Nigel Cawthorne - The Mammoth Book of Killers at Large

“She’s so full of confidence. So was Margo, full of her own importance,” she says. “I hope she keeps that.”

Meanwhile, the murder of Margo Lafferty led to the girls in Glasgow’s red light district being given lessons in self-defence by specially trained police officers. They were issued with personal attack alarms and leaflets offering practical safety advice. The leaflets provide advice on what clothes to wear, where to sit in a client’s car, how to deal with a violent client and how to protect their money.

But that did not help 27-year-old Emma Caldwell, who went missing on 4 April 2005. Her badly decomposed remains were found on 8 May in thick undergrowth near Biggar, South Lanarkshire, over 30 miles away. It was found by a member of the public walking their dog in woods at Kilnpotlees, Roberton, at about 1 p.m., near two service stations on the M74 motorway link to the south at Happendon and Abington.

Emma Caldwell grew up in Erskine, Renfrewshire. Her mother said: “She was just a happy, happy child—we had a happy life. She was a lovely child, full of fun. A magical child who loved horses. There used to be a thing in the family—we’d say, ‘What would you like, Emma?’ She’d say, ‘A horsy, a horsy’. We’d say, ‘When would you like the horsy?’ She’d say, ‘Right now, right now I’d like the horsy’.”

Indeed she had worked as a horse-riding instructor before her sister, Karen, died from cancer in 1998. Then her whole world seemed to collapse. She left home, because she was a heroin addict and became a prostitute to support her habit. At the time she went missing she was living a women’s hostel in the Govanhill area. It was been reported that Emma may have been forced to walk to the woods before being murdered, but the police said she almost certainly died very soon after the last sighting of her in Govanhill.

Officers studied CCTV footage and warned men who did not come forward that they would be visited by detectives. In any effort to jog the public’s memory, the police projected a 60-foot image of Emma on to the side of a semi-derelict tower block in the Gorbals district of Glasgow.

The BBC’s Crimewatch programme aired CCTV footage showing the last recorded moments of Emma’s life. It showed her leaving Inglefield Street women’s hostel for the last time, then talking briefly to two people outside before heading for the city centre. The driver of a BMW passed her, stopped and did a three-point turn in Inglefield Street. She was last seen at around 11 p.m. on 4 April, walking down Butterbiggins Road towards Victoria Road.

Later the police came across footage of a woman getting into a silver Skoda Felecia car outside the Riverboat Casino on the Broomielaw, Glasgow’s historic quayside. Detectives have traced every owner of a silver Skoda Felecia car in Scotland, but have been unable to track down the driver. This line of enquiry might even be a blind alley.

Detective Superintendent Willie Johnston of the Strathclyde Police said: “I am unable to say with any authority that the person who entered the car was Emma. However, I do know that she could have been in Broomielaw at that time.”

The charity Crimestoppers offered a reward of £10,000 to anyone who could help track down her killer. But a year after she went missing 50 officers were still working on the case. The police then released recordings of 999 calls she made the weeks before she disappeared, expressing her concern about children playing on a railway line.

The officer leading the inquiry said the calls showed the kind nature of the “caring” young woman and he hoped they would help to jog people’s memories.

“I want to demonstrate to the public, who may still have reservations about coming forward, that despite her lifestyle, Emma was a loving, caring individual who was genuinely concerned for the children on the railway line,” he said. “It may also prompt people who recognize her voice and know something that could be relevant to this investigation to come forward. I make no apologies for constantly reminding members of the public of this crime and will continue to do so until the person or persons responsible have been brought to justice.”

The murdered Glasgow vice girls may not be the victims of a serial killer. It seems likely that a different killer is responsible for each murder. But that makes life no safer for Glasgow’s prostitutes, as long as the killers are at large.

On 8 September 2006, 29-year-old Gillian Gilchrist, from Ibrox, was thrown from a car by a man who had picked her up in the red light district of Glasgow. She lost part of an arm.

She had been picked up by a man in a dark coloured car in Holm Street at Wellington Street, in the heart of the red light district. He drove to Arkleston Road near to Arkleston Cemetery, on the outskirts of the suburb of Paisley, where he threw her from the car at around 1.50 a.m. From there she stumbled 100 yards across a field and onto the westbound M8 motorway, where she was found by a man in a taxi who did not want to be named.

“Suddenly the taxi brakes and there was this woman in the road,” he said. “She was covered in blood. I ran to help her and called 999 and tried to get her off the motorway, it was then I noticed she had no arm. It was the most horrific thing I have ever seen, I put my jacket around her and gave her first aid.”

Her arm was severed four inches above the wrist and doctors were unable to reconnect it.

Her sister Debbie, told the Scottish Sun : “I don’t understand why someone would want to do that to a lassie. In a way Gillian is lucky because she could well be dead.”

“We have tried so hard to get her off the streets,” said her stepmother Anne Gilchrist. “I just pray this is the wake-up call she needs—we will all be there to help her.”

The Glasgow edition of the Daily Record offered a £10,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of the attacker. The police are treating the attack as attempted murder and searching for a man in his forties with a full head of hair, driving a dark-coloured saloon.

Since the end of apartheid there has been an explosion of serial killers in South Africa. Take the case of Lazarus Mazingane, who was given 17 life sentences for murder and rape, and over 700 years for other offences in Johannesburg High Court on 3 December 2002.

Dubbed the “Nasrec Strangler”, he preyed on women commuting between Soweto and Johannesburg. Many of the bodies were found near the Nasrec Exhibition Centre. His victims are black females, mostly between the ages of 20 and 35, who are lured from minibus taxis.

Judge Joop Labuschagne said Mazingane was a “cruel and inhuman person” who showed no remorse, and should be permanently removed from society to which he was a menace.

“He stalked defenceless women whom he robbed and raped before he killed them,” said the judge.

Mazingane was working as a taxi driver at the time and many of the victims were attacked along his route or when seeking transport. His first victims were throttled—not fatally—then raped. But as his vicious career progressed, he murdered by strangulation.

“All these women were young and in the prime of life,” said Judge Labuschagne. “I listened to the evidence of mothers… and loved ones who told me of their tragic losses. Nothing I do or say today can compensate them, but perhaps they can find some compensation in the conviction of the accused and these sentences I am imposing.”

The court also noted that some of the victims were men such as Gert Aspeling, who was shot dead when he refused to hand over his car keys after stopping to change a wheel. Mazingane then drove off with the dead man’s paralyzed wife in the car and dumped her in the veldt without her wheelchair.