The Price of Innocence Read online

  SHIRLEY MCKIE: THE PRICE OF INNOCENCE

  Iain McKie was a police officer for thirty years, rising to the rank of superintendent. He has spent the last ten years extensively researching fingerprinting and has spoken at forensic conferences in the UK, Canada and the USA. Married with seven children, he now lives in Ayr.

  Michael Russell is a well-known author and broadcaster who was an MSP for the South of Scotland from 1999 to 2003. In February 2000 he agreed to take on Shirley McKie’s case as a parliamentarian and has championed it in politics and the media ever since. He lives in Argyll.

  I am Shirley McKie

  She is me and I am she

  You are too, Shirley is you

  from the song ‘Shirley McKie’

  by Michael Marra

  This ebook edition published in 2012 by

  Birlinn Limited

  West Newington House

  10 Newington Road

  Edinburgh

  EH9 1QS

  www.birlinn.co.uk

  Copyright © Michael Russell and Iain McKie 2007

  Introduction © Shirley McKie 2007

  The moral right of Michael Russell and Iain McKie to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN: 978 1 84158 575 8

  eBook ISBN: 978 0 85790 547 5

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  This book is dedicated to the memory of Marion Ross,

  in the hope that her murderer will be identified,

  tried and imprisoned, as should happen in the

  normal resolution of any vicious crime.

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction by Shirley McKie

  1 Day 1: The Murder

  2 Day 34: ‘One of your prints’

  3 Day 140: The Asbury Trial

  4 Day 420: Shirley’s Arrest

  5 Day 833: Shirley’s Trial

  6 Day 1,081: Christmas 1999

  7 Day 1,261: Exonerated in Parliament

  8 Day 1,716: Legal Battle is Joined

  9 Day 1,897: The Return of the Experts

  10 Day 2,465: Silencing Mackay

  11 Day 2,646: A Policeman Calls with a Bill

  12 Day 3,094: ‘We want to be reasonable’

  13 Day 3,319: ‘An honest mistake’

  14 Day 3,394: Truth and Lies

  15 Day 3,465: Letting Go

  16 Ten Years On: Some Questions and Some Answers

  Postscript: Response to the report of the parliamentary inquiry

  Appendix: Pat Wertheim’s 2001 report on the McKie prints

  Acknowledgments

  The authors would like to thank all those who helped in the campaign for justice for Shirley McKie and express the hope that such a campaign may never again be necessary in Scotland.

  Shirley and her family are particularly grateful to those in the media who constantly asked questions and refused to accept anything but truthful answers, and to the politicians, forensic scientists, fingerprint experts and ordinary members of the public who regularly argued for justice to be done, whilst offering support and encouragement to Shirley and to the whole family.

  Sarah Ream, Andrew Simmons and Hugh Andrew at Birlinn nurtured this book in a way that immensely improved its content and style. Mairi McKie and Cathleen Russell did the same, and put up with their husbands’ interminable discussion and dissection of the minutiae of the case.

  Finally, the authors thank each other for a remarkably amicable collaboration. Seven years ago they started out as co-campaigners; now they have become the firmest of friends.

  Introduction

  When I gave evidence to the Justice 1 parliamentary inquiry in April 2006, I began by telling the committee that I would rather have been anywhere but there. Over the nine years it took to fully clear my name, I appeared in court many times, attended inquiry after inquiry and gave many media interviews. Each time I hoped that there might be someone listening who had the power to end my nightmare, but most importantly, by speaking out, I hoped to ensure that what had happened to me could never happen to another innocent person again. In that committee room, at our new parliament building, being yet again questioned and scrutinised, I was making a final attempt to convince our politicians to do the right thing.

  My nightmare began in February 1997 when I was wrongly accused of leaving a fingerprint in the house of Marion Ross, who had been brutally murdered there. Nine years later, in February 2006, I received an out-of-court settlement from the Scottish Executive (the body responsible for the Scottish Criminal Record Office), although they still refused to admit liability. Choosing to accept this settlement was the most difficult decision I had to make throughout the whole affair: should I do the right thing for the science of fingerprinting and the people of Scotland, refuse the settlement and let it go to trial so that those responsible could be held accountable for their actions, or should I take the money and end the nightmare? I had fought for justice for nine long years. I had lost a lot, including my career and my health, and on occasions I had contemplated suicide. If I let the case go to trial I risked losing everything and I know this would have killed me.

  I have had to give up the fight now and accept that I’ve done everything I could possibly do. It’s up to the politicians to make this right now. I now want to get on with my life, whatever that holds for me, and forget about the ‘Shirley McKie case’. I would prefer there to be no book, film or any other publicity, but people continue to support me and question what happened and why, and I would rather that my story was told by those I trust to tell the truth.

  As you read this book I would ask you to bear one thing in mind. What happened to me could happen to you. The fact that I was a serving police officer meant nothing. If it is alleged that your fingerprint – or your DNA even – has been identified at a crime scene, you too could end up in a situation like mine. We therefore need to build a justice system and a political system that are open, honest and transparent. When mistakes are made, we must admit these mistakes and take responsibility for them.

  You will think it strange when I say that I still believe in using fingerprint evidence. It is one of the most powerful and reliable forms of evidence that we have. For it to be lost because of the controversy of this case would be a travesty. Throughout the last nine years I have had the privilege to meet many fingerprint experts from all over the world. They came to my rescue, many of them willing to put their own careers on the line by speaking out. The honesty and integrity of those few individuals have truly touched me. They have shown unbelievable commitment and belief in their science, which, in turn, has restored my belief.

  There are many people to whom I owe so very much, but I owe my father Iain the most. Even as I write this, tears well up at the thought of where all this could have ended if it hadn’t been for his love, patience, and tenacity.

  My mother, Nancy, deals with things so differently from my dad, but has been there constantly for me in so many ways.

  Mairi, my siblings and their families, sorry this has taken so long: thank you so much.

  In times of adversity you find out who your true friends are. I thank those few individuals for their belief in me and their support. You know who you are. I have also made some great new friends over the duration of this case, and would include Mike Russell in that category. I owe him a special thank yo
u.

  There are so many aspects of this tale which remain unanswered. I have had to accept that they may always remain so. But there are people out there who know the truth. For the sake of Marion Ross and for the future of fingerprint evidence worldwide, I would implore them to finally do the right thing.

  Shirley McKie

  Troon, December 2006

  1

  The Murder

  Day 1

  In the UK, January 1997 was dry and slightly colder than normal. On tiny Fair Isle near Shetland, it was the calmest January since records began; on broad Exmoor in England, it was one of the chilliest. Kilmarnock lies about halfway between those British extremities, and its weather likewise. A town of about 60,000 inhabitants to the south-west of Glasgow, its former glory as a key textile and heavy engineering centre has long faded, although it is still home to the famous Johnnie Walker whisky blend. The location of the pioneering railway in Scotland, which ran to Troon on the Ayrshire coast, it is the place where, in 1786, Robert Burns’ poems were first printed in what become known as the ‘Kilmarnock edition’. A more modern book, The Rough Guide to Scotland, rather harshly described the town as ‘shabby and depressed, saddled with some terrible shopping centres and a grim one-way system’.

  Before the demolition of much fine architecture, the heart of the town lay at the crossroads where traffic from the neighbouring towns of Ayr, Troon and Irvine converged. To the east of these crossroads lies St Marnock Street and to the west, Portland Road, which soon becomes Irvine Road and cuts through the housing sprawl that surrounds the town. The houses here are modest and old-fashioned but mostly well maintained.

  St Marnock Street is the site of the town’s police office, a vaguely modern building whose size confirms that this is not only the headquarters of the Ayrshire division of Strathclyde Police, but also that the police have much to do in this area.

  On the morning of Thursday 9 January 1997, it was even busier than usual. The preceding evening a neighbour of Marion Ross, a 51-year-old spinster living in a semi-detached bungalow at 43 Irvine Road, had been alerted by one of Miss Ross’s relatives who was concerned that she was not answering her telephone. Miss Ross, a retired, prematurely aged and nervous bank clerk, was something of a recluse, and it was not usual for her to be out on a winter’s evening. Could the neighbour use his key to find out if everything was all right?

  He did, and it was not. Letting himself into the darkened house, the neighbour very quickly found Miss Ross. She was lying on her back on the blood-soaked hall carpet, diagonally across the entrance to the bathroom. There were terrible wounds to her face and throat. Panicked phone calls to the police and ambulance followed

  Constables Hope and Stirling arrived within minutes but already the paramedics were there and had examined the body. Senior detectives were soon on the scene and the house was sealed off. Although it was clear from her horrendous injuries that Marion Ross was dead, the first and most important job was medical confirmation of that fact, which the casualty surgeon gave after a brief examination.

  The grim tasks of examining the body in detail, photographing and protecting the murder scene and identifying potential evidence for forensic examination then began. The police mortuary was put on standby in preparation for a post-mortem, and the highly respected Professor Peter Vanezis, head of Forensic Medicine and Science at Glasgow University, was alerted.

  Once the police decided that the body could be moved, an undertaker took it to the mortuary, where Professor Vanezis performed a meticulous examination, finding bruising over the whole body as well as deep lacerations to the hands and arms. These indicated that Miss Ross had desperately attempted to fend off her attacker. Thirteen fractured ribs provided evidence of a brutal struggle.

  Marion Ross had first been stabbed in the throat with a knife and the wound would have been enough to kill her. But then her attacker had continued to brutalise her, stabbing her through the eye with scissors that penetrated her skull and entered her brain. Still not finished, he had used the scissors once more, pushing them through her throat and into the spinal column, almost pinning her to the floor. Whoever the murderer was, he (and the force of the attack implied a male attacker) was obviously extremely dangerous. When he left the house he must have been covered in his victim’s blood.

  The police murder team was being formed when Shirley McKie arrived for work on that grey Thursday morning. As a respected and competent detective constable, she was one of several DCs allocated to the inquiry, which would be led by Detective Chief Inspector Stephen Heath, the senior detective in Kilmarnock. At the first briefing he allocated tasks to all the officers and made it clear that they were looking for a particularly savage murderer who could strike again. An early arrest was essential.

  After that first briefing of the murder team, DCI Heath and DC McKie went their separate ways to undertake their allotted tasks in the inquiry. The procurator fiscal at Kilmarnock had visited the crime scene early on because, although the police were in charge of investigation, it was the PF, that uniquely Scottish legal official, who would oversee the inquiry and, if a suspect was arrested, prosecute on behalf of the Crown.

  A permanent police guard was posted outside the house and the task of all the officers on that duty, who changed shifts regularly, was to prevent entry to all but authorised personnel. Shirley, although part of the inquiry, was not authorised to enter, and although she officially visited the house three times in total, each and every officer involved in standing guard would later testify that she never went inside. This was to become a critically important fact.

  Once the house was secure, every room and cupboard was meticulously searched by the forensic and scenes-of-crime experts. Doors, skirting-boards, railings, personal items, food packaging, papers and anything that might, no matter how faintly, yield a fingerprint, a fibre or a stain were meticulously examined. And although the highest standards were adhered to throughout the inquiry, even more care was taken with the bathroom door near which the body had been found, as there were several obvious prints on the wooden surround. Any one of these prints could have been left by the killer.

  Shirley’s job in these early days of the investigation was to make routine inquiries of workmen who had been at the victim’s house over the past few years. Along with her sergeant, Willie Shields, she set about this detailed activity in her usual thorough way, knowing that from such mundane tasks vital new information often arises.

  One of the companies they checked had built an extension to Miss Ross’s house some years earlier. The small firm belonged to Nimrod Asbury, who was visibly upset when they called on him. He explained that his grandson, David, had gone missing and left a suicide note. He confirmed that David had worked on the extension with him.

  Concerned, but not yet alarmed, Shirley and Willie followed this up by going to the family home in Kilbirnie, some twelve miles north-west of Kilmarnock. They were met by David’s mother who anxiously asked whether they had any news of her son. David, she told them, had recently been ‘down’ but his disappearance was completely unexpected. She allowed them to look through his bedroom.

  In the room, little seemed out of the ordinary. However, on the top shelf of the wardrobe, Shirley found a Marks and Spencer biscuit tin which contained several wads of banknotes held together by rubber bands. At a rough count there seemed to be £1,400, which Mrs Asbury explained as being David’s savings for a car which he wanted to buy. Shirley replaced the tin on the shelf without any comment.

  David Asbury returned home the next day and was interviewed quickly thereafter. There seemed to be nothing to link him to the murder and he was not considered a suspect. As he had worked in Miss Ross’s house some time ago and it was possible his fingerprints were still there, he volunteered to give a set of prints to eliminate him from the inquiry.

  In Irvine Road and in the surrounding streets a door-to-door visit by the police turned up no one who had heard or seen anything suspicious. The officers knew that
living near the scene of a murder is traumatic and unsettling. Word of the crime travels fast, along with gossip, and fear and uncertainty grows until the killer is caught. The victim’s relatives urgently seek the solace of knowing that the murderer has been identified, the media endlessly probe for information and the procurator fiscal and the force’s senior management regularly look for progress reports. And, of course, officers know that careers can rise or fall depending upon success in a high-profile murder inquiry.

  The pressures for an early arrest were strong, yet cases such as this one, where there is no obvious motive, but where extreme brutality has been used, are often the most difficult to solve. Computers and continually improving technology have made murder investigation much more sophisticated, but it is still nothing like as fast-moving or glamorous as television suggests. Effective police work remains rooted in tried-and-tested routines and requires much patience.

  The police had an early suspect with a personal link to Marion Ross and it quickly became apparent that this person’s alibi was far from robust. There were also other reasons which made him a likely candidate. In addition, a police informer had told DCI Heath that there was some gossip in the criminal fraternity in Kilmarnock about a certain Patrick Docherty. Docherty had a long record of violence and was now apparently boasting about having been involved in the murder. Relatives and friends of the murdered woman were also being scrutinised closely by the investigation team, for most murder victims know their killers well. In all, the police investigated eights suspects.

  Meanwhile, forensic evidence recovered from the murder scene was being analysed. This included 400 or so fingerprints that had been lifted in the first few days of the investigation. The job of examining and identifying these prints was undertaken, as usual, by staff at the Scottish Criminal Record Office, known as SCRO, which was based in the Strathclyde Police headquarters at 173 Pitt Street, Glasgow, the somewhat old-fashioned headquarters of the entire force. If they could sift out from this mass of material the victim’s prints and those who had legitimate access to the house, then perhaps the fingerprints of the killer would be identified from what remained.