murder scene was the forensic pathologist, David Gee, who knew Hoban well and admired his professionalism as a top detective. Each had earned the respect of the other. They had already spent most of the night together at the scene of another murder elsewhere in the city and Gee also had only just dropped off into a very deep sleep when the phone call came through alerting him to this latest case. Not unreasonably, he regarded it as a bit of a nuisance. He had made good speed, considering he had to drive in to Leeds from Knaresborough, twenty miles away, during the morning rush hour. Hoban filled him in on all he knew so far. Gee – notebook in one hand, biro in the other – stood as he always did, listening intently. For a few minutes he looked at and around the body. Eventually he drew a diagram and wrote a few cryptic remarks. For a murder involving multiple stab wounds it was what he would have expected. There was heavy soiling of the skin at the front and right side of the neck because of the stab wound on the throat. Blood was staining the grass beside the victim’s head. The blood trickling from the chest and abdomen had also soiled the right side of the victim’s blouse. Other spots of dried blood could be seen on the front of both her thighs, on the upper surface of her slacks and the upper surface of her right hand.
Gee’s very first thoughts were that the blood seepages running vertically downwards from the stab wounds in all directions suggested she had been stabbed to death where she lay. One blood trickle ran into the top of her knickers and then along it. When the panties were removed, he could see the trickle did not run down inside, probably indicating that no sexual intercourse had taken place either just before or just after the stabbing. Some blood soiled her long and tangled hair, but this was maybe due to blood escaping from the wound to her neck.
Once the body had been photographed, Ron Outtridge, the forensic scientist from the Home Office laboratory at Harrogate, moved closer and began taking Sellotape impressions from the exposed portions, hoping to find tiny fibres, perhaps from the killer’s clothing. Gee took swabs from various orifices – vagina, anus, mouth. Then he began measuring the temperature of the body at roughly half-hourly intervals. In an hour, between 10.30 and 11.30 a.m., Wilma’s corpse grew colder by two degrees, falling to 71.5°F. However, once the sun came up, the external temperature began to rise. By a simple calculation Gee determined that death happened around midnight, according to the hourly rate at which the body dropped in temperature. A gentle south-westerly breeze eventually blew the fog away and by 11.40 the temperature was 59°F, quite warm for an autumn day. The sky, however, remained overcast and there were a few spots of rain. For protection, the body was partly covered by a plastic sheet raised above the corpse on a metal frame so as not to contaminate any clues. By this time there was slight rigor mortis. Outtridge then removed the slacks, shoes and handbag. Plastic bags were placed over the head and hands and the body was gently wrapped in a much larger plastic sheet for the short journey by windowless van to the local mortuary. There the rest of the clothing was removed and handed over to Outtridge. A fingerprint specialist examined the body for prints on the surface of the skin.
The team, including Hoban and Outtridge, gathered again for the formal post-mortem at 2 p.m. It was a long and exacting process which took four hours. Most officers hate post-mortems. ‘It is not only the sight but the smell of the body and the disinfectants,’ recalls one senior detective who had been involved on countless murder inquiries. ‘The smell would cling to your clothing and when I got home I would strip, put clothes in the washer and my suit on the line. I would then have a shower but I would also lose my sex drive for several days. I think a lot of policemen are affected in this way.’
After the formalities of measuring and weighing the body, Gee quickly made an important discovery. Because Wilma had been lying on her back when found, there had been no examination of the rear of her head. On the examination table, her head propped up on a wooden block, he quickly located two lacerations of the scalp that had been concealed by her long hair. One was a vertical and slightly curved laceration, two inches in length, its margins relatively clean cut and shelving towards the right. This wound penetrated the full thickness of the scalp and through it a deep fracture in the skull could be clearly observed. Two inches to the left was another head injury, not so severe. Gee pointed out the two wounds, and later this portion of Wilma’s skull was shaved so they could be photographed prior to her brain being removed and studied.
Gee then began minutely examining the fifteen stab wounds to the body, trying to follow the track of each beneath the surface of the skin. It was a difficult task. The majority of wounds to her abdomen were very close together. It proved impossible to show the direction of each individual track of each individual wound. He had greater success in tracking the wounds to the neck and chest. Here, patiently, slowly, was a scientist methodically at work trying to learn what kind of weapon or weapons had been used to kill Wilma; and to determine more precisely how she actually died.
Gee’s final conclusion was that death occurred within minutes of the victim being struck on the head, then stabbed. He believed the weapon involved in the stabbing was more than three inches long and a quarter of an inch broad. She’d been hit on the head with a blunt object with a restricted striking surface. It could have been a hammer, but at this stage Gee favoured something like an adjustable spanner. There was nothing special about the stab wounds. The victim had been struck from the left side. Death had occurred probably early on the morning of 30 October.
Back in his office later that night Hoban began absorbing the information flowing in. House to house inquiries by the Task Force began to give a more detailed and increasingly depressing picture of Wilma’s lifestyle. Her former husband had been traced. Her parents were contacted in Scotland. Criminal records showed she had four convictions for drunkenness, theft and disorderly conduct. The local vice squad believed she was a known prostitute, though she had never been cautioned.
Wilma had been born and brought up near Inverness, one of eleven children. Her father was a farm worker. She had been christened Willemena Mary Newlands. According to her mother, she had been a good speller as a child, full of life but inclined to go her own way. Mrs Betsy Newlands said she had brought up all eleven children strictly. Wilma had to be in bed by 10 p.m. every night and when her father discovered her wearing make-up he took it from her and buried it in the garden. She could quickly become emotional, and when she did everyone would know about it. From leaving the local technical school she went to work at the Gleneagles Hotel near Perth. She had been pregnant with her daughter, Sonje, before she was out of her teens.
After Sonje was born, Wilma met a joiner, Gerald Christopher McCann from Londonderry, Northern Ireland. They married on 7 October 1968. A few years later they moved to the Leeds area, where five of Wilma’s brothers lived. She and Gerry had three children of their own in fairly quick succession – a son and two daughters. But by February 1974 the marriage was over. Wilma couldn’t settle, she hadn’t the self-discipline to adapt to either marriage or motherhood. She liked her nights out. And she liked other men. Gerry left and soon took up with another woman and had a child by her. He continued to see his kids after school and bought them birthday presents, Wilma did not ask for money from National Assistance but earned it her way – when she went out in the evening. Gerry McCann wanted a divorce on the grounds of his wife’s adultery and Wilma was happy to give it to him. Court proceedings were imminent.
From early on after Wilma and Gerry separated, nine-year-old Sonje seemed to be doing most of the caring for her half-brother and half-sisters at the house. In fact Wilma came to rely increasingly on the little girl, who was expected to grow up quickly and take on board responsibilities for her siblings way before her time. As a mother, Wilma was hopeless. She had degenerated into a terrible drunken state. The house, when police searched it, was filthy. She was sexually promiscuous and irresponsible and Gerry, a caring father, had become increasingly concerned that, since their separation, Wilma was neglecting the children’s welfare and leaving them alone for long periods in the evenings.
Hoban knew inner-city Leeds intimately. He had worked there for thirty years, he knew the streets, he knew the back alleyways, the pubs and clubs. He met his vast network of informants there – the criminal classes who gave him tipoffs that made him probably the
