Emma Caldwell inquiry must call these top cops and prosecutors to stop ‘whitewash’
The Sunday Mail today names senior figures who must testify about botched handling of tragic Emma Caldwell’s murder to avoid yet another cover-up.
Emma Caldwell(Image: PA)
The Sunday Mail is today naming the senior police and prosecutors who must give evidence to a public inquiry into the murder of Emma Caldwell.
It comes amid fears the probe will become “part of the cover-up” by failing to examine the years killer Iain Packer walked free while overwhelming evidence of his guilt was suppressed at the highest level.
Emma’s body was discovered in woods outside of Glasgow in May 2005 but it took another 19 years for Packer to finally be convicted – during which time he continued to rape and abuse women.
Even after we published his picture on the front page in 2015 branding him the “Forgotten Suspect”, senior officers launched an illegal molehunt for our sources rather than pursue the killer.
A public inquiry was ordered after Packer’s eventual conviction in 2024, but its terms of reference suggest it will only investigate the actions of Strathclyde Police during an initial botched investigation into four innocent Turkish men which collapsed in 2008.
Iain Packer(Image: PA)
Emma’s mum Margaret has now joined forces with former Sunday Mail editor Jim Wilson, her lawyer Aamer Anwar and MSP Pauline McNeil to demand inquiry chair Lord Scott take urgent action to avoid the probe becoming an expensive whitewash.
In a letter to Scott, Wilson said: “Packer had not, of course, been forgotten by detectives but concealed. Strathclyde Police effectively closed the case in 2008 after the prosecution of Turkish suspects collapsed.
“The refusal to return to the inquiry, despite senior officers knowing the strength of the evidence against Packer, only hardened after the new national force was established in 2013.
“It should be noted that several former Strathclyde officers were promoted to the most senior ranks of Police Scotland after being directly involved in the first murder inquiry.
“The murder investigation in 2015 was eventually reopened after the Mail’s reports after the intervention of a Lord Advocate exasperated by police inaction but that second inquiry moved at glacial pace taking six years to go precisely nowhere.
“Many critics believe its protracted, torturous progress can only be explained by an official reluctance to allow its conclusion.
“The first murder inquiry was sabotaged by professional hubris and incompetence. To most impartial observers, what happened – or did not happen – next is far more worthy of the Inquiry’s interest.
“The crux of this scandal is not a botched police investigation, it is official cover-up and concealment, a family lied to, police officers and prosecutors circling the wagons because it was too professionally embarrassing not to, and our investigating and prosecuting authorities allowing one of Scotland’s most dangerous men to walk free for almost two decades to attack countless women.
“If restricted to examination of the initial murder investigation and not the subsequent years of cover-up, concealment and apparent corruption, your inquiry will, I’m afraid, risk becoming part of that cover-up.”
Emma Caldwell’s parents Margaret and William at spot where daughter’s body was found(Image: PA)
Packer was finally jailed for 36 years – the second longest sentence ever in Scotland – in February 2024 after being convicted of Emma’s murder and 32 other charges, including 11 rapes, involving 22 other women.
He was first spoken to by police in June 2005 before admitting in subsequent interviews taking a prostitute to woods outside Glasgow. In March 2007 Packer gave a fifth statement and even took police to Limefield Woods where Emma’s body had been found.
Despite this he appears to have been dismissed and four Turkish men were instead pursued with a massive surveillance operation and charged, before the case later collapsed in July 2008.
It then took another 16 years for Packer to be convicted.
We are today naming senior police figures including former Police Scotland Chief Constable Stephen House, former head of CID Ruaraidh Nicolson, former counter corruption unit boss Neil Richardson, and former superintendents David McLaren and Bobby Hendren as men who must be called to give evidence spanning the entire 19 year scandal.
At Crown Office former Lord Advocates Frank Mulholland, James Wolffe and Dorothy Bain must all also be called before the inquiry.
These are some of the people who can shine a light on what went wrong. There is no suggestion they have personally done anything criminal.
Emma’s mum Margaret said: “I do not want to be insulted or patronised further, I have had to fight not just for my daughter Emma, but Packer’s many other victims.
“I will fight until my very last breath for the truth. I believe that those officers who sabotaged the investigation into Packer have for far too long remained in the shadows, but if you stop this Inquiry at 2013, those corrupt officers will always remain hidden rather than answer for their betrayal.
“I plead directly now to the First Minister John Swinney and Lord Scott – we want the truth I have fought too long for the cover up to continue.”
Lawyer Aamer Anwar, Margaret’s lawyer, has said the public inquiry must follow the evidence(Image: Daily Record)
Solicitor Aamer Anwar said: “Maragaret did not spend 20 years fighting for the truth, to now see Police Scotland excluded from investigation by this Inquiry, that would be a travesty of justice and a further betrayal of Emma and the many women who suffered at the hands of Packer.
“If this Inquiry is truly determined to follow the evidence, then it must look at the period after Strathclyde Police became Police Scotland.
“Sir Stephen House, Chief Constable of Strathclyde Police from 2007, became Chief Constable of Police Scotland. The detectives, responsible for ‘wrongfully’ arresting four Turkish men then became senior officers at Police Scotland, under the leadership of House who only resigned in November 2015.
“The Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain KC in March 2024 told Emma’s family that as senior crown lawyer in 2008, she actually instructed the bogus case against the Turkish men be dropped, and for a team of new detectives to pursue Iain Packer as a prime suspect, whilst former detectives should have been investigated over their conduct.
“Yet it never happened, several months after she left, the case was marked ‘closed and protected’ and paperwork disappeared – that could only have been instructed at the highest levels in the Police and Crown Office.
“Jim Wilson more than any other journalist fought to expose the truth and of course it’s why Police Scotland’s carried out unlawful surveillance of the Sunday Mail and honest police officers in 2015.
“Margaret believes that Police Scotland sabotaged the case against Packer until they no longer could.
“If an arbitrary line is drawn at 2013 to leave out Police Scotland from the inquiry’s terms of reference will be seen as a further act of betrayal and cover up by the Caldwell family as well as many of the survivors we represent.”
Labour MSP Pauline Mcneil added: “The Emma Caldwell scandal exposed serious failings in Scotland’s criminal justice system.
“If the pubic inquiry is restricted to avoid examining every aspect of those failings, no matter how uncomfortable that may be for some, lessons will not be learned and more families will be let down.
“I fully support efforts to make sure the public inquiry uncovers every aspect of this scandal so that it can hopefully never happen again.”
Eleven questions for Police Scotland
Police search area where Emma Caldwell’s body was found(Image: Daily Record)
- Why did it take Police Scotland 19 years to put Iain Packer in the dock?
- How many senior Strathclyde Police detectives leading the first Emma Caldwell murder investigation were promoted after Police Scotland was launched in 2013?
- Did any seek to investigate Iain Packer before The Sunday Mail exposed him as the forgotten suspect in April 2015?
- Did any discourage or delay a new investigation into Packer or assist and encourage a cover-up of his involvement?
- Why did Police Scotland immediately order an unlawful inquiry into the Mail’s sources two days after Packer was exposed and who ordered it?
- Why was invented intelligence and fake claims the murder investigation was live used to justify that molehunt?
- Why did it take the direct intervention of the Lord Advocate to reopen the inquiry?
- Why did that second inquiry take nine years to get to court when there was only one suspect?
- Why did it spend years analysing the evidence against Turkish suspects already cleared when Packer was obviously the prime suspect?
- Was that inquiry prioritised and properly resourced as a live investigation while Packer, a prime suspect in an unsolved murder, remained free?
- Did Police Scotland allow a suspected murderer, one of Scotland’s most dangerous men, to remain free for almost 20 years because it was too embarrassing to admit its serial failures?
Five questions for the Crown Office
Emma Caldwell’s mother Margaret Caldwell along with her family and their lawyer, Aamer Anwar arrive at the Crown Office in Edinburgh for a meeting with the Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain KC.(Image: Daily Record.)
- Why was Police Scotland not instructed to investigate Iain Packer until May 2015, eight years after the Crown Office had been given his six statements to murder squad detectives?
- Why did the investigation reopened under Crown Office direction go nowhere for six years?
- Did the Crown Office instruct detectives to spend those years reviewing and analysing all the evidence from the initial inquiry despite Packer being the only suspect? If so, why?
- Was that inquiry properly directed or needlessly delayed by the Crown Office while Packer, a suspected murderer and one of Scotland’s most dangerous men, remained free?
- Did prosecutors allow a suspected murderer to remain free for almost 20 years because it was too embarrassing to admit it prosecuted the wrong men despite knowing the evidence against him?
