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True Crime Documentary - For 36 Years, Her Killer Walked Free · The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories

0:07
Speaker 1: In September nineteen eighty four, fifty eight year old Mary
0:11
Speaker 1: McLaughlin was walking home after a night out at her
0:15
Speaker 1: local pub.
0:19
Speaker 2: Mary met her killer on that route, and we don't
0:24
Speaker 2: know how or why, but that killer ended up in
0:28
Speaker 2: Mary's home.
0:31
Speaker 1: The stranger was twenty two year old Graham McGill, a
0:35
Speaker 1: convicted sex offender who was on temporary release from prison.
0:40
Speaker 1: Once inside Mary's flat, McGill brutally murdered the popular grandmother.
0:47
Speaker 3: Mcgil repaired her quite easily. He beat her up. It
0:51
Speaker 3: was a horrifict murder.
0:54
Speaker 1: Mary's body was discovered six days later, by which time
0:58
Speaker 1: her killer had seemingly val without a trace.
1:03
Speaker 4: We were looking for a perpetrator of essentially motivated trame,
1:09
Speaker 4: there's no doubt about it, but we got nowhere.
1:14
Speaker 1: The case went cold for nearly four decades until DNA
1:18
Speaker 1: evidence left behind at the scene would expose McGill.
1:24
Speaker 5: The probability of the DNA which was discovered was one
1:27
Speaker 5: in a billion.
1:28
Speaker 1: Graham McGill had finally been revealed as one of the
1:32
Speaker 1: world's most evil killers. It was justice thirty seven years
2:01
Speaker 1: in the making. In April twenty twenty one, fifty nine
2:06
Speaker 1: year old Graham McGill was found guilty of the nineteen
2:09
Speaker 1: eighty four murder of Mary McLachlin.
2:14
Speaker 3: It was a cold case that hadn't been covered for
2:17
Speaker 3: a number of years by any journalist in Scotland, and
2:20
Speaker 3: in twenty sixteen I decided to feature it in an
2:23
Speaker 3: unsold murder series I was running in the Daily Record.
2:26
Speaker 3: Mary's case hadn't been in the newspapers for quite a
2:29
Speaker 3: long time, been I decided to have a look at it.
2:32
Speaker 1: Detective Ian Wishart worked on the original murder investigation in
2:38
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four.
2:40
Speaker 4: What I remember of Mary was that she was well
2:43
Speaker 4: lated in the area and she was an absolute character.
2:47
Speaker 4: She had eleven children. Anyone who knew York said she
2:52
Speaker 4: was a wonderful person.
2:54
Speaker 1: It was evidence collected at the crime scene by Ian
2:58
Speaker 1: and his team that would prove crew. Thirty seven years
3:01
Speaker 1: down the line, Graham.
3:03
Speaker 6: McGill probably thought he got away with his murder. He
3:08
Speaker 6: felt that thirty years have gone by and nobody has
3:12
Speaker 6: come to arrest me. He lived a full life, never
3:17
Speaker 6: being held liable for what crimes he had committed.
3:23
Speaker 4: The only proofs the murders and very serious crimes are
3:28
Speaker 4: not forgotten.
3:32
Speaker 1: This killer's story begins in Scotland on the thirtieth of
3:36
Speaker 1: September nineteen sixty one.
3:43
Speaker 4: We don't know very much about Grae McGill's early life.
3:49
Speaker 3: There isn't a lot known about his path. We know
3:52
Speaker 3: that he's from the west of Scotland, but.
3:54
Speaker 4: I do know that in later life he was charged
3:59
Speaker 4: with attempt to ravish or attempt to reape.
4:04
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty one, aged around twenty, McGill was sentenced
4:08
Speaker 1: to six years in prison for the assault.
4:12
Speaker 2: The younger that men like this start to offend, the
4:16
Speaker 2: more likely it is that this offending is going to
4:18
Speaker 2: continue and on into the future. Misogyny is a much
4:24
Speaker 2: bigger problem than people think it is, and starting at
4:28
Speaker 2: that young age is predictive that there are going to
4:31
Speaker 2: be big problems in the future.
4:34
Speaker 1: By September nineteen eighty four, Graham McGill was in Edinburgh prison,
4:39
Speaker 1: three years into his six year sentence. Fifty miles away
4:46
Speaker 1: in Partic, a suburb of Glasgow, fifty eight year old
4:49
Speaker 1: Mary McLaughlin, a mother of eleven and grandmother of twenty six,
4:54
Speaker 1: was a popular member of the neighborhood.
4:58
Speaker 3: Mary McLaughlin laws are divorced women. She lived in a
5:02
Speaker 3: flat alone. She was well known in her local community.
5:06
Speaker 3: She liked to go to the local pub where she
5:08
Speaker 3: play a game of dominoes and then quite often she'd
5:11
Speaker 3: stop for chips on the way home and she talk
5:14
Speaker 3: to everybody. Everybody knew as we Mary. She was really,
5:17
Speaker 3: you know, quite a popular member of our community.
5:21
Speaker 1: One of Mary's eleven children is her daughter, Gina McGavin.
5:26
Speaker 7: I know from the area where she would go and
5:29
Speaker 7: do her socializing and at night, there was a lot
5:33
Speaker 7: of people liked her.
5:34
Speaker 3: She was well l liked.
5:36
Speaker 7: I don't think she had any close friends, but she
5:38
Speaker 7: was well l liked. She liked to have a little drink,
5:45
Speaker 7: She liked the company of people.
5:48
Speaker 3: I feel she.
5:49
Speaker 7: Didn't ever like being alone, and that was her we
5:51
Speaker 7: it was our escape.
5:53
Speaker 1: Mary's need to be surrounded by people may have stemmed
5:57
Speaker 1: from her tough start in life.
6:00
Speaker 3: Mary had a very tragic upbringing. Her mother died when
6:05
Speaker 3: she was only five years old, and her dad was
6:09
Speaker 3: merchant seman, so he was away quite a lot. So
6:12
Speaker 3: what he did was as he left Mary in the
6:14
Speaker 3: charge of his two sisters, who weren't very kind to Mary.
6:20
Speaker 3: There was no affection there was nobody that cared about her,
6:24
Speaker 3: so she was basically left just to you know, her
6:26
Speaker 3: own devices, and quite frankly, if Cinderella was her real
6:30
Speaker 3: life story, Mary fitted that Bill.
6:33
Speaker 1: Mary's troubled upbringing may have been why she struggled when
6:36
Speaker 1: she had children of her own.
6:39
Speaker 3: Wasn't there.
6:40
Speaker 7: I was mostly brought up by my father, and I
6:45
Speaker 7: have vague memories of her coming and going in my life,
6:48
Speaker 7: having my first child. She wasn't there when I get married.
6:52
Speaker 7: You know, she wasn't there at the crucial points in
6:55
Speaker 7: my life.
6:56
Speaker 3: And never understood why.
6:58
Speaker 7: The memories that I do have of her, She to
7:01
Speaker 7: me always seemed happy outward, but in what I always
7:07
Speaker 7: had that feeling she wasn't happy.
7:09
Speaker 3: She was lonely.
7:11
Speaker 1: Although Gina and her mother had a challenging relationship, Mary
7:15
Speaker 1: was thriving in her role as a grandmother.
7:19
Speaker 7: The times that they did see their granny, they loved
7:21
Speaker 7: their they loved their humor, they loved their fun. She
7:23
Speaker 7: was always making jokes that I knew deep down that
7:27
Speaker 7: was all just up front for the sadness that she
7:31
Speaker 7: was feeling and the loneliness that she was really feeling.
7:35
Speaker 1: By September nineteen eighty four, Mary and Gina's relationship showed
7:39
Speaker 1: signs of improvement after they crossed paths at Gina's father's funeral.
7:45
Speaker 7: She explained a lot of things about her life and
7:47
Speaker 7: my dad, her life with her other relationship, and understood
7:51
Speaker 7: her more because I was married and I had shown myself,
7:55
Speaker 7: so I understood.
7:58
Speaker 3: Where she was coming from. And she opened up quite
8:00
Speaker 3: a bit.
8:02
Speaker 7: And we did it eased to meet, but it didn't
8:05
Speaker 7: happen because she was muddered.
8:09
Speaker 3: That just was cut short.
8:14
Speaker 1: Just a few weeks after Gina's dad's funeral, in early
8:18
Speaker 1: October nineteen eighty four, Mary McLachlin was found murdered in
8:23
Speaker 1: her party home.
8:26
Speaker 3: Mary's body lay in her flat for six days before
8:30
Speaker 3: she was discovered, so it suspected through forensic examination that
8:35
Speaker 3: she died on either the twenty sixth or the twenty
8:38
Speaker 3: seventh of September nineteen eighty four. Her body was discovered
8:42
Speaker 3: when her son, who used to visit her maybe once
8:46
Speaker 3: a week, went into the flat with his girlfriend at
8:49
Speaker 3: the time and she ran now screaming.
8:52
Speaker 5: Martin finds his mother lying on the bed. She has
8:56
Speaker 5: her dressing gown cord tied around her. Next times and
9:00
Speaker 5: double knotted and her dress, her green dress is on
9:04
Speaker 5: back to front and they called.
9:07
Speaker 3: The police and that's when the murder investigation started.
9:12
Speaker 1: News of Mary's horrendous murder left her daughter Gina distraught.
9:18
Speaker 7: My maternal half brother called my house to see that
9:23
Speaker 7: it mean in.
9:23
Speaker 3: Her mum's and she be murdered.
9:28
Speaker 7: And the short stunned. But I just couldn't believe what
9:32
Speaker 7: I was hearing.
9:36
Speaker 1: The investigation into Mary's murder began immediately. Who would want
9:41
Speaker 1: to kill the popular grandmother? Detectives needed to find the
9:46
Speaker 1: killer fast, but with minimal evidence and few witnesses, it
9:50
Speaker 1: would be like finding a needle in a haystack. When
10:03
Speaker 1: Mary McLachlin was found murdered in her Glasgow home in
10:07
Speaker 1: October nineteen eighty four, Detective Ian Wishart was one of
10:11
Speaker 1: the first investigators at the scene.
10:15
Speaker 4: When I arrived at the house, obviously there was a
10:18
Speaker 4: policeman at the door. The scene was Mary lying on
10:21
Speaker 4: her bed, partially clothed but clearly strangled by what looked
10:29
Speaker 4: like the tie of a dressing gown. There was no
10:34
Speaker 4: sign of the house being ransacked, but what was rather
10:39
Speaker 4: obvious was an ashtray full of cigarette ends plus a
10:46
Speaker 4: partially spoke cigarette. Obviously, a very quick inquiry revealed that
10:56
Speaker 4: no one had heard her entering the house that night,
11:01
Speaker 4: so it would have appeared at a very early stage
11:05
Speaker 4: that she may have known her attackers. Because obviously there
11:09
Speaker 4: was no kerfuffle, no noise whatsoever.
11:14
Speaker 1: Mary's family, including her daughter Gina, needed to roll themselves
11:19
Speaker 1: out of the inquiry.
11:20
Speaker 7: We were directed to Glead Street Police office in party
11:24
Speaker 7: to get fingerprints taken for obviously elimination purposes. I just
11:31
Speaker 7: was totally, I was babbling. I couldn't get my head
11:36
Speaker 7: round it, and it was just awful, awful, an awful experience.
11:42
Speaker 7: When you hear of murder and you read it in
11:44
Speaker 7: the newspapers or you hear it in the media, and
11:48
Speaker 7: you think, oh, that's awful, that's sad, But when it
11:50
Speaker 7: actually it is close to home, that impacts unbelievable and
11:56
Speaker 7: you start feeling all sorts of mixed the most and
12:01
Speaker 7: you can't think straight.
12:02
Speaker 3: Your head just can't.
12:03
Speaker 1: Get around it. Mary's partner also had an alibi. He
12:07
Speaker 1: was working away at sea. Ian wish Art and his
12:13
Speaker 1: team had now early leads.
12:16
Speaker 4: The following day, I gave a television interview and naturally
12:22
Speaker 4: appealed for witnesses.
12:24
Speaker 8: Obviously, we would like to get in touch with anyone
12:28
Speaker 8: who lived in the area, who may have been in
12:31
Speaker 8: the area of Craffic Court over the past week, or
12:35
Speaker 8: who may have seen missus McLaughlin alive after last Wednesday.
12:41
Speaker 4: This was very positive because it turned out that we
12:45
Speaker 4: were able to establish, first of all, she had been
12:49
Speaker 4: in a local chip shop.
12:52
Speaker 1: Mary had last been seen on the twenty sixth of
12:55
Speaker 1: September nineteen eighty four, six days before her body was found.
13:03
Speaker 1: Tracing Mary's final footsteps, detectives with the help of locals,
13:07
Speaker 1: soon pieced together the story of the night of her murder,
13:11
Speaker 1: which began at a local pub in party.
13:17
Speaker 3: The Hindland Bar wasn't far from Mary's flat. She probably
13:24
Speaker 3: had a bit of five or ten minute walk if that.
13:26
Speaker 3: Mary probably stayed there that evening until roughly about nine
13:31
Speaker 3: o'clock half past nine, and she decided that she wanted
13:34
Speaker 3: to go and get some fritters that was part of
13:36
Speaker 3: her routine. She enjoyed a bag of fritters, which is
13:39
Speaker 3: basically fried potato instead of chips. She said to her friends,
13:44
Speaker 3: should this time go home. Mid forty five minutes, maybe
13:48
Speaker 3: ten hour before the pub was closing for the evening.
13:51
Speaker 1: Witnesses placed Mary in the fish and chip shop at
13:54
Speaker 1: around ten forty five pm.
13:57
Speaker 3: She was in the chip shop, very very happy, speaking
14:01
Speaker 3: to the people that worked there. They knew her, she
14:04
Speaker 3: was a familiar face to them. There was nothing in
14:06
Speaker 3: her manner to suggest that she was worried about anybody.
14:09
Speaker 3: She wasn't didn't tell anybody she was being followed or
14:12
Speaker 3: that anybody had approached her, so there was nothing there
14:16
Speaker 3: to suggest that anything untoward was going on that night.
14:21
Speaker 4: We were left with a lot of interviews with the
14:25
Speaker 4: people in the chip shop, the people in the public house.
14:29
Speaker 4: Nothing ever came of that.
14:34
Speaker 1: After leaving the takeaway, witnesses saw Mary talking with a stranger.
14:41
Speaker 4: Two witnesses state that they saw her walking along the
14:46
Speaker 4: road accompanied by a young man, but they only take
14:53
Speaker 4: her accompanied by this young man as far as Crow
14:57
Speaker 4: Road Rashley Street, which are two roads that lead up
15:02
Speaker 4: to Crathy Court. No one saw her going up to
15:06
Speaker 4: her house and no one saw her in the house.
15:09
Speaker 4: So at that stage, yes we have witnesses, but it
15:15
Speaker 4: becomes very very difficult to track down this young man,
15:21
Speaker 4: and indeed we cannot at that stage say that this
15:27
Speaker 4: young man was a perpetrator because we have absolutely no
15:33
Speaker 4: evidence that he had accompanied her up to her house.
15:41
Speaker 1: It's impossible to know what happened next, but at some
15:45
Speaker 1: point a killer was invited into Mary McLachlan's home.
15:51
Speaker 2: I think what we need to remember about Mary is
15:54
Speaker 2: that she's mum to like eleven children. This is a
15:59
Speaker 2: woman who's the whole identity is around being mum. And
16:05
Speaker 2: she meets a young man in the street. Now, this
16:10
Speaker 2: is a mum. She may have been very maternal towards
16:13
Speaker 2: him if he was saying things to her like I've
16:16
Speaker 2: got nowhere to stay, or I'm feeling really sad, I
16:19
Speaker 2: need someone to talk to. It's quite possible that it's
16:23
Speaker 2: that kind of thing that got Mary to trust him.
16:28
Speaker 5: The tragedy of this story is that she encountered a
16:31
Speaker 5: predator and didn't recognize the predator when she saw one.
16:35
Speaker 1: When Mary's body was eventually found, it was hard to
16:39
Speaker 1: determine exactly what had happened.
16:42
Speaker 6: The scene is quite problematic because there is a dead
16:48
Speaker 6: woman in the house for several days. This is where
16:52
Speaker 6: now they have to be very careful what they bring
16:55
Speaker 6: into the scene, and when they take out of the scene,
16:58
Speaker 6: because the killer probably walked in and out of that scene.
17:03
Speaker 6: Are there footprints on the floorboards, Are there any marks
17:07
Speaker 6: of shoe prints? Everything needs to be carefully examined, carefully documented,
17:12
Speaker 6: and carefully removed.
17:15
Speaker 1: A post mortem revealed that Mary had been strangled to
17:18
Speaker 1: death with a cord from her own dressing gown.
17:23
Speaker 2: It's a very personal way to kill someone. You're right up,
17:27
Speaker 2: you're really close to them. They are going to fight you.
17:31
Speaker 2: You're going to have to watch them struggle for breath.
17:35
Speaker 2: So this is somebody who's quite happy to be up
17:40
Speaker 2: close and personal. He hasn't gone up behind her and
17:42
Speaker 2: hit her. It's like there's some sadism involved here, and
17:47
Speaker 2: he wanted to see her suffer. He wanted to know
17:51
Speaker 2: what it felt like to watch somebody die.
17:57
Speaker 1: Any relevant items at the crime scene needed to be
18:01
Speaker 1: handled with care by the forensic team.
18:06
Speaker 4: If you went to a murder scene, and I have
18:08
Speaker 4: been quite a few, unfortunately, anything that was relevant to
18:13
Speaker 4: the murders had to be taken possession of, bagged, labeled,
18:18
Speaker 4: and preserved because you might catch someone one day and
18:23
Speaker 4: you would have to present this evidence in court.
18:27
Speaker 1: Items bagged and taken away, including the dressing gown, corde,
18:31
Speaker 1: a discarded cigarette, and an item of clothing found in
18:35
Speaker 1: Mary's garden.
18:38
Speaker 5: One of the things they discover a few days later
18:40
Speaker 5: in the garden behind the flat is a bars It's
18:44
Speaker 5: not on the body. It's been dumped in the garden,
18:47
Speaker 5: but they have got no idea of how it got there.
18:53
Speaker 4: Due to the passage of time, it was inconclusive whether
18:57
Speaker 4: they would say she had been they couldn't say. But
19:03
Speaker 4: when you pictured the scene of the crime, you felt,
19:08
Speaker 4: even then there was some form of sexual motive in
19:12
Speaker 4: this because of the way the body was dressed.
19:17
Speaker 1: The revelations coming from the crime scene were hard for
19:21
Speaker 1: Mary's large family to comprehend.
19:26
Speaker 3: Although Mary had a complicated relationship with her family and
19:30
Speaker 3: her children, her death, particularly the violence of it and
19:33
Speaker 3: the brutality of her murder, it absolutely devastated her family
19:38
Speaker 3: and quite literally ripped them apart.
19:41
Speaker 7: I went home that night and I wasn't expecting when
19:45
Speaker 7: I put on the TV for it to be on,
19:47
Speaker 7: and I'd remember shaken and things like that. And I
19:51
Speaker 7: can't watch this because I didn't really want to accept
19:55
Speaker 7: in really bad had happened to.
20:00
Speaker 3: It was horrible.
20:03
Speaker 1: After rolling out family members, detectives were still trying to
20:07
Speaker 1: find a potential suspect, and there was no sign of
20:10
Speaker 1: a break in at Mary's flat.
20:15
Speaker 3: When police began their investigation. One of the most striking
20:19
Speaker 3: things that stood out at that very very early stage
20:22
Speaker 3: in their murder hunt was that Mary's front door was
20:26
Speaker 3: locked and the front door key was gone. It was
20:29
Speaker 3: missing the.
20:30
Speaker 4: Man who lived next door. He had the keys for
20:33
Speaker 4: the house, He had the ability to have entered that house.
20:40
Speaker 4: We interviewed him at length and well, we were quite
20:44
Speaker 4: satisfied at the end of the day that he was
20:48
Speaker 4: not who we're looking for.
20:54
Speaker 7: They exhausted every avenue and no one came forward. They
20:58
Speaker 7: couldn't pinpoint anyone, can arrest anyone.
21:02
Speaker 1: As the investigation continued, detectives were left stubbed. There appeared
21:08
Speaker 1: to be no ill will towards Mary and no evidence
21:13
Speaker 1: of an intruder. As the leads dried up, there was
21:17
Speaker 1: a real concern that Mary's killer was going to get
21:20
Speaker 1: away with murder. As investigators widened the net in the
21:34
Speaker 1: search for Mary McLaughlin's killer, there appeared to be no
21:38
Speaker 1: obvious suspects linked to the brutal murder.
21:46
Speaker 3: There were eight different police forces in Scotland at the
21:48
Speaker 3: time and communication shall we save us not particularly brilliant
21:53
Speaker 3: between every force area. And Ian Visser told me that
21:57
Speaker 3: they put a dragnet around the media area and they
22:01
Speaker 3: pulled in know in sex offenders, housebreakers.
22:07
Speaker 4: So you look at the family, you look at the neighbors,
22:10
Speaker 4: you look at people who have access to the house.
22:13
Speaker 4: You also look at people who have motive. There was
22:17
Speaker 4: just nothing that we could say, oh, yes, it's this
22:22
Speaker 4: type of person, that was that person. You know, we
22:26
Speaker 4: had no way to go. The minute a stranger, a
22:29
Speaker 4: complete stranger, comes into the picture, we have difficulties.
22:35
Speaker 1: Not knowing who may have killed Mary was an extremely
22:38
Speaker 1: difficult time for her family.
22:41
Speaker 7: When I was told by one of the CID officers
22:44
Speaker 7: that did exhausted different avenue, but the case would still
22:47
Speaker 7: lie as a cold case on the shelf. And when
22:50
Speaker 7: they said that to me, don't give up, hope, and
22:52
Speaker 7: I said, anything at allty here, if you think it's relevant,
22:56
Speaker 7: let us know. And I just went on a mission
22:59
Speaker 7: my self in a field would have.
23:04
Speaker 3: Been relevant to.
23:05
Speaker 7: Solving my mum's but identifying who her killer was, and
23:10
Speaker 7: I thought I was getting old dinner and I'll go
23:12
Speaker 7: to the end of my life without knowing what happened.
23:17
Speaker 2: To I'll work with a lot of brieved families breathed
23:24
Speaker 2: through homicide, and the one thing that they all consistently
23:29
Speaker 2: say is we just want to know what happened. We
23:34
Speaker 2: need to know what happened. And Mary's family they just
23:38
Speaker 2: kept the fight up year after year after year. They
23:41
Speaker 2: were not going to let Mary get forgotten.
23:45
Speaker 1: As the days turned into weeks and the weeks into months,
23:49
Speaker 1: by the summer of nineteen eighty five, detectives were no
23:53
Speaker 1: closer to tracking down Mary's killer.
23:56
Speaker 4: I would say about six to nine months later, you
24:02
Speaker 4: realize you're not getting anywhere where. It's never dead. If
24:07
Speaker 4: someone gave some information, there had to be an officer
24:11
Speaker 4: nominated who would look into that case.
24:16
Speaker 3: Murder investigation nowadays are typically solved very very quickly. Back
24:20
Speaker 3: in the nineteen eighties, in the seventies, there was a
24:23
Speaker 3: bit more legwork needed, you know, before anything was solved.
24:27
Speaker 3: That police did not have endless resources, So the hunt
24:31
Speaker 3: from Mary's killer was scaled down.
24:36
Speaker 4: People put things to your studio, done this, could you
24:40
Speaker 4: have done this?
24:41
Speaker 6: No?
24:42
Speaker 4: Nothing came out of it. For some reason, I always
24:45
Speaker 4: remembered her name, and I always remembered that case because
24:50
Speaker 4: of the fact that when I was in charge of murders,
24:55
Speaker 4: this was the only one that hadn't been solved.
25:00
Speaker 1: Investigation into Mary's murder remained cold for decades. It appeared
25:05
Speaker 1: it would never be solved. Journalist Jane Hamilton began looking
25:12
Speaker 1: into the case over thirty years after the horrific attack.
25:18
Speaker 3: By two and fourteen, there had been four case reviews
25:22
Speaker 3: and to Mayy's murder by police. Unfortunately, DNA prior to
25:27
Speaker 3: two thy fourteen was not advanced enough for the police
25:30
Speaker 3: to make any significant breakthroughs in Mary's murder. And I
25:36
Speaker 3: read and free that Gina had given and in it
25:39
Speaker 3: she'd booken a better devastation and how she couldn't move
25:42
Speaker 3: on until her mum's murderer had been cold, And I
25:47
Speaker 3: just wanted to, you know, see if there was anything
25:49
Speaker 3: I could do.
25:51
Speaker 1: Jane's article in the Daily Record, published in twenty sixteen,
25:56
Speaker 1: shone a light on the case again, but unbeknown to her,
26:01
Speaker 1: investigators had already begun the process of retesting the evidence
26:06
Speaker 1: collected at the murder scene.
26:10
Speaker 6: Mary dies in nineteen eighty four, and the DNA is
26:14
Speaker 6: eventually revisited thirty years later. Now, in those thirty years,
26:20
Speaker 6: the DNA sensitivity and specificitic capabilities skyrocket. We have better
26:26
Speaker 6: technologies and we can actually identify more specific genes on
26:32
Speaker 6: every DNA profile that can pinpoint one person as opposed
26:36
Speaker 6: to many, many, many others, And so in this case,
26:39
Speaker 6: in thirty years we go from looking just a handful
26:43
Speaker 6: of DNA markers to over two dozen DNA markers.
26:49
Speaker 1: Forensic scientists began by analyzing the murder weapon, the makeshift
26:54
Speaker 1: ligature that strangled Mary to death. Her dressing gown code
27:04
Speaker 1: when recovered from the crime scene in nineteen eighty four.
27:07
Speaker 1: There were two knots along the court. One was untied
27:11
Speaker 1: during the original investigation, while crucially the other was left untouched.
27:21
Speaker 6: Anybody's DNA who was on that knot had to be
27:24
Speaker 6: at that death scene. Mary and her killer are more
27:29
Speaker 6: likely to be the only people whose DNA would be
27:32
Speaker 6: found on that second never touched Before.
27:36
Speaker 3: Not I got a phone call from a contact who
27:40
Speaker 3: said that police were interested in a man for Maddy's
27:45
Speaker 3: murder and that they believed that they had a DNA
27:48
Speaker 3: mat to a man because of Media's deathink in court.
27:54
Speaker 6: The search on the sex Offenders database gives us a name.
27:58
Speaker 6: It's Graham McGill and his DNA's on the database because
28:07
Speaker 6: many years before he was convicted of a sexual crime,
28:11
Speaker 6: so thirty years after Mary's death we get a match.
28:17
Speaker 1: Graham McGill had been jailed for assault and attempt to
28:21
Speaker 1: rape in nineteen eighty one and was supposedly behind bars
28:25
Speaker 1: at the time of Mary's murder, But in the light
28:28
Speaker 1: of the DNA results, a new revelation was discovered.
28:33
Speaker 3: Miguel was on DAI release from Edinburgh prison, where he
28:36
Speaker 3: was serving as six year sentence for attempting to rate
28:40
Speaker 3: women in nineteen eighty one. He was on a two
28:42
Speaker 3: day training for freedom program.
28:50
Speaker 1: During his trial. Release from prison, McGill had traveled fifty
28:55
Speaker 1: miles from Edinburgh to Glasgow to kill Mary. Investigators had
29:01
Speaker 1: no way of knowing that back in nineteen eighty four.
29:06
Speaker 4: It's all very well in hindsight to say, should we
29:09
Speaker 4: have known about Graey McGill, Well, no, there was just
29:13
Speaker 4: no way that we could have at that time homed
29:16
Speaker 4: in on Graey McGill.
29:19
Speaker 3: There's never ever been any real explanation as to why
29:23
Speaker 3: back in nineteen eighty four, when transport botn't as reliable
29:28
Speaker 3: as it is nowadays. Why he decided to get a bus,
29:31
Speaker 3: Why he decided to do that when he only had
29:33
Speaker 3: two days out of prison.
29:39
Speaker 2: He'd have been obsessing about this whilst he was in prison,
29:43
Speaker 2: thinking about, you know, the type of woman he's going
29:46
Speaker 2: to attack, how he's going to do it, almost enjoying
29:50
Speaker 2: the thought of it. So by the time he gets out,
29:52
Speaker 2: he's ready, he's ready to go, and that's exactly what
29:55
Speaker 2: he did do.
30:00
Speaker 1: The motive for McGill's apparently unprovoked attack on Mary has
30:05
Speaker 1: never been established.
30:07
Speaker 3: It's always been a bit of a mystery as to
30:09
Speaker 3: why McGill targeted Mary, and nobody quite knows how they met.
30:15
Speaker 3: Did he see her in the street? Was he in
30:17
Speaker 3: the Hindland bar that she was drinking in that night,
30:19
Speaker 3: and did he see her? Did he follow her? It
30:23
Speaker 3: thought that when Mary and McGill got back to her flat,
30:26
Speaker 3: he's attacked her almost instantly. Mary wasn't a violent person,
30:32
Speaker 3: but she did try to defend herself and she would
30:35
Speaker 3: have fought quite ferociously for her life. But she was
30:38
Speaker 3: fifty eight years old. McGill was twenty two. You know,
30:41
Speaker 3: he was quite a strong young man and he would
30:44
Speaker 3: have been very easy for him to overpower her, which
30:47
Speaker 3: is what he did.
30:48
Speaker 1: After murdering Mary Graham, McGill casually returned to Edinburgh at
30:53
Speaker 1: prison until he was released just a few days later
30:57
Speaker 1: in October nineteen eighty four after serving half of his
31:01
Speaker 1: six year sentence. McGill lived as seemingly normal life, working
31:07
Speaker 1: as a welder, but his misogynistic behavior never went away.
31:15
Speaker 5: In nineteen ninety three, he gets married to a lady
31:20
Speaker 5: called Susan, and at one point in a conversation with
31:24
Speaker 5: his wife, he tells her that he's killed a woman
31:27
Speaker 5: and says to her, I wanted to know what it
31:29
Speaker 5: felt like to kill someone. And he also says if
31:33
Speaker 5: you tell anybody about that, I'll kill you. It's a
31:37
Speaker 5: good indication of McGill's attitude. He didn't care for women
31:41
Speaker 5: and he was prepared to use violence.
31:45
Speaker 2: He's probably been dying to brag about it for years.
31:50
Speaker 2: This is not the type of person who worried about
31:54
Speaker 2: what he's done in the past, but he will use
31:57
Speaker 2: it to control people in the presence.
32:00
Speaker 5: McGill actually said to her that no one was going
32:02
Speaker 5: to come after him for the murder of Mary McLaughlin
32:05
Speaker 5: because I quote, because she was on her own, she
32:08
Speaker 5: didn't have anybody, and she may be more like a prostitute.
32:11
Speaker 5: It's a dreadful thing to say about the poor woman.
32:14
Speaker 5: She certainly wasn't, but that's the way it occurred to him.
32:19
Speaker 3: He said she had no one. That was not true.
32:23
Speaker 2: She'd spent that evening with her daughter, her family, her
32:28
Speaker 2: fought and fought and fought over the years to find
32:31
Speaker 2: out who Mary's killer was. He could not have been
32:35
Speaker 2: more wrong.
32:39
Speaker 1: By the time DNA revealed McGill as Mary's killer, he
32:44
Speaker 1: had already been back in prison and subsequently released for
32:48
Speaker 1: another sexual assault on a woman.
32:54
Speaker 5: In nineteen ninety nine. McGill is convicted of the attempted
32:58
Speaker 5: rape of a twenty four year old woman and is
33:02
Speaker 5: sentenced to life. He does not serve a life term.
33:06
Speaker 5: In fact, he's released on license in two thousand and night.
33:10
Speaker 1: In December twenty nineteen, over thirty five years after murdering
33:15
Speaker 1: Mary McLaughlin, Graham McGill received an unexpected knock at the door.
33:21
Speaker 5: Unsurprisingly, perhaps McGill is astonished when the police arrived at
33:26
Speaker 5: his door to charge him with the murder of Mary McLachlan.
33:32
Speaker 4: I was delighted, but don't forget what was at the
33:36
Speaker 4: back of my mind. Had I made a mistake, had
33:42
Speaker 4: the person they were about to arrest been someone we
33:47
Speaker 4: had interviewed. I was delighted that caught the murderer, and
33:51
Speaker 4: I was delighted that it wasn't somebody we had slipt
33:55
Speaker 4: through her fingers.
33:57
Speaker 3: I spoke to Gina, Mary's daughter in the immediate aftermath
34:01
Speaker 3: of the newsbreaking that there had been a man arrested,
34:06
Speaker 3: and she was relieved but nervous and didn't want to
34:12
Speaker 3: get her hopes up that finally, you know, she would
34:14
Speaker 3: get doctors to our mum.
34:18
Speaker 7: When he was arrested, some of the newspapers were saying
34:21
Speaker 7: that he had committed previous crimes of reape, and the
34:26
Speaker 7: prole board felt that he was able to go back
34:29
Speaker 7: into the community and he wasn't a danger and to
34:32
Speaker 7: other women again, when in fact me On murdered my mother.
34:38
Speaker 1: Despite the overwhelming evidence against him, Graham McGill, now aged
34:42
Speaker 1: fifty eight, wasn't going to confess to anything. As preparations
34:48
Speaker 1: were made for his upcoming trial, McGill refused to admit
34:51
Speaker 1: to murdering Mary in a final insult to her family,
34:55
Speaker 1: McGill was going to plead not guilty.
35:09
Speaker 3: Gray McGill was absolutely convinced that he would take Mary's
35:14
Speaker 3: murder as a secret to his grave. He thought that
35:17
Speaker 3: he would get away with her. It possibly made him
35:20
Speaker 3: quite cocky and quite arrogant, and as time went on
35:23
Speaker 3: he probably just thought that, you know, nobody was ever
35:26
Speaker 3: going to look at Mary's murder again, and therefore he
35:28
Speaker 3: would get away with murder.
35:30
Speaker 1: Thirty six and a half years after the murder of
35:33
Speaker 1: Mary McLachlin, Graham McGill finally faced justice.
35:39
Speaker 5: It wasn't until April twenty twenty one that he appeared
35:42
Speaker 5: in the Glasgow High Court to face trial. McGill pleaded
35:47
Speaker 5: not guilty.
35:48
Speaker 1: Mary's daughter Gina McGavin, was in attendance at the trial.
35:52
Speaker 1: She finally got to look Graham McGill in the eye.
35:56
Speaker 1: The fifty nine year old well there was now aged
35:58
Speaker 1: one year older than Mary maclachlin was when he killed her.
36:03
Speaker 7: I seen him because of sitting to ors behind him.
36:07
Speaker 7: I just looked at his face. But how can you
36:09
Speaker 7: tell what a mada's face looks like? They can just
36:12
Speaker 7: look like nobody. You can't you can look at somebody,
36:14
Speaker 7: or you can't see you say, what it looks like
36:16
Speaker 7: a maderer to me, because you can't tell.
36:20
Speaker 5: The prosecutor during the trial said, and I think it's
36:24
Speaker 5: very telling that Mary was friendly and trusting, and I
36:28
Speaker 5: would suggest that ultimately this brought about her death. These
36:32
Speaker 5: were different times. We have to accept that the awareness
36:36
Speaker 5: of stranger danger of vulnerable women, which is so clear
36:41
Speaker 5: to us all now, was much less evident then.
36:46
Speaker 1: Although McGill pleaded not guilty, the DNA evidence against him
36:50
Speaker 1: was indisputable.
36:53
Speaker 6: Mcguilt's DNA is on the database, and when compared to
36:58
Speaker 6: other people's d we get a statistical probability of one
37:04
Speaker 6: in eighty five thousand chances of any other male depositing
37:10
Speaker 6: that DNA at the scene of Mary's death. McGill's DNA
37:15
Speaker 6: is found in multiple items, each one of them has
37:18
Speaker 6: its own statistical probability of belonging to somebody else. But
37:24
Speaker 6: when you combine his DNA on the bra, his DNA
37:28
Speaker 6: on the NOD, his DNA on a cigarette but found
37:32
Speaker 6: near the scene, the probability of any other human being
37:36
Speaker 6: depositing that DNA on that day at that scene skyrockets
37:42
Speaker 6: to one in a billion. It is no small number
37:48
Speaker 6: and it points that our killer is definitively McGill.
37:54
Speaker 1: McGill appeared unmoved. Is the overwhelming DNA evidence against the
38:00
Speaker 1: collected when he was just twenty two years old was
38:04
Speaker 1: presented in court.
38:07
Speaker 5: McGill chose not to give evidence at his own trial.
38:11
Speaker 5: He reportedly sat with his head bowed throughout, not I
38:14
Speaker 5: think from very much in the way of remorse, but
38:17
Speaker 5: more from the sense of embarrassment. After all, by this
38:19
Speaker 5: point is an old man than is being tried for
38:22
Speaker 5: something that happened thirty seven years ago. But it doesn't disguise,
38:25
Speaker 5: not for one moment, nor does his excuse the utterly
38:28
Speaker 5: wicked nature of the crime.
38:32
Speaker 1: On the ninth of April twenty twenty one, the jury
38:36
Speaker 1: had unanimously reached their decision.
38:42
Speaker 7: I felt relieved when I heard the guilty verdict. I
38:45
Speaker 7: felt relieved that it was coming to an end and
38:50
Speaker 7: someone's been held to account and family can go on
38:56
Speaker 7: with their lives. For me, personally, I didn't have clues.
39:02
Speaker 3: In my experience as a crime reporter and having dealt
39:06
Speaker 3: with literally hundreds of families of murder rictims. I don't
39:12
Speaker 3: think closure is the right word. I don't think that
39:16
Speaker 3: they ever get such a thing as closure because the
39:19
Speaker 3: you know, the relator isn't here.
39:25
Speaker 1: Graham McGill got away with Mary mclachlin's murder for nearly
39:29
Speaker 1: thirty seven years, but in the end he could not
39:33
Speaker 1: run away from the DNA evidence he left behind.
39:37
Speaker 6: In order for a conviction to happen, jurors have to
39:41
Speaker 6: believe beyond a reasonable doubt that we're talking about the
39:44
Speaker 6: correct suspect. Without DNA matching, this would not have been the.
39:50
Speaker 5: Case in this case.
39:53
Speaker 2: The thing is, when a lot of these men were
39:57
Speaker 2: committing their offenses, there was no such thing as they
40:00
Speaker 2: would have had no idea that leaving behind all of
40:04
Speaker 2: these things that the crime scene would eventually come back
40:07
Speaker 2: to get them. But they are starting to realize it now,
40:12
Speaker 2: and I think that there's a lot of serious offenders
40:17
Speaker 2: sitting in their homes waiting for that knock on the door,
40:21
Speaker 2: because it's almost inevitable.
40:25
Speaker 7: For anyone considered and committing claims late this then hope
40:29
Speaker 7: that you will get caught. No matter how long it ticks,
40:33
Speaker 7: you will get caught.
40:35
Speaker 1: In May twenty twenty one, at Aberdeen High Court, fifty
40:40
Speaker 1: nine year old Graham McGill was sentenced to fourteen years
40:43
Speaker 1: in prison for the murder of Mary McLachlin.
40:47
Speaker 5: The family, not surprisingly, were upset at what they saw
40:51
Speaker 5: was a very short sentence, and it's difficult not to
40:55
Speaker 5: sympathize with them.
41:01
Speaker 3: There was thirty seven years between Mary's murder and McGill's conviction,
41:06
Speaker 3: and in that thirty seven years he was able to
41:10
Speaker 3: lead a very full life, which included getting married. He
41:14
Speaker 3: was able to work and socialize, have you know, lots
41:18
Speaker 3: of jobs, and move around the country and you know,
41:21
Speaker 3: basically just live his life, and unfortunately he took that
41:25
Speaker 3: away from Mary.
41:27
Speaker 7: Fourteen years is nothing, and I think life should mean
41:32
Speaker 7: life for people who do Henny's crimes. But it's nothing
41:37
Speaker 7: really compared to the last nearly thirty forty years of
41:41
Speaker 7: family had gone through. But nothing at all compared to
41:46
Speaker 7: the tourment that my full siblings and maternal half siblings
41:50
Speaker 7: have gone through.
41:54
Speaker 1: McGill has never confessed to Mary's murder or spoken about
41:58
Speaker 1: it on record. What exactly led him to kill the
42:03
Speaker 1: fifty eight year old grandmother on that night in September
42:07
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four remains unknown.
42:11
Speaker 5: There is nothing about the killing of Mary McLaughlin that
42:14
Speaker 5: really makes sense to me, except that it was a man,
42:17
Speaker 5: twenty two year old man anxious to fulfill his sexual desires.
42:21
Speaker 5: And if that was really the only reason, why on
42:25
Speaker 5: earth would he wind her dressing gown cord round her
42:28
Speaker 5: neck three times and then double knotted.
42:31
Speaker 1: I find it very, very hard.
42:33
Speaker 5: To find any possible excuse for Graham McGill's actions.
42:38
Speaker 1: They are truly wicked.
42:41
Speaker 3: I seem the girl somebody who is particularly deprived for
42:46
Speaker 3: the fact that you know, he not only got away
42:49
Speaker 3: with murder for thirty seven years, but in the intervening
42:52
Speaker 3: years he actually bragged to somebody that he killed a
42:55
Speaker 3: woman just to see what it felt like, and he
42:58
Speaker 3: had for somebody to have to callous disregard for life
43:02
Speaker 3: is just evil PERSONI.
43:04
Speaker 1: Fact McGill was a convicted sex offender who traveled fifty
43:14
Speaker 1: miles to kill a stranger in September nineteen eighty four.
43:21
Speaker 1: We may never truly know what happened that night, but
43:25
Speaker 1: we can be sure that innocent victim Mary maclachlin, was
43:29
Speaker 1: simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. It
43:33
Speaker 1: took almost thirty seven years and an advancement in DNA
43:38
Speaker 1: technology to finally unmusk Graham McGill as one of the
43:43
Speaker 1: world's most evil killers.