The Law Killers (4 page)

In fact, it was a marriage which probably should never have taken place. The bride was pregnant and had gone to the altar with some reluctance after finally deciding against having an abortion. But these were the days when unmarried mothers were still stigmatised and, if a termination was ruled out, a wedding was the next option for respectable people. So Helen Maxwell, the pretty Dundee hairdresser, and baby-faced Jimmy Wilkie, an apprentice fitter whose home was in the village, were there that spring afternoon to do the right thing. She could not have looked more radiant and he was dressed in his best dark suit and new blue tie, an adornment he wore through necessity rather than choice, for they had never been his favourite item of clothing.

To the surprise of no one who knew them well, the marriage started to founder almost from the first few weeks after the simple honeymoon. The new Mrs Wilkie confided in a long-time family friend that she had walked in on her husband to discover him engaged in sex with another woman. When she had later tried to discuss it with him, she said, he had reacted by assaulting her – although by then she was mid-way through her pregnancy – as he had already done on other occasions.

Jimmy had no monopoly on unfaithfulness, however. Helen resumed a liaison with a previous boyfriend and the two met at regular intervals after her wedding in Longforgan. Her former lover, aged 19 and himself married, would visit her at her home and at the hairdressing salon where she worked. Their sexual relationship was rekindled.

The doomed marriage stumbled along amidst a series of disputes and rows, a number of them in public, and Helen made no secret of her unhappiness. But they remained together, though no one was certain whether that had more to do with impending parenthood or an underlying passion that bound them however much they might clash over other matters.

On 3 February 1974, Jimmy Wilkie had another occasion to wear his wedding day suit and blue tie, this time for the christening of their months-old son – a day which saw the consumption of much alcohol by some of those who attended the celebration in a small hotel near the family home at Hill Street in Dundee, a narrow thoroughfare of tall tenements on the slopes of the Law.

Although the day had started well, with Helen in a buoyant mood, it led, almost inevitably, to yet more friction between the couple. That evening, after dropping their newly baptised son off at Longforgan to be looked after by Jimmy’s mother, the couple went out for the evening, going first of all to the Golden Fry restaurant in Dundee city centre. They never got as far as eating. An argument broke out over Helen’s demands for more drink on top of the not insignificant amount she had already consumed. She stormed out of the Union Street bistro, somehow finishing with a bloody nose, apparently after stumbling on the stairs leading up to the street.

Two days later Helen Wilkie, the 19-year-old mother and reluctant bride, was reported to the police as a missing person.

The call was made by her father, James Maxwell, a prominent businessman in the city who had links with leading local Dundee councillors. He said he and his wife, also Helen, had not seen their daughter since the evening of the christening. They only became aware she was missing at midnight that day when Jimmy’s mother had phoned from her home in Longforgan to enquire if Helen was there. The Maxwells learned that their daughter and her husband had had yet another public row, in a restaurant, and that she had seemingly walked out, never to be seen again.

Police treated the disappearance as a routine missing-person case and began their inquiry by gathering statements. In his interview, Jimmy Wilkie told how he and his wife had fallen out in the Golden Fry after a dispute about her wanting more liquor when he felt too much had already been taken at the christening. Describing the earlier festivities at the reception in the hotel, he said, ‘I was the only sober one there and got the job of driving everyone home.’ He described how his wife had attempted to walk out on him from the restaurant but had tripped on the stairs, falling forward with her nose starting to bleed. ‘Helen had blood all over her clothes,’ he explained, adding that they had then returned home where she changed into a wine-coloured dress. Later they went to another restaurant for a meal, then drove into town in the hope that Jimmy might see his sister. When this was unsuccessful, they headed in the direction of Longforgan to collect their newly baptised son, but on the way another argument developed over Helen’s continuing demands for yet more alcohol.

In Perth Road, Jimmy said, he stopped to visit public toilets at the top of Riverside Drive. When he returned to the car, Helen had gone.

‘I waited ten minutes then checked the ladies’ toilets and she wasn’t there,’ he told the detective sergeant handling the missing-person inquiry. ‘I doubled back into town, suspecting she had jumped on a bus. I didn’t go to anyone’s house and didn’t find her. I went to the house in Hill Street, then back into town. Then I went back to Longforgan and asked my mother if she was there. I haven’t seen her since.’

The day after the baffling disappearance of his wife, life apparently continued much as normal for Jimmy Wilkie. In the morning he dropped his son off at his in-laws, then went to work. That evening he returned to have tea with the Maxwells and discuss his wife’s possible whereabouts but there had been no fresh developments. And that was how it remained as the following days merged into weeks and then months. Very little happened.

The Maxwells took over the care of their grandson, later adopting him, and Jimmy Wilkie eventually moved out of town to live and work, forming a new relationship with a young woman. Together they lived in Canada for a brief period.

Meanwhile, in Dundee, there was inevitable gossip and speculation about the fate of the attractive hairdresser who had apparently abandoned the baby son she doted on. Her father, an enterprising entrepreneur in business with a wide range of contacts, mounted his own enquiries and vague reports trickled through that his daughter had been sighted in London, Dundee and other parts of Scotland.

The next Christmas the postman delivered a card to Mrs Wilkie Sr in Longforgan. Bearing the greeting ‘Wishing You All the Best’, it was signed ‘Helen’ and had been posted in Dundee. That Festive Season, Jimmy Wilkie had been living in Canada.

The police never launched a major search for the missing woman, which in hindsight seems inexplicable considering her devotion to her son and the closeness of her relationship with her parents and the absence of any contact from her. Yet where would any hunt have been concentrated? And there had been the apparent sightings, even if unconfirmed. Then there was the Christmas card … It was a puzzle with no obvious solution. Helen Wilkie had evidently vanished off the face of the earth and no one seemed to know why, where to, or with whom.

The months slipped by. The baby boy of the absent mother became the centre-piece of his grandparents’ family and Jimmy Wilkie had a fresh life in Murcar, Aberdeen. A new routine was in place and there were few people in Dundee – apart from Helen’s family, friends and a few former hairdressing customers – who were particularly aware of the mystery in their midst, for the disappearance of the young mother had, perhaps surprisingly, had little publicity generated by the police.

Four years and forty-one days after the christening party – on 15 March 1978 – all of that abruptly and dramatically changed.

Workmen preparing to erect a Dutch barn at Littleton Farm, near Longforgan, had gone to a nearby den beside a quarry to collect stones for the foundations and were using a mechanical digger to scoop loads of the rocks into a lorry. When one pile was being tipped at the farm, driver John Merchant spotted an unusual object tumbling from the vehicle in the middle of the tons of stones. Work was at once halted and closer examination revealed it, unmistakably and alarmingly, as a skull. The police were alerted and at CID headquarters seven miles away in Dundee, Chief Inspector David Fotheringham summoned two colleagues. Together they hurried to the scene of picturesque Littleton Den on the slopes of the Carse of Gowrie. As they left the squad room, and without really knowing why, Fotheringham called over his shoulder to other detectives, ‘You’d better look out the file on Helen Wilkie.’

His instincts did not let him down. The grim find had been made around lunchtime and there was still enough light left in the day for a full excavation to be made in the section of the den where the stones had been gathered. Within a short time they had unearthed a shallow grave about twenty yards from the Knapp Road, shielded by a copse of trees. It contained a headless skeleton, the remnants of a wine-coloured dress, jewellery, and a single fashionable ladies’ boot. Round the neck was an unexpectedly well-preserved blue tie which had been wound round three times and knotted tightly at the rear. It did not take long to establish that the body was indeed that of Helen Wilkie and she had died as a result of being strangled by the tie. Dr Donald Rushton, the forensic scientist who would roast coffee beans during his post-mortem examinations to mask unpleasant odours, also concluded that the body had not been hurriedly dumped at the scene but had been carefully placed in a grave and covered by many of the stones littering the area.

Other officers went to Jimmy Wilkie’s new home, a caravan in Murcar which he shared with his girlfriend Donna McKenzie (known as Wilkie), to inform him of the gruesome find. He asked two questions: ‘Where did you get her?’ and ‘How did she die?’

After Jimmy had been brought to Dundee, ostensibly to identify the body, Chief Inspector Fotheringham showed him the jewellery which had been found beside the body. Wilkie said it had belonged to Helen and asked if her handbag had also been found. Told it hadn’t, he asked, ‘Did you find anything else?’

Chief Inspector Fotheringham, a shrewd and skilled interviewer, explained that all the clothing at the scene appeared to be Helen’s, except for a tie, which Jimmy then asked to see. The chief inspector held it out in his hands, but with the knots concealed.

‘Oh, that’s my tie,’ replied Jimmy at once, adding that he had taken if off at the christening and given it to his wife to put in her handbag.

‘It wasn’t found in her handbag, but tied round her neck,’ said the detective gently.

Apprehensive but composed, and sitting tall in his seat in front of the murder investigators, Jimmy responded that whoever had killed his wife must have taken the tie from her bag and throttled her with it, quickly adding, ‘I hope you don’t think it was me.’ A few hours later he was charged with her murder.

In June that year he sat in the dock at the High Court in Dundee and for three days listened intently as a number of witnesses described his short but turbulent marriage. They spoke of drink-fuelled arguments, of seeing bruises on Helen and him throwing objects at her. Friends of the couple said they had witnessed the two of them grappling together in their home, had seen Jimmy Wilkie presenting a knife at Helen in a restaurant and how he had kicked her while she was pregnant.

The former boyfriend who had resumed a relationship with Helen after her marriage, told the court of the day they had been walking in the street outside her home, pushing a pram with her baby in it, when Wilkie drove his car at them. They had to dive for safety when the vehicle mounted the pavement and headed straight for them. He revealed that Helen had seemed on the verge of a mental breakdown and had wanted to leave town because she hoped to escape her marriage. One acquaintance said Helen had shown him a rope looped over the door of her home with which Wilkie had tried to hang himself after an argument.

Not everyone considered the marriage to be particularly stormy. The accused man’s mother, Amy, said that as far as she was aware they had ‘got on fine’ and there had never been any trouble between them. She told how, on the night of the christening, her son had arrived alone at Longforgan at around midnight and had explained that following an argument, Helen had run off while he was visiting the Perth Road public toilets.

Mrs Wilkie added that while they were talking she heard a car outside: ‘Jimmy jumped up and went outside, saying, “That’ll be Helen.” But it was his sister.’

The accused man’s mother also explained to the jury that she had lent her son her car on the night of the christening and the next day she noticed blood on the back door of the vehicle and on its window.

‘Jimmy said it must have come from Helen’s hands. He had told me the previous night that she had fallen on the stairs in the Golden Fry and banged her nose.’

She described how, at Christmas 1974, ten months after her daughter-in-law had gone missing and while her son was in Canada, she had received the card apparently signed by Helen in writing she did not recognise. Mrs Wilkie concluded her evidence by proclaiming that she believed the young couple had been happy together.

It was not a view shared by her husband. When he came to give evidence and was asked the same questions about the relationship, he had responded by saying he thought his son was ‘pretty unhappy with his marriage … Everything went wrong from the start, I think.’

Journalists covering the hearing they had headlined the ‘Body in the Den’ trial jerked to life when one of the accused man’s friends went into the box to speak of a drink the two had shared after the disappearance of the teenage mother. Robert Milne said that when he had asked about Helen’s whereabouts, Jimmy Wilkie had answered, ‘I don’t think they will find her. She’s well buried.’ The accused had not elaborated, he said, but the following day, he asked Jimmy Wilkie if he could recall the conversation of the night before. He had replied that he had no recollection of what they had spoken about.