A Killer in Plain Sight: The 20-Year Hunt for Emma Caldwell’s Murderer

Well, this was one of the biggest police investigations in Scottish history. It was arguably the biggest botched investigation leading to the biggest scandal in Scottish policing history. A scandal that allowed a serial rapist and murderer to evade justice for up to two decades.  If you are the one who took Emma’s life, then I ask you to come forward.

Living with the guilt of taking her life must be dreadful. But if you have no conscience, then be aware my family and I will never give up fighting for justice on Emma’s behalf. We can do no less for we love and miss her every day, not just today.  Sunday, the 8th of May, 2005. South Lanarkshire, Scotland. A man was out for a walk with his dog in the Limefield Woods, a stretch of remote woodland just southwest of Glasgow.

The patch of woodland had paths, ditches, and relatively isolated clearings, and the man’s dog had darted off into one very specific section of the woods. The man walked on, but the dog refused to follow. So, he called the dog’s name a few times and waited, but it didn’t return. The man turned and walked back towards where his dog had stopped and saw it sniffing at something that looked out of place.

As the man lent further forward, he had to duck down beneath the bushes, and as he did, it was the dead body of a woman. She was half naked with a garrote around her neck and distinct bruising on her torso. She had been strangled to death. It was clear that she had been dead for some time.  I think we’ve just found a dead body.

 At least they’ve only found the top half, at least we can  She’s  It’s It’s this day blood all over here, I think.  Emergency services arrived and took her in for the identification process. The level of decomposition meant it was going to be difficult, so they had to use dental records and DNA testing to confirm her identity.

The body was that of Emma Caldwell. Emma had been born on the 31st of January 1978 to parents William and Margaret Caldwell. She had grown up in and around Cardross, Isle of Bute, sharing a childhood with her older sister Karen, whom she was extremely close to. She’d been a member of the Brownies as well as a local drama group and had horse riding lessons.

 By all accounts, she had a very wholesome childhood. As she got older, she’d focused her sights on working with horses full-time and got a job at some local stables. But everything changed for Emma when her sister Karen told her she had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Just a couple of years later, when Emma was just 20, Karen died from cancer, and this affected Emma in ways that nobody could have predicted.

She didn’t cope well, and during this time her boyfriend told her he had something that would help her forget the pain. Heroin. Emma began taking it, and it quickly morphed into an active addiction. She begged her parents for help, and they took her to hospital, but the doctor told them there was nothing they could do for her.

 After that, Emma moved out of her parents’ house and into her boyfriend’s house, and that soon ended, so she moved into a women’s hostel in Glasgow. It was a three-story building with one shower, two baths, and three toilets for all of the women inside to share. Emma was still in active addiction during this time, but she was being supported by her parents, who would regularly see her and help her with everyday tasks if she was struggling.

Things like doing her washing, buying her food, or giving her credit for her phone bill. They even had a weekly routine where on a Wednesday, Emma’s dad, William, would arrive at Emma’s place to see her. He’d top up her phone, buy her something to eat, collect her washing, and bring it home.

 Then on Sunday, Margaret would bring the clean washing back to Emma, get snacks, and sit with her for a few hours. They’d never miss their weekly catch-ups, and even beyond that, they’d speak on the phone daily. On the 3rd of April, 2005, Margaret had gone to visit Emma as usual, but she noticed that she seemed a bit nervous. They’d gone shopping and bought some daffodils, as well as a card for Emma’s grandmother’s birthday.

 Afterwards, they had a McDonald’s, but rather than sit in the car and chat, Emma asked her mom to take her back to the hostel. This was completely out of character for Emma. She and her mom would usually chat for hours during their Sunday meet-ups. Just before she left, Emma turned to her mom and said, “Bye, Mom. Phone you Monday or Tuesday.

” That was the last time Margaret saw Emma. The following evening, Monday the 4th of April, Emma got ready to go to work. Her heroin addiction was costing around 100 lb a day, and she needed to engage in regular sex work in order to be able to pay for it. She pulled her long blonde hair back into a ponytail before putting on the last-minute additions to her outfit, a dark brown jacket with a fur collar and brown heeled boots.

 At 10:45 p.m., CCTV footage captured Emma leaving her flat and walking alone towards Victoria Road. After that, she was seen working on London Road, a well-known area for sex workers, sometime between 12:30 a.m. and 1:30 a.m. There were no confirmed sightings of her for the rest of the night, and it was just 2 days later that her parents had become concerned because of a lack of contact.

She was supposed to meet up with her dad on Tuesday, but when he tried to call her, she didn’t pick up. William had been contacting her to change the meet-up day, but with no reply the following day, or Thursday, or Friday, they began to worry. They spoke almost every day on the phone and would see Emma at least twice a week.

 So, this complete lack of communication meant they knew something was wrong. 5 days after that last sighting from Emma, her mom and dad reported her as missing. By all accounts, police took the missing person’s report seriously, and they started digging into Emma’s background and the last sightings of her. A friend of Emma’s spoke about how they used to walk into town every night and just talk, not about the bad stuff in life, just the good stuff.

 But even she hadn’t seen Emma recently.  I think we’ve just found a dead body.  It was on Sunday, the 8th of May, just over a month after Emma disappeared, that the dog walker had found her body and alerted the police. The police informed Emma’s parents that she had been found, and the investigation quickly progressed from a missing person’s inquiry to a murder investigation.

 The police had searched Emma’s room shortly after she went missing, and again after her remains were found, but they didn’t find anything that directly led to any potential suspects. They did find some items that may have had evidentiary value, but unfortunately, anything they did find hadn’t been preserved well enough, and ultimately wasn’t of any use in the ongoing investigation.

And the investigation, specifically the police work done during the body recovery and crime scene investigation, was allegedly not done well or without proper care. The area where Emma’s body had been found was cordoned off, but there was a problem. The crime scene officer had used the most commonly used walkway into the woodland as the walkway for the investigation team, which meant that any evidence that may have been there from the killer, such as footprints or hair strands, might have been destroyed or at the very least

compromised.  This is difficult to comprehend.  Oh, Emma.  Love you.  How could anyone How could anyone do [laughter] that?  The investigation team began looking into Emma’s previous clients, and they managed to do this by looking at her phone activity. She had 50 clients saved in her phone, but also worked by getting picked up by men she didn’t know.

 The police managed to get statements from a number of men involved with Emma, with ages ranging from the youngest being 19 to the oldest being 76. The problem was a lot of the men were hesitant to talk. They either outright denied knowing Emma, or they tried to say as little as possible. Police soon got access to Emma’s phone records, and they showed that the last person to call Emma was a client at 11:20 p.m. on the night she disappeared.

The call lasted 1 minute and 16 seconds, and was soon traced back to a 28-year-old Turkish man named Abubakir Onsu. Abubakir was living in the East End of Glasgow, and when questioned, he told police that he’d contacted Emma before, but only once. He didn’t remember speaking to her on the night she disappeared, and if he had spoken to her, then it was something he’d simply forgot.

What he could tell them for certain though, was that he’d only ever met up with her once some time ago, and he’d paid for sex with her. Something piqued the officers’ interest though. They realized that the day after Emma had gone missing, Abubakir had got on a flight to Turkey. The timing seemed suspicious.

 He seemed cooperative though. He told them he was in Turkey for his wedding, but as soon as it was over, he’d get a flight back to the UK, and he did. He arrived back in the United Kingdom, and officers met him at the airport. They brought him in for a police interview where he repeated his story.

 He hadn’t seen Emma on the night she disappeared, and in fact, the rest of his story stayed the same, too. They also took nail clippings and hair samples from Abubakar, as well as photos which showed that he had a superficial scratch on his neck. With no clear evidence to keep him, the police had to let Abubakar go. However, the police had honed in on him as the prime suspect.

 So, they sent covert surveillance to keep an eye on him and track his movements, as well as placing various listening devices inside his home. Over time, hours of recordings were gathered, and police listened to him talk about Emma. He spoke about how he knew that he was being investigated, and at one point, his housemate started talking about Emma, too.

 They did a good job. She was a prostitute. She shouldn’t have been a prostitute. And these weren’t the only recordings the investigating team would gather as evidence for the case. Over the next few months, the police also looked at the cafe owned by Hussein Komanaglu. The cafe was known for being a base that sex workers could work from.

Once inside, the women would be given alcohol before being taken upstairs to a room with a mattress on the floor. Sometimes, this would be consensual paid for sex, but other times, it was rape or sexual assault. On the 9th of August, the police raided the cafe, and a forensics team was brought in for the search and to analyze the scene.

 Specially trained forensics officers examine a Turkish community center on Glasgow’s Bridge Street raided by police this morning.  Searching for any kind of evidence that may lead them to Emma’s killer, the investigating team recovered a quilt with blood stains on it. That, along with hundreds more pieces of potential evidence that were taken up to the lab, but the quilt was the most important thing, and the blood was found to be a match to Emma.

More covert surveillance, including listening devices, four cameras placed in the the the cafe itself, and the upstairs room was approved. As well as this, the operation placed an undercover officer inside the cafe. The translators listening to the recordings reported that they heard the following, “You took Emma away, didn’t you? They killed her like an animal.

They strangled her. They took her jacket and threw it in the bushes near the casino. He killed her. I know.” Police searched that bush area near to the casino and they did find some of the items that they believed may have belonged to Emma. These included a black jumper, a t-shirt, and a key ring. They also found that the items had been in those bushes from around the same time that Emma went missing.

Police believed that Emma was in the cafe when she was assaulted and then strangled. It was theorized that Emma’s body had been rolled up in the carpet before being driven down to a drainage ditch hidden in some trees    and then dumped and left there.  Dramatic developments in the hunt for the killer of Emma Caldwell.

 Tonight, police have arrested four men in connection with her death.  Late this afternoon, the men thought to be of Turkish origin were charged with Emma Caldwell’s murder.  On the 31st of August 2007, the police arrested 32-year-old Abubekir Oncu, 55-year-old Huseyin Cobanoglu, 34-year-old Halil Kandil, and 35-year-old Mustafa Soylemez.

All of them were charged with murder, but they all denied having anything to do with it. Abubekir said he didn’t even know the other three who were accused.  Earlier today, I spoke to the defense lawyer for one of the accused. He maintains his innocence. Um the difficulty is that proceedings are still live.

 Inquiries are still continuing, so it would be inappropriate to comment any further.  Even beyond that, there was a problem. The main piece of evidence in arresting the four men had come from the covert recordings that had been translated from Turkish to English. But, when those recordings were played back to the men, it became clear that the translation had been inaccurate.

 The men hadn’t spoken about Emma having been strangled and there was nothing about her jacket being thrown into nearby bushes. The translators who were working with the police knew a very small amount of Turkish and were not fluent enough to do a comprehensive translation and had got it wrong. After this, more experienced translators were brought in, and they confirmed that there were numerous misquotes and things that had been taken out of context.

 There wasn’t actually anything incriminating on those recordings. Even the clothing recovered from the bushes were found to not match Emma’s DNA.    They also weren’t even a visual match for any of the clothes Emma was seen wearing or was known to have owned. As for the blood found on the duvet, that did match Emma’s DNA.

 It was theorized that this had come from a previous time when she had injected heroin. Ultimately, all four of them were released. After that, no further arrests were made, and the case went cold. The investigation seemed to hit nothing but dead ends. Any suspects  the police identified were soon cleared, and it wasn’t long before Emma’s murder was officially unsolved.

   In 2015, Police Scotland launched a reinvestigation of Emma’s case after instruction from the Lord Advocate. Assistant Chief Constable for Major Crime and Public Protection Bex Smith said,  “It is clear that further investigation should have been carried out into Emma’s murder following the initial inquiry in 2005.

” And so, police began speaking to a number of sex workers about men who had used their services around 2005 in the area Emma had worked in. And a number of women described the same man. This man’s name had come up a number of times throughout the initial inquiries relating to Emma’s murder, and he had even been interviewed multiple times between 2005 and 2007, but senior officers had dismissed these leads because they did not believe he was the murderer.

That man was Ian Packer. Years later, Ian had asked to speak to a journalist named Sam Poling to clear his name. Over the course of their interactions, Ian and the journalist exchanged various emails and eventually sat down for a recorded interview. Ian explained that he had lived under suspicion for years.

 I want my name cleared. I want my life back. I want my family’s life back. He continued saying how accusations against him was something that had hung over his life. His main point and something he had raised a number of times was if he had something to hide, why would he come forward and insist on speaking publicly? During the interview, he insisted that he had never hurt anyone.

 He did admit that he had paid for sex, but maintained that he was not a violent man. Were you ever rough with any of these women? No, no, never. I’m not a violent person. Never been a violent person. But these claims were contradicted by women who had encounters with Ian that showed the opposite.

 A woman named Magdalene came forward with a claim of attempted rape. When she was 15 years old, her sister had been dating Ian. One night, Ian had tried to rape her. Magdalene told her sister and reported the assault, but nothing was done. Afterwards, her sister continued to date Ian, which meant he was around a lot and he continued to abuse her physically, sexually, and emotionally.

 Other women came forward with accounts of violent behavior, including former partners who described controlling and abusive conduct and his repeated use of sex workers. One woman stated that he had locked her inside a property and on another occasion, he had threatened her with a knife. More women spoke about Ian’s violence.

 One having suffered burns when Ian allegedly put cigarettes out on her head. Another claimed that he had put a vacuum cleaner cord around her neck. Back to the reinvestigation into Emma’s case and when Ian was first questioned by the police, he claimed he didn’t know her, even going as far as say that he didn’t know the names of any of the women he had paid for sex, but in his later interviews, his account changed.

He revealed that he had got to know a number of women that he had paid for sex, and one of those women was Emma Caldwell. Ian went on to say that he would specifically look out for Emma. He revealed on one occasion that he and Emma had agreed to have sex, but then Emma called out and said she didn’t want to do it anymore.

 I was saying we agreed before we started, I’ve paid for this. She managed to pull away and was upset. He had therefore admitted to rape. Police couldn’t use this statement against him as evidence though, because at this time he was being interviewed as a witness, not as a suspect, and had not been read his rights. Ian told police he had never taken Emma anywhere outside of Glasgow, and that he didn’t know the Lanarkshire area where the woods were, but there were a number of women who came forward to detail times when Ian took them to those woods.

One woman called Natalie told the police that she had regularly been taken to a remote area of woodland by her clients. And police showed her a photo lineup of men. She immediately pointed to Ian Packer. Police asked Natalie to take them to the location that Ian took her to. Extraordinarily, she managed to recall the route and exactly where he had taken her.

 It was the same place where Emma’s body had been found.  I’m Detective Superintendent David McLaren from Police Scotland, and I’m the senior investigating officer in the re-investigation into the murder of Emma Caldwell. Today marks 12 years to the day since Emma was last seen, and as part of our re-investigation, we are carrying out fresh searches at an area, wooded area, in Lanarkshire, near Roberton, where Emma’s body was found.

As part of our press appeal today, I am appealing to any women who were involved in prostitution, or may still be involved in prostitution, who in the last 15 years may have been taken to that area. I would appeal to those women to get in touch with us as soon as possible. I’m certain that they will hold information that would crucial to us identifying the person that killed Emma.

I understand that women may be reluctant to come forward to the police, but I just like to take this opportunity to reassure you that we are not interested in what activities you may have been involved in over the years or passing any sort of opinions on your background and how you came to be involved in prostitution.

 I would just ask you to get in touch with us. You have no doubt that you hold information that would crucial to us finding the person who killed Emma.  Three more women came forward and told police that they had been taken to the same woods by a man driving a van matching Ian’s description. Each of the three women picked Ian out of police photo books.

 There was one other incredibly important piece of evidence that linked Ian to multiple assaults and more generally that placed Ian as someone that the sex workers and police knew about as a danger. It was a logbook known as the beware book where sex workers could detail certain individuals and specific incidents they were concerned about or wanted to warn others about.

Inside the book, Ian Packer’s name was written down multiple times often alongside the pseudonyms he used. Many of these accounts written by sex workers detailed a man picking them up driving for about an hour to a wooded area and then he’d either have sex with them or if they refused, he’d rape them. One woman who wrote in that book had been taken to the same woodlands months before Emma was murdered.

 She had been raped there by a client, Ian Packer. Over the course of the police investigation, there were no other accounts or reports of women being taken to this remote woodland area. It was in Ian’s fourth police interview that he admitted he had taken sex workers to remote woodlands. He went on to describe a time when a woman told him she no longer liked to have sex.

 He became angry because in his words, “That’s twice you [ __ ] done this to me. Just take your clothes off. We’ll get it [ __ ] over with and done and we’ll go home.” He went on to detail other times that he had forced women to strip in that area. In March 2007, 2 years after Emma was murdered, Ian had led police to the woods he was talking about and it was the same spot where Emma had been found.

When asked why he hadn’t told him about this before, why he’d initially lied about ever knowing Emma and then changing his story multiple times, he said he was worried that he would get the blame for what had happened to Emma. Yes, he’d been with her in that same location. Yes, he’d assaulted her before, but he said he wasn’t responsible for her murder.

After this information came to light, a phone call was made to senior officers requesting the go-ahead to arrest Ian Packer. But instead, the police were told to let him go. There was no reason given to the public as to why Ian was then released. The case then went cold and in 2011, Emma’s father William died without ever having seen justice for his daughter.

 I feel sad for my husband. He was broken-hearted about Emma. And then he passed away and the last thing he said to me was, “Go on. You have to go on. Don’t let this go.”  It wasn’t until the cold case review team was set up in 2015 and following sustained pressure and growing scrutiny of the original investigation that a full review of Emma Caldwell’s case was ordered.

 As part of this, detectives began re-examining over 30,000 documents and more than 23,000 pieces of evidence. Time had passed and investigators were able to use more advanced forensic techniques including detailed soil and environmental analysis. Soil recovered from the footwell of Ian’s van was compared to the samples taken from the woodlands where Emma’s body had been found.

 The results revealed a 97% match, the highest level available for that type of analysis. This showed Ian’s van had very likely been in that exact location. In 2019, Sam Poling’s investigative journalism piece, Who Killed Emma, produced by BBC Scotland, had helped to highlight and uncover so many inconsistencies in the original investigation.

Some of the interviews Sam had conducted with Ian would later be brought in as evidence.  I don’t believe you’ve been telling me the truth. All the evidence that I’ve seen and everything that I have learned um    makes it clear that you are a sexually violent man.  I’m not a sexually violent man whatsoever.

 women.  I’ve never raped anyone in my life.  You told me you’d never been to the place where Emma’s body was found.  Absolutely.  You’ve been there many times according to all the evidence that I’ve seen. The first woman you took to those woods was Emma.  No, it wasn’t.  Ian Packer was arrested and faced charges of murder, multiple counts of rape, sexual assault, physical assault, and abduction.

 These related to attacks on various women over a number of years.  You have been arrested on suspicion of murder, attempted to defeat the ends of justice, rape, um common law times nine, rape section one sexual offenses Scotland Act 2009 times two, attempted rape, um common law, abduction times three, indecent and or sexual assault common law times 12, sexual assault section three sexual offenses Scotland Act 2009 times three, and assault times six.

 Tell me your involvement relating to the rape and murder of Emma Caldwell.  No comment.  So, I had said to him at the end of the first interview, “Look, I’m going to go away and investigate everything you’ve told me, and I’m going to get you back for a second interview, and I’m going to put to you the evidence that I find.

” And he says, “That’s fine.” And I say, “And if I find evidence against you that leads me to point the finger at you, I will point the finger.” And he says, “No problem.” So then when I get him back for that second interview, and I remember standing outside the building and saying, “Come on, let’s go in.

” And he looks at me and he says, “I’m so excited. I can’t wait to hear what you you’ve found out.” And he sits down, and my very first thing I say to him is, “I don’t believe you’ve been telling me the truth. I think you’re a violent sexual predator who’s raped multiple women, and basically I believe that you are responsible for the murder of Emma Caldwell.

” And you can see, and I think you could see his face in some of that interview, the color goes, and his breathing changes, and it’s literally like the oxygen has been sucked out of the room, and I mean, I’ve never been in in in such a highly charged interview ever, and and probably never will again. It wasn’t a pleasant moment for him, or actually for anybody who was in that room.

 Ian Parker faces 46 charges, amongst them multiple rapes and sexual assaults. He’s also accused of the murder of Emma Caldwell in 2005. Because of death, was strangulation.  He entered a plea of not guilty to every charge, including the murder of Emma. There was loads of evidence presented for the courts, forensic evidence, thousands of documents, and interviews, including the interviews he had done with Sam Poling.

 Ian Parker was twice interviewed by journalist Samantha Poling for a BBC documentary which aired in 2019. The jury heard the first interview lasted over 2 hours, and  it was Parker who first made contact because of concerns his police statements were being leaked to the press. Footage of the interview was shown to the jury.

Parker told the journalist he had paid Emma for sex 10 or 11 times over a long period. He said he’d heard of Emma’s death before police contacted him. He remembered seeing an appeal poster outside a casino. He told the reporter, “I thought it was a horrible thing that happened to her.” Packer’s position throughout the first interview was he’d never been outside of Glasgow with any sex worker, let alone Emma Caldwell.

 During the first interview, the jury heard Ian Packer claiming he had never been to the remote Lanarkshire woods where Emma’s body was found. He said the first time he went there was when police had taken him. Under cross-examination by the defense, the journalist agreed that Ian Packer originally sat down with her in a bid to try and clear his name.

 Defense advocate Ronnie Renucci asked if the information she had received about Ian Packer had all been obtained by legitimate means. The witness replied her sources remain confidential. Ian Packer denies all 46 charges against him. The trial will continue tomorrow. Brandon Cook, STV News, at the High Court in Glasgow.  Ian’s alibi was also called into question.

 He had always said on the night of Emma’s murder he had been at home with his newborn and fiance. However, his child was only 10 days old at the time and so his fiance had written detailed notes as part of his care plan. She documented her daily routine inside the home and that included detailing exactly who was there, when the baby was fed, and how the night had unfolded.

 On the night of Emma Caldwell’s murder, the written notes showed that Ian had been out of the house. He claimed he’d been working.  A woman has told a jury that a man accused of murdering Emma Caldwell attempted to strangle her with a cord of a Hoover. The witness said Ian Packer subjected her to numerous physical and sexual assaults.

 She told the court of a time when Ian Packer lost his temper during an argument. In a fit of rage, she says he held the flex of a Hoover between his fists, put it behind her head, and tried to strangle her. The jury was told Packer would drive this woman around Glasgow’s red light district.

 She said he was constantly looking at who was on the street. The woman also said Packer would regularly go out for long periods, sometimes entire weekends, and was spending money on prostitutes, gambling, and drugs. Police first interviewed the woman in 2006 during investigations into the death of Emma Caldwell. The High Court heard from another woman who claimed Packer had raped and repeatedly sexually assaulted her from the age of 14.

She said, “He molested me every single second, every time he got the chance.” The witness added she did not tell people close to her because she was not believed.  After a 5-week trial and 4 days of jury deliberation, on the 18th of February 2024, Ian Packer was found guilty of 33 charges against 22 separate women.

He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 36 years.  Over more than 25 years, you pursued a campaign of violence and appalling sexual mistreatment of a very large number of women. You have caused great harm to so many people as you indulged your pathologically selfish and brutal sexual desires.

 The women involved resisted and protested, but you would not listen. The trauma you caused has led to suffering which has endured for decades. Whether you killed her whilst acting out some evil fantasy, you murdered her in circumstances which must have been truly terrifying. Alone with the man who had already indecently assaulted her in the dark, deprived of her phone, and miles from any prospect of help.

 Today, Margaret Caldwell wishes to honor those women, some of whom were sex workers who spoke up not just for Emma, but for the many unknown victims of Ian Packer. But Margaret also wishes to acknowledge those who have been lost due to illness, overdose, and other forms of harm. Those women were a part of our communities.

 They were important to their loved ones, to their families, and should have been important to the police. A toxic culture of misogyny and corruption meant that the police failed so many women and girls who came forward to speak against Packer. Instead of receiving justice and compassion, they were humiliated, they were dismissed, and in some instances, they were arrested.

 Whilst the police gifted freedom to an evil predator to rape and to rape again.  Ian did attempt to challenge his sentence, but his appeal was refused.  These former police officers who worked on the murder inquiry have broken their silence. The evidence against Packer, they say, was there all along, yet senior officers repeatedly dismissed him as a suspect, instead wrongly pursuing four Turkish men for the murder.

 They couldn’t lose face. If they were to turn around and say, “We’ve made a mistake here. We’ve spent all this public money.” Their careers would have been finished, and they knew that. So, they bluffed it out.  This detective asked for Packer to be made a suspect. He was told, “No.”  There was identification there of more than one No, not just him, the van, his behavior.

Several girls had um picked him out of the photographs. He’s admitting to more and more. So, I phoned Willie Johnston, who was the senior investigating officer. And I said to him, “I want to detain Ian Packer for the murder of Emma Caldwell.” To which he replied, “Do not detain him. He is not our man. Release him.

”  It wouldn’t be the only time this detective was told to bring Packer in for another statement.  And I’m told at that point, “But Davie, when you get Ian Packer and bring him in, it doesn’t matter what he tells you. Doesn’t matter what he tells you. He won’t be an accused ever in this case.”  Who tells you this?  This SIO.

Willie Johnston.  Report to the junction.  Willie Johnston retired as a detective superintendent in 2014. He declined to provide a statement to the BBC. We asked Police Scotland for a statement. They said this, “Emma Caldwell, her family, and many other victims were let down by policing in 2005. For that, we are sorry.

 A significant number of women and girls who showed remarkable courage to speak up at the time also did not get the justice and support they needed and deserved from Strathclyde Police.”  The amount of time it took for Ian to be properly investigated did greatly impact other women after Emma’s murder. 12 of the original charges against Ian were for incidents that took place in the years after Emma’s killing.

 For years, despite early warnings, despite repeated allegations, despite inconsistencies in his account, and opportunities to act, Ian remained free. Even taking the police to the wooded area where Emma was killed had still not been enough.  Did you get an insight into the world in which the women and Emma was living in?  I was naive to all this. I’d no idea.

We just thought she wanted to stay at the hostel till she could get into rehabilitation some way. Uh we knew she was a heroin addict, which was a terrible thing. And we worried about all the time. But with absolutely no knowledge that she worked in the streets of Glasgow to fuel her habit. We didn’t know how much it cost.

 It was really hard to take.  It begs the question that in 2005, Emma is murdered. In 2007, the four Turkish men are falsely accused of the crime, one of whom happened to be my client. We knew very early on as defense lawyers Ian Packer’s in the frame. We knew there was evidence there. Police officers within Strathclyde Police at the time knew it was him.

 So, you had two distinct teams, and yet for some reason those those police officers had their lives ruined, their careers ruined, the ones who pointed the finger at Ian Packer. And the ones who were involved with going after false the false accusation cuz they were false. It wasn’t the four Turkish men. They went on to bigger and better things.

 And we are now asking for a full statutory inquiry into the actions of Strathclyde Police and Police Scotland after that, and those individuals whose fingerprints were on this case because it Six of those women uh apart from Emma are now dead. They never saw justice. It begs the question why this man was allowed to be free to roam the streets, to rape, to kill, to abduct, to torture, and to ruin other women’s lives.

 And there is there’s also the question of misogyny. I think there was a toxic culture at the time of misogyny combined with corruption that meant that women who were vulnerable, women who had drug addictions, and women who were sex workers didn’t matter, but they did matter.  After his conviction, the Scottish government announced a public inquiry into the handling of the case to examine how these failures had happened and why they were allowed to continue for so long.

 The Beware book that had become such a clear and horrifying piece of evidence was known about by police back in 2005, but no action was taken. Ian Packer was on the police’s radar and even led them to the spot where Emma’s body had been found. He was known in the sex workers community as a violent and aggressive individual with a history of attacking women.

 The public inquiry was established in December 2025 and is still ongoing today in 2026. It is examining the systemic failures that allowed Ian Packer to remain free for nearly 20 years and the missed opportunities that delayed justice, including failures in investigative strategy, oversight by the Crown Office, and broader procedural and organizational failings.

Emma’s mom, Margaret, was quoted recently in a meeting about the inquiry. She would want people to know that Emma was gentle and kind to a fault. Her passions were horses and family. The whole family adored her, but had been robbed of a wonderful daughter, sister, niece, and aunt. For the Caldwell family, for the women who survived, the inquiry represents both accountability and hope that what happened to Emma and the failures that followed will finally be exposed.

 It is a reminder that justice is about convicting the killer, but also about ensuring that the systems meant to protect others are held to account and that no other family has to endure the anguish of watching a violent predator go unchecked.  Mhm.