Ten years ago, serial killer and rapist Angus Sinclair was jailed for at least 37 years for the murders of two teenagers in Edinburgh.

It remains the longest minimum sentence ever imposed by a Scottish court

Sinclair raped and murdered teenagers Christine Eadie and Helen Scott in October 1977 after meeting them at the World’s End pub in Edinburgh, in a case that gained worldwide notoriety.

He has been convicted of four murders and is suspected of being responsible for several unsolved cases.

It was in 2004 that DNA first linked him to Scott and Eadie’s World’s End murders.

Serial killer and his brother-in-law Gordon Hamilton attacked the girls after they left the pub on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile.

The girls were raped in Sinclair’s caravan before being taken to East Lothian, where they were tortured, strangled to death and their bodies dumped.

At his trial in Livingston High Court, a jury found Sinclair guilty of raping and murdering the two girls.

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Sinclair claimed his first victim when he was just 16, luring seven-year-old Catherine Reehill to his home in Glasgow before sexually abusing and strangling her.

He then threw her body down the stairs and said her death was an accident. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter for the 1961 killing and was sent to prison for ten years.

The judge in the case said Sinclair was “brilliant, cunning and mischievous” and no young girl would be safe with him around.

In 1968, Sinclair was released and placed on probation for three years. He moved to Edinburgh where he met his wife Sarah. They married in 1970, before the family moved back to Glasgow.

While he appeared to be settling into family life, in reality Sinclair began a killing spree in 1977, targeting young women.

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All three women – Anna Kenny, Matilda McAuley and Agnes Cooney – had been abducted and murdered after nights out in the Glasgow area. All the crimes remain unsolved to this day.

In 1982, a series of sexual assaults were committed on young girls in the Govan area of ​​Glasgow.

They would be asked to deliver a message to a home before the attacker followed them to the end and sexually assaulted them.

Sinclair was brought in for questioning by Detective Inspector Joe Jackson, who has now retired.

The police officer was convinced that Sinclair had committed multiple murders, but could not prove it.

Mr Jackson, who was only able to get Sinclair to confess to his crimes with the help of his wife Sarah, believes Sinclair’s capture in 1982 prevented him from committing more murders.

Sinclair was jailed for life in 1982 for the attacks on 11 victims aged between three and 14. The judge recommended that he never be released.

Although he was in prison for life, it wasn’t until DNA testing was developed that Sinclair’s crimes caught up with him.

He was about to apply for parole when police reopened Mary Gallacher’s case and got a DNA match to Sinclair.

The 17-year-old had been sexually assaulted and had her throat slit before her body was dumped in a wasteland near a railway station in Springburn, Glasgow, in 1978.

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In 2001, Sinclair received a second life sentence for her murder. A few years later, DNA linked him to the Doomsday murders.

Sinclair was jailed for life in 2014 and ordered to serve at least 37 years, the longest sentence ever handed down in Scotland.

The 73-year-old was found dead in Glenochil Prison in Clackmannanshire in March 2019.

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