MILE-LONG TRAIL OF BLOOD IN THE SNOW
Horror on a deserted farm track as Army pay heist triple murderer Andrew Walker struck...
THE trail of blood in the fresh white snow stretched for one and a half miles along a deserted farm track, leading searchers to the bodies of three soldiers who had been executed by one of their own.
Nearby, an Army Land Rover lay abandoned and awash with blood and bullets, its engine still running, as killer Andrew Walker decided to make his getaway across the wintry fields on foot, leaving the bodies of Major David Cunningham, 56, Staff Sergeant Terence Hosker, 39, and Private John Thomson, 25, behind.
Just 20 minutes earlier, the men – all married with young families had been collecting £19,000 in wages destined for the Scottish Infantry Training Depot at Glencorse Barracks in Penicuik, Midlothian.
But after emerging from the local branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland, Walker, a Royal Scots corporal, suddenly appeared at their sides and casually asked for a ride with them back to camp.
Happy to oblige, they agreed, unaware their kind gesture would end in their deaths.
Walker, a weapons instructor, already had an eye on the cash bonanza they were transporting back to base and was secretly armed with a Sterling sub-machine gun, withdrawn from the camp’s armoury that morning. He had lied, saying he needed it for training.
Now, with a far more sinister purpose for the weapon, he clambered into the back of the vehicle beside
Staff Sgt Hosker, while Major Cunningham sat in the front alongside Pte Thomson, the driver.
Within seconds of the vehicle moving off, in what would become one of Scotland’s most notorious murders, Walker suddenly pulled out the sub-machine gun, ordering his three comrades to turn left up the town’s Mauricewood Road, instead of continuing straight on to their original destination.
Witnesses reported seeing the Land Rover being driven erratically that January morning in 1985, indicating a struggle inside. That was when the first shots were fired. Nearby residents recalled the sound of muffled gunfire.
Sitting facing Walker in the rear of the vehicle, Staff Sgt Hosker, from Bradford, was the first to die, as two rounds hit him full in the chest. Major Cunningham, formerly of the Pay Corps, was the next to die, killed by a single shot through the head. The bullet passed on through the windscreen.
Pte Thomson, who served with the King’s Own Scottish Borderers and was on his first payroll collection having transferred to Glencorse from Colchester only ten days earlier, knew his life was about to end. But he was spared long enough to drive past the Flotterstone Inn and on to lonely Loganlea Cottage.
Walker forced him to carry the bodies of his colleagues up to a spot in the Pentland Hills at Glencorse Reservoir. Panicking as Staff Sgt Hosker’s body twitched, Walker shot three rounds into him, and with no further use for young Thomson, Walker then forced him to kneel and executed him with a bullet through the head.
Having killed the final obstacle in his path, he now had the payroll cash – £18,600 in £10 notes, and £400 in £5 notes – and, pumped with adrenaline at his prize, he attempted to drive off at speed from the scene of horror he had left behind.
Meanwhile, soldiers and detectives were already on their way towards him. The Land Rover’s failure to return to camp, coupled with the sickening bloody trail in the snow, had raised a full-scale alert. Skidding in deep snow, Walker crashed the vehicle and was forced to hide in nearby trees as the searchers began to arrive. It is a moment that remained vivid in the memory of his commanding officer, Clive Fairweather, the lieutenant colonel in charge of Glencorse Barracks at the time and the man at the head of the search party that day.
He was unaware until later that Walker had him in his sights too and that he could have been his fourth victim. But the killer instead lowered his sub-machine gun, and carrying the bag of money, slipped into the undergrowth before making off across the fields.
Recalling his close escape later, Lt Col Fairweather said he often
wondered at Walker’s inexplicable change of heart, adding: ‘He could have shot me at any point. I was exceedingly lucky not to have been his fourth victim.’
The bodies of the three soldiers were soon found dumped in a line near the cottage.
Lt Col Fairweather added: ‘A chill went through me as I saw the empty 9mm cases. It hit me then that it was an inside job. I’ve seen an awful lot of soldiers buried after being killed in action but to see men murdered by one of their own is different…their faces never leave me.’
Meanwhile, Walker had cleaned his gun and returned it to the armoury. At first, he cynically claimed the killings had been carried out by the IRA and, as the trial approached, he sent a letter to the Press claiming the organisation was behind the atrocity.
But the wider evidence proved otherwise – including the bullet in the shoulder of Staff Sgt Hosker which linked Walker to the crime because it matched the weapon signed out by him.
He was later sentenced to 30 years for triple murder – at the time the longest sentence ever handed down. Judge Lord Grieve recommended the lengthy term because of his ‘callous disregard for human life’.
The judge said: ‘A person who could bring himself to do what he did is not fit to live in a society which still regards itself as civilised.
‘This was a calculated crime. The accused, if he was to achieve his purpose, had to kill.
‘I am quite satisfied that the crime was carefully planned, and I am also quite sure that the substance of the evidence given by Walker was a tissue of lies.’
As for the £19,000 ‘blood money’ – worth around £57,000 today – it would never be found, believed to be buried in the hills until such times as Walker could retrieve it when he was freed.
Fate, however, had other ideas. He was given a further seven years for leading a riot at Peterhead Prison in 1986, in which more than £250,000 of damage was caused when prisoners set fire to ‘A’ Hall. Fifteen prison officers were assaulted when the trouble started and one of them, John Crossan, was taken hostage for four days.
But in 2002, Walker scored a minor victory when he used human rights legislation to have his original 30-year term cut by three years at the Court of Appeal.
His lawyer, Gordon Jackson, QC, said 30 years was ‘excessive’ when compared to similar cases such as Howard Wilson, who shot dead two policemen, and Robert Mone, who killed a policeman after escaping from the State Hospital at Carstairs in Lanarkshire.
Little account was taken of the fact that Mone had also, while dressed in a Gordon Highlanders uniform at the age of 19 and armed with a shotgun, wandered into a girls’ sewing class at St John’s High School in Dundee and killed a teacher in cold blood.
But any serious thought Walker might still have retained at capitalising on his murderous actions, came to an abrupt end in 2009 when he was left severely disabled after suffering a stroke in his cell at Shotts Prison, in Lanarkshire.
With no apparent hope of recovery and, with only months left to live, Walker was controversially granted early release on compassionate grounds from prison in December 2011 by Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill.
It was the first such release since Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi was freed in 2009 and provoked widespread anger, particularly from his former colleagues and the families of the victims.
On hearing the news that Walker would be cared for the rest of his days in a residential home, paid for by the taxpayer, Lt Col Fairweather, who had gone on to become a Scot- tish Chief Inspector of Prisons after retiring from the Army, said: ‘I feel no compassion for Walker. It is not a word that should be associated with him. I would like to think this release is purely for practical reasons rather than compassionate ones.’
Walker was said to be ‘severely incapacitated’, unable to communicate and unlikely to improve in the home, the exact location of which in Lanarkshire has been kept secret.
More than seven years on, however, the Scottish Mail on Sunday can reveal that Walker is still alive and is understood to be comfortable, although sources say he is immobile.
The news is just one more blow in the devastating and lasting legacy left behind by Walker and one which has left the widows and children of his victims in limbo.
On Friday, February 1, 1985, Pte Thomson was buried with military honours in Galashiels, Selkirkshire, and now lies in the town’s Heatheryett Cemetery.
Every year until now, his widow, Susan, has visited the lonely spot where he died in the picturesque Hills on the anniversary of Walker’s killing spree.
This year, having just undergone hand surgery, she decided not to go and admits the guilt she now feels as a result is almost tangible.
She said: ‘People seem to think that because so much time has passed that I’m somehow “over it”. But the pain is as raw today as it was then. Walker didn’t just kill three people that day. He gave every one of us connected to them a life sentence.
‘No one can ever understand how I feel. I’ve never been able to go out in the snow since the day Johnny died or settle down with anyone else.
‘It’s like a form of post-traumatic stress and I’ve learned to cope with it in my own way by putting on a brave face for the world.’
The couple, who had a toddler son, Bruce, had just moved into a new home a few days before Walker carried out his executions.
She added: ‘I’m not looking for sympathy from anyone but I was 19 when this happened. It should have been the beginning of my life and Walker ruined it.
‘My son was left without a father, as were the children in the other families. I can still hear Bruce asking where his daddy was and I had to tell him, “he’s gone to Heaven”.’
As she does every year as a mark of remembrance, she also wrote a poem to her husband.
‘It’s important to remember,’ she says, adding: ‘That’s why the public needs to be reminded about what this evil man did and why he doesn’t deserve the compassion he’s been shown at taxpayers’ expense.
‘He didn’t do his time in prison quietly, he always managed to continue his attention-seeking at every opportunity, making all the relatives suffer repeatedly. He led a prison riot, wanted compensation, lied about a service medal, appealed his sentence. I could go on and on.
‘It’s been like being on an emotional rollercoaster. Just as the attention died down, he brought it right back and it felt impossible to get on with life. Walker’s never wanted for anything in prison, while we have struggled trying to piece our lives back together.
‘Do I hate him? Of course I do. I sometimes feel we will never be free of him, not even when he is finally dead.’
‘Not fit to live in civilised society’
‘I’ve never gone out in snow since Johnny died’