'Rough Justice' killer fails to clear name after 35-year battle

Published on Wednesday 4 March 2009 21:18

A MAN'S attempt to clear his name over a murder 35 years ago was rejected yesterday by appeal court judges.

George Beattie, 55, served nearly 15 years of a life sentence for the frenzied stabbing of a young woman but has always protested his innocence.

The Court of Criminal Appeal examined fresh psychological evidence about Beattie – who had claimed that men in tall hats with mirrors had made him watch the killing – but ruled his conviction for murdering Margaret McLaughlin, 23, had not been a miscarriage of justice.

Beattie was not at the court in Edinburgh to hear the decision, but Peter Hill, a journalist who featured the case in the BBC series Rough Justice and who has campaigned on Beattie's behalf, remained defiant.

He said: "This really comes as no surprise to George because of the system of justice in Scotland and the hidden rules of the Court of Appeal, the main rule being you must not mention wrongdoing by the police."

Ms McLaughlin, a typist, left her home in Carluke, Lanarkshire, on a wet Friday evening in July 1973 to walk the short distance to the railway station to catch a train to Glasgow.

Her body was found the next day in a wood known as Colonel's Glen. She had 19 stab wounds.

Beattie, from Carluke, then 19 and described as "a bit simple", spoke to police during door-to-door inquiries and said he had been in Colonel's Glen but had not seen or heard anything suspicious. But he then told a neighbour he had seen Ms McLaughlin, and said to a colleague at the steel plant where he worked that he must have passed the spot about the time of the murder.

Beattie was questioned further by detectives and said he had tripped on a path and got blood on his hand. He had wiped it with a paper handkerchief which he put in his pocket.

In the interview, he started shaking and sobbing. He then gave an account of six men – two wearing top hats with mirrors in the style of glam rock group Slade – carrying out the murder and said he was forced to watch.

Tests showed that the blood on the tissue that was found in Beattie's pocket could have come from Ms McLaughlin but not from him.

The Crown maintained that Beattie had been the killer, not just a spectator, which explained why he had been able to give accurate details about the murder and the scene, including the fact a ring had been removed from the victim's finger and that a knife had been left embedded in soil nearby.

It was accepted, however, that none of the information he gave had been unknown to police.

A jury took only 35 minutes to convict Beattie in October 1973. He was refused leave to appeal and served almost 15 years of a life sentence.

In 1994, an appeal was rejected, but the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission later agreed to send the case back to the appeal court.

In yesterday's judgment, Lord Hamilton, the Lord Justice- General, sitting with Lords Nimmo Smith and Cullen, said there was nothing to suggest that the treatment of Beattie by the police "was otherwise than fair". In the years after his trial, Beattie had alleged physical abuse by the police, but the judges said there was no evidence to "give any credence to that version of events".