I was attacked by Gartshore too, says sister of tragic Moira
Alleged killer’s sex assault in street
THE sister of tragic Moira Anderson disclosed last night that she was also sexually assaulted by the man s uspected of abducting and murdering the schoolgirl in 1957.
Janet Hart, 69, said it was not until decades later that she realised her attacker was Alexander Gartshore, the paedophile almost certainly responsible for taking her sister’s life.
The assault happened weeks after Moira vanished and shortly before Gartshore was jailed for raping his family’s 13-year- old babysitter.
Yet the bus driver, from Moira’s home town of Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, never figured in the police inquiry into her disappearance in February 1957.
This week, police and forensic experts spent three days exhuming a grave at Old Monkland Cemetery, Coatbridge, after a long investigation concluded Moira’s body might be hidden in a family plot which had been open for a burial shortly after she disappeared.
But the search found no trace and Mrs Hart and her sister, Marjory Muir, learned the sad news on Thursday in a call from Gartshore’s
‘The anger is still
quite strong’
daughter, Sandra Brown, who has campaigned for years to prove her late father’s guilt.
Speaking f rom her home in Sydney, Australia, Mrs Hart recalled her own terrifying brush with the suspected killer when she was 12.
She said: ‘The family was still reeling from losing Moira, still hoping that somehow she’d come home. I was in my first year at high school.
‘I had gone home at lunchtime and was hurrying back to school when I tried to pass this very tall man looking down at his black car. It had the bonnet up.
‘He asked if I had a minute to hold up the bonnet so he could get underneath to look for a fault.’ She remembered: ‘ We were supposed to be polite and respectful to adults and there was nothing obviously bad about him. We were in the street in broad daylight.
‘I held up the bonnet, needing both hands to take the weight and he got underneath t he car. Suddenly, his hand shot right up my skirt and he grabbed me.
‘I was shocked, screamed, dropped the bonnet and ran, but after a few yards I turned and memorised the number plate. As soon as I got to school, I wrote it down and went to tell a teacher what had happened. It was reported to the police.’
She said the school rector later warned pupils of a ‘ bad man’ lurking in the neighbourhood.
Mrs Hart said: ‘I only realised many years later that my attacker was the same man who made my sister disappear. I saw pictures of him in the papers when Sandra accused him of killing Moira. I described the car and remembered the number plate, and Sandra later confirmed that it was her dad’s.’
She went on: ‘It beggars belief that Gartshore had been charged with child rape and was the last man to see Moira alive, but was not a suspect. It was 56 years ago but the anger is still quite strong.’
Meanwhile, members of the Upton family, whose dead relatives were exhumed in the search for Moira’s remains, have attended a ceremony to mark the re-interment.
Among them was Sinclair Upton, 78, whose grandparents were reburied at Old Monkland yesterday. He said: ‘I never really believed Moira was there. I gave permission for the graves to be opened because it was the Christian thing to do.’