A man has been found guilty of the murder and sexual assault of his teenage sister, whose partly dressed body was found in woodland in Hamilton, near Glasgow.
Connor Gibson, 20, was found guilty by a jury in Glasgow of attacking his sister Amber, 16, in Cadzow Glen in November 2021.
Gibson had denied any involvement in her death but was convicted after a 13-day trial of removing her clothes, sexually assaulting her with the intention of raping her, inflicting blunt-force trauma to her head and body, and strangling her.
Before his arrest five days after the attack, Gibson had posted a tribute to her on Facebook, saying: “Amber, you will fly high for the rest of time. We will all miss you. Especially me. I love you ginger midget. GBFN [goodbye for now] X”.
Significant amounts of forensic evidence tied Gibson to the assault and murder, including “widespread blood staining” compatible with his sister, and his DNA being found on 39 parts of her body and her shorts, which she wore as underwear and had been torn off.
He told detectives he was at a “complete loss” as to why his DNA had been found on Amber.
In CCTV footage released by the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, the pair were seen together on the evening she disappeared. Her body was found two days later.
A forensic pathologist who conducted the postmortem examination told jurors that Amber was found covered in mud, and the cause of death was compression of the neck.
A second man, Stephen Corrigan, 45, from East Kilbride, was found guilty of attempting to defeat the ends of justice and breach of the peace after encountering Amber’s body in the time before she was reported as found, touching her and then concealing her body. He failed to contact the police about his discovery.
Corrigan denied being there. His father, William, told the court that his son was at his home in Blantyre, South Lanarkshire, that weekend after falling on some ice.
The court was told the Gibson siblings had been fostered at an early age by Craig Niven and his wife, who were later granted permanent care of the children. Niven said he did not leave the pair in each other’s company as they were “not a good mix”.
In November 2021, Gibson, who left home at 18, was living at a homeless hostel in Hamilton while his sister, who had been placed back in care at the age of 13, was in a nearby children’s home. Niven said he spoke to his foster son by phone the day his sister’s body was found, and Gibson said the pair “had fallen out” two days before.
It emerged during the trial that Amber had been raped by another man, Jamie Starrs, in an unrelated case earlier in 2021. Starrs was found guilty of that assault, carried out at his home in Bothwell, Lanarkshire, at the high court in Lanark earlier this month.
Gibson and Corrigan will be sentenced at a later date.
