In 1987, a serious and unprecedented health warning was issued to Edinburgh shoppers as it emerged that a man had been spiking supermarket products with poison and glass.
A huge police operation was launched that June after the man targeted three Edinburgh Safeway stores in Cameron Toll, East Craigs and Davidson's Mains. One girl was left with cuts to her mouth due to shards of glass deposited in a tub of coleslaw, while the mystery poisoner also spiked grapefruit juice with weed-killer and laced yoghurt with arsenic.
A red label was on the tub of coleslaw, warning of the glass, while the juice also carried a similar warning.
READ MORE: When Edinburgh locals were trapped in floods at Cameron Toll just weeks after it opened
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Then, on June 20, the manager of the Cameron Toll branch was issued a blackmail letter demanding £40,000 in cash with the twisted perpetrator warning that further contamination attacks would take place if the money was not paid. Days later, the manager received a second letter, with the blackmail demand raised to £100,000.
Contaminated products included coleslaw, cottage cheese, natural yoghurt, Safeway's cola and grapefruit juice. While there was an obvious cause for alarm, it was found that the quantities of poison found in the products were too low to kill anyone.
As a precaution, every Safeway store in Scotland underwent rigorous item checks, with supermarket shelves cleared of products that appeared to show signs of having been tampered with.
Two anonymous calls made to police claimed to know the identity of the individual behind the attacks. But, while a number of men would be interviewed over the incidents, all would be cleared.
A Safeway store in Glasgow was also the victim of a poisoning scare, but Lothian and Borders Police said there was no clear connection to the Edinburgh incidents.
In the end, police would admit to being baffled over the identity of the saboteur.
'The Bogeyman'
In April 1989, Dundee man Robin Smith admitted to five counts of extortion at Safeway and Littlewoods supermarkets around Scotland and was jailed for five years. The twisted criminal was found to have contaminated products with Aids-infected blood and spiked bottles of shampoo with hair remover and broken glass.
Signing himself as "the Bogeyman", Smith, 32, had sent threatening letters to Safeway managers in a bid to extort up to £200,000. In one letter, the would-be extortionist said: "Your stores will be blitzed. Be sensible, pay up and I will disappear."
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