Every police incident room has one: a crime wall where clues are displayed. Lists of names, photos, maps, lurid Post-it notes, random scribbles, all go up in the hope that one day a vital connection will be made and the mystery solved.
Retired detective Gerry Gallacher had such a wall. But his was to be found in the third bedroom of his immaculate house in a quiet cul-de-sac outside Glasgow. Not for Gerry golf or model aeroplane making in retirement. He was trying to solve a murder in his spare room.
He smiles when asked about the epic amount of paperwork his retirement ‘project’ must have involved sifting through. ‘Oh aye, pages spread all over the floor, and then up the wall, stuck on with Sellotape,’ he says. ‘My wife Marjorie would come in with a sandwich and say, ‘Gerry, you’re retired. This isn’t your job.’ I’d say, ‘If this was our daughter, would you not want someone doing this?’
‘She supported me once I’d explained. Her attitude was, ‘Well, if you are going to do this, you’d better do a damn good job on it.’ So I did.’
The murder victim whose killer he was determined to bring to justice was Emma Caldwell, a 27-year-old sex worker whose body had been found in remote woods 40 miles from Glasgow in 2005.
Emma Caldwell, 27, was a sex worker whose body was found in remote woods 40 miles from Glasgow in 2005
Serial sex attacker Iain Packer, 51, was found guilty of Emma’s murder and was sentenced to a minimum of 36 years in prison
Retired detective Gerry Gallacher spent 18 months interviewing witnesses, following up leads and painstakingly poring over existing evidence to crack the case
But while four men were charged with her murder, the case against them collapsed and Emma’s killing remained unsolved. Gerry, an old-school detective once described as a ‘pit bull’ by a notorious Glasgow gangster, was not involved in the original investigation.
But after he retired in 2011, a chance comment from a colleague led him to start his own 18-month clandestine investigation.
Was it legal? He’s a little coy about certain aspects of his modus operandi but says: ‘I told Marge that if the cops got wind of what I was doing, and the information I had access to, I’d probably be arrested and facing jail because I’d never reveal my sources.’
Whatever evidence he had has long gone from the house. But what charges could he have faced? ‘Theft? Data protection? They would have found plenty.’ He adds: ‘But I have no qualms there. I was on the side of the angels.’ Gerry certainly was. Last month, justice was finally served for Emma, albeit almost 20 years late.
Serial sex attacker Iain Packer, 51, was sentenced to a minimum of 36 years in prison, found guilty of 33 charges against a total of 22 women. As well as Emma’s murder, he was found guilty of 11 rapes.
The court heard that the sadist had a penchant for outdoor sex involving strangulation and would often drive prostitutes to remote woods to indulge in his fantasies.
There, he killed Emma, leaving her naked body to be found by a dog-walker. But guess which investigation — the official one, which cost £4 million of taxpayers’ money, or Gerry’s one-man inquiry carried out from the spare room — correctly identified Packer as Emma’s killer?
Almost unbelievably, it was the latter. Gerry wasn’t in court to see justice served, but there was a quiet sense of satisfaction of a job well done when he received the news.
During his long police career, he put away murderers and sex offenders but says ‘this is the biggest sentence I got. Ironic really, since I was retired and it was not my case’.
Quite how the original investigation failed to identify Packer as a prime suspect is now the subject of an independent inquiry in Scotland, where this case has been called ‘the worst scandal in policing history’.
Emma’s family have been rightly appalled to discover that the evidence that eventually convicted Packer was available within the first few weeks after her death.
Instead, they claim, the police ‘gifted freedom to an evil predator to rape and rape again’. They blamed a ‘culture of misogyny and corruption’ for the appalling police failings.
Gerry Gallacher is the unsung, unpaid, hero of this disgraceful debacle. Astonishingly, he has never met Emma’s mother Margaret. She may not even know the extent of what he did for her daughter.
But for 18 months he quietly plugged away with his Post-it notes. He interviewed witnesses and followed up leads, painstakingly poring over existing evidence.
When he had finished, he was utterly convinced that Packer was the killer. ‘And the thing is, it wasn’t Taggart. There was no great mystery to solve. All the evidence was there all along,’ Gerry says.
The evidence included the fact that Packer had been identified by other sex workers as being obsessed with Emma.
The crime scene in the woods where Emma’s naked body was found by a dog walker
Emma’s mother Margaret sits alongside family and their lawyer in the Scottish Parliament as an independent inquiry into the handling of Emma’s murder investigation is announced
They said he had sometimes been violent towards prostitutes. Interviewed by police six times as a witness, he had admitted to having sex with her on a previous occasion and had even taken them to the place where Emma had been murdered. Yet he was never charged.
It’s clear how much Emma’s case meant — still means — to Gerry. He springs to his feet in his living room, under the picture of his own daughter’s wedding day, and tells me about the times he trudged through those dark woods where Emma’s body was found. Once, he even went there in the small hours.
‘I’d been maybe six times in daylight, but I wanted to approximate the conditions at night, when he would take those girls there.
‘When I said I was getting up to go, Marge said, ‘At this time?!’ — but she was used to me lying there, unable to sleep, because I’d always done the same when I was on a big case. That night I got up, dressed, drove there. It was so remote, pitch black, no ambient lighting at all. You could not see your hand in front of your face.’
He still thinks of Emma often. A lovely girl and a keen equestrian whose life fell apart when her sister died of cancer. She got involved in drugs, then prostitution. ‘There but for the grace of God,’ he says. ‘It could have been any one of our daughters. Given the right set of circumstances, anyone’s life can unravel.’
Gallacher, 67, had joined Strathclyde Police when he was in his late 20s. He reached the rank of acting inspector but says he wasn’t prepared to ‘play the politics’ to go further.
After he retired in 2011, he tended to shy away from police social events. Too cliquey, ‘and I’m teetotal’. He wrote a book, Gangsters, Killers And Me, which had moderate success in Scotland.
At a retirement do, he was approached by a well-lubricated colleague who had an idea for the next book. ‘I thought ‘Here we go’ but he said ‘Emma Caldwell’.’
All Gerry knew about the case was that four men — all connected to a Turkish cafe in Glasgow — had appeared in court, charged in connection with Emma’s murder.
‘My understanding was that the case had collapsed, allegedly because of translation problems with evidence, but this guy said, ‘It was never the Turks, it was a Scottish guy that did it, and they know, and they’ve covered it up.’
My curiosity was piqued, but I really didn’t think there would be anything in it. There is no way on this planet they’d have spent all that money, getting it all the way to court, if they weren’t on sure ground.’
Emma was a keen equestrian but her life fell apart when her sister died of cancer. She got involved in drugs, then prostitution
Still, he made a few calls and managed to get access to police files. At first the police focus on the Turkish cafe seemed perfectly logical. Emma had been a regular, a spot of her blood was found inside, and the last call to her mobile had come from one of the Turkish suspects. But, very quickly, things did not add up.
‘The Turks were supposed to have killed her in the cafe, stored her body in a deep freeze, power washed it to get rid of forensic evidence then transported her to those woods.
‘When I went to the woods myself, I thought, ‘Not a chance in Hades!’ Honestly, Ranulph Fiennes couldn’t have found that place, far less the Turks coming 40 miles from Glasgow. It made no sense.’
He paid a visit to one of the men who had been charged, Abubekir Oncu. Oncu had allegedly fled to Turkey after Emma’s death, further arousing suspicions. ‘He admitted he had called Emma that night,’ Gerry says. ‘He was getting married and wanted to use her, but he said she hadn’t picked up.’
There were discrepancies in Oncu’s story but, having sifted through hundreds of pages of statements by this point, Gerry concluded that he was not involved in Emma’s death. How could his colleagues, seeing the same evidence, have concluded that he was?
Evidence against the Turkish men had also been garnered from hours of expensive surveillance carried out on the cafe.
Yet Gerry was baffled because looking through transcripts, it seemed every time Emma was mentioned it wasn’t by the suspects but an unidentified person.
Eventually, he realised that undercover officers had been involved and ‘that every time an unidentified male made a reference to Emma, an undercover cop was in the room. My interpretation was that he had been sent in to try and get them all talking about Emma — with very little success’.
One of the most glaring aspects of this case is that Packer was interviewed some six times during the investigation as a witness, but was seemingly overlooked as a suspect.
A known user of prostitutes, he was identified as a person of interest when other sex workers not only told officers about his penchant for violence and strangulation, but of his fixation with Emma (one even claimed he had previously raped her).
In 2007, Packer had not only taken detectives to Limefield Woods, where Emma’s body was found, but led the investigating detectives to believe he was on the verge of a confession.
The reaction from senior officers? ‘It was to shut it down, and tell them, ‘No, the focus is on the Turks,’ ‘ Gerry says.
He still cannot fathom this. Little wonder that there have been lurid claims about masonic order conspiracies, or that police officers were using the same prostitutes as Packer, and determined not to let the investigation get too close to home. Gerry, however, believes the failings were more about egos.
The original inquiry had secured vast sums for surveillance because of previous bad publicity about the way murders of sex workers were investigated.
He suspects they needed to justify the expense and couldn’t be seen for it to fail. They were given all the toys to play with, but didn’t see what was in front of them.’
Gerry excoriates the senior officers who not only pushed the Turkish angle but refused to admit their own failings when the case collapsed in 2008. ‘What I find unforgivable is that they were still telling Mrs Caldwell that they were sure it was the Turks, they just didn’t have enough to nail them. But this meant they left a killer on the streets.’
On Gerry plodded, speaking to more witnesses, even managing to secure a meeting with Willie Johnston, the retired superintendent who had led the initial investigation.
‘That was under the guise of writing a book about sex workers in general. I asked if there was ever another suspect in the Emma Caldwell case. He said, ‘No, it was definitely the Turks.’ ‘
But the evidence on Gerry’s spare room wall suggested otherwise. ‘It screamed it,’ says Gerry.
‘There were mentions of Packer all over the place, in different places because different teams of detectives had spoken to different people, but it was there.’
How did he make the connection? ‘It was so daft. My wife had been at the supermarket and said the packers had helped her put the stuff in bags.
‘I had the word ‘Packer’ in my head, then I realised I’d seen the name several times. I brought all the references together and I thought ‘God Almighty’.’
He tells me he actually spoke to Packer. ‘I wanted to check he was still at the address I had for him. I made up a story about trying to trace people for a football team reunion. Obviously, I couldn’t say a thing, but I wanted to say, ‘I know it was you, you bastard.’ ‘
Then came the dilemma of what to do with this ‘new’ evidence. By now, it was almost ten years since Emma had been killed, and the obvious place to turn was to the cold case team at Police Scotland. But it was headed by someone who had been on the initial Emma investigation and so Gerry went to the Press.
In 2015, the Scottish newspaper the Sunday Mail published Gerry’s explosive findings, naming Packer as ‘the forgotten suspect’ and setting in motion a chain of events that would eventually lead to justice for Emma. The BBC also played a key role when it broadcast an interview with Packer in 2019, but it wasn’t until February 2022 that he was finally charged.
Yet what if Gerry hadn’t had his interest piqued? What if he had chosen to play golf in his retirement? ‘I have no doubt the whole thing would have been kept buried, and Packer would still be out there. And Mrs Caldwell would have been none the wiser.’
Has he ever received thanks from his former employers or a medal for his efforts? Absolutely not. Shockingly, after the newspaper investigation Gerry was investigated by his own force, who (unlawfully) accessed his phone records. (He was later awarded £10,000 when a tribunal found in his favour.)
‘They were more concerned about finding the mole than the murderer,’ he says. ‘I am still persona non grata with the force.’
Gerry is delighted there will now be a judge-led inquiry, and would be glad to give evidence, but there is no sense of triumphalism.
‘I was a proud police officer for 30 years. This sort of shambles taints us all. It was the senior officers who are responsible here and who need to be held to account. Yet there were cops on the ground who knew that things were not right, and they failed to speak up.’
His one regret is that his wife did not live to see Packer jailed. Marjorie died in 2021, of cancer. ‘But I got the bastard so I kept my word to her,’ he says.
