Taxi Driver Online

TOP COP 'BELIEVED CABBIE WAS KILLER'

Daily Record

A TOP cop in the Templeton Woods murder hunt made up his mind a taxi driver was the killer, a court heard yesterday.

Retired cabbie Philip Carlin, 65, told a murder trial the detective had put taxi drivers "through hell and back" during the investigation more than 27 years ago.

Mr Carlin appears on a list of 13 possible suspects which murder accused Vincent Simpson has produced in court.

The former cabbie yesterday told what happened when he tried to help police.

He said he told them about a fare he picked up on the night nursery nurse Elizabeth McCabe disappeared - two men and a girl who seemed to match her description.

Mr Carlin said he was answering police appeals for help in the case when he met Detective Inspector William Hart.

He told the High Court in Edinburgh: " His attitude was terrible to me, well, all the taxi trade. He put taxi drivers through hell and back.

"He had made up his mind, without anything going for it, that one of the persons out there driving that night had done it."

Mr Carlin continued: "It came to a stage when he turns to me and said I done it. I was horrified."

The trial has heard Elizabeth disappeared after leaving friends at Teazer's disco in Dundee city centre in the early hours of February 11, 1980.

Her naked body was found in Templeton Woods on the outskirts of the city 16 days later - the day before her 21st birthday.

Simpson, 61, from Camberley, Surrey, denies murder.

At the time he was living and working in the village of Newtyle, near Dundee, and running a private hire taxi business.

The trial continues.
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Daily Record

November 3, 2007, Saturday

DEATH RAP CABBIE 'HAD DIRTY HANDS'

ATAXI driver with "dirty hands" was acting strangely when he left woods on the night a nursery nurse disappeared, a murder trial heard yesterday.

The body of Elizabeth McCabe, 20, was found in the same woods a fortnight later.

A couple heading home in February 1980 saw the car pull out in front of them.

Andrew McKay, 70, told the High Court in Edinburgh that the man at the wheel seemed to be driving "with his wrists" when he pulled out of a road from Templeton Woods, Dundee.

He said: "It was as though he had dirty hands and he feared to touch the steering wheel and it was as if he was searching about for something to wipe his hands with."

The interior light was on and the car was swaying on the twisting road, he said.

The trial has heard that Vincent Simpson ran a taxi business from his then home in Newtyle, near Dundee, and drove a Cortina.

Simpson, 61, of Camberley, Surrey, denies murdering Elizabeth. The trial continues.
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