was like planning
to go to this concert was like a big deal
to her. And lived in her own flat in Polwarth
on Dalrye Road. Do you know what that is? Okay?
I don't foreign. The first time her mother saw her,
(04:11):
not the first time, the last time, No, pretty sure,
pretty sure. The first time her brother saw her was
when she was exiting her body. The last time her
mother saw her there was the eighteenth and November nineteen
eighty six, when they said goodbye after a visit. Okay,
Anne had recently split up from her boyfriend but was
said to be in like really good spirits was quite
(04:33):
happy about the breakup, like she didn't she wasn't down
about it at all. A friend, however, reportedly saw her
on del Rye Road just before she went missing and
she had a black eye and that is possibly why
she had ended the relationship. Now that this is interesting
because I got this off of Reddit and it was
the friend who commented on an article who's like, I
(04:56):
knew Anne and I saw her with this black guy.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
So that is firsthand account from somebody in the city
who says that she saw that, Okay, and she did
speak with the police.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Right.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
So, only days after the split, Anne went missing. Her
parents had been looking for her at her flat and
they weren't getting any response to their knocks, so they
just kept showing up and not getting any response. They
slipped notes and money through the letterbox asking her to
call them. So this was like like November ish time,
(05:30):
beginning of December. They thought that maybe she had run
out of money and was just embarrassed, or was maybe
back together with the boyfriends. They didn't know what was
going on, but they were like, this is not like
her because she was quite close to her mom. Yeah,
when she didn't show up for Christmas, the family knew
that something was really really wrong.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Oh my god, so long a month.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
But then you think, I don't know. I guess some
families maybe that's normal, like they disappear, They go through
maybe little spurts where they don't see or talk to
each other for a while. But that's really long time.
Like they were clearly concerned. They were showing up trying
to get in touch with her. So obviously she was
reported missing. So on the twenty first of January nineteen
(06:16):
eighty seven, so this is probably a month and a bit.
Almost two months after she went missing. Anne's body was
found in the Union Canal. It was just one hundred
yards from her flat. Oh gosh. She was badly decomposed
and she was naked, wrapped in a dirty carpet. The
dental records were eventually used to identify Anne, who had
(06:39):
been strangled by a ligature around her neck, but they
also could tell that her body had been stored for
some time after her death. Oh so this is it's
weird because it must have been stored close to the
crime scene for her to be dumped only one hundred
yards away from her flat. Yeah, I think that they
(07:00):
can tell, although I'm not sure how they could tell,
but they must be able to tell that it's been
refrigerated or something like that, or frozen.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
It'll be the decompossession stay because that'll alter how decomposed
a body will be. So if they're expecting a body
to be two months old, for example, because that's how
long she's been missing, but then the decompossession looks different,
then they're gonna assume that it's been stored somewhere or frozen. Yeah,
(07:32):
but then I'm also sure that it probably will do
something to the test shows like it does.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
But then in January, how could they tell that? But
you're right, it would be the stage because after two
months in the water, it probably would have been more
integraded than what it was, or maybe not as whole
as it was. I'm not sure sure Anne's family believes
they know who murdered her. Oh, think it's a person
known to the family. They have a photo of Ann
(07:58):
sitting next to him at a family event.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Right.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
They describe his expression while looking at Anne in the
photo as pure evil, like he's just glaring at her apparently.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
They do not think he will ever confess, but believe
he killed her because, in quotation marks, if he could
not have her, then no one else could, Okay. Some
members of the police believe that Anne may have been
killed by John Taylor, aka the Beast of Bramley.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
Right.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
He is currently serving life for the two thousand murder
of sixteen year old Leanne Tiernan and a series of
sex attacks as well. Linked with that. He had kept
Leanne in a freezer for nine months before dumping her body.
So I think that's maybe why they think. Because he
even though he was based in Leeds, he often made
(08:47):
deliveries in Scotland and would travel through Edinburgh to get
to Glasgow. Right, I don't think that's it. I think
that is too much eustretch because why would he store
it and then dump it later right by her house?
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Yeah, if he was only just passing through Edinburgh, why
would he dump it an edge?
Speaker 2 (09:05):
I think, yeah, maybe there's some of the same same behaviors,
but I mean it's not a stretch. It's not like
it's not like it is that unusual a behavior. To
store a body in a freezer. So Anne's parents are
not legally allowed to name the man they think murdered her.
For legal reasons. He was questioned by police and due
(09:26):
to lack of evidence, no charges were pursued. Obviously they
have not said who it is. But what I was
reading on Reddit and what has been said by them
in regards to if he can't have or no one
can obviously the exploitment.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Yeah, yeah, I don't know his name. I wouldn't say
it even if I did, But yeah, I mean that
is the logical conclusion.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
Yeah, I mean, it's the first person that you go
to in any modern investigation. I suppose boyfriend, ex boyfriend
X girlfriend. You know, yeah, it's going to be the
first person that you look at.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
In that area. There wouldn't have been CCTV at that point. No,
and ligature. Obviously it's gonna leave minimal evidence, isn't it,
Especially if she's still got the ligature around her neck
when she's dumped.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Oh when did she? All right?
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Okay, So if anyone has any information, called Police Scotland
or crime Stoppers if you have anything that could possibly
lead to somebody's arrest that you know did it, then
just come forward. Honestly. I got the cell from an
Edinburgh Live article by Hillary Mitchell from April of this year.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
Cool in case, Holly you Okay, we're back. Yeah, my
turn now. So my unsolved case that took place in
Edinburgh is the murder of Helen Keane. And I had
to go through quite a few articles to get all
the information for this because you know, it was quite
a long time ago and they are was bit set
(11:01):
of information here, there and everywhere.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
But all in all, I think I got quite a
comprehensive story.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
So I got this from a BBC News article by
Graham Essen, several Daily Record articles by Alan McEwan and
Paul o'heyar, a Scottish Sun article by Chrissy Stoder, and
a Scottish Male and Sunday article by Marcello Mega, and
then a few extra details from Wikipedia.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Jeez, you're all over the place.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
I was everywhere.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
It was one of those stories that just like took
you down a little bit of a rabbit hole.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
So Helen Caine was twenty five years old when she
was on a night out in Leath with her husband
and some friends. The couple were out celebrating their wedding anniversary.
She and her husband, who lived in craig Miller. Do
you know where that is?
Speaker 2 (11:50):
No?
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Okay, it was not that far from us, to be fair. Okay,
out past Cameron tole and then up there.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
So they had four kids at home, ranging from the
ages of six years old to ten months, so they
were pretty busy and probably enjoying a freedom. It was
May nineteen seventy and Helen had decided to go home
earlier than the rest of the group to check on
the children. Her sister was babysitting her sons for the night.
(12:18):
Helen caught a taxi which took her to Royal Terrace,
which is at the top of Leith, so it's kind
of near Abbey Hill, so it was still quite far
away from her home Craig Miller. But what I sort
of theorized from that, and this is just a pure guess,
is that maybe she only had enough money to get
there in the taxi and then she had.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
To walk the rest of the way.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
Okay, because obviously back then ubert didn't exist. You know,
you had to have cash on you to pay for
the taxi and I remember that, you know, it wasn't
that long ago. Okay, So a couple witnessed a woman
matching Helen's description talking to a short and stocky man
on royal terraces, and Helen never made it home at night.
(13:01):
Her body was found the next day on a construction
site near the Pleasance where new houses were being built.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
So we've been to the Pleasants before.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Oh, that's right. We went to a launch party there, didn't.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Yeah, no, no, didn't we go to We went to
the Pleasants when we were handing out our business cards.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Is that that were are the festival? Launch party? Was?
Speaker 1 (13:24):
No?
Speaker 3 (13:25):
No, that was somewhere else. The pleasants were that first.
See when we first started handing out our business cards
and we were putting them on the tables and then
everybody just kept on clearing them.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Away and the attacking me and Craig. That's the Pleasance.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Oh oh yes, okay, ah, no, I know where we
are now. That was at the beginning of the drinking.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Yeah, the beginning of the drinking.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
So a man walking with his dog saw the body.
Helen was left partially clothed. She was naked on her
bottom half. She had been sexually assaulted and hit repeatedly
on the head. Investigators believed that items on the construction
site had been used to cause injuries, and the weapon
that they focused on was.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
A large piece of slab.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Oh no, no, there was a clump of hair found
in Helen's hand, believed to be from the murderer.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
The area was canvassed and police conducted interviews of people
in the area who they suspected could be involved. One
person who they questioned was a man called Angus Sinkler.
That name might be familiar to you as he is
a notorious Scottish murderer.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Ah huh.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
At the time of Helen's murder, he was living in Edinburgh,
only about half a mile from where Helen's body was found.
He had recently been released from prison after being found
guilty of the sexual assault and murder of a seven
year old girl called Catherine Reehill when he was just sixteen.
And he only served six years in prison for this.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
That's horrified. Yeah, is it because he was sixteen that
he he didn't serve that much happ.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
Probably he sentences probably, so he was released in nineteen
sixty seven.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
So that was like three years before this.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
He'd been assessed by a psychiatrist during his time in prison,
and the psychiatrist stated, quote, I do not think that
any form of psychotherapy is likely to benefit his condition,
and he will constitute a danger from now onwards.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
He is obsessed with.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
Sex and given the minimum of opportunity, he will repeat
these offenses.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
Really, okay, yeah, like very absolute there.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
When police questioned him in regards to Helen's murder, he
provided an alibi which was backed up by a close friend,
and then he moved from Edinburgh back to his hometown
of Glasgow a few weeks after being questioned.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
In nineteen seventy seven, so this is about seven years later,
there was a spray of similar murders taking place across
central Scotland. Two women were raped and strangled, one woman
was raped and beaten to death, another one was raped,
tortured and stabbed, and another woman was stabbed and beaten
but not raped. There were also two young women who
(16:12):
were last seen together in the World's End pub in Edinburgh,
Christine Edy and Helen Scott, whose bodies were found six
miles apart, but were both found naked and had been raped,
beaten and stabbed. The similarities between all these murders were
that the women were coming home from nights out. They
had been bound and gagged in similar ways, so there
(16:33):
was connections between them all. Angus was suspected in the
spree and many other murders throughout Scotland, but he was
charged and brought to trial for the murders of Christine
Edy and Helen Scott in two thousand and seven.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
However, the judge.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Ruled that there was not enough evidence to convict at
that time and he was set free. Investigators worked hard
to find more conclusive evidence, and advanced in technology found
that there was two DNA's samples left on a jacket
of one of the women. They were able to match
the DAANA to Angus Sinkler and his brother in law,
Gordon Hamilton, who by that time had already died from
(17:10):
problems related to alcohol abuse. Angus was charged again after
a change in Scottish law adjusted the double jeopardy job
double jeopardy, not fuck double jepary day close enough, and
he was the first man in Scotland to be tried
(17:32):
twice for the same crime. He was found guilty of
these murders and sentenced to life in prison with a
minimum of thirty seven years, which meant he would be
one hundred and six years old before he would be
considered for parole. He died in prison March twenty nineteen
following a series of strokes. He was seventy three years old.
(17:53):
The post mortem report's original police reports for Helen Cane's
murder have been destroyed, along with the hair that was.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Found in our hand.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
No, this means it's unlikely that a suspect will ever
be confirmed or charged. Helen's family pleaded with Angus to
confess before his death, convinced.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
He had been the one to murder her.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Many other investigators believe the similarities between the crimes link
Angus strongly to Helen's murder, but we'll just never know
for sure. I don't think unless something drastically changes. But
I think it's safe to assume that he was responsible.
But it's just also there's always going to be that
(18:35):
level of doubt, especially for the family.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Did he confess to any crime? No, No, okay, because
I'm just thinking like if you'd confessed to others but
didn't confess to that, I'm not convinced, but it certainly
sounds likely. I mean, God, you wouldn't want to think
that there's more than one killer of his nature running
(18:58):
around the city at any given time, would you.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
No, you wouldn't.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
And I think the fact that he was in the area,
you know, he wasn't from Edinburgh.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Yeah, he was in the area.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
He fit the description of the last witnesses that saw
Helen alive, and he moved so suddenly afterwards, and then
his alibi was like shawdy anyway, I think they were
able to like discredit that because.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
A friend of the murderer. Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, I
think I would side with you that the likelihood probably
is that he did it.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
No, okay, here we go. We are back.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
We are back.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
How are you picking?
Speaker 2 (19:47):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
That doesn't make any sense. Where is my grammar gone?
Speaker 2 (19:53):
That you're names have gone?
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Just creaks check and buying chushions.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
I know. It's just as soon as this like recorded
gets hit, like I'm just recorded, and it's like record
gets hit, I'm just like.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
My brain goes and I can't speak properly.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Look for it. If you find my mass high name
there then.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Passed along together.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
We can we can add up to a complete function
in person.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Possibly possibly.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
I think there' still maybe a couple of elements missing
because I can't say names either. I don't know what
I'm picking, to be honest with you, because I was
thinking about this right before record went and I was like, they're.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Both horrible, They're both really bad.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
One is strangulation by ligature, yeah, which horrifying, horrifying, Like,
h no, horrifying. But then the other one involves sexual
assault and a big thing to the head. Yeah, I'm
going to presume, though we probably don't know that the
sexual assault happened before the thing to the head.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
I think I think.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
It's before, right, So rape and then murder.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
Yeah, and the did you know there was definitely a
struggle there. You know, there was the hair and hands
and stuff like that. So yeah, there was definitely a fight.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
How frustrating is that that she actually had evidence in
her hands, like she managed that and they still destroyed it. Yeah,
didn't you, Like, don't destroy evidence. I don't care if
you have to build fifteen story evidence lockers, like, just
keep it, yeah until the case is sault's Yes, sorry,
ran to the sidebar. God, I don't know what do you
(21:46):
go first?
Speaker 1 (21:47):
I'm pecking yours, are you? Yeah, yeah, I am.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
You're going because of the torture.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Yeah, the sexual assault, the slab.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
We're going on the assumption of it was Angus that
killed these people. Then his other murders are equally horrific,
and nine times out of ten involved sexual assault or rape.
Yours appears to be like a one off, you know.
(22:23):
It's like, yeah, probably an abusive relationship. We can't say
for certain, but probably that which ended in the murder
of this per woman. Yeah, However, there wasn't any evidence
of rape.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
It's hard to say though, because she was so deteriorated
by the time they found hers. She was found in water,
and that erases evidence of most things. Yeah, true, unless
the body's found right away, but even then it's a nightmare.
I'm picking yours, Okay. Not the stray from behind, like
(23:02):
with a ligature. It's horrifying to me because you'd be
like scratching at your throat and not able to get
it off, and it's not necessarily the quickest death, especially
if there's a struggle, so there's terror there. I'm not
a super fan of obviously, the sexual assault and everything
with yours. But if it is a giant blow to
(23:23):
the head by a slab, I think that's an instant
death probably, or an instant at least an awareness, And
for me, that's a better way to actually die than strangulation.
So I'm going to pick yours.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
I totally see where you're coming from, but yeah, I
still pick yours, all right, disagree. It doesn't happen that often,
but when it doesn't, so usually it is because we've
picked really bad cases.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Ah, these were bad or it's really bad, and I
hope as a miracle they get solved. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
And we were seeing in the break they are that
it's just so strange to think that these happened so
close to home. That's such horrors can happen like just
down the roads. And I think it's really easy to
forget that when you live in sort of an insulated bubble,
especially right now, when all people are doing really is
(24:18):
spending time indoors, you kind of forget what's out there.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
I know, I know we're all in bubbles right now,
but yeah, I know it's weird to think, you know,
even when we walk by the World's Inn pub, which
we've done a million times. Yeah, that that was the
last place that those two girls were seeing, and you know,
like they spent their final happy moments in life there.
You know, it's weird, but yeah, I suppose city is
all Edinburgh. Everywhere you go there's gonna be murdered. But yeah, yeah,
(24:44):
it is weird, especially in modern times.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Yeah. Yeah, so thank you all for listening.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
Yeah, if you would be so kind to give us
a little five star review wherever you can iTunes mostly,
but we have have sit up podchaser.
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I claimed it, you claimed it.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
I claimed it as.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Ours And yeah, if you want to leave a few
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on the ar. So if you finds a getting your
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(25:45):
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Speaker 1 (25:59):
I don't know wherever, Fine, and we'll see y'all next week.
We will Bye bye bye.
Speaker 4 (26:06):
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