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Split Thread David Gilroy: murder conviction goes to Scottish Review Commission

anglolawyer

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anglolawyer
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Rolfe said:
I only see three threads in SI&CE in the past week or two dealing with actual suspected miscarriages of justice. Obviously the Shrien Dewani and Oscar Pistorius threads would have fitted in a Law and Justice section too, but people have stopped arguing about these cases.

There are a lot of other threads that have some sort of legal connection though. It will be interesting to see what sorts of threads people decide they want to put there. David Gilroy is trying to get another appeal and that's quite an interesting case (Suzanne Pilley, the murder without a body) I wonder if people will want to discuss.
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I would love to discuss that one. I use it as a paradigm case for explaining circumstantial evidence because it's so neat and tidy. Guilty as sin IMO but I would be fascinated to know the basis of any appeal.
 
Yeah. I thought the case was very thin at first, but when I saw the detail of the evidence I definitely came round to "guilty as sin". It's a beautiful example of the fact that concealing a body effectively is not exactly impossible, even if it's being actively sought.
 
Rolfe said:
Yeah. I thought the case was very thin at first, but when I saw the detail of the evidence I definitely came round to "guilty as sin". It's a beautiful example of the fact that concealing a body effectively is not exactly impossible, even if it's being actively sought.
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I wonder how he did that? I didn't know until recently there was evidence of some pretty suspicious behaviour in the office the morning he killed her. I think it's a compelling case.
 
Look, we shouldn't start talking about it in this thread or it'll get AAHed as a derail!
 
He turned off his mobile phone so he couldn't be tracked. And have you seen that terrain? It's a huge area.
 
Rolfe said:
He turned off his mobile phone so he couldn't be tracked. And have you seen that terrain? It's a huge area.
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Bodies always turn up. I think you have to dissolve them in quicklime or something but maybe even that doesn't always work. Peter Hogg (from these parts) killed his wife in a rage in 1976 and had the initiative to drive her up from Surrey to the Lake District, weight her down and drop her into a lake. The body was found 8 years later when the cops were looking for another body! Talk about bad luck. Scott Peterson also got unlucky when his wife and unborn son bobbed up out of San Francisco Bay after being carefully weighted and sunk. Often it's a passing dog that digs at a shallow grave.

Maybe they should shave a couple of years off Gilroy's sentence if he will explain how it's done.
 
anglolawyer said:
Bodies always turn up. I think you have to dissolve them in quicklime or something but maybe even that doesn't always work. Peter Hogg (from these parts) killed his wife in a rage in 1976 and had the initiative to drive her up from Surrey to the Lake District, weight her down and drop her into a lake. The body was found 8 years later when the cops were looking for another body! Talk about bad luck. Scott Peterson also got unlucky when his wife and unborn son bobbed up out of San Francisco Bay after being carefully weighted and sunk. Often it's a passing dog that digs at a shallow grave.

Maybe they should shave a couple of years off Gilroy's sentence if he will explain how it's done.
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It's not been that long. It's going to take someone stumbling over something, and as you noted, eight years was bad luck. And Argyll ain't the Lake District.
 
anglolawyer said:
Bodies always turn up. I think you have to dissolve them in quicklime or something but maybe even that doesn't always work.
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Well, see, that's your problem right there. Quicklime actually helps preserve the body (although it is useful for drying it out quickly, which gets rid of the smell of putrefraction). I've had pretty good luck with both hydrofluoric acid and lye (not at the same time though!).
 
sunmaster14 said:
Well, see, that's your problem right there. Quicklime actually helps preserve the body (although it is useful for drying it out quickly, which gets rid of the smell of putrefraction). I've had pretty good luck with both hydrofluoric acid and lye (not at the same time though!).
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The best policy is to dispose of the body such that no trace is ever found, which removes all need for chemicals.

We had an interesting case in the US in 2007, involving an Illinois cop whose wife abruptly disappeared and has never been found. Everyone knew the guy must have killed her, but the evidence simply did not exist. So they charged him with the murder of an earlier wife, whose death had originally been ruled an accident, and got a conviction.

Scott Peterson probably would not have been charged if his wife's body hadn't washed ashore.

Here in the San Juan Islands we have nice, deep channels to hide our transgressions... but now and then a foot works free, owing to decomposition. The buoyant sneaker then carries it ashore.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salish_Sea_human_foot_discoveries
 
Charlie Wilkes said:
The best policy is to dispose of the body such that no trace is ever found, which removes all need for chemicals.

We had an interesting case in the US in 2007, involving an Illinois cop whose wife abruptly disappeared and has never been found. Everyone knew the guy must have killed her, but the evidence simply did not exist. So they charged him with the murder of an earlier wife, whose death had originally been ruled an accident, and got a conviction.

Scott Peterson probably would not have been charged if his wife's body hadn't washed ashore.

Here in the San Juan Islands we have nice, deep channels to hide our transgressions... but now and then a foot works free, owing to decomposition. The buoyant sneaker then carries it ashore.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salish_Sea_human_foot_discoveries
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And of course I know who the multiple dead wife guy is! What is it with the Peterson name? There's Scott, Michael and Drew.

I believe there are lots of examples of convictions with no corpus delicti. Anne Marie Fahey/Tom Capano is another. I will have to read up on this Gilroy case. I am always interested in murder cases.
 
Lots of old mine shafts in the Lake District and Yorkshire Dales. A lot of them uncapped.

In the village where I lived and grew up we had 3 old Ironstone Mines within a mile f my house. two of them had uncapped shafts with just a wall built around them to stop children and small animals from falling down, about 300 ft deep with the bottom 100 ft or so flooded. Drop a body down there and it's gone forever.
 
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I don't think there are uncapped mine shafts in the area where Gilroy managed to go without surveillance that afternoon, but there are lochs, lochans and just miles of wild country. I don't know how much Suzanne weighed, or how strong he was, though.

It's one of those cases that makes me wonder about the difference between guilty beyond reasonable doubt, and guilty merely on the balance of probabilities. I think he's guilty as sin, but do I think it's been proved beyond reasonable doubt?

I don't like these allegedly trained "corpse sniffing" dogs. Look at the trouble they caused in the Madeleine McCann case. There have been studies that show there's a huge level of "Clever Hans" effect going on there. The dogs find the drugs, or the explosives, or the corpse smell, where the handlers expect to find it.
 
anglolawyer said:
Bodies always turn up. I think you have to dissolve them in quicklime or something but maybe even that doesn't always work. Peter Hogg (from these parts) killed his wife in a rage in 1976 and had the initiative to drive her up from Surrey to the Lake District, weight her down and drop her into a lake. The body was found 8 years later when the cops were looking for another body! Talk about bad luck. Scott Peterson also got unlucky when his wife and unborn son bobbed up out of San Francisco Bay after being carefully weighted and sunk. Often it's a passing dog that digs at a shallow grave.
Maybe they should shave a couple of years off Gilroy's sentence if he will explain how it's done.
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There's a murder trial ongoing in Dublin where the body was unearthed about a year after the victim disappeared, by a dog walker.

Charlie Wilkes said:
The best policy is to dispose of the body such that no trace is ever found, which removes all need for chemicals.

We had an interesting case in the US in 2007, involving an Illinois cop whose wife abruptly disappeared and has never been found. Everyone knew the guy must have killed her, but the evidence simply did not exist. So they charged him with the murder of an earlier wife, whose death had originally been ruled an accident, and got a conviction.

Scott Peterson probably would not have been charged if his wife's body hadn't washed ashore.

Here in the San Juan Islands we have nice, deep channels to hide our transgressions... but now and then a foot works free, owing to decomposition. The buoyant sneaker then carries it ashore.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salish_Sea_human_foot_discoveries
Click to expand...
If you're disposing at sea I suggest wrapping the remain in plastic netting and weighing them down; this allows marine life access for recycling but prevents bits floating off and disturbing beachgoers.
 
catsmate1 said:
There's a murder trial ongoing in Dublin where the body was unearthed about a year after the victim disappeared, by a dog walker.


If you're disposing at sea I suggest wrapping the remain in plastic netting and weighing them down; this allows marine life access for recycling but prevents bits floating off and disturbing beachgoers.
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Scott Peterson is thought to have shrink-wrapped his wife as well as weighing her down with concrete anchors he made. She (or what was left of her) still bobbed up months later as did her foetus a mile or so away.

We had an interesting discussion at Injustice Anywhere about that case in the course of which I devised a way of disposing of a weighted body from a small boat without capsizing. It was one of the defence arguments at his trial that this was not possible. They tried unsuccessfully to admit a film of someone attempting it (obviously not with a real body).

The guy I mentioned yesterday, Peter Hogg, managed it in the Lake District, although I don't know how. Anyone like to guess my method, or should I wait 'til my turn in the trivia quiz thread and post it as a question there? The body must be weighed down by about 5 concrete anchors and the boat must be small.

ETA I should say my method may well only work inside my head.
 
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I think the Keith Bennett example is the one that really demonstrates what the investigators are up against if the area concerned is large enough. Even the murderers seemed to have forgotten the spot, and been unable to pick it out at a later date.

I think the method would vary depending on the murderer - for example a strong man might find it relatively easy to dig a fairly deep grave. Then the large remote area comes into play. With no lead as to where to look, investigators are relying on someone stumbling over something. But if very few people are passing by, and the body is pretty well concealed, that stumbling might not happen.
 
In the case of Gilroy (please try to stay on topic everybody! :p) the underneath of his car showed signs of having been driven over rough ground (another telling piece of evidence against him) so he must have left the road at some point and driven off into the undergrowth. She could be anywhere!
 
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