Tom was top of the policing wood pile
By Stephen Rafferty
Tom Wood joined the City of Edinburgh Police in 1968 and during a 37 year career worked his way through the ranks before retiring as Deputy Chief Constable (DCC) of Lothian and Borders Police. (L & B)
The bulk of his police service saw him spend long spells in
CID posts across the Capital, and latterly in the Serious Crime Squad, reaching the rank of Detective Superintendent.
He has a distinguished record of study of police operations and management and has an MSc degree in Legal Studies from Edinburgh University.
He has also attended the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, and completed the Senior Command Course at the Police Staff College at Bramshill in Hampshire.
He adopted a forward thinking policy in dealing with the city’s sex trade, recognising that a heavy handed approach to Edinburgh’s numerous licensed saunas and to women working on the streets, would drive the trade underground and would be counter-productive in trying to get a handle on the city’s horrendous drug use explosion.
He was appointed a Commander of the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit in 1994 and was awarded The Queen's Police Medal in 1995.
As DCC and Director of Operations of L & B Police he was Officer-in-Overall Command of Operation Trinity, the linked murder investigation into the deaths of a number of young women, including Helen Scott and Christine Eadie in what became known as The World’s End Murders. Operation Trinity led to the conviction of Angus Sinclair for Helen and Christine’s murders and in 2014 Sinclair was jailed for 37 years, which brought to an end a 41 year murder mystery and offered closure to the girls’ remaining family members.
Working with respected journalist David Johnston, he co-authored The World’s End Murders: The
Final Verdict, which charted one of Britain’s longest murder hunts and the making of Scottish legal history as Sinclair became the first person to be tried twice for the same crime.
On retiring from the police he headed up the Action on
Alcohol and Drugs in Edinburgh, working with other agencies and local authorities to develop policy relevant to supporting citizens who are alcohol and drug dependent. Later he took the role of Independent Chair of Adult and Child protection committees and carried out a number of cold case homicide reviews in the north of England. He is a regular columnist in The Scotsman newspaper.