NEW EVIDENCE has revealed that seven unsolved murders in Scotland may be linked.

Here, Courier reporter Steven Bell profiles the cases which have so far remained a mystery.

* Carol Lannen: The mother of a three-month-old child, she was last seen alive as she entered a red estate car in Exchange Street, Dundee, on the evening of March 20, 1979.

The next day a young couple walking in Templeton Woods discovered the 18-year-old’s naked body, partly covered by snow, some 150 yards from Templeton Road. No attempt had been made to cover the body.

Some of Carol’s clothing and personal effects were found 11 days later on the banks of the River Don, near Kintore, about 12 miles from Aberdeen.

A red estate-type car was seen on the bridge over the Don at Kintore a day, or two days, after Carol’s body was found in Templeton Woods.

* Elizabeth McCabe: Two youths walking their dogs found the nursery nurse’s body in the same woods, barely 150 yards from where Carol Lannen’s corpse had been discovered less than a year before.

Elizabeth’s body was found the day before her 21st birthday. Like Carol, she had apparently been strangled. The nursery nurse was last seen alive at a Union Street discotheque early on February 11, when she told friends she was going home.

One theory was that she had entered a car after mistaking it for a taxi. Her clothing and handbag were later found in three different parts of Dundee.

* Hilda McAuley: A 36-year-old mother of two boys, Hilda was discovered on October 2, 1977, in bushes on a lover’s lane in Langbank, Renfrewshire.

The divorcee’s clothing was scattered, and her coat, shoes and handbag were all missing, as were all forms of identification.

Her mother, with whom she and her sons shared a flat, recognised the description from newspaper reports.

Hilda was last seen leaving a dance at the Plaza Ballroom in Glasgow alone. Earlier in the evening she was seen speak- ing to a man in his 30s in a nearby pub.

* Agnes Cooney: The 23-year-old from Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, was found by a farmer stabbed and battered to death on moorland near Airdrie in December 1977.

She was last seen at the rear door of Irish nightspot The Clada Club in the south side of Glasgow—10 minutes walk from the Plaza Ballroom.

Agnes had been waiting for a lift home from members of a country and western band who had been playing at the venue that night.

The children’s nurse had died after a violent struggle, and had been stabbed 26 times, leading to speculation that she may have been attacked by more than one person.

A single woman, she was found with a thin gold band on her wedding finger. She had been bound and gagged with one of her own socks, perhaps for as long as 24 hours.

* Anna Kenny: Two shepherds found her makeshift grave in a remote part of Argyll, almost two years after she went missing in Glasgow in August 1977.

Traces of material which had been bound around her ankles and neck remained on the skeleton.

The 20-year-old and a friend met two young men in the city centre Hurdy Gurdy pub and, at closing time, she left with one of them to catch her bus home to the Gorbals.

The brewery worker was last seen walking alone in the Townhead district after midnight, having left her young male companion to hail a taxi.

* Christine Eadie and Helen Scott: The Edinburgh office worker and shop assistant met two friends in the capital’s World’s End bar on October 15, 1977.

Two men, in their late 20s or early 30s, invited the 17-year-olds to a party and the foursome left the pub which would give its name to one of Scotland’s most notorious murder cases.

Christine’s body was found at around 2 pm the following day at Gosford Beach in East Lothian, naked with her hands tied behind her back.

Four hours later, a man walking his dog around six miles away found Helen’s semi-naked body. Again her hands were tied behind her back.

Both teenagers had been beaten, raped and strangled.