World's End: Police chief brands cleared serial killer 'evil'

A RETIRED police officer who led the World's End murder case has branded Angus Sinclair, the serial killer who stood trial for the double murders, as "evil", comparing him to notorious Moors murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley.

In a book to be published today on the infamous double-murder investigation, Tom Wood gives his account of a case that spanned 30 years and ended in agony for the families of the two young victims, Christine Scott and Helen Eadie.

The best friends were murdered after a night out in Edinburgh's Royal Mile that ended in the World's End bar in October 2007. The women's bodies were found separately, on a beach and in a field in East Lothian, both having been beaten and strangled.

Last year, after decades of painstaking work by detectives and forensic scientists, convicted killer Sinclair stood trial for the murders. But the case was sensationally thrown out by the judge, Lord Clarke, who upheld a "no case to answer" motion from the defence.

In his book Mr Wood, who retired as deputy chief constable of Lothian and Borders Police in the final stages of the World's End inquiry, which he headed, said: "I believe there are evil people – evil people whose actions put them beyond any forgiveness or sympathy – and Angus Robertson Sinclair is one of them."

Mr Wood also goes on to condemn as archaic a justice system that has allowed the "balance of fairness" to swing in favour of the accused and away from the victim and public interest.

The decision to throw out the World's End case was met with a mixture of disbelief and barely suppressed fury from police officers involved in the case.

In particular, they could not understand why the advocate depute decided not to present DNA evidence which police believed would help prove that Sinclair had bound the girls with their own underwear, and therefore murdered them.

In The World's End – A Thirty Year Quest for Justice, Mr Wood publicly vents those frustrations for the first time. But in a sweeping overview of the long-running case, he also reserves criticism for some aspects of the police's own investigation.

Mr Wood admits the original murder inquiry was "too local" and failed to profile other similar crimes elsewhere in the country which could have led to a breakthrough decades before advances in DNA technology finally led them to Sinclair.

Last night, Mr Wood insisted the book was not intended to be "throwing stones" at the prosecution.

"I wanted to do a narrative on the whole of the case from start to finish so the history of the World's End was not only about the trial and not in a hundred news bites."