Killer Angus Sinclair hid car with ‘kidnap kit’

Angus SinclairAngus Sinclair
Angus Sinclair
WORLD’s End killer Angus Sinclair hid a car with five sets of makeshift handcuffs and children’s jackets in a quarry only months after murdering Helen Scott and Christine Eadie, it was revealed today.

The Toyota Carina, containing what is thought to be a kidnap kit, was ditched in a flooded quarry near Glenboig in Lanarkshire, and lay underwater for almost 30 years.

Sinclair, who has been convicted of four murders, bought the car after trading in the camper van he used on the night he abducted Helen Scott and Christine Eadie, both 17, who he met in the pub on the Royal Mile.

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Cold case detectives on the World’s End inquiry recovered the car from the water.

A senior officer involved in the case said: “It’s not the sort of thing members of the public would have in their boot. It is just more evidence of the dangerous individual that he is.”

The detective said: “In the boot was the most chilling thing I have ever seen in my life. It was a series of kids’ cagoules and four or five ready-made sets of handcuffs.”

But the evidence wasn’t considered relevant to the World’s End case so it couldn’t be put before the jury.

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Experts were unable to retrieve any DNA from the cagoules as they had been underwater for so long.

It is not quite clear whether the clothing and handcuffs were related to other crimes or a sinister declaration of intent.

Last month, faced with new DNA evidence, a jury found Sinclair guilty of raping and strangling Helen and Christine in 1977. He was convicted after the ancient double jeopardy law was overturned, when his original trial collapsed in 2007.

Meanwhile, Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland said few killers compared with Sinclair, who has now been convicted of four murders and linked to six more. He speaks from experience, having prosecuted Peter Tobin for the murder of schoolgirl Vicky Hamilton, 15, who was abducted in Bathgate in 1991, and the rape and murder of Polish student Angelika Kluk in Glasgow and the murder of Dinah McNicol, 18, in Kent.

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Mr Mulholland said: “I’ve dealt with Peter Tobin, I prosecuted the Vicky Hamilton trial. I did the appeal for William Beggs. I put Robert Black through one of the initial court hearings.

“I have dealt with a lot of other dangerous individuals over the years but Sinclair is right up there. He is just a danger, a real danger.”

Mr Mulholland’s first brush with the World’s End case came in 2000, when he was appointed procurator fiscal in Edinburgh. What also became clear was that if Sinclair returned to the dock, Mr Mulholland felt he was the only person who could be tasked with securing a conviction.

The jury returned their guilty verdict on November 14.

Mr Mulholland said: “I was just so relieved and pleased that the two families I had got to know well and had so admired, finally had closure.”

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