HMP Glenochil has held a number of high profile prisoners over the years, One of these was Angus Sinclair, a convicted murderer.

On Saturday, October 15, 1977 two 17-year-old girls went out for a night out in Edinburgh ending up at the World’s End Pub on the High Street.

The following day, the bodies of Helen Scott and Christine Eadie were found in East Lothian six miles apart. Both had been beaten, raped, and strangled with their own clothing.

Lothian and Borders Police immediately began a murder inquiry, but it would take decades to finally convict one of the men responsible for their deaths. They interviewed hundreds of people and visited numerous pubs in the city where the girls had been, but the case went cold. However, with advances in forensic techniques, DNA was found on Helen’s raincoat, and further DNA was found of another man, but neither were on the police database.

Then there was a breakthrough. The DNA was a match to Angus Robertson Sinclair, who had a long criminal history and had been in prison since 1982. He had been convicted raping and killing seven-year-old Catherine Reehill, and in 2001 had been found guilty of murdering 17-year-old Mary Gallacher in 1976. Later police would also connect the DNA of the second man to Sinclair’s brother-in-law Gordon Hamilton.

In November 2004, 59-year-old Sinclair was detained by the police in connection with the murders of Helen and Christine but it was not until March 2005 he was arrested and charged.

Two years later his trial got underway. He claimed that Hamilton, who died in 1996, had forced the girls into motor vehicle, then drove to Gosford Bay where he sexually assaulted and strangled Christine, disposing of her body there.

He then said Hamilton had attacked and murdered Helen, near Haddington, disposing of her body in a field. Sinclair denied murdering them. The court decided there was insufficient evidence, so the case was dropped.

Nonetheless, the police were tenacious, and thanks to a change in the double jeopardy law in Scotland in 2011, Sinclair once again found himself in the dock. He was the first man in the country to stand trial twice for the same crime.

This time he was found guilty on November 14, 2014, of the World’s End murders, and given a life sentence with a minimum period of 37 years. He died alone in his cell at Glenochil on March 11, 2019 aged 73.

Sinclair was suspected of killing at least four more women.