The Law Killers Read Online Free PDF Page B

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