Moira Anderson murder: Police appeal to bus staff

By MATT COYLE
Published on 09/03/2013 03:34

DETECTIVES searching for missing schoolgirl Moira Anderson have appealed for information from former staff at a bus company where her suspected killer worked.

• Former staff at a bus company where Moira Anderson’s killer is believed to have worked may hold key to solving case, police believe

• Officers want to speak to ex-colleagues of Alexander Gartshore, who is suspected of murdering and abducting 11-year-old 56 years ago

Officers probing the disappearance 56 years ago believe ex-colleagues of Alexander Gartshore could hold vital information.

The 11-year-old is thought to have been abducted and murdered by rapist Gartshore after getting on a bus he was driving in her hometown of Coatbridge, Lanarkshire.

The Strathclyde Police team working on the case have received fresh information since a dig at a graveyard in search of Moira’s remains proved fruitless in January.

Officers have now launched an appeal for ex-employees of Baxter’s Buses to contact them. They are keen to speak to anyone - inclusing bus drivers, conductors and cleaners - who worked at the company between 1957 and 1959.

Detective Chief Inspector Pat Campbell, who is heading up the probe, said: “The publicity surrounding the exhumation process resulted in additional and further information being passed to the inquiry team.

“Officers are currently assessing that information and following up any leads.

“At this time, I would like to ask former employees from Baxter’s Buses to get in touch with us, even if they spoke to police at the time, I would like them to get back in touch.

“I appreciate a significant amount of time has passed but we would like hear from anyone who was employed at the company during that time.”

“We have numerous statements with witnesses who saw Moira catch that bus, and we are now certain that Gartshore was the driver. We do not have witnesses who saw her getting off the bus, and we know she

never reached the Co-op.”

The last recorded sighting of Moira was on Saturday February 23, 1957. Gartshore’s daughter Sandra Brown and Moira’s sisters Janet Hart and Marjory Muir have campaigned for many years to find out the truth about her

disappearance.

In January this year, an operation was launched to find out if the remains of Moira were within a burial plot in Old Monkland Cemetery. But after a week-long dig police confirmed that no human remains, other than

those already buried at that plot, were present at that location.

Gartshore was convicted of raping another child just weeks after Moira’s disappearance in Coatbridge. However, he was never prosecuted for Moira’s murder and died in 2006.

A police probe was relaunched in December and last month fears were raised that Moira may have been dumped in disused mineshafts now under a housing estate.

A witness says she saw a girl being pulled into a field in nearby Carnbroe, near a turning circle for buses.