Summing up the case for the defence in the trial of Iain Packer, who has been jailed for at least 36 years for the murder of a sex worker, Emma Caldwell, and a catalogue of sexual violence against similarly vulnerable women, Ronnie Renucci KC posed a question to jurors last week.
“If he is this person [who murdered Caldwell], how on earth did he get away with it for all these years right under the noses of the police?”
This is precisely the question now being asked as Packer begins the second longest sentence to be handed down in Scottish legal history.
As the horrifying detail of Packer’s offences emerged during his trial, what became all too apparent were the devastating consequences when the authorities do not take seriously women and girls who report sexual crimes and, in particular, the dismissive attitude of local police towards sex workers who reported attacks well into the noughties.
In the years since her death, Caldwell’s case has been pursed doggedly by Scottish media. In 2015 the Sunday Mail exposed Packer, revealing that he admitted taking Caldwell to Limefield Woods, the location where her body was found, six times, but police did not pursue him.
Jim Wilson, who was then editor of the newspaper, said: “Police Scotland and the Crown Office must now be compelled to explain why Packer was not prosecuted 10 years before and why, after his exposure, the reopened inquiry took another nine years.
“Iain Packer will finally pay for his crimes but the police and prosecutors who allowed him to remain free for almost 20 years must now also be held to account. Police Scotland and the Crown Office had the evidence to convict Packer for almost two decades but did nothing because it was too professionally embarrassing to admit their mistakes and put them right.”
In 2019, the BBC journalist Sam Poling interviewed Packer for the Disclosure documentary series.
Packer said that in March 2007 he had taken two police officers to the remote woodland where Caldwell’s body was found. Poling revealed that the detectives asked their superiors whether he could be charged and the response was to let him go. It appeared that the police were too focused on their Turkish suspects.
It seems likely that more missed opportunities will emerge after Packer’s conviction. Sky News has heard testimony from several former sex workers whom Packer paid for sex in the early 2000s, which reveals that concerns about his dangerous sexual behaviour were raised with police years before Caldwell was murdered.
Shockingly, Sky reports that one woman was arrested for prostitution and placed in police cells after reporting an alleged serious sex attack by Packer in Glasgow’s east end.
Magdalene Robertson, Packer’s first known victim, who was raped by him when she was 15, told BBC Scotland that she had “mixed emotions” after the verdict. “Although he’s been convicted now, he’s had a lot of time to get away with it,” she said.
Standing with Caldwell’s mother, Margaret, on the steps of the high court in Glasgow on Wednesday afternoon, her solicitor, Aamer Anwar, drew attention to the stark fact that the murder rate for sex workers in the UK is 12 times higher than for other women.
Anwar said that in the coming days Caldwell’s mother would meet the first minister, the lord advocate and the Police Scotland chief constable to argue that “those in our criminal justice system who gave Packer his freedom should finally be held to account”.
“Whatever a woman’s job, status, addictions or vulnerabilities, it should never be used as a reason to ignore sexual violence or treat them as a second-class citizen,” he said.
