UK/Scotland/Tayside – Twice in less than a year, the frozen conifers of Dundee’s Templeton Woods shrouded the naked bodies of young women who died violently.
Tayside Police were already trying to track down the killer of teenage prostitute Carol Lannen when two rabbit hunters stumbled on the remains of trainee nursery nurse Elizabeth McCabe, covered only by debris from the trees and a blue jumper draped over her shoulders. It was the eve of her 21st birthday.
For a time detectives thought both girls had died at the hands of a serial killer – and they had been told that Ms Lannen was last seen talking to a taxi driver. But the trail soon went cold.
Almost a quarter of a century later, new life was breathed into the inquiry when three Scottish police forces jointly set up Operation Trinity to investigate unsolved murders.
Tayside CID took over the investigation in June 2004. Files revealed that less than a week after Ms McCabe’s body was found, Vincent Simpson was questioned. A taxi matching the description of his beige Ford Cortina had been seen driving away from Templeton Woods on the night she disappeared.
Mr Simpson was a petty thief who appeared to have gone straight with the assistance of his in-laws who helped set him up in a private hire taxi business in Newtyle, a few miles from Dundee.
Back then, present rules which govern the way police can treat suspects and which limit questioning had not come into force.
Day after day, for hours at a time, Mr Simpson faced a grilling which would be impossible now. The man responsible, Detective Chief Inspector David Fotheringham – who has since died – was compared during the trial to the bullying cop Gene Hunt from the Life on Mars television series.
The detectives squeezed information from him, which did not show Mr Simpson in a good light.
During questioning, the suspect confessed to being a Peeping Tom who used walking his golden labrador as cover to spy on couples in Templeton Woods. But the hoped-for confession to murdering Elizabeth McCabe never came. It was another 25 years before Vincent Simpson, by then resettled in Surrey, was arrested and charged.
Tayside CID were hoping that advances in DNA testing would give them the evidence they needed for a conviction. So much so, that according to figures suggested during the trial they were prepared to spend £1m on lab tests.
But a jury decided Mr Simpson did not murder Ms McCabe. That given, this means that the nursery nurse’s killer – and, indeed, that of Carol Lannen – is still at large.