Angus Sinclair

The World's End Murders is the colloquial name given to the murder of two girls, Christine Eadie, 17, and Helen Scott, 17, in Edinburgh, in October 1977. The case is so named because both victims were last seen alive leaving The World's End pub in Edinburgh's Old Town. The only person to stand trial accused of the murders, Angus Robertson Sinclair, was acquitted in 2007 in controversial circumstances. Following the amendment of the law of double jeopardy, which would have prevented his retrial, Sinclair was retried in October 2014 and convicted of both murders on 14 November 2014. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 37 years, the longest sentence by a Scottish court, meaning he would have been 106 years old when he was eligible for a potential release on parole. He died at HM Prison Glenochil aged 73 on 11 March 2019. His death was the same day the that BBC's Crimewatch Roadshow programme profiled the murders. In addition to the murders of Eadie and Scott, Sinclair also pleaded guilty to the culpable homicide of his eight-year-old neighbour Catherine Reehill in Glasgow in 1961 when he was 16, and was given another life sentence in 2001 for the murder of 17-year-old Mary Gallacher on a footpath in Glasgow in 1978. He is believed to have also killed four other women between 1977 and 1978, all within a seven-month period of the murders of Eadie and Scott.