Man Guilty Of 'World's End' Murders

14 November 2014, 17:32 | Updated: 14 November 2014, 17:34

A convicted killer and paedophile has been found guilty of raping and murdering two teenage girls 37 years ago.

Christine Eadie and Helen Scott, both 17, were brutally killed after a night out at Edinburgh's World's End pub on October 15 1977, with their bodies discovered the following day in East Lothian. They had been bound and strangled with their own underwear.

Angus Sinclair, 69, was convicted today of the rape and murder of both girls after a trial at the High Court in Livingston lasting five weeks.

The prosecution is the first under changes to Scotland's double jeopardy law which meant he could be retried for their murders after the court case against him collapsed seven years ago.

Sinclair, a serial rapist who has been in jail for more than 30 years, was accused of carrying out the attacks with his brother-in-law Gordon Hamilton, who died in 1996.

The jury of nine women and six men took less than two-and-a-half hours to convict Sinclair unanimously of both charges.

In reaching their verdict, jurors were unaware that Sinclair has already spent more than half of his life in prison.

He was just 16 when he strangled seven-year-old Catherine Reehill in Glasgow in 1961, later pleading guilty to a charge of culpable homicide and serving six years.

In 1982 he was convicted at the High Court in Edinburgh of a string of sex attacks on 11 young girls - including three rapes.

While still in prison, he was given a life sentence in 2001 for the murder of 17-year-old Mary Gallacher, who was raped and stabbed in Glasgow in 1978.