Angus Sinclair: How far did his killing spree go?

Undated police handout of Anna Kenny who was murdered in Glasgow in August 1977. Pic: PA

ANGUS Sinclair could well be Scotland’s worst serial killer – but how many others did he kill?

Detectives believe he may have killed between six to ten others. It is almost certain in the 14 years from 1968 to 1982, when Sinclair was free to roam, he struck time and time again.

Sinclair inflicted unforgiveable pain for those families who will continue to have nightmares over his atrocities.

At that time, police did not link the killings to another four murders, which had happened in Glasgow within a few months of each other.

Agnes Cooney, murder victim, who died December 1977 in the Strathclyde area.

Frances Barker, 37, Anna Kenny, 20, Hilda McAuley, 36, and Agnes Cooney, 23, were all killed and dumped in strikingly similar circumstances to Christine Eadie and Helen Scott.

All had been bound and gagged with items of their own clothing.

In a striking twist, the last person to see victim Anna Kenny alive, Wilma Sutherland, became the wife of Gordon Hamilton, Sinclair’s accomplice, just months after this spate of murders.

Thomas Ross Young, the man who was imprisoned for the murder of Frances Barker, continued to plead his innocence until his death in July 2014.

No-one has ever been charged with the murders of Ms Cooney, Ms McAuley and Ms Kenny.

Police are also understood to have suspected Sinclair of the murder of amateur pornographer Eddie Cotogno, who was beaten to death in Glasgow in July 1979.

It was after he was sentenced to at least 37 years in prison that it was revealed police had hauled Sinclair in for questioning in regards to the death of Edinburgh mother-of-four Helen Kane, 25, whose body was found on a Dumbiedykes building  site.

He was released after providing an alibi from a close family member. Seven years later, he would go on to kill Ms Eadie and Ms Scott.

Sinclair, recently released at the time from Saughton jail after serving six years of a ten-year sentence for murdering an eight-year-old Glasgow girl, was living in nearby Hill Place – less than half a mile from  where Mrs Kane’s body would be found next day by a 25-year-old computer programmer Christopher Holmes.

Mrs Kane, of Greendykes Terrace in Craigmillar, had been married to husband Joe, a hospital porter, for seven years and they had four young children. Despite police appeals for help tracking down her killer, no-one has been brought to justice.