Bryan McLaughlin - Crimestopper: Fighting Crime on Scotlands Streets

To my wife, Elizabeth, and my daughters
Debbie, Janis and Lucy

It was a Sunday in September 1998 and the witness who could hold the key to a jailed mans freedom was walking home from church when I approached him.

He was one of three men whod claimed in court theyd seen the accused, Stuart Gair, at a homosexual pick-up point in Glasgow in 1989. Gair was allegedly with a man called Peter Smith at the time of a fatal stabbing that led to Smiths death two weeks later. Gair was jailed for the crime in 1989 but protested he was the victim of a shocking miscarriage of justice.

Two of the witnesses both rent boys had since publicly retracted their stories, claiming the police had pressurised them into lying. But my target a respectable man whose statement would carry more weight had refused to confess hed committed perjury. Id first spoken to him over a year earlier, when hed stuck to his original story. This time I told him Id interviewed all the other people involved and I knew his version of events just couldnt be right.

He was obviously a religious man and, as we sat in my car, I reminded him that the truth was all-encompassing. He became very emotional and then, finally, he admitted hed lied. As he got the truth off his chest after all those years, the relief he felt was obvious.

Anxious to avoid being accused of pressuring the witness to change his story, I arranged to meet him ten days later to make a statement. It was a nervous wait but he again outlined what hed told me that Sunday after church. In a version of events he went on to repeat at the Appeal Court in Edinburgh, he said he only picked Gair out of an identity parade because hed been shown his picture by police and told, Thats the one there.

He told me that an unnamed police officer took me to another room with no one else there and said that if I changed my statement he would let it be known to my parents that I was gay. I did not change my statement as I took this threat seriously. I had never seen Stuart Gair before he was pointed out to me in a photograph.

The admission was the culmination of eighteen months of work for me. I had been asked to investigate the case by Gairs legal team. One of his lawyers had cornered me at my police retirement party in 1997 and told me he had a client who was innocent. Would I look into it as a private investigator? Its an old joke that everyone in Barlinnie Prison is innocent, so I was sceptical.

I was also in two minds about rooting around in a case where the polices conduct was being questioned. I knew some of the officers involved. But lawyers can switch between prosecution and defence roles, so I decided I could do it too. Anyway, the chance to keep my investigative muscles in shape after leaving the job was appealing. So I agreed to become a gumshoe.

Id never heard of Stuart Gair, who was described as a drifter involved in drugs and crime. I assumed he was likely to be guilty. But my attitude changed when I tracked down a rent boy who claimed hed seen the murder victim with his attacker but had refused to speak up before. He assured me he had never seen Gair until he met him in prison several years after the stabbing. In a statement he gave me, he claimed, I am certain the person I saw with the man who was murdered was not Gair. This was a character who had an intimate knowledge of the world of rent boys and was known to the police. He convinced me he was telling the truth.

My instincts were underlined when I spoke to a man who had claimed hed been with Gair when the stabbing took place but later admitted lying. He was a co-accused until he gave evidence against Gair and said hed only told the police what they wanted to hear and had never met Gair until they were both behind bars after the murder.

Hed told cops two other people had been with him and Gair that night. One was just a first name and I couldnt find the person. He said the other was one of two members of the same family he couldnt remember which. One of them was eliminated by the police so I went looking for the other. I found him in an urn on a mantelpiece. Hed died after being stabbed two years before the night he was supposed to have been with Gair and the other man. Gairs one-time co-accused was the kind of person who would tell you black is white, if thats what he thought you wanted to hear. His statement was obviously full of holes and I couldnt believe he was seen as credible.

I was also convinced by the man who could have given Gair an alibi if only hed been called to give evidence. This guy said he was in a hostel with Gair watching TV at the time of the stabbing. I believed him. He claimed police had tried to get him to alter his statement but he wouldnt. He said he was gutted he hadnt been called to the witness box when he went to court. So much so, he claimed he swore at Gairs original lawyer when he was told his evidence a clear alibi would not have helped.

Gair was freed on bail in 2000 while waiting for his appeal, which finally began in 2004 nearly six years after I concluded my first crack at being a private investigator. The appeal judges heard the witnesses Id spoken to admit theyd perjured themselves, and the police officers denial of any wrongdoing.

But, unlike me, the judges werent convinced by the witnesses. They believed the men werent reliable and said the witnesses could have been put under pressure by campaigners for Gair, rather than the police, to change their stories. The judges threw out that ground of appeal in 2005.

Nevertheless, they quashed Gairs conviction in 2006 due to another appeal ground. They said a failure to disclose statements by some witnesses that varied from what they later said at trial about the identification of the assailant had deprived the defence of a powerful argument about their clients innocence.

But the tragedy of the story didnt end there. The following year, Gair dropped dead of a heart attack, aged just 44. I took some comfort from the fact that Id done my best to help him win a few short months of life with his name cleared.

I still wonder about the true story behind the killing. I suspect the real murderer was linked to a gay extortion racket. I found a highly-organised gang was operating in the area where the killing took place. Gay men who went to pick up rent boys would be threatened with violence and told their sexuality would be exposed if they didnt hand over money.

One of the blackmail gang spoke publicly in 1992, saying he feared for his life. He said a knife was used to terrorise their victims. He disappeared to London and I went looking for him. I put ads in a gay newspaper but he never contacted me and nor did any of his friends.

When he described the extortion operation, he let slip a name that I believe was crucial. It was a person who matched an early description released by the police of one of the suspects in the attack on Peter Smith. This same man was found floating in the River Clyde after apparently plunging from a bridge. Two of his associates were later jailed after admitting extorting money from gay men.

Its likely Peter Smith was a victim of extortion and that something went wrong that night, leading to his stabbing. Im convinced people who worked in the area as rent boys at the time know the identity of the real killer.

It was distasteful to think that some members of Strathclyde Police had been accused of working to get Stuart Gair, an innocent man, banged up. It wasnt the police service I recognised after more than 30 years in the job with the force and its proud predecessor, the City of Glasgow Police. The men and women I worked with were professional and diligent and wouldnt think of bending the rules to get a case off the books. I was of the same mind.