“I’ve seen her taking the jacket off her back and giving it to an old woman in the street, but she had a bad temper,” said her mother. “You needed to watch her because she’d hit you as soon as look at you. She was very brave physically. Not that she went out looking for bother, but she wouldn’t run away from it either. That was why I told the police that Margo fought, that whoever had murdered Margo had been well and truly scarred. She would fight for every minute of her life and every second.”
Indeed she fought ferociously with her killer, gouging the flesh of his face.
Margo was the seventh prostitute to be murdered on the streets of Glasgow in six years. Another would follow. But hers was the only case where the police secured a conviction. Men accused in two other cases were acquitted. Suspects in another were released. And in four cases no arrests have been made. But, as we have seen, prostitute murders are notoriously difficult for the police. Between 35 and 40 remain unsolved in England and Wales each year.
In Glasgow all the murdered women were drug addicts who had turned to prostitution to support their habit. Such women are often estranged from society and there is little pressure on the police to discover who was responsible for their fate. And by the nature of their calling, few admit knowing them.
The killings began in 1991 when 23-year-old Diane McInally was found dead in Pollok Park, near the Burrell Collection, Glasgow’s famous art gallery. On 15 October, her body, clad only in a black mini-dress and stockings, was dumped under a bush. She came from the Gorbals, where drugs were bought and sold openly on the streets. It was thought that she was killed because she owed drugs money. Two men were arrested for her murder, but later released due to lack of evidence.
In April 1993, 26-year-old mother-of-two Karen McGregor was found dead in the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre. She had been battered around the face and head with a solid object, strangled and sexually assaulted with a foreign object.
The police had an obvious suspect. Her husband, Charles McGregor, was arrested and charged with the murder. Two witnesses said that they had seen him beat his wife to death with a hammer, but retracted their statements in court. Another witness said they had seen Karen’s battered and bruised body, but grew fearful and ran off before observing the situation further. A woman testified that she had seen McGregor in the cemetery, crouching over his wife’s grave and saying: “I’m sorry, Karen. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.” And a fellow prostitute gave evidence that Karen was fed up giving all the money she had earned to her husband to feed his drug habit.
However, when McGregor appeared in court, he did not look like a junkie. He wore a smart suit and overcoat, and had his hair neatly cut—looking every inch the thrusting young businessman. The jury were impressed and returned a verdict of “not proven”—a third option allowed by Scottish courts. He later died of a drug overdose.
On a warm summer evening in June 1995 the body of Leona McGovern was found in a Glasgow car park. She had been stabbed seven times with a screwdriver, then strangled. The petite 22-year-old, barely five feet tall, had been sleeping rough. Two weeks before her death, her boyfriend died of an overdose.
“He meant a lot to her,” said Detective Chief Inspector Nanette Pollock, who was leading the investigation. “When he died she really lost it.”
Then Leona had found her best friend dead in bed.
On the night she died she owed her dealer money and asked her brother to lend her ?35, but he could not give it to her. About 7 p.m., a security guard said he saw a man stabbing something on the ground. At the time he thought it was a bag of garbage as he could not imagine witnessing a murder take place in the street in broad daylight—even in Glasgow.
A man was arrested and charged with Leona’s murder—but, again, the jury returned a not-proven verdict. He claimed the murderer was another man who had been seen with Leona in the last two weeks of her life. He was not her boyfriend, just another homeless person she hung around with. Inspector Pollock thought their relationship entirely innocent.
“Homeless people tend to stick together,” she said. “They’re in the same situation. She’d lost a lot in her life.”
The body of 34-year-old mother-of-two Marjorie Roberts was pulled out of the River Clyde in August 1995, four days after she drowned. Citywatch cameras taped her walking by the river with a man. A month later the same man was arrested after trying to push another prostitute into the river. She managed to struggle free and ran to a taxi driver for help. However, she did not want to press charges. As a prostitute and drug user, she did not want the glare of publicity.
“She was a drug addict,” said Marjorie’s younger sister Betty. “They don’t care about their own life.”
There were no witnesses and no marks on Marjorie’s body—nothing to indicate that she did not slip and fall into the water accidentally, perhaps, at night when it was pitch black, or even jump in and drown.
“She had Valium in her body,” said Betty. “When she went into that Clyde she had no strength to fight.”
It was Marjorie’s boyfriend who introduced her to drugs. At first, she took temgesics—a barbiturate used to treat withdrawal symptoms. Then people in the projects where she lived began selling heroin. Marjorie’s boyfriend left her and the children and she started letting prostitutes use the house to take drugs. By the time he came back Marjorie herself was on the game.
“He just went, ‘Well, hen. As long as you’re using plenty of protection.’ He didn’t care,” said Betty. “‘She was dead shy and quiet. She never had any confidence. That’s how we couldn’t believe she could go and do that.”
As her habit grew, her life slipped downhill. In her last few months, she slimmed down until she looked like a skeleton. She would sit motionless with her face covered for hours on end. Eventually, her doctor prescribed Valium.
Like Karen McGregor and Marjorie Roberts, 26-year-old Jaqueline Gallagher had only been on the game for five or six months when she died. Jacqui’s own mother did not even know her daughter was a prostitute.
“I know those girls,” she said. “See the way they’re dressed? When I saw Jacqueline she was never like that. She was always prim and proper. People used to say, my God, she’s beautiful. If she was a wee bit taller she could be a model.”
Like Leona McGovern and Margo Lafferty, Jacqueline Gallagher was only five feet tall. She had met her boyfriend when she was just a teenager. He was ten years older and already on drugs—but then, so were most of her friends. According to Gordon, they were very much in love.
“On our 10th anniversary she was running about and singing, ‘Our House in the Middle of the Street’,” he recalled. “She was happy. I came in with a big, massive card and I got her a gold necklace. She loved gold. I put bits of gold in her coffin, things that we’d given each other.”
Their idyllic life together was marred only by drugs and the periods he spent in prison for shoplifting. While he was inside, she wrote hundreds of love letters to him that he kept in a plastic shopping bag. One read: “Gordon, I know myself it’s not going to be long till you’re walking through the door, and baby I will be there for you. I always will be, Gordon, no matter what. You know that yourself, baby.”
However, on his last stint in prison Jacqui did not visit him as she had before.
“She knew I hated this,” said Fraser Gordon.
He knew the risk she was running, earning money as a prostitute.
“I told her, I worry about you from the moment you walkout that door to the moment you walk back in,” he said. “It’s frightening. You don’t know how much strain you’re putting on me.”
On the night she died in 1997, Jacqueline was picked up by car from the kerbside in Glasgow. Later her half-naked body was found on a grass verge near a bus stop in Bowling, a village four miles outside the city. She was hidden in shrubbery and wrapped in a home-made curtain. The fabric was pink and grey, and the lining white with blue polka dots. The police never managed to discover where it came from—even after it was shown on the nationwide TV programme
The police had a suspect—43-year-old George Johnstone of Erskine, who was one of her clients. But he was cleared and the real killer is still at large.
“Somebody knows who killed my daughter,” said her mother. “I didn’t know she was a prostitute but it doesn’t matter what she was doing. She was a lovely girl and didn’t deserve to be killed.”
Gordon Fraser was devastated by Jacqui’s death. Six months later, he was found on the roof of his house, throwing down slates and threatening to kill himself by setting himself on fire.
Twenty-one-year-old single mother Tracy Wylde was the only victim to be murdered indoors. Like Marjorie
