The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Police won’t give up on solving Templeton Woods murder case
Unsolved killing of Elizabeth McCabe
Police Scotland said it remains committed to cracking one of Tayside’s most notorious unsolved murders despite the passage of time.
As the 40th anniversary of Elizabeth McCabe’s murder approaches next year, Police Scotland said the case remains open despite no new information coming forward since 2007.
A Courier investigation can reveal the police evidence vault includes 772 productions which were seized by officers, 3,184 statements which were obtained during the investigation, and 1,311 questionnaires that were completed.
The force said the full list of artefacts would not be made public because “disclosure of the requested information at this stage would be detrimental to any ongoing investigations”.
A Police Scotland spokesperson said: “As time passes, the investigation of such cases can prove to be more challenging, therefore it is essential that information is disclosed in the correct manner, to ensure that neither the investigations nor the potential for any new proceedings to be brought against an individual are put at risk.
“Unresolved murders are cases that are never closed.
“Police Scotland are fully committed to identifying the person or persons responsible for the murder of Elizabeth McCabe.”
In February 1980 the trainee nursery nurse left the city’s Lyndhurst Avenue for a night out with friend Sandra Niven in Dundee.
The pair visited several city centre bars before heading to Teazer’s nightclub on Union Street.
The following day she was reported missing by her family.
Fifteen days later, on the day after she would have celebrated her 21st birthday, her partially-clothed body was found strangled in Templeton Woods.
The spot where Miss McCabe lay was only 150 yards from where the naked body of another young Dundee girl had been found 11 months earlier.
Like Miss McCabe, Carol Lannen, who had also been last seen in the centre of the city, had been strangled.
Sixteen years after nursery nurse Miss McCabe’s murder, Tayside Police instructed a review of both deaths.
The murders were also included in a secret investigation into six possible Yorkshire Ripper attacks in Scotland by then-West Yorkshire Police Chief Constable Keith Hellawell.
The man responsible for the infamous Zodiac slayings which terrorised Northern California from 1968-74 was also linked to the murder of Miss Lannen after a dossier of evidence was given to Tayside Police in 2005.
The dossier stated the killer had fled to Scotland and said the “Zodiac’s last act” was the murder of Miss Lannen but the theory was eventually quashed by investigators in California.
Despite the biggest investigation ever mounted by local police, no one was ever arrested for either of the Dundee murders.
In July 2005, former taxi driver Vincent Simpson, who was first interviewed by police on March 2 1980, appeared at Dundee Sheriff Court accused of Miss McCabe’s murder.
His seven-week trial at the High Court in Edinburgh ended in December 2007, when a jury found him not guilty.