WHEN the body of 27-year-old Emma Caldwell was found dumped in remote woodland it sparked one of the biggest murder investigations in Scottish history.
Emma was the seventh Glasgow sex worker to have been murdered in recent years – was there a serial killer on the loose?
But detectives soon had a prime suspect for Emma’s murder – Iain Packer.
Other sex workers told police that regular punter Packer had been obsessed with Emma, didn’t like her going with other men and Emma had said he had raped her.
While other girls said Packer had been aggressive towards them.
But the senior investigating officers in the case discounted Packer and instead focused on a Turkish cafe frequented by sex workers.
Over the next few years countless chances to apprehend Packer were ignored – even when another girl told police he had taken her to the exact same remote spot where Emma’s body was found.
At one point Packer himself led officers directly to the wood where Emma’s body had been found.
But still senior officers told detectives to ignore Packer and concentrate on the Turkish cafe.
In 2007 four Turkish men were charged with Emma’s murder – but the multi-million pound case against them collapsed and Emma’s killer was still free to roam the streets with devastating consequence.
Criminologist Robert Giles says: “Iain Packer was one of the most prolific rapists and sex offenders in modern Scottish history.”
Now a new ITV documentary, Britain’s Countryside Killers, analyses the failings in Emma’s case as a public enquiry has been launched into what went wrong.
Emma Caldwell had a happy childhood until her older sister died from cancer. Struggling to cope with this tragedy, sadly she turned to drugs which eventually dragged her into sex work to fund her habit.
It was April 2005 when Emma Caldwell’s parents had reported her missing after she had failed to contact them.
Jonathan Taylor, child safeguarding consultant, says: “Even though Emma had left home and was working as a prostitute she was still in regular contact with her parents.”
But while police assumed she would turn up, alarm bells did ring when drug addict Emma failed to collect her methadone and none of the other girls on the streets had seen her.
Body found
Five weeks after Emma went missing her parents’ worst fears came true.
A dog walker in Limefield woods, Biggar, South Lanarkshire, – 43 miles away from Glasgow – found Emma’s naked body in a shallow ditch.
Robert Giles told the documentary: “Emma’s parents now had the unfortunate task of identifying Emma’s body in the mortuary. They were devastated. They had already lost one daughter and now they were losing their other in such a cruel way.”
The investigation into Emma’s death quickly became a high-profile case.
But what investigators didn’t know at the time was that disagreements over suspects and internal politics within the Strathclyde task force would significantly complicate the search for the killer.
The nature of Emma’s work made the enquiry very difficult – people who use prostitutes often do it in secret.
But fellow sex workers in Glasgow’s red light district gave police their first big lead.
Robert Giles says: “Police had a very interesting conversation with a sex worker who knew Emma quite well.
“This woman told police there was one particular client who was obsessed with Emma.
“This client would hide out behind some billboards and if another client would try to talk to Emma he would drive his van at full speed past them to try to intimidate them, scare them off, as if he was the only one who was allowed to engage with Emma.”
Emma also told some of the other women that he had raped her. Police now had a suspect to focus on.
With help from the women, police identified the possible van used by the suspect. It was for a sign company and officers believed the cable used to strangle Emma was the kind used for neon signage.
On 22 June 2005 police realised the man they were looking for was Iain Packer.
Police approached him as a witness and he denied using sex workers and being a regular in the red-light district.
But a detective took a picture of Packer which they later showed to sex workers and they identified him as the man who was obsessed with Emma.
And a number of sex workers came forward and described Packer as aggressive, angry, and someone who was reluctant to use protection.
Detectives were convinced they had their man. But they were told by their Senior Investigating Officer not to treat Packer as a suspect.
Tunnel vision
What the junior officers did not know was that behind the scenes there was a separate secret enquiry into the murder and four suspects had been identified.
The other investigation, Operation Guard, was focused on a Turkish man who had made the last call to Emma’s phone on the night she disappeared.
And cell phone data from Emma’s phone also showed one of her last known locations was a Turkish cafe used by sex workers.
Abubekir Oncu, the man who called Emma’s phone, denied he had seen her that night, he couldn’t recall making the phone call. Although he admitted having a previous intimate encounter with Emma he denied any knowledge of her murder.
Emma’s parents now had the unfortunate task of identifying Emma’s body in the mortuary. They were devastated. They had already lost one daughter and now they were losing their other in such a cruel way
Robert Giles, Criminologist
But detectives on Operation Guard continued to focus all their attention on him and his friends.
A decision was made to conduct hugely expensive 24 hour surveillance on the cafe by putting listening devices inside.
Meanwhile detectives on the original Operation Grail continued to look into Iain Packer.
Another sex worker told Police that on one occasion he took her to a very remote location at least an hour of Glasgow.
The woman retraced the route with detectives describing landmarks she had remembered. And eventually she brought shocked detectives to a silver gate where she says Packer stopped the van.
Just to the left of that spot was where Emma Caldwell’s body was found.
But again the officers were told from above that Packer was not their man. When they visited him to tell him he is eliminated as a suspect he made a shocking admission.
Jonathan Taylor says: “Now he admits to everything. Yes he does know Emma, he has met Emma, he does use prostitutes but he didn’t hurt her and he sticks to that story.
“Now these detectives must be thinking ‘wow, hang on, you’ve gone from lying to us, to driving that van, to possibly being associated with that cable, we’ve got witnesses who have out you at the location, witnesses who say you are violent and has raped some of the prostitutes and now you are admitting to knowing Emma and having been with her’.”
Based on Packer’s confession, detectives on Operation Grail made a tactical decision. They asked Packer to take them to the area where he takes the girls – and chillingly he took them to within yards of where Emma’s body was found.
Again the officers told their superiors that Packer had to be the killer.
But what came back was the same thing – we have got the right people. It is not Packer.
Detective Inspector Steve Keogh says: “I can’t even begin to imagine the frustration of those officers, good detectives, that in their minds would have been absolutely convinced at this point to be told, no you are wrong.”
But the senior investigating officer demands the detectives stand down, claiming to have damning evidence from surveillance of the Turkish cafe.
During the recorded conversations the casino next door to the cafe was mentioned. Police searched the casino and found clothing that they believed to belong to Emma.
In a search of the cafe they found two specks of blood on some bed linen – and the blood belonged to Emma.
£4m had been spent on the investigation into Emma Caldwell’s murder – the most expensive enquiry in Scotland – and the four Turkish men were charged.
But it transpired that the ‘experts’ the team had used to translate the surveillance recordings from the cafe were officers of Turkish descent, one of whom had only an O level in Turkish, and the other admitted his grasp of the language was limited at best.
Independent translators were brought in and they found that what was alleged to have been said was not obvious.
And although Emma’s blood had been found in the cafe, police knew that sex workers were taken there. And the belongings found in the casino were never confirmed to have belonged to Emma.
The case against the four men collapsed. But despite this the senior officers did not return to the other original suspect, Iain Packer.
Robert Giles says: “That in itself is strange because there was so much pointing to Packer.”
Packer was a free man for almost 15 years until he approached a BBC journalist to tell his side of the story – this arrogance was his downfall.
He was interviewed twice by journalist Sam Poling, whose documentary Who Killed Emma? was broadcast the following year.
In the programme he openly admitted knowing Emma and using prostitutes but said he was never violent.
But Sam Poling spoke to several women who painted a very different picture of a sexually violent man who had abused many women and raped a girl when she was 14.
Just hours after the documentary was broadcast, an ex-partner contacted police and told them she had been stalked and attacked by Packer.
He was arrested and jailed for two years in February 2020 after pleading guilty.
In February 2022, Packer was arrested and charged with Emma’s murder. He stood trial two years later, accused of dozens of charges of physical and sexual violence against women.
One of the most harrowing moments of this trial was the testimony of a young woman who Iain Packer raped 11 years after he murdered Emma Caldwell.
Through floods of tears, she described a traumatic sexual assault which would not have happened had he been convicted of killing Emma following the original police enquiry.
She wasn’t alone. Packer committed sexual offences against at least 10 women after he left Emma’s naked body in woods in South Lanarkshire.
The 51-year-old was found guilty of Emma’s murder and 32 other charges including 11 rapes and multiple sexual assaults against a total of 22 women. He was jailed for life with a minimum of 36 years.
He has not been linked to the other six murders of Glasgow sex workers, five of which remain unsolved.
A public enquiry has now been launched into the failures of the case. Emma’s family said she had been failed by police due to a “toxic culture of misogyny and corruption” which left Packer free to rape other women.
Britain’s Countryside Killers is on ITV 9pm Thursday 12 March
