Judge rejects woods killer appeal

Iain Murray failed in his second appeal against conviction

A man found guilty of killing his step-sister in woods in Glasgow more than 20 years ago has failed in a second bid to clear his name.

Iain Murray, 39, and Brian Wilson, now deceased, strangled 20-year-old Alison Murray with her bra in Bluebell Woods, Drumchapel, in May 1986.

Murray's lawyers argued key confession evidence was unreliable because he was a vulnerable teenager under pressure.

But the Court of Criminal Appeal upheld his and Wilson's convictions.

At the original trial, the court heard how Ms Murray chanced on her step-brother, then 17, and Wilson, then 18, while they were committing an indecent act in the woods.

Similar confessions

She was subsequently chased, stripped and subjected to a sexual assault before her bra was knotted tightly round her neck.

Murray and Wilson lost an appeal soon after their convictions but their case was taken up by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, which investigates possible miscarriages of justice.

Although Wilson died in March while serving a sentence for separate offences, committed after his release from his life sentence, the case was sent before the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh.

The court heard how the men's claims that they were wrongly convicted was backed by Professor Gisli Gudjonsson, a former detective in Iceland and now one of the world's leading authorities on interrogations.

But Lord Wheatley, in a written ruling, said the disputed confessions had been made in different police stations, were remarkably similar and included the sort of detail likely to be known only to the killers.

Murray, who was also released from his life sentence, was in court to hear the result.