Recriminations rife over collapse of trial

Published on Wednesday 30 July 2008 22:19

THE collapse of the World's End murder trial led to angry recriminations, with police officers privately blaming prosecutors for bungling the case.

One legal source told The Scotsman that eight out of ten judges would probably have let the jury reach a verdict.

Lord Clarke put himself in the minority by accepting a "no case to answer" submission from Robert Sinclair's defence team.

Throwing out the case, Lord Clarke said: "There was no forensic evidence to link the accused to the items used to kill the girls. I am not satisfied that the evidence relied on by the Crown can overcome that absence of crucial evidence."

That was it. One of Scotland's most high-profile murder cases remained unsolved.

Following the collapse at the end of the prosecution's evidence last September, The Scotsman revealed the jury never heard about samples of DNA, which could be linked to Sinclair, found in ligatures used to kill Christine Eadie and Helen Scott, who were last seen in the World's End pub in Edinburgh in 1977.

Scotland's most senior judge, Lord Hamilton, later accused the chief prosecutor, Elish Angiolini, of disrespecting the judiciary by making a statement to the Scottish Parliament to explain the high-profile collapse of the murder trial.