Sir Ian Rankin has told how one of Edinburgh's most notorious double murder cases brought the capital's dark past into stark reality for him as a young student in the city.
The brutal murder of teens Christine Eadie and Helen Scott horrified the country and for a young Sir Ian Rankin the crimes uncovered more of the capital's nasty history that had previously gone unnoticed.
The acclaimed crime writer was 17 years old and about to start studying English literature at Edinburgh University in 1977 when the World's End murders shook the capital report the Scottish Express.
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Tragically the bodies of 17 year old school friends Christine Eadie and Helen Scott were found on 16 october 1977 six miles apart in East Lothian.
The teenagers, who had last been seen the previous night leaving The World's End pub in Edinburgh's Royal Mile, were both were bound, sexually assaulted and strangled with their own clothing.
Evil killer Angus Sinclair, who was originally acquitted in 2007, would eventually be convicted of both murders in 2014 following amendments to double jeopardy laws and was sentenced to life imprisonment. He died in HMP Glenochil near Stirling in 2019, aged 73.
Speaking in a new BBC Scotland two part documentary, The Hunt for the World’s End Killers, Rebus writer Rankin – who studied in Edinburgh throughout the early years of the investigation – recounts how the capital was a grim and grey place where underage teenagers could easily get served in a pub.
He said: "It’s got an apocalyptic resonance to it. Edinburgh’s got a very dark history but this brought it into the present.
"The notion that there was a killer or killers out there preying on the innocent and the fact that the police seemed to be getting nowhere."
Despite its picturesque Old Town and tourist attractions that drew people from around the world to the Festival City, Edinburgh had a dark undercurrent.
The laws had not long changed to allow women the legal right to drink in bars and they often had to tolerate questionable toilet facilities as well as the unwanted attention from unrelenting men.
School friends Helen Scott and Christine Eadie had gone out drinking with friends in the World’s End pub. Eyewitnesses said they saw the women speaking with two unknown men.
The hunt for the killers became one of the biggest manhunts Scotland has ever seen, as fear gripped the nation and the press began to link the murders of Christine and Helen with other unsolved killings in Glasgow.
Despite similarities across the cases, by the end of the 70s, the investigation into the World’s End case had gone cold and it seemed like the killers had escaped justice.
Rankin, 62, tells the documentary how, by the dawn of the eighties, the only hope for catching the elusive murderers seemed to be in the hands of the people developing new techniques in forensic science.
The Hunt for the World’s End Killers, a Firecrest Films production for BBC Scotland, features testimony from detectives and forensic scientists who worked on the investigation, journalists who reported on the case and psychologists who studied the murders.
Meanwhile, archive footage reveals how policing underwent a revolution fuelled by advances in forensic science, DNA fingerprinting and Information Technology that would eventually help solve the case.
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Forensic scientists succeeded in obtaining a clear DNA profile from Helen Scott’s coat. When detectives originally tried to match it with existing DNA profiles held in police records across the UK, no match could be found.
However, further advances led to a second sample being examined, which matched with Angus Sinclair, a notorious sexual offender who was serving two life-sentences in Peterhead Prison by that time.
* The Hunt for the World’s End Killers starts on Monday 17 October BBC One Scotland 9pm-10pm and concludes Tuesday 18 October, BBC One Scotland 9pm-10pm
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