The Inside Story of the World's End Murders with Tom Wood

Ringwood author Tom Wood joins us this week to chat about his latest novel, The World's End Murders: The Inside Story, which details the nearly four-decade-long struggle that detectives and scientists endured to deliver justice for victims Helen Scott and Christine Eadie, who were tragically murdered in October 1977 in Edinburgh. Tom talks to us about his involvement, his thoughts on Scottish law at the time of the trials of the perpetrator, true crime as a genre, and much more.

Tom Wood was one of Scotland’s most senior and experienced police officers, an authority on serious and violent crime and the policing of major events. Latterly he was Deputy Chief Constable and Director of Operations of Lothian and Borders Police. He is a graduate of Edinburgh University and the FBI Academy at Quantico, Virginia. Tom currently lives in Edinburgh.

Since leaving the police, Tom has worked in Alcohol and Drug Strategy, Adult and Child Protection and carried out Independent Serious Case and Homicide Reviews.
He is now a regular columnist with The Scotsman and writes extensively on crime and justice matters.

His book, Ruxton: The First Modern Murder, was shortlisted for the 2021 Scottish National Book Awards.

Order The World's End Murders here!

Be sure to also grab a copy of Ruxton: The First Modern Murder here if you haven't yet. If you liked this episode, mark your calendars for July 19th, when podcast network Audio 99 will release a historical true crime podcast series based on Tom's work, titled "Beyond Recognition: The Ruxton Murders"!

The World's End Murders: The Inside Story will launch on Sunday, June 23rd at 2pm at Hillhead Library in Glasgow. This event is free and all are welcome. If you can't make it in person, we will be streaming it from the Ringwood Publishing Facebook page. We hope to see you there!

Transcript

Julia: Welcome to the Ringwood Publishing Podcast. I'm your host, Julia.

Annemarie: And I'm your host, Annemarie. And each week, we are joined by a series of authors, colleagues, and guests to talk about all things books and publishing.

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Annemarie: Hello, everyone, and welcome to Season 3, Episode 6 of the Ringwood Publishing Podcast. My name is Annemarie Whitehurst, and I'm one of the co-hosts for this season, along with fellow intern Julia Pujals Antolin.

Julia: Hello.

Annemarie: In this episode, we've invited Ringwood author Tom Wood to discuss the release of his book, The World's End Murders: The Inside Story, a true crime novel that details one of Scotland's longest and most famous murder investigations.

Julia: This book tells a true story of the tragic fates of two Edinburgh teenagers, Helen Scott and Christine Eadie, during October 1977 and the decades long cold case that followed. It details the efforts of law enforcement that eventually led to the discovery of the perpetrator Angus Sinclair, one of Scotland's most notorious murderers and sex
offenders.

Acquitted after a controversial trial in 2007, Sinclair found himself back in court in 2014 after changes in Scottish law and development of new, cutting edge forensic evidence occurred. There, he was finally held accountable for his despicable acts.

But this is not a gruesome tale of violent death. The families of Helen and Christine  have suffered long enough. It is a story of heroes, of the families of the two girls who, with quiet dignity, have carried an unimaginable burden down the years, and of the
police officers, the support staff, and the scientists who persisted in their investigations and never gave up. This is the inside story of the World's End Murders.

Annemarie: Tom Wood was one of Scotland's most senior and experienced police officers, an authority on serious and violent crime and the policing of major events. Latterly, he was Deputy Chief Constable and Director of Operations of Lothian and Borders

Police. He is a graduate of Edinburgh University and the FBI Academy at Quantico, Virginia. Tom currently lives in Edinburgh.

Since leaving the police, Tom has worked in alcohol and drug strategy, adult and child protection, and carried out independent serious case and homicide reviews. He is now a
regular columnist with the Scotsman and writes extensively on crime and justice matters. His first book, Ruxton, The First Modern Murder, was shortlisted for the 2021 Scottish National Book Awards.

Julia: Well, first of all, thank you so much, Tom, for coming to the podcast. You said you were very excited, and we're definitely very excited for you to be here.

Tom Wood: I'm very excited to be on the Ringwood Podcast.

Julia: So, if Annemarie, you want to get started with the questions?

Annemarie: Absolutely. So our first question for you, Tom, for our listeners who are not familiar with you or the case, could you talk about your police work and your involvement in the World's End case?

Tom Wood: Yes, of course. I am now a writer, but for most of my life, I was a police officer through in the east of Scotland. And for most of that time, I was an investigator. I was a member of the criminal investigation department. Through, in the east of Scotland, round about Edinburgh, but I worked other places too.

And one of the, one of the major enquiries which I worked on for a good part of my service was what became known as the, the World's End Murders, but in fact were the murders of two young girls, Helen and Christine. And, um, I don't, I don't like, I mean, I know it's called "The World's End Murders", but I like to talk about Helen and Christine
because they are the centre of the story and they don't deserve, they don't, um, deserve to be kind of airbrushed out by the, the generic name.

But the World's End Murders, the murders of Helen and Christine, were two young girls who were abducted from, uh, outside a pub, um, near Edinburgh in 1977, October 1977, and their bodies were found about 20 miles east down the coast, brutally murdered. And it was a sexually motivated murder. And that crime haunted my police force, Lothian Borders Police, and a lot of us, um, you know, a lot of us investigators over the long course of their, of that.

What I'd written before, I discovered that actually, there was so much more to add, and so the new book, um, The World's End Murders: The Inside Story, is very much that, the inside story of the investigation works on all. And of course over a period of all these years, we made a lot of mistakes, um, got a lot right as well, and the story is the story
of that journey.

And if I could just read to you the opening two paragraphs of the book, I think you'll get the gist of it.

What I say is this:
"It's difficult now after the passage of so much time to remember all the things we did not know and could not do in 1977. Suffice to say that the 37-year life of the investigation spanned several epochs of advances in criminal investigation and forensic science. We began the investigation with notebooks and pencils. Fingerprints and crime scene photography. We finished with supercomputers and then sensitive low copy DNA analysis."

That, that span, I don't think there's a period in history where forensic science has developed so much as over that period, not just in terms of forensic science, but also in terms of the use of computers.

I want to go on to say, second paragraph of my introduction:
It's a remarkable testimony to the care and precision of the work done in 1977, that the evidence gathered back then was both gathered and retained in such a way that That over three decades later, it could give up its secrets and deliver justice for two innocent young girls, the families who loved them, and the wider community horrified by their
brutal murders."

And in a sense, I suppose, you know, it's the old thing about writing books. You should tell people what you're going to tell them, then tell them and then remind them what you've told them. Well, in essence, the, the first two paragraphs tells you what the book's about. It's about that journey and about the, about the people who struggled for over 37 years to deliver justice.

Julia: I mean, the way you talk about it, it's like such like a pivotal moment, like a moment in your career and the careers of so many other officers that were involved in the case. And I guess like in those sort of like situations, people always ask like, but do you remember when you were, when that happened? And that's our next question for you: Do you remember where you were exactly when the murders occurred?

Tom Wood: I do. I remember vividly. I was a young detective and I actually came on duty at 2 p. m. on Sunday, the 16th of October, just as the bodies had been found. And I had an indoor job. I was just newly promoted into the CID, so I was indoors working in an admin office. They hadn't thought I was reliable enough to let me out on the general public yet. I was working in the office, so my job was to find call out officers, coordinate vehicles, office space, all the admin things that you need, that surround a huge investigation. But what I remember distinctly is when I was in the office and this really old detective inspector came in, very experienced guy, and he was speaking to a colleague of mine and he said to him in kind of hushed tones, he said, "They've done
this before, and they'll do it again." That's what he said. "They've done this before and they'll do it again."  It was clear right from the outset. that we were dealing with something extraordinary. This was not the usual murder where just accident or, or, or a claim of passion or anger or alcohol or anything. This was a cold, calculated murder, execution of two young girls.

And first officers on the scene knew right away that this was different and it was going to be really difficult to catch the guys who did this.

Annemarie: Wow. That's incredible. I think you do, I think that definitely comes across clearly in your book. Um, that just the extent to which the perpetrator was willing to go to satisfy his urges, essentially, it's really sad. And your writing generally is super thorough. Um, I really, really enjoyed reading your book because of that.

Was writing always one of your hobbies, or did you hone this skill through your work?

Tom Wood: Well funnily enough, I was always, I was always keen on creative writing and when I was at school, when I was at primary school, of all things, I won a, I won a major essay writing competition. I can't, uh, I can't, uh, think what now I wrote about, but I've still got the prize, which is a book, and I, I regularly use it to taunt my grandchildren.

But, but, uh, yeah, of course you learn to write, but, but the style of writing in the police is very different. And you, you learn to write in a very, uh, very, very much to a formula. And of course, I mean, there's an old joke about, you know, police reports talk about, um, proceeding in a westerly direction when you see a female person, that sort of
thing.

And you do tend to slip into jargon like that. And of course, when you start to write. Other things, like I'm writing just now, you've got to sort of, you've got to sort of discipline yourself out of that. But on the other hand, the strength of writing reports in the police is you've got to be succinct, you've got to be accurate, and you've got to be brief. And I was taught, as I rose through the ranks of the police service, that, you know, what you should try to do always, is, is try to have a complete summary of what had happened on two sides of a piece of paper. And an old boss of mine used to say to me, "Tommy," he said, "Brevity, and not much of it."

Annemarie: That's pretty good writing advice.

Tom Wood: Yeah, it is good writing, it is good writing advice. And, uh, you know, when you see some writing, you see some books, and academics are particularly bad for that, actually. They go off on tangents. You know, they veer off to talk about this, that, and
the next thing. Whereas, I suppose, and I suppose it was conditioning in the police service. You, you sat down, uh, to, to write short pieces. And I think now, um, let's be honest, attention spans are much shorter than they used to be. And so, when you read some old writers, some very famous writers, I mean, Walter Scott, Sir Walter Scott, the first novelist, fabulous writer, his writing now is difficult to read because the sentences are too long. The paragraphs are too long. You know, it's just a different style of writing. And, and I think now it should be short, snappy, short sentences, short, short paragraphs. And. I don't write fiction. I only write about fact, frankly, because I think that that's much more interesting and much more bizarre than most fictional work, to be honest with you.

So you've got to be accurate, but you've also got to be succinct and keep focus and keep the pace up on the story so that people get caught up in it and can't put it down.

Julia: Yeah, I mean, I think I definitely felt that because it was, when I was reading through it, it sort of felt like reading, like, a police report, or my very vague idea of what a police report sounds like, which I don't, I don't think it's that, but it, it was just like what you were saying, like, very succinct and very to the point, and I think, as a reader of mostly fiction that I think helped me like keep my attention focused on the facts and not lose track of what was happening and not lose interest. So I really did appreciate the writing style, definitely.

Tom Wood: Take it, take it from me. That's nothing like a police report, I can assure you. I hope, I hope for your own, for your own sanity that you never have to read one. No, but it was funny because I mean, the last book I wrote, uh, Ruxton: The First Modern Murder, was a very similar book and it was about a historic case as well, one that I hadn't been involved in, but I tried to do the same, and I tried to change my writing style to put a lot more pace on the story, but above all to be accurate, because if you're writing about real people, and real things have happened, You must, must, must be accurate. I mean, okay, you can give an opinion as to what happened and perhaps
interpret something, but at the same time, you've got to, you've got to be accurate because, you know, there will be somewhere, there'll be someone somewhere in darkest Australia that knows the last thing about this particular aspect of the case. And they'll be very quick to tell you if you're wrong.

Julia: And well, you sort of like hinted at this already, but you have a lot of experience in law enforcement, obviously, and you must have come across quite a few cold cases apart from this one. What is, what made this one especially significant to you?

Tom Wood: Well, this was my case. I mean, it was a case that haunted me, literally, I use the word advisedly, for all of my police service. And it was a case that I had the great privilege to lead. I led the investigation at the conclusion. So from day one, when I was a young sergeant trying to organize the cars and the offices, I ended up actually leading the investigation, which reached a conclusion and which finally identified and convicted Angus Sinclair. So it's, it's my case. I lived with it. And therefore it's probably the most defining single case of my career. In fact, there's no question it was. And, and I dare say that, that will be the case for many of my generation. It was a case that haunted us and it was a case that we felt we were personally responsible for. Helen and Christine were our girls. They weren't just victims, they were our girls. We kept photographs of them in our offices. It was a personal thing and we were determined that whoever had done this was not going to get away with it. And, uh, eventually, due to the hard work of hundreds and hundreds of officers, um, some of whom I name in my book, I can only name half a
dozen, and I feel sorry for that, because I'd like to have named many, many more, um, due to their diligence and just tenacity, um, finally justice was done. So it was a hugely important case to me and for the police force that I was proud to be a member of.

Annemarie: I have to ask how, what, what was the feeling in the room at that 2014 trial when they Finally declared the verdict against Sinclair. What was the general feeling amongst like you and your fellow law enforcement officers and like, you know, the victims families and such?

Tom Wood: Well, I can only speak personally, but I think I think judging from what I saw on the day and I was at the trial every day of the trial, you expect to feel some kind of euphoria. You expect to be punching the air and the, yes, we've done it, we're back to the, actually you don't. What I felt was an immense sense of relief, just relief. And I felt as if a huge burden had been lifted off my shoulders. It was, it was as if, you know, come into the house in the winter and you take off a very heavy coat and all of a sudden you feel lighter. Well, that's how it felt for me. I didn't feel at all, I didn't, I didn't feel at all in a celebratory mood and neither did any of my colleagues, um, because the truth is that when you boil it all down, Helen and Christine are still dead and all that they could have achieved died with them.

That's the horrific thing to think about these cases. When you think of these two young girls, two lovely young kids, right at the of their life, bright, talented, intelligent girls. And you think what they could have achieved through their lives. Who knows what they would have become? Who knows what they might have achieved? In, in their, in their, in their lives, all of it just snuffed out in a few seconds of wickedness.

And that's what it was. It's wickedness. And so when you think of it that way, you think, really, there's no cause for celebration. However, that said, I was hugely proud of the way that my old force, Northern Lothian Borders Police, had stuck with it. And they really had stuck with it. They never gave up. They never stepped back. And they kept on going and going and going and innovating and challenging forensic science and doing everything and eventually succeeding. And that gives me a sense of satisfaction, if not pleasure.

Annemarie: It's a testament to perseverance and really to, it's an example of what law enforcement is supposed to be, it's incredible. At the time of the 2007 trial of Sinclair going back a little bit at the point and you talk about in your book that his past convictions were not disclosed to the jury that that was part of the law here in Scotland, um, until after the verdict was read, so they didn't know anything about his past. And I
was super curious about your thoughts regarding this procedure?

Tom Wood: Well, it's the law of Scotland and you've got to live within the law and I, we, we in the police service did not make law and do not make the law. We enforce the law and that's the law and we live within it. It does seem to me to be somewhat bizarre that someone, someone can have this terrible background and that no inclination be given of it. And in England and Wales, of course, you can produce what they call evidence of similar facts. So, in other words, you can say, here we have a situation of these two young girls, um, they had been abducted. Um, here we have forensic, um, science materials which links this man to the abduction. Um, they were then murdered and their bodies left lying in an open space. And here we have a few years earlier, the same man doing exactly the same thing. Now, it seems to be fair, fair in the general sense, that a jury should get to hear about that, because it is salient.

But, but the law of Scotland says that you should not have your previous convictions declared, and that you should appear in the court as an innocent man. While I may not agree with it, I, you know, it's, it's not for me and there are counter arguments and I can understand the counter arguments. What I, what I can tell you is that when he was eventually found guilty, um, in 2014, and of course, immediately he's found guilty by the jury, the Lord Advocate reads out his previous convictions, and you could see the faces of the jury, literally, drain of colour, and one or two of them actually slumped forward in tears, because they, here, they had been considering the fine details and and mulling over, uh, the issues over guilt of innocence of this man, Angus Sinclair, completely, uh, unknowing to the fact that he had such a hideous record of, of wickedness and violence and sexual depravity against young women. So you could see it in their faces. I thought, for goodness, you know, this is the person we've been, we've really been wondering about this and here is his background.

I think in the case of Angus Sinclair, the English system is slightly better because he could have, they could have introduced evidence of similar fact. I think there's a point where if you're a police officer and you're an investigator, you've just got to say, look, we have to live within the rules and regulations, let's get on with it. And that's what we did.

Annemarie: I mean, definitely, you guys went to work to change the double jeopardy law following that, right?

Tom Wood: Well, that was a huge, I mean, the, the, the changing of the double jeopardy rules, I mean, I said to you, there are very few virtues that came from the World's End case, and they're not, because Helen and Christine are still dead, and the other girls who Angus Sinclair murdered are still dead. However, I was proud of the way my old force stuck to it, and I was also pleased that the law had been changed for the better, because that won't, that doesn't only affect the World's End case, that will affect those that come after and I think that the double jeopardy law where you cannot be tried twice for the same thing, regardless of circumstances, I think that was antiquated. I think that was out of date. Um, and I think that it needed changed. And so I'm glad this case. was the catalyst for that change. And I think it's changed the law for the better. And let me tell you, it was not easy to do, uh, nothing to do with us in the police service, although we brought pressure obviously. But I mean, you've got to hand it to the politicians of the day, um, and the Lord Advocate of the day, uh, Frank Mulholland and Kenny McCaskill, Justice Secretary. That was a difficult thing to do. And they did it because they saw the injustice of the 2007 trial as well. And all credit to them, instead of hiding behind, um, legal convention as they might have done, um, they stepped forward and changed the law. So all credit to them. And I give them that credit in the book.

Julia: Yeah. I mean, it's nice that there's like a hopeful, um, thing that came out of it, or that you can look back on it and look at it. The good things that came after, um, the trial, um, and I think that you also talk about it in the book about how a large part of the reason why you wrote it is to focus the story on Helen and Christine and their families instead of just focusing on the perpetrators. Often, the general public remembers the names of the criminals a lot more than the people that they harmed. So what do you think is the biggest obstacle for this to change?

Tom Wood: There seems to be a, there seems to be a cult of celebrity round about criminals and round about violent criminals. And, um, I hate it. I absolutely hate it. Because I've met a lot of them. And there's nothing to be celebrated about any of them. They're not clever. Um, they're just, they're just brutish. And I mean, the reason I wrote the book originally, the reason I started to write about this in the aftermath of the 2007 trial, because I did not want the case to be written up as a tabloid news story. I did not want it to be defined as a legal outcome. I wanted to tell the whole story. And if you want to tell a story, the best way to do it is write it yourself. But equally, I was absolutely insistent that anything I wrote should not have Angus Sinclair's face on the cover. I don't want, I don't want, and, and I, I told the, the, the, everybody that I wrote for newspapers, please do not celebrate Angus Sinclair. And eventually when Sinclair died, I was asked to write a piece about him in one of the national newspapers. And I more or less, um, said Sinclair's dead, nobody's going to miss him, let's talk about his victims, let's talk about Helen and Christine, let's celebrate their lives, let's rejoice, let's look at them, let's look at photographs of these lovely young girls and remember them. Let's not remember Angus Sinclair. He's a disgraceful, disgraceful human being, and nobody will mourn his loss.

But it does, um, concern me. I get asked to do quite a lot of television and podcasts. I mean, this is the first time I've been on the Ringwood podcast, but I've
been asked to be on other podcasts before. But, but, but, but I said to people, look, if you think I'm going to talk about the great killer, the slasher, the ripper, I said, forget it. I'm not going to do that. Because actually, I don't, I don't, I don't think they should be
celebrated at all.

Annemarie: This is kind of a follow up question, knowing that you've done, been on TV shows and podcasts for, for different cases. How do you feel that true crime stories are often sought out as a form of entertainment? Through those forms through books as well. Do you think that it takes away from the severity of the cases? Or do you think
that it's a useful form of education?

Tom Wood: I think I think some of them are done very well and and I'm very selective, but what I appear on and what I participate in, and I turned out as many as I. I don't like, I mean, there are some that are, there are dedicated satellite channels to the worst killer and you know, blah, blah, blah. And they take a very tabloid approach to it, so they explain a case, they want to cover a case in 20 minutes. Just a few weeks ago I got a call from one of these things, "So we're doing this series of things on this, and we want to do
something on one of the cases I was involved in and, uh, we're going to cover it in 15 minutes," and I said, "Stop, stop, stop. I said, not with my help, you're not. You cannot, you cannot do justice. You cannot do justice to that case in 15 minutes. Now, you know, I'm not going to participate in a comic book version of, uh, of a case which, which costs real lives, you know?"

Um, that said, some, there's some excellent documentaries, drama documentaries out there, absolutely superb, but they've got to be done, of course they're expensive to do, but they've got to be done thoroughly and well, so there's good chances of good and bad, but I don't, I don't like the tabloid approach, shock horror, 15 minute with adverts kind of approach, and I don't participate in it.

Annemarie: Perfect. Those were all of our, you know, had, had questions that we had thought of. Tom, was there anything that you would like to mention on the podcast for listeners, whether about the book or about your work or about Helen Christine or?

Tom Wood: Okay. Well, um. The book I've written about the World's End Murders is, and I say it on the front page, in honour of the memories of Helen and Christine, and of Anna, and of Hilda, and of Agnes, who were the other young women that that Angus Sinclair certainly murdered in that time in 1977. It's, it's not a, a gruesome account. Um, I don't go into, um, bloody detail about the scene of the crime and the method of murder because the families of these girls have suffered long enough and hard enough, and I'm not going to add to that, but it is a, it is a story. About a turning point in criminal investigation and for anybody who's interested in, in just the, the process of criminal investigation. And this is a story of, of, of development over several epochs and how, um, generations of detectives, several generations of detectives kept up with the developments in forensic science. And use them to, um, to deliver justice. I like to write about turning points. I like to write about cases where, that have left a legacy.

And, we've talked about the legacy of the Worlds End Murders. The book I wrote previously about the Ruxton Murders, which is, has been very well received. It's been the Ringwood bestseller for the last three years. This is why I'm surprised I've not being invited on this podcast before, by the way. But I like, it's a turning point too, because you see the development of forensic science in the World's End, and we, we see the fulfillment of that as it moves on through generations by generation.

And I've got a third book, which I'm also in preparation for writing, which I hope, um, Ringwood will also publish as part of a trilogy and that's going back further to talk about another very, very famous case, which changed Scottish society and changed the methods of criminal investigation. And I'm not going to tell you any more about that.

Julia: Okay.

Annemarie: Awwww!

Tom Wood: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're going to have to ask, you're going to
have to ask me back and I'll talk about that sometime in the future. Okay.

Annemarie: We'll absolutely do that.

Julia: This was a really great discussion, and with a perfect ending, um, to keep readers and listeners engaged, uh, for further podcast episodes with you, Tom. So thank you so much for coming by. Uh, it was really nice talking to you.

Tom Wood: Well, thank you very much for inviting me for the first time.

Annemarie: Thank you, Tom.

Interested in getting a copy of The World's End Murders, The Inside Story? Order yours through the Ringwood website for the special pre launch price of 9.99. And if you can't get enough of true crime, you can also purchase Tom Wood's first book, Ruxton: The First Modern Murder, which was shortlisted for the Saltire Society's nonfiction book of the year 2021 for only 16 pounds for both books. But hurry, this offer ends on Sunday,
June 23rd, the same day as the launch of the World's End Murders: The Inside Story, happening at 2 PM at Hillhead library in Glasgow. This event is free and all are welcome.
Let us know you're attending by heading to the event listing on the Ringwood Publishing Facebook page to RSVP.

Julia: We hope to see you there and thank you for listening.

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