Focus on scientists’ role in high-profile murder cases
FOR Carol Weston, it’s all about the details – barely visible skin flakes, a strand of hair, the tiniest blood spot – that can make the difference between securing a criminal conviction and someone getting away with murder.
As a senior forensic scientist for the Scottish Police Authority (SPA), she has worked on some of the country’s most high-profile crimes, including the Glasgow murders of Angelika Kluk and Moira Jones.
Ms Weston played a key part in securing the conviction of Peter Tobin, who in 2007 was found guilty of raping and murdering Ms Kluk, a young Polish woman studying in the city. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, to serve a minimum of 21 years.
The case helped link Tobin to the murders of two other young women: Vicky Hamilton and Dinah McNicol.
A new BBC Scotland series, Crime Scenes Scotland: Forensics Squad, which begins on Wednesday, charts the timeline of events from Ms Kluk going missing on September 24, 2006 through to the conclusion of Tobin’s trial on May 4, 2007.
Ms Weston, 39, recounts seeing Ms Kluk’s body for the first time, wrapped in tarpaulin and beneath a bin bag at St Patrick’s Church in Anderston.
“She was underneath a hatch in the floor of the church,” she said. “I was firmly of the opinion from the outset that I wanted to go down and access the body in situ. I didn’t want her to moved to the mortuary prior to any evidence being recovered.
“The hatch was not only small, but bisected with a supporting beam. There was a lot of discussion about how we were going to get to the body. Eventually we decided: ‘Right, let’s go and see if I can actually fit down into this hole’, and luckily I did.”
Ms Kluk had been stabbed multiple times, gagged and her
To have played a small part in helping to catch a serial killer is a massive thing ... and to help families find answers
hands bound by cable ties. “The first thing that struck me was the amount of violence that had been used against Angelika,” said Ms Weston. “I’ve seen a lot of murders and dead bodies, but this one, from the beginning, looked like a sexually motivated murder. Her injuries were horrific. Straight away this was something out of the ordinary.”
Within the closed, cramped space beneath the floorboards, Ms Weston spent three-and-a-half hours completing the painstaking task of examining the body and collecting samples.
It was a horrific scene, which, as she sits across the table in a quiet office at the SPA, seems a million miles away.
“To have played a small part in helping to catch a serial killer is obviously a massive thing,” she said. “Knowing you have had a role in putting this man in jail, and for the families – I don’t if closure is the right word, but to help them find answers.”
Ms Weston averages 150 cases a year including serious assaults, sexual crimes, rape and murder.
It is a busy beat as Glasgow, where she is based, is ranked among the most violent cities in Western Europe. “We deal with 60-70% of serious crime in Scotland,” she confirmed.
Other high-profile murders featured in the new series include that of Glasgow businesswoman Moira Jones who was abducted, raped and murdered in Queens Park in May 2008 – a case on which Ms Weston also worked.
The investigation would lead detectives to Slovakia, with the SPA forensics team playing a pivotal part in the conviction of Marek Harcar, who in 2009 was sentenced to a minimum of 25 years in prison.
Ms Weston gathered evidence from a leather jacket belonging to Harcar that contained multiple tiny blood spots. “The blood was Moira Jones’s – and he had been wearing the jacket for six weeks,” she said. “It struck you that this guy didn’t actually care about what he’d done.”
Crime Scenes Scotland: Forensics Squad begins on BBC One Scotland on Wednesday at 10.35pm.