On-the-run killer jailed for attack

DNA evidence linked Gourlay to the murder

A murderer who killed for the third time while on the run from prison has been sent back to jail for a minimum of 30 years.

George Gourlay battered 40-year-old Richard Campbell to death with a golf club in his flat in Glasgow.

Gourlay, who killed two women in Falkirk 20 years ago, absconded from Greenock prison on the first day of a Training for Freedom programme.

Gourlay, 43, was branded "wicked and evil" by High Court judge Lord Bonomy after he was found guilty of murder.

The High Court in Glasgow heard how Gourlay battered Richard Campbell to death in his flat in Lily Street, Dalmarnock between March and April, 2001.

Mr Campbell's badly decomposed body was found in the flat months later.

Gourlay, who murdered two women together in a Falkirk flat 1981, was on the run at the time after absconding from Greenock Prison.

I can only regard you as a wicked and evil person who has committed such grave offences that you must serve a long period of imprisonment Lord Bonomy

During the trial forensic scientists told Sean Murphy QC, prosecuting, that Gourlay was linked to Mr Campbell's murder after his DNA was found on the handle of the golf club used to kill him.

Detectives also discovered he had used the dead man's identity when he asked to become a Big Issue seller.

Sentencing him to life Lord Bonomy ordered that Gourlay spend 30 years before being allowed to ask the Parole Board for release.

Lord Bonomy told him: "Very few people ever commit murder on two separate occasions. You have committed murder in the past twice, albeit at the same time.

"Having absconded from the first day of your Training for Freedom you went on to commit what I can only describe as the brutal and callous killing of a harmless man.

"Against that background I can only regard you as a wicked and evil person who has committed such grave offences that you must serve a long period of imprisonment as punishment."

In August 1981 Gourlay murdered Maureen Maloney, 34, and Lorraine Fleming, 30, in a frenzied attack in a flat at King Street, Falkirk.