World’s End trial: Girls ‘never said no’
Angus Sinclair, 69, denied raping the 17-year-olds on the night they were killed in 1977, but gave explicit details of their final hours.
Sinclair is on trial for the murder of Christine Eadie and her friend Helen Scott, who were last seen at Edinburgh’s World’s End pub on 15 October that year.
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Hide AdHe denies being responsible for their deaths and has lodged a series of special defences incriminating his brother-in-law Gordon Hamilton, who died in 1996.
At the High Court in Livingston, he told how he drove to the city’s Holyrood Park area where both men had consensual sex with each girl after meeting them in the pub.
Asked by Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland yesterday how the sex started, he said he had begun by “kissing and fondling” Christine, and it was the same with Helen.
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Mr Mulholland asked: “How did you know these girls were consenting to sexual intercourse?” He replied: “They never said no.”
Mr Mulholland quizzed Sinclair on whether there had been fear in the eyes of the teenagers, and asked: “Did you rape these two girls?”
Sinclair replied: “No.”
Mr Mulholland put it to Sinclair that he had been out looking for two girls and that he “hit the jackpot” in the World’s End.
Sinclair agreed.
“They were under your control, weren’t they?” Mr Mulholland asked.
“Yes,” he replied.
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Hide Ad“They didn’t consent did they, they were terrified – you raped those girls.”
“No, I didn’t,” Sinclair said.
“Not content with that, you took them out to East Lothian. You knew they were terrified. You’re enjoying the fact they are terrified. You have raped them, they are under your control,” the Lord Advocate said.
Sinclair replied: “No.”
“What you do is make sure they have no voice whatsoever, that they can’t tell the police what happened,” Mr Mulholland said to him.
“No,” Sinclair replied.
Mr Mulholland then suggested Sinclair “punched” and “kicked” the girls. “That’s animalistic, Mr Sinclair, you did that with Gordon Hamilton,” the lawyer said.
“No, I didn’t,” Sinclair replied.
“Those girls, were they not pleading for their lives, begging you, ‘Don’t do this, don’t kill me’?”
“No,” Sinclair said.
Mr Mulholland added: “You and Gordon Hamilton ended their lives like something that was wiped off your shoe.”
“No, definitely not,” Sinclair said.
Defence QC Ian Duguid asked Sinclair why he agreed when the Lord Advocate asked him earlier that sex “wasn’t on the mind of both girls”.
“I don’t know,” Sinclair said.
“What is the answer to his suggestion that there were no chat-up lines, no wooing?” Mr Duguid asked.
“There was,” Sinclair replied.
The trial continues.
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