By Bruce Robbins and Brian Smith

A FORMER lover of Elizabeth McCabe protested his innocence at the High Court in Edinburgh yesterday, claiming, “There’s no way I murdered that lassie.”

Brian Lindsay (50) was giving evidence in the trial of Vincent John Simpson, who denies murdering Elizabeth McCabe, whose body was found in Templeton Woods in February 1980.

He is one of 13 individuals named in the special defence of incrimination by Mark Stewart QC and he told the defence counsel he had always known he would get the chance to prove his innocence in court.

In heated exchanges Mr Lindsay said, “I knew one day I would get into court to prove my innocence. I didn’t murder that lassie.

“There’s no way I murdered that lassie— 25 years ago there was no way the police could prove I murdered her—25 years later they still haven’t found my forensics on that lassie’s body.”

Beginning his second day in the witness box, Mr Lindsay was told by Mr Stewart that they had dealt with his record of violence the day before and counsel said he would now ask, “Are you an honest man?”

The witness replied, “Yes, I would say so.”

Mr Stewart said that as well as the convictions raised in court the day before, Mr Lindsay had also been convicted of a number of crimes of dishonesty. The witness replied, “As I said yesterday, I paid the penalty for those crimes.”

He accepted he also had a conviction for altering documents in connection with road traffic matters. The witness added, “Selling a car with a duff MoT.”

He said he had carried out business as a motor trader at premises in Coldside Road before ultimately being made bankrupt.

He told the court, “Yes, I was sequestrated. That does not make me a violent or dishonest person, there’s far too much stigma about bankruptcy.”

He was then asked about a statement his mother Isabella Westwater made to police and he claimed it was a “complete fabrication”.

The statement, according to Mr Stewart was noted by Detective Sergeant Soutar on April 7, 1980. Mrs Westwater is alleged to have said that she remembered her son telling her that police suspected him because he worked in the woods.

Mr Lindsay said he did work in Aberfeldy and Forfar woods for his company but never in Dundee because the then Dundee District Council controlled tree management and not the company for whom he had worked.

He said his clothes were often covered in bark and tree resin but disputed his mother’s whole statement, which he argued could not have been made until at least 11 months after Elizabeth McCabe’s death.

Mr Stewart asked, “Are you saying that DS Soutar not only made the statement up but brought it back 11 months?”

The witness replied, “There’s a statement in there that my mother has said, that my mother wouldn’t have known about until the early part of December, 1980.

“We had to sign the bottom of the statement and not where the line ended, so it was quite easy for police to put in words.”

“Are you suggesting that police made up the statement after your mother signed it,” asked Mr Stewart. “Yes” was the reply.

Mr Lindsay repeatedly said “didna happen” when Mr Stewart put other parts of his mother’s statement to him.

Mr Stewart said, “Your mum made it up, the police made it up and you’re standing here with your record of dishonesty and we are expected to believe you.”

Under further examination Mr Lindsay agreed he had used Elizabeth’s friend Sandra Niven for sex but denied ever having used Elizabeth for sex, having been with her only once.

Mr Stewart then turned to the number of times the witness said Miss McCabe had been to his home.

Counsel reminded Mr Lindsay of information obtained by a police officer after Elizabeth had been reported missing.

The officer had noted from Mr Lindsay that both he and his friend Charlie Lamont had “intercourse with her on several occasions during this period.”

Insisting there was only one liaison between him and Elizabeth, the witness said he thought the officer’s note could refer to his casual relationship with Sandra Niven as well as Elizabeth McCabe, and that would account for the use of the word “several.”

Mr Stewart then asked him to look at the information his mother gave the officer investigating the disappearance. She thought Elizabeth had been at their home five or six times.

The witness, becoming increasingly strident, replied, “I don’t know where this is coming from.”

He told Mr Stewart that his mother’s description of Elizabeth and Sandra Niven having had breakfast with her was a fabrication—“We were too poor for breakfast. I’ve never had breakfast in 30 years,” he said.

He could not dispute a neighbour’s account of seeing Elizabeth coming away from his door twice in the early hours of the morning. Nor could he dispute Sandra Niven saying she followed Elizabeth to his home and waited outside as she watched Elizabeth, unaware of her presence, knock at his door.

The witness shouted at Mr Stewart that he had not known of any of this until the night he spoke to Sandra Niven, on the day Elizabeth’s parents came to ask about her disappearance.

He said, “I have swore blind since 1984 that Sandra Niven is a liar. She said in 1984 she had a baby to me some time in 1981. I do not believe her.”

Now yelling he described Sandra Niven as a “jealous bitch,” continuing, “She was jealous of Elizabeth McCabe and she’s telling you a pack of lies.”

Mr Lindsay admitted he had been looking for sex on the evening on which Miss McCabe disappeared. He left the Tay Centre Bar with friends to get the bus. He phoned Yvonne Bannon, a girl he had been “trying to get away with” for a couple of weeks, just after 11pm. He said he would have gone to her house that night for sex but did not get an invite.

Mr Stewart said, “Sometime after midnight in the early hours of February 11 you went out of your house with a drink on you looking for sex.” The witness replied, “I would say yes in respect that I was phoning a woman and I can’t see any problem in that.”

Mr Stewart asked him if he had met Elizabeth McCabe that night, he shared a fish supper with her and if he had taken her back to his flat but Mr Lindsay replied no to each.

Mr Stewart put it to him that Miss McCabe had become “somewhat infatuated” with him but Mr Lindsay said he had never been informed of that.

He admitted that Miss McCabe’s route home that night would have taken her past his door, that a bag and possessions belonging to Elizabeth McCabe had been found in derelict land at the foot of Cobden Street, not far from where he lived at the time, and her clothes about a mile-and-a-half away.

“You were looking for sex that night,” said Mr Stewart. “Aye, but it still doesn’t make me a killer,” Mr Lindsay said.

Under further questioning the witness said police had never found he had access to a car and he strongly denied ever stealing one.

He denied being “a man of violence,” saying his last conviction for assault was in 1987 and his first in 1976 when he was 17.

“The number of times you have thrown violence at me, I am amazed I haven’t been in jail every day of my life.”

Mr Stewart summed up what Mr Lindsay had told him and asked him, “On the night she was last seen you saw her in a pub in Dundee. You were drinking in town that night?” To each question he replied, “Correct.”

“You went home and made a phone call to a woman looking for sex. You went out looking for sex and after that time there is no one whose company you were in.”

Mr Lindsay said, “I didn’t go out looking for sex; I went out to phone Yvonne Bannon.”

Mr Stewart said, “The following day you were unable to make your work in the morning.” The witness said this was “a common occurrence.”

Elizabeth Reid (52) said her husband and brother were “raking” waste ground in Cobden Street on April 2, 1980, looking for non- ferrous metal to sell as scrap and she noticed a bag sticking out from garden rubbish beside the road.

“When I pulled it out, it opened and a jar of Nivea cream fell out. It had a letter and chain, a neck chain or ankle chain, in it and it had Elizabeth McCabe’s nursery nurse photo.

She went to a nearby hairdresser’s shop and telephoned police.

The area was cordoned off and she saw photographs in the papers of police digging at the site. It was somewhere they regularly looked for scrap and she said they returned two or three weeks later.

She said that time, she noticed a pair of black suede shoes, “beside a dyke,” near where the bag had been found. “I read in the paper that was the only thing still missing belonging to Elizabeth. I never reported it to the police. I don’t know, I was just a little bit afraid after finding the bag.”

She described the shoes as about a size four, plain black suede with a heel and they looked fairly new.

Cross examined by Mr Stewart, she said there was neither purse nor money in the bag she found.

David Guild (65) said he worked as a lorry driver and supplemented his earnings by driving a taxi for Vincent Simpson on Friday and Saturday nights.

Shown a photograph of a Ford Cortina BSP 175V, he said that was the newest of the three Cortinas he remembered the firm had and it was the one usually driven by Mr Simpson.

Bookings were taken by phone and both Mr Simpson and his wife would take the calls at their home. He could remember being given slips with jobs by both.

He said he would pick up fares in Dundee—“everybody was doing it at the time”—but denied he had been told to do so by Mr Simpson.

The subject had come up in conversation and he had been told to “please yourself,” about the practice.

It was a mutually beneficial arrangement, the more money he made, the more Mr Simpson made, but denied he had been “specifically tasked” to do so, as was written in the police statement read out to him.

He agreed with Mr Stewart those were not his words, adding “tasked” was a word he never used.

The trial continues.

*Three of our eagle-eyed readers have contacted us to point out that the picture we carried yesterday of the flyover purporting to be at Camperdown actually showed the Macalpine Road junction at one end and Kings Cross Road at the other. We are happy to put the record straight.