The Glencorse Murders

[00:00:00] Welcome to Crime Time Inc, our daily podcast where we bring a true crime story every single day of the week with an overview and review with Tom Wood and myself every Sunday. And here is today's episode.

[00:00:21] Good morning Tom, we're on the move today. We're moving up the east coast of Australia from Coulomb, which is beautiful, and we're heading up further north to a place called Harvey, which is the years up the coast for a few days. How are things in Scotland? We're going to talk today because you've been all over the media, Tom, the last few days. You seem to be hogging the limelight since I've left Scotland. You've filled the vacuum very nicely there for yourself.

[00:00:47] The solar career that you're building without me. And we're going to speak about a murder you were involved in back in 1985, a triple murder, an assassination if you like, back in 1985 of three soldiers in Midlothian. How are you? Yeah, I'm very well, thank you Simon. It's after nine o'clock at night here. It's been nice weather. We have not had much frost or anything, so we're happy with that.

[00:01:14] We were going to talk about Glencourse and we will talk about Glencourse, but just a little bit of news for you because you'll be behind it. We've got a result this morning from the Southport killings. You know the three young girls that were stabbed today? Yeah. At the dance class. Horrible kids. Horrible, horrible. And of course the riots followed that. Well, the young man who was accused pled guilty this morning. And of course, because he pled guilty, all the background information has come out.

[00:01:43] And it turns out he is a very troubled individual who has been on the radar of the police and social services any number of times. He's got a history for carrying a knife. He's been referred to the counter-extremism programme. This morning, the Prime Minister was on the television from Downing Street saying, there's going to be a public inquiry. This is absolutely horrendous. The public services have failed.

[00:02:13] I was just reflecting, looking at this guy's background. This young man is a school shooter who could not find a gun. It's as simple as that. When you look at his profile, Simon, remember we talked about Sandy Hook in America? Yes. And the other shootings? And we talked about the profile. Young men, isolated, fixated with violence, fixated with weapons, excluded from school, want to bring their vengeance upon the world, does he see it?

[00:02:43] Well, this guy is exactly like that. Except because he's in the UK, he couldn't get a gun. I swear, if this fella had been in America, he'd have got a gun and he'd have seen another school shooting. As it was, the only thing he could get is a knife. But there's other aspects to it too, of course. Not only have there been failings, but the whole media and news management side has come into it. And that will bring us to Glenn Coors in just a second.

[00:03:11] In Scotland, it is the police who are responsible for news management in a major case, as long as we stay within the law. The law is the Law Advocates Guidelines, which reflects the Contemptive Court Act in England and Wales. But in this case, according to news reports, the Crown Prosecution Service actually took control of the news management. Now, I don't think that's proper. And furthermore, I don't think that works.

[00:03:38] Because it's only the SIO and it's only the murder investigation team that actually know all the nuances and know what information can be put out and what cannot be put out. So, I hope that's something they pick up. Because I think the Crown Prosecution Service are getting a bit beyond themselves. They're forgetting what their role is, you know? Yeah. It was always, you and I know, Tom, the SIO is the only person with these tight-knit team round about them.

[00:04:07] There was these two or three tight-knit colleagues round about them, hand-picked generally, that can know the nuances of the case and work with the press. Because you've pointed out here many times that you can't work without them and you can't give them free reign. You've got to have some relationship with the media in order to manage the output. A, because you want to keep the public informed. That's very, very important.

[00:04:32] B, because you don't want to compromise the case by information leaking out that's going to be crucial come the trial. Any information that may compromise the trial. And you and I will speak again about interviewing accused and how valuable it is to have information that's not been in the public domain, that only the perpetrator can know. And therefore, you know when a confession is real and when it's not, which happens many times.

[00:04:57] And the other aspect of that is protecting the case itself for court purposes. When it goes to court, that our future jury have not been influenced by the media coverage. So all that management, Tom, is what you did. You actually did it as the media officer for Lothian and Borders Police on your way up the ranks as well. So nobody understands this better than you. Yeah, and funnily enough, the Glencore's killings, which we're about to discuss, was a prime example of that.

[00:05:27] The thing is, Simon, it's not just what you can tell the media. It's what you can tell them it's not. And so you can take them into your conferences and say, you think it's an al-Qaeda cell and there's some future terrorist or it's part of a pattern of terrorist activity. I can tell you it's absolutely not. This is an isolated incident and we've got it nailed down.

[00:05:50] So without revealing anything of the case or of evidence or of sensitivity, you can actually tell them what it's not. And I don't think that the police down south, I think it was Gator Manchester Police, was it? They didn't do that. And it now appears that it's because they were given directions by the Crown Prosecution Service. Because I think often both the police sometimes and the Crown hide behind the contempt of Cortag.

[00:06:21] Yes. They use it as an excuse for saying nothing. Because to be honest, they're not confident about working with the media. And that's unfortunate. But in terms of Southport, Simon, we're going to hear more about that. And there's going to be a public inquiry. But mark my words. This is a classic school shooter. He is the archetypal school shooter who simply couldn't get a gun. I can feel an article coming on.

[00:06:48] Tom, it's interesting because last week or the week before we were talking about cold cases, unsolved cases and cases where we don't have a clear line of inquiry. When a case is at its beginning, a major case, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of roads that you could go down in that inquiry. And that's where speculation lies. That's where you get theories coming out that it could be this that happened, it could be that that happened. And what you're talking about there is very important.

[00:07:17] It's saying to the press, stop that speculation. It's not that. Stop that. It's not that. The direction we're going in, work with us and help us go in that direction. And that's managing the inquiry. And I remember this as it was social media that wasn't managed properly. The police didn't put out quickly enough. Or the Crown, as you now tell me, controlled by the Crown Prosecution Service, which I find incredible.

[00:07:43] They didn't keep the public informed properly and more importantly, keep the media on track. Well, that's right. But it's important to make the differentiation. We were going to talk about the Glenn course in a minute. Both you and I, to some extent, are out of date because while we dealt with the social media, when we were in the police service, and we did not deal with the red hot minute by minute social media storm that broke.

[00:08:13] We could take professional journalists into our confidence and say, listen, you're going down this road. I cannot tell you very much, but I can tell you you're going down the wrong track. You could have a degree of a relationship there. And you could control it to some extent. With social media now in full cry, and with no quality control whatsoever, it is truly the Wild West.

[00:08:37] One of the other aspects of this is the photograph that was released at the time of the incident. The photograph that was released, you might remember, is of a choir boy kind of laddie, maybe 11 or 12 year old boy. And what the media are now saying, that was misleading. Because the arrest photograph, which they've now released, frankly shows someone who is demonic. I mean, it's the only word I can use to describe it.

[00:09:04] It's the most horrendous photograph of this individual glowering at the camera. For some reason or other, he has been allowed to appear from custody and hide his face. He was in the court to plead guilty. He was wearing a face mask. And before that, when he was appearing earlier, he pulled his hoodie up over his mouth. I frankly don't think that should be allowed. Are there terrorist overtones here, Tom? There are.

[00:09:33] He's been trying to make ricin, which is a deadly poison, as you know, and there were items of ricin. There's been an Al-Qaeda handbook, which is readily available on the internet. He's downloaded that. This laddie is just a very, very disturbed individual who has been determined to do as much damage as he can. Think about a school shooter that couldn't get a gun. So it's going to be very interesting how it all plays out.

[00:10:02] The connection with the school is a real one, because a week before the fatal attack, he actually tried to go to his school, which had excluded him. He'd been excluded from school some years before. He tried to go to school armed with a knife, and his father had actually intervened and stopped him. And I think what's happened then is he's chosen the softest of targets. These wee girls were four or five years old. There'll be other people that don't know what we're talking about, haven't heard the news.

[00:10:30] What is Mr Starmer saying here? Is he saying that the police failed and the Crown Prosecution Service, which he used to lead, so he's got some good information here, is he saying that we didn't manage this thing properly, and he wants an inquiry into how it was handled from the outset? Yeah, what he's saying is that because he had come to the attention of the authorities so often, he'd been in the hands of the police, social services, various other agencies,

[00:10:57] that the public body failures jump off the page. That's what he said, jump off the page. We're living in a new world where we've got to consider how we deal with these very, very disturbed people and how we protect the public. He wants a full public inquiry. So he's not saying the police failed. He's saying that the public service has failed to protect these girls from a young man who was

[00:11:24] very obviously dangerous and had been reported and seen as dangerous on numerous occasions. There's another issue, of course, Simon, coming up, and that is one of race. It seems to underlie just about everything we talk about now. Because, of course, the young man concerned is black. And commentators are asking, quite rightly, I suppose,

[00:11:48] that if this young man had been found to be an extreme right-wing agitator and had copies of Mein Kampf and had tattoos of swastikas on his arm, etc., would the authorities have been so lackadaisical, for want of a better word? Would firmer action, perhaps, have been taken? In other words, did they back off because he was black?

[00:12:12] And there's been a retired DCI come on the television and said, quite honestly, yes, of course. Because police officers all over the country are just a bit reluctant because of this constant smearing of racism. If they as much as touch or look sideways that somebody is black, they're going to have an allegation of racism. And the point that was made, and I think it's a valid one,

[00:12:40] of while racism is sometimes difficult to prove, it's impossible to disprove. And some of it sticks. And, Simon, we've spoken about this before in context of Scotland, there are one or two politicians in Scotland and one or two celebrity lawyers in Scotland who this is their stock in trade, where everything is about race. And they use it as a weapon to drive back the police service.

[00:13:09] And I hope that that is covered in the public inquiry. I would just add to that, it's not just the police that are scared to say anything about black or about race at all. We're supposed to be neutral about everyone. But that's the whole country. And now we've got the hate crime laws as well. I think people feel that there's things they just best avoid and not talk about. And that's not a healthy place for society to be, Tom, when we can't openly. It's why we do podcasts.

[00:13:39] It's why we do these things. It's so that we can all discuss these issues for the greater good, so that we can all move forward together. Not being able to say things and not being able to mention or feel that you're not able to is not a healthy place to be. I take the right-wing point that things are handled differently. And I think that's what the police are always striving to do. And it's why the Crown Prosecution Service should keep themselves to themselves, like we do here in Scotland. I hope still it's the police dealing with the inquiry.

[00:14:09] Of course they refer to the fiscal. Many times I've gone to the fiscal to talk about releasing photographs and footage and CCTV. That relationship works the way it works to manage the case and manage the inquiry. The whole thing here really is coming back down to social media because that's what happened in the Southport case. Within minutes people were on there saying it was boat people, it was immigrants, it was this, it was that. All of it's speculation that needed to be cut off. It needed to be stopped there and then.

[00:14:39] And that's where the mismanagement came in, I think, Tom. That's right. I don't know if it was mismanagement or just lack of material, or perhaps paralysis in the face of a fast-moving situation. But it certainly led to a lot of disinformation. I mean, if you leave a void, something will fill it. And what fills it inevitably will be wrong. You likened that to the Glencore's case, and that's why we're speaking this morning. I thought that was why we were speaking this morning

[00:15:07] was because it's all over the media just now because of the anniversary of the Glencore slaughter. I can't remember what the name was given to it in the press at the time. Was that a big part of the inquiry then, managing the media around it? Because it was 1985, the whole country would assume it was the IRA, despite the fact that they had never been active in Scotland. It really was. I mean, the 84-85 were terrible years for us.

[00:15:36] 84 and 85, Simon, for you two in the West, they were terrible years. With the minor strike ongoing, there were two long-running murder investigations, the Caroline Hogg, Susan Maxwell, the World 10 murders were ongoing. It was the peak of the first wave of heroin. I remember in 84, particularly 84-85, the housebreakings were just going through the roof with us here in the East. And I had just changed job, and I was brought in from the serious crime squad

[00:16:06] into a new role as press and information officer, really to handle all the tactics for the Robert Black case, because we had a media strategy to try and enlist the public to catch this guy who subsequently was caught, subsequently was Robert Black. But in January, I always remember, it was cold, cold, cold winter, and I was sitting in my office in January and the phone rang mid-morning.

[00:16:36] It was my old boss, the head of CID, Brian Cunningham, the debt chief suit. Lovely guy, really old-school detective. He says to me, do you have a pair of boots, Tom? And I said, a pair of boots? Yeah, I've got a pair of boots. Why? He said, put them on. Meet me at the back door in five minutes. I always kept a pair of heavy boots in the office because time without number, I'd been called out to things and I'd ended up with wet feet, you know. So I had a pair of boots, went down to the back door, and here's a police,

[00:17:05] a marked Range Rover, Brian Cunningham was sitting in it, jumping in the back. He said, we've had a terrorist attack, terrorist shooting, three dead, Glencours Barracks. Oh, that was sick. I mean, I was just new. I was a few months in the job. And what happened was a farmer had been out feeding his sheep, snow and ice everywhere, desperately cold. He'd come across an army land rover stuck on a ditch, engine still running. He'd gone out to have a look at it and in the back,

[00:17:35] just a shambles of blood and cartridge cases. There's a trail of blood going up the road, this track, quite a steep track to this old derelict cottage. Behind the cottage, he sees the bodies of three men, two of them in army uniform, lying in a crumpled heap at the bottom of some stairs. And of course, no mobile phones in these days. He runs back and phones the police. And he also phones the nearby army barracks at Glencours because, you know, he's put two and two together.

[00:18:04] He takes a number of the Land Rover and phones us, I've seen this Land Rover, and these are three men, you see. We quickly found out that these three guys were part of a payroll crew who had, every Thursday, went from the barracks down to the local bank to draw out cash because some of the people in the barracks were still paying cash at that time. And sometimes it was 60 grand they took, but on this occasion it was 19,000 pounds. They hadn't returned and the army were actually out looking for them

[00:18:34] and wondering what had happened to them because it's about 10 minutes each way to the bank so they should have come back. And of course, army target, army dead, natural thought, IRA. Because the IRA were very, very active at that time in the UK but we had never had them in Scotland and I thought, as I was driving out, it's about 20 miles from Fetis out to Glencours, my head's spinning. IRA, you know. I thought, this is exactly what I didn't need

[00:19:04] when I was so early in the job, you know. But Brian was a great guy, he was very, very cool and we went up to the cottage, Logan Lee Cottage, I'll never forget it, derelict cold. I can't overemphasise how cold it was, Simon, to such an extent that I was wearing heavy boots and the cold was coming through the soles of my shoes. And Brian, poor Brian, he told me to wear boots but he didn't have boots so he was dancing about to try and keep his... But it was very disturbing

[00:19:34] because two of the men had been shot in the back of the head, execution style. And the other one had been shot several times across the chest and it did look like the work of terrorists. And of course, the IRA, as you know, were not averse to a bit of robbery along the way. So, military target, little bit of money on the side, looked like the IRA except that, as you said,

[00:20:03] the IRA had never operated in Scotland and there was no phone call to claim credit. The IRA always did that. So, as we were looking at the scene and the pathologists were there, up comes another Land Rover and this has got Colonel Clive Fairweather. We'd never met Clive Fairweather before this but this was Colonel Clive Fairweather who is the colonel in charge of Glencore's barracks and we didn't know at the time but Fairweather was a famous fighting soldier.

[00:20:33] He'd been the deputy commander of the SES at the time of the Iranian embassy siege and he'd fought all over the world in all the little wars in Dofar and the Middle East which nobody ever talked about and he'd also seen a lot of service in Northern Ireland. He looked at it and said, something wrong here boys, something wrong here. First of all, he said, he talked about the IRA, he said, this is not what they do but secondly,

[00:21:03] he said, these cartridge cases, he said, they're 9mm Parabellum cartridge cases, these are army rounds. He said, the IRA don't use these rounds, the IRA apparently used a mixture of ammunitions, in other words, they had different weapons for different things and furthermore, looking at the injuries of one of them, he said, he's been shot with a submachine gun because he was sprayed right across the chest and abdomen with bullets. Yeah.

[00:21:33] It's amazing how we can turn up at a locus and know what's not occurred and know that there's something not right, something doesn't sit right with us. I've had it with a case where I knew right away and it took me a minute or two and I said to the lad that was with me, the cop that was with me, this is a girl that's done this, do you know that? And he looked at me as if I was mad but I'd been at so many housebreakings, I knew there was something and it was too tidy for a housebreaking. My point

[00:22:03] is that it's amazing how someone with his experience and knowledge and you can't short circuit that, you can't train somebody like that, it's only experience and knowledge that they bring to the table and he can see that it doesn't fit the patterns that have to be there. We were very lucky because had it been another commanding officer, someone without his operational experience, he wouldn't have had that inside knowledge. And straight away he said listen boys I think this is an inside job.

[00:22:33] He said it's an army weapon no doubt about it it's a submachine gun he said I don't have these, I think it's closer to home. That was incredible Simon because we were on the right track within the first two or three hours and you know how important that is because we were standing out there in the snow and they're cold oh dear You think how white the inquiry would have become immediately if you had been left on that wrong track nationwide

[00:23:03] ports alerts all the stuff going on We were starting to go down that road we'd called the special plans to come out and all that sort of stuff and we alerted London and you know the anti-terrorist branch and MI5 all of that was in motion so what we did was we kept our mind open Clive father was an incredible guy very very experienced guy and he said let's look at this and of course it comes

[00:23:33] by too where did the gun come from in peacetime soldiers are not routinely armed the only people that carry arms are the sentries so the first thing that he did was we went back to Glencourse and we brought out there and luckily the army are fastidious at keeping records I mean that's the anybody signed out an automatic weapon in the last 24 hours we looked down and of course quite a few had because they were

[00:24:03] getting signed out for training purposes because Glencourse Barrett was a training depot so there was territorial army soldiers there there were young squaddies there and there were firearms instructors that was the whole purpose of the place so they were getting signed out these guns but with no ammunition because it so anyway we found out that there was one or two weapons had been signed out to people and were

[00:24:32] starting to zero in on them when we got another little breakthrough because a witness from the village nearby had actually seen the Land Rover picking up the money and was quite adamant that there weren't three soldiers in the Land Rover there were four there was a man in the passenger seat there was a driver and there were two uniformed soldiers in the back of the Land Rover now

[00:25:02] we knew that there was a retired major who would be sitting in the he was the admin pay corps he'd be sitting in the front passenger seat there was the driver who was a young squaddy a man called Thompson and there would be the pay corps sergeant hoskers who was sitting in the back seat but who was the fourth man and the fourth man was dressed as a soldier so this added even more weight to what the Colonel Fairfield said I didn't realise Tom maybe I missed

[00:25:31] it in the coverage but I didn't realise that he was with them he had them hostage if you like when they went to pick the money up from the bank no he hadn't done that what he'd done Simon was he'd known about it and he'd made his way down to the bank and he'd intercepted them and he'd asked for a lift back when they'd got the money yes and that's another thing Clive said he said look this is not some young squaddie this is somebody experienced

[00:26:01] somebody that knew the routines somebody who the pay the uplift crew the dead men knew and they would have allowed in the back of the land rover they wouldn't have just let anybody in the back of the land rover so it's somebody there so this is what he'd done and of course as he'd been making his way back up he pulls out the gun from his coat a short sterling machine gun very small short weapon and instructs them to go

[00:26:31] off the route and go up the hill towards where the bodies were found now we surmise and we'll never know for sure if the sergeant hoskers in the back actually went to try and tackle the gunman and got shot several times in the chest and abdomen thereafter the gunman killed the retired major shot him in the back of the head and instructed the driver to drive on to the eventual deposition

[00:27:01] site we narrowed it down eventually and there was one person who looked as if they had all the qualifications it was a man called Corporal Andrew Walker Royal Scotch soldier 12 year serviceman had seen a lot of service in Northern Ireland had been mentioned in dispatches for initiative and leadership we also found out that he was deep in debt because he'd had debt counselling from some of the senior

[00:27:30] officers his discipline had been slacking and he'd been actually returned to his unit from being an instructor there was all sorts of things adding up the other thing to say is that Walker was absent from the barracks but the gun he had signed out that morning had been returned clean as if it had never been fired so then we had to get the gun and do ballistics tests as to find out whether this was the gun that actually killed the three men

[00:27:59] and people don't appreciate this Simon but that's harder than you think because most soft nose bullets when you fire them at people the bullet is actually distorted it's not a clean bullet because the bullet enters and hits your bones and your vital organs and actually becomes distorted so sometimes it's really difficult but luckily unluckily for him but luckily for us we found a complete bullet head in the chest of the sergeant and managed to get styration marks from that

[00:28:29] and managed the forensic guys were absolutely first class and within 24 hours they'd done the test and they said this is definitely the gun that fired that bullet and the gun was the one that Walker had signed out something that was missing for me in the coverage was about that you might be able to help our listeners with the background of the three officers who were murdered I was wondering about I think you alluded to the role of the retired major David Cunningham

[00:28:58] can you tell us a bit about him what his job was Major Cunningham was a retired officer who had been kept in a civilian position so he was a retired major and he was the head of admin that's what he did Sergeant Hoskers was the pay corps he was the staff sergeant and he was the pay corps man so he was the guy who made up the wages basically and then poor and got instructed to drive us down

[00:29:28] this was a routine thing they didn't take any security precautions it happened every Thursday regulars clockwork nine o'clock in the morning they left bank opened at 9.30 got the cash came back so anybody who was observing or anybody who cared to look could see what was happening so anyway we eventually got Walker he pitched up after two or three days and said he didn't we would think it was an IRA attack but

[00:30:00] of course the gun was the evidence and he was convicted in the high court it always struck me you know that I was going to kill these three men his comrades in arms because that's the only

[00:30:30] way he could have made his escape because they knew who he was so he set out all that's exactly what he had done all it needed was for him to slip off an icy

[00:31:00] road and put his land rover in the ditch and that was it completely good he had no plan after that his whole scheme came unstuck because of that one error it's an old military maxim that no plan survives contact with reality well his plan didn't and he suffered as a consequence the thing about he never said a word never admitted his guilt nothing

[00:31:29] not till the day he died and he was put in prison sent to Peterhead and was one of the leading lights in the Peterhead riot which happened the year after in 1986 he was one of the leaders of the Peterhead riot he subsequently had a stroke and was sent out of prison released on compassionate grounds and he died in his 60s in a care home and the money has never been found or

[00:31:59] at least if it has been found Simon nobody has come forward and send it and all that for 19 grand yeah but what's intriguing about that the form he's got a gun that he shouldn't have and he's got a bag of cash and he's miles from anywhere right so what's he going to do he's got to get the gun back as fast as he can to

[00:32:45] with your wellies on up there with your spade you spend a lot of time up there I bet the grandkids get walked up there all the times oh no granddad not the reservoir again not the reservoir again do we have to take that drystone down again oh 19 grand Tommy we found out later that what he'd done he said he'd ordered a car he was going to be posted to Germany and go out with the Royal Scots to Germany and what we found out is that

[00:33:15] he'd bought a car to be delivered to him in Germany which he couldn't afford so it was all about his lifestyle and it was all about maintaining his lifestyle and he was just a cold hearted killer I spoke numerous times to clive fair about this because I got to know him very well he became inspector of prisons and a

[00:34:00] it but I always wondered exactly what kind of things Andrew Walker had been exposed to in Northern Island because the level of violence and cold hearted violence in pursuit of a few grand was absolutely incredible what we think happened Simon was he shot Sergeant Huskers in the back of the Land Rover very shortly after hijacking the Land Rover he shot the Major soon thereafter

[00:34:29] because there was an exit through the wind screen and we think that he took the driver up to the cottage and we

[00:35:29] next after the media management as soon as we moved to the barracks the press were all over us television everybody all over us what I could tell them was was they used to attack once, and then they'd attack twice,

[00:35:58] sometimes a third time as well. Sometimes, Tom, what they were doing, this is where I was involved, was there would be an attack, an explosion or whatever. That was the bait, to get the security services into the area, get them plotted up round about, because that's what we did. We plotted up round about to watch what was going on, and then the second device would go off, and sometimes it was more impactful than the original device. And that's what happened at Warren Point and these things too.

[00:36:25] Well, again, you see, because there was snow on the ground and had been snow lying for some time, we could see that the area round about had not been disturbed. So if there had been a secondary device planted, and of course, you know... Or an ambush. Well, that's right, an ambush. Because of the cold, almost Arctic conditions there, you could see anything that had been moving around, and the snow had been lying for quite some time.

[00:36:54] So that gave us a level of comfort as far as that was concerned. I always remember Glasgow Central Station on a surveillance, and that cold you're talking about, Tom, it goes through your bones, doesn't it? You can feel it rising from your soles of your feet. My mama used to always say, keep your feet and your head warm, and the rest of you will be warm. I learned it in Glasgow Central Station, standing in that marble, and it goes right up through you. It takes you hours, if not days, to get warm again.

[00:37:25] It takes a lot of whiskey to warm you up. Absolutely. Well, yes, indeed. The thing is, I was a very young man then, but poor old Brian Cunningham. He should. He was there as well, and he was a lot older. He was first class, and I'll tell you who else was involved in that case. You might have come across him. Oh, yeah. DCI man called Kenny Shanks. Yes. Kenny was leading in the drug squad for many years. Big red-haired fella. Lovely guy, and a very good detective.

[00:37:55] And Kenny was the DCI on that case. We had to draw detectives from other investigations to man it up, because we were really strapped at that time. I don't think we can ever impart accurately or properly how that crime wave was sweeping across Scotland at the time, but we'll try again in the future. In the meantime, Tom, it's brilliant that we've got you, that we can go back to that in 1985, the anniversary of it just passed, and that you were actually there at the Locusts

[00:38:23] and very much involved in the inquiry. Thanks for doing that for our Time Time Inc. listeners this morning, or this evening, for you. It's a pleasure, Simon. I've written about it, and it was on the BBC and whatnot, and the one thing I always want to do is I'm a firm believer in people are only forgotten when their names are not mentioned. And it gives me a great pleasure to mention Brian Cunningham and Kenny Shanks and people like that, people who I worked with for many years and I had huge respect for, and they're no longer here. If I can give them a little bit of credit

[00:38:53] and mention their names, then... And, of course, David Cunningham, Terence Husker, and John Thompson, the same murdered soldiers. Yeah, dreadful. And, funnily enough, I believe that there is now... I've not been back at the cottage, but I believe there's a memorial there, a nice memorial to them, which the army have put there, which I think is very appropriate and fitting because they were completely innocent parties who just happened to find themselves the target of a cold-blooded...

[00:39:22] You'll need to get your boots on again, Tom. If they're still fit, you can get up there for a wee walk. Thanks, Tom. Speak soon. Tom, I think these daily episodes are a game-changer for us. I'm really enjoying it. They are, Simon, and there's a lot more to come. Looking forward to it. Tune in tomorrow for another exciting True Crime episode.