‘You may feel sympathy for the accused, her unhappy background, her physical disabilities,’ he said. ‘On the other hand, you may feel a certain horror and shock that an attractive little girl should die in this way.’ However, he urged them to put their feelings aside and accept their responsibility of looking only at the facts.
Mr Charles McArthur, QC, defending, described the case as ‘particularly tragic’ and asked the jury to find Annette guilty of assault only. He pleaded: ‘It is extremely tragic and very distressing for you and for me to find myself responsible for the little girl of thirteen sitting in the dock.’ He agreed that the case depended on the facts, but said sympathy could not be put out of mind. Then, as though reading the minds of many of those who sat in the High Court that pre-Christmas day, he struck out, saying:
Perhaps one is a little less sympathetic to those who are responsible for their small children being looked after. I find it very distressing little children should be left to be looked after by a young girl to a very late hour. That may just be part of the whole tragic set-up.
When the jury returned after an absence of only seventeen minutes to find her guilty of culpable homicide, Annette started to cry quietly in the dock and turned to cuddle closer to her policewoman escort, gripping her hand even more tightly. Her mother, seated in the public benches, sobbed loudly and was assisted from the courtroom by friends.
Most of the court time was taken up in discussion about where the tearful 13-year-old could be held to serve her sentence. Mental health experts said the State Mental Hospital at Carstairs was the only place in Scotland suitable for Annette, though it was not ideal, and there was no room there for her. One consultant in child psychiatry explained that Annette required long-term, consistent care in ‘graduation security’. He thought the security would be at the beginning rather than the end of her period in detention and that ideally the prognosis would be satisfactory enough to allow her ‘eventual return to responsibility’. ‘Regretfully, I know of nowhere in Scotland which can provide this treatment,’ he said with some resignation.
Another consultant psychiatrist opined, ‘I think it is necessary for the girl’s own safety, and possibly the safety of others, that she be in conditions of security before one should begin a plan. That would mean she would be long enough in one place to develop satisfactory relationships, at least with adults and perhaps with people of her own age.’
Lord Keith on the bench, who had listened intently to the medical experts, continued the case to allow more time for a suitable place of detention to be found. He looked gently at the weeping Annette and told her that no one could avoid feeling very distressed about the nature of the case or a great deal of sympathy with her about the circumstances, problems and sad events that brought her to the court, or the fact she was there at all. Three weeks later, at the High Court in Edinburgh, at the resumption of the hearing, His Lordship was informed that little real progress had been made and there was no place in Scotland which was suitable from the point of view of security and the kind of assistance Annette required. Ultimately, it was decided that the tiny figure who sat in court with a bright red ribbon in her hair should be accommodated in a new special care unit for disturbed adolescents forming part of Balgay Approved School in Dundee.
Lord Keith ordered that she be detained for ten years. But he told her that while the order he had made specified that period of time, it did not necessarily mean she would be held for that duration. The Scottish Secretary, he said, had the discretion to allow her release on licence when he thought fit.
Annette McGowan disappeared from public view that day, 5 January 1973, and what ultimately became of her is not commonly known. She vanished beneath the cloak of anonymity given to offending juveniles and there is nothing to suggest she ever appeared in a court again. Nor is it publicly known for how long she was detained. That is not surprising. What is remarkable, given the deep interest in more contemporary times of the activities of children who kill, is that the case of Annette McGowan did not attract more attention than it did in her home town when the unusual and disturbing events were played out. A quarter of a century later, there are few in local police or legal circles who are aware she even existed.
13
The approach of Christmas 1970 seemed to signal a change in fortunes in the troubled life of Leah Bramley. Twice married and with three young children, she had moved away from Yorkshire five weeks earlier to seek a new start in Dundee, leaving her miner husband Bernard back in Castleford.
The move hadn’t begun well. After spending a few days residing with her sister, the 33-year-old took up the tenancy of a small flat in Springhill. But it was too cramped to accommodate the whole family and the three children – the products of her first marriage – had to be split up. The oldest girl, aged fourteen, remained with her, but her 9-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son were sent to live temporarily in a Salvation Army hostel in Lochee. Then things suddenly took a turn for the better. Out of the blue and to Leah’s surprised delight, she was given the keys to a brand new council flat in Dundee’s developing Whitfield housing estate. She moved at once into the first-floor maisonette at 389 Ormiston Crescent and wrote excitedly to her husband with the news, telling him how he could help her get established when he came north for a Christmas visit. ‘Dundee has been lucky to me at last,’ she enthused.
A few days later, as the fairy lights twinkled in the recently occupied houses in the new estate, the small, attractive blonde was found dead in the flat she had been so proud to occupy.
She was slumped in a rocking chair, an imitation fur coat over the shoulders of her green jumper, and her lower body was naked with a broom-handle protruding from her intimate parts. Although there were signs of manual strangulation and three superficial cut injuries to her neck, these did not appear to be the main cause of her death. That had come after a series of severe sexual assaults by the broom-handle and a drinking glass, which were both found nearby, heavily bloodstained. Among other items scattered near the body, and the large pool of blood which had formed under the chair, was an empty McEwen’s Export can and a tin-opener. A number of pieces of burnt paper were also on the floor beside the corpse.
Detective Superintendent William Melville, the head of Dundee CID, whose distinguished career was to see him successfully solve more than forty homicides in the city, described the killing as ‘one of the worst sadistic murders I have ever seen’.
Murder squad detectives made two significant discoveries. There was not a fingerprint to be found in the room, not even of the victim, with every surface seemingly having been wiped by a damp cloth; and there was no evidence of a break-in, suggesting that Leah had known her killer.
Although the body of the petite blonde had been found at 5.30 p.m., the city’s senior police surgeon said he believed she had died many hours before – probably in the early hours of that day. His post-mortem indicated that the light cuts on her neck could have been made by a tin-opener and that the violent injuries to her private parts had been carried out while she was still alive, but that she had probably been rendered unconscious a short time before the intimate assault by blows to the chin, combined with a form of strangulation. If she had not been insensible, she would have screamed out because of the intolerable pain caused by the massive internal injuries.
Enquiries quickly established that at about 7 p.m. on the previous night Leah had gone with a woman friend to the Heather Bell bar in William Street, where she consumed more than half a dozen lagers. As the mood became merrier, she had asked the guitarist who entertained in the pub to play a particular song. He obliged, then she asked him to join her for a drink.
Witnesses told police that Leah had become ‘very friendly’ with the singer and had proceeded to invite him to a party, requesting that he bring some drink along in the form of a carry-out. Others described how a little later that night, just after closing time, Leah had knocked on the door of the pub to ask for the musician, who had stayed behind for an after-hours drink. After apparently expressing some annoyance at being disturbed, the musician, who used the stage name Ron Gibson, bought a dozen cans of export and twenty cigarettes and left. He was last seen driving off with Leah in his two-tone red and grey Ford Zodiac.
Eighteen hours after the presumed time of the murder, the guitar player – who in reality was Alexander Stuart, a 25-year-old married man who also lived in the Whitfield estate – was invited to police headquarters to make a statement. He was a character with a complex life. As well as using assumed names to dodge the taxman when he sang round the city’s pubs, he worked as a hairdresser and also as a part-time taxi driver with Handy Taxis (one of the leading companies in town). Stuart related how the woman who had earlier asked him to sing had requested that he drive her to her sister’s home in Mid Craigie, which he did. When they arrived, the sister was walking in the street and Leah had left the car to briefly speak to her, before returning to ask him to drive her home to Ormiston Crescent. Halfway there, however, in Pitkerro Road, she wanted him to stop the car. He did so and she got out. He had not seen her since.
Stuart went on to explain to detectives how he had subsequently gone taxi-ing and had driven round various estates on the northern edge of the city but hadn’t landed a single fare. He had even tried several times to phone the taxi company headquarters seeking work, but the phone had been constantly engaged. Eventually, he had gone home to Whitfield and called at a neighbour’s house, where he knew his wife had been spending part of the evening with a couple who were friends. He had taken his carry-out of twelve cans of McEwan’s Export with him, he said.
The neighbours corroborated the latter part of his story, telling how he had arrived at the door shortly before 1 a.m. and had then spent some time with them, drinking and singing and playing his guitar. There had been nothing unusual about his behaviour or anything in his demeanour to suggest he had undergone some kind of terrible experience, they said. He had spoken about sex, which was a usual part of his conversation when in their company, and had, equally typically, taunted his wife about his supposed sexual conquests.
At 3.30 on the morning of 14 December, less than twelve hours after the body of Leah Bramley was so dramatically found sprawled and bloodstained in the flat she had been so thrilled to move into, Alexander Stuart, the singing hairdresser was charged with her murder. He replied simply, ‘I dropped her off in Mid Craigie.’
Several weeks later, while the accused man was held in Perth Prison awaiting trial, his solicitor, John Clarke, received a remarkable handwritten letter at his office in Victoria Chambers in Dundee. It read:
I gather you are Stuart’s lawyer. I want to confess the Whitfield murder to clear my mind and free an innocent man. On Saturday, 12/12/70, I picked up a woman at the bottom of Pitkerro Road at about 11.35–11.40 p.m. She asked me to take her to Ormiston Crescent.
In the car she was at my privates. We went to her house and we had intercourse. After it she laughed at me and said she was on her ‘periods’. I went berserk and I choked her. I then took her tights and strangled her. I cut her on the neck with a can-opener and a knife.
The confessor then described how he had further sexually assaulted his female companion with a broom-handle, beer can and a tumbler.
The letter went on:
I robbed her of £1 18 shillings and 3 pence. I am guilty of this murder and getting away with it. No fingerprints. I know Stuart was in her house because he dropped something with his name on it. I tried to start a fire but her blood put it out. The CID will confirm everything I have told you.
I don’t think I will have any bother sleeping now I have got this off my conscience. I am going to write to the papers and let them know.
Signed, Taxi Man.
The letter, apparently written on the torn-out fly-page of a book, was a bombshell. Police and the Crown prosecutors knew that if the jury in the forthcoming trial took it at face value Stuart would be exonerated and would walk free. The letter contained information which at that stage had never been made public and the writer had either killed her himself, or was closely connected to the person who had.
Detectives went at once to Perth Prison and launched rigorous investigations, interviewing prison officers and inmates in an effort to trace the source of the letter. They made a series of startling discoveries. A mutilated copy of
The Sunday Post
had been found in Stuart’s cell and a series of words had been cut from it. Checks revealed that many of the missing words were identical to some of those contained in the letter of confession and it seemed that whoever had so painstakingly extracted them from the paper may have initially intended to use them to form a letter. They thought this plan might have been abandoned because some of the words in the confession were not the sort usually to be found in a newspaper like
The Sunday Post
.
The police team examined every one of the four hundred or so books in the library of ‘C’ Hall in the prison, the wing where Stuart was held. They found one,
The Kingdom of Melchior
, with a ripped-out fly-page which apparently corresponded to the tears on the letter of confession.