Porn King beaten to death with a hammer
PORNOGRAPHER Eddie Cotogno was battered to death with a hammer, we can reveal.
Weeks before his death, he had fallen out with a friend – notorious World’s End murderer Angus Sinclair, a known child
FROM PAGE ONE killer but also a violent armed robber. Cotogno, who ran a brica-brac stall at the Barras in Glasgow, was found dead in his Dumbarton flat by a beat bobby doing his rounds on July 30, 1979. His head had been caved in by blunt force trauma and the flat set on fire in an effort to destroy any evidence. Detectives homed in on Sinclair, who was known to them for a series of brutal robberies that happened in Glasgow, and quizzed him over Eddie’s death. But crafty Sinclair had already lined up a false alibi and persuaded his wife Sarah to help him lie to police. A source close to the original investigation said: “Sinclair had to be traced, questioned and eliminated from the inquiry – or become a suspect. “The alibi he gave was believed. “There was no way to dispute it. “Sinclair told police he was with his wife and she backed up the lie. “It would be many many years before she admitted he forced her to lie. We never revealed the instrument used to kill Eddie. “It was always considered that it would be something only the killer knew so it was kept vague. “It was a hammer – or something similar – and
Sinclair favoured hammers in his robberies.
“He was a violent man but he was only 5ft 4in so he needed to use deadly force to be a threat to people, especially other men.
“He’d carried out a terrifying armed robbery in 1976 in Moodiesburn where he and an accomplice, Gordon Hamilton, burst into a house and tied up a 10-year-old girl and her father and waited for the rent man to come so they could rob him of his takings.
“Hamilton was armed with a knife and Sinclair with a hammer.
“It was his favoured instrument.”
He added: “I’ve seen reports that Sinclair wasn’t formally quizzed over Cotogno.
“He was – but back in the day we made the mistake of phoning ahead to make an appointment to see him. It primed him for an alibi.
“But false alibis were not unusual for him.
“He was always out thieving or doing something he shouldn’t have been, such as photographing women, which is how he came to know Eddie.
“They were like-minded when it came to porn.
“Maybe he’d gone to Eddie for a loan of money or maybe it was a robbery gone wrong. We couldn’t crack it and I doubt it will ever be solved.”
During the 2004 Operation Trinity, which was set up to review Angus Sinclair’s life and crimes and would eventually see him convicted for further murders, detectives could again find no evidence that linked Sinclair to the Cotogno death.