Army killer bids to cut life sentence

ONE of Edinburgh’s most notorious murderers, who gunned down three Army colleagues in a botched payroll robbery in the Pentland Hills, has claimed that he should not be forced to serve out all of his 30-year sentence before he seeks his freedom.

Appeal judges were asked to decide if former soldier Andrew Walker deserves the longest jail term for murder in Scotland handed down under new legislation as a senior defence counsel urged them to cut the sentence.

Walker complained that he should not have been treated more harshly than other notorious murderers, Robert Mone, Howard Wilson and Alan Brown.

Walker was a Royal Scots corporal when he executed three Army colleagues in 1985 with a machine gun in the snow-bound hills at Flotterstone near Penicuik.

The victims - Major David Cunningham, 56, Sergeant Terence Hosker, 39, and Private John Thomson, 25 - had been ferrying 19,000 for soldiers’ pay from a Penicuik bank to Glencorse Barracks, where all four were stationed.

The "Payroll murders" shocked the nation and sparked a three-day hunt that culminated in Walker’s arrest. At the time, Lord Grieve jailed Walker for life with the recommendation he serve at least 30 years for his "callous, brutal and calculated" crimes.

Earlier this year, the sentence was reinforced in a review of murderers’ cases.

But yesterday Gordon Jackson QC told the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh that Walker, now 48, should have to serve no more than 25 years - similar to that imposed on infamous killers Mone, Wilson and Brown.

Mr Jackson said of Walker’s crime: "It would be folly of anyone to suggest it is not a very serious matter. It is obviously a matter of the greatest seriousness."

But he argued that Walker’s triple murder was comparable with the crimes committed by Mone, Wilson and Brown.

Mone, now 52, murdered a police officer during a violent break-out from high-security Carstairs State Hospital. He was in the psychiatric hospital after killing a Dundee teacher in front of her pupils. Ex-police officer Wilson, now 64, whose release from prison this week sparked outrage, shot dead two policemen and badly wounded a third after a bank raid in Glasgow in 1969.

London gangster Brown, 52, a former associate of the Krays, gunned down gateman James Kennedy, 42, during a payroll robbery at the St Rollox engineering works in Glasgow in 1973.

All three were given 25-year terms under new legislation brought in to make life sentences compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.

But after receiving the 30-year term Walker challenged it as excessive before Scotland’s senior judge, the Lord Justice General, Lord Cullen, sitting with Lord Marnoch and Lord Clarke.

The judges reserved their decision on Walker’s appeal and will give their decision at a later date.