How it took police 19 years to catch Emma Caldwell’s killer

Strathclyde Police were doggedly pursuing a different line of inquiry. The last call on Emma’s phone the night she went missing led them to a Turkish café, which was where the police focused their investigation. 

For two and a half years (and to the tune of £4 million) they went after the wrong men. “They bet the ranch on the Turkish suspects,” says Brendan McGinty, former deputy editor of the Sunday Mail, which eventually exposed Packer as a suspect. 

“Before I even knew the name Iain Packer, this investigation into the Turkish men was a big, big deal. It was going to be the biggest case based on surveillance at the time. So when that collapses you can see the obvious difficulty for the police and for the Crown to then go ‘okay, let’s do plan B, which is Iain Packer, an incredibly viable suspect who has had zero to do with the Turkish case’. It was easier and more expedient for everybody, I think, to forget about it.” 

And so the investigation went quiet. For ten years, Packer’s name never saw the light of day, affording him the protection he needed to go on offending. Gary Holmes, a former Scotland Yard Homicide Senior Investigating Officer, says Strathclyde Police’s failure to not return to the drawing board is unconscionable, particularly given the evidence they already had on Packer. “If you get any evidence or any leads you have a duty to investigate, no matter the reason, it would be undoubtedly wrong to not reexamine lines of inquiry if they’re valid, if nothing else then for public confidence.” 

Not returning to a known suspect after one trail goes cold is “extremely rare, almost to the point of being unheard of”, he says. “If you have a suspect for a homicide investigation you really do make the effort to do all you can to convict that person.” 

“There were police officers possibly at a junior level who were pressing for a revisit on Packer,” says McGinty. “I’d love to know why that revisit didn’t take place. I’d like to know where up the chain this thing ended.” 

In 2015, on the ten-year anniversary of Emma’s death, the Sunday Mail, which had been leaked his name, published a story naming him as a forgotten suspect in the case. McGinty spoke to Packer outside his house. He recalls a man who seemed “a mix of confident and stupid”. “When you’re suspected of a murder that is a very dangerous combination to be.”