Caldwell family statement after gulity verdict

Emma Caldwell’s killer convicted nearly two decades after first police interview
The scandal of one of Scotland’s longest cold cases as suspect who was interviewed in initial investigation is convicted of murder and multiple rapes

Nearly two decades after the body of Emma Caldwell was found in an isolated woodland, a man who was interviewed in the initial investigation has been convicted of her murder and of being a serial rapist.

The unsolved murder was one of Scotland’s longest cold cases, and was branded a “scandal” by an ex-newspaper editor who exposed Iain Packer as the “forgotten suspect”, after which police and prosecutors reopened the inquiry.

The jury took four days to find Packer guilty of murdering the 27-year-old, who went missing in Glasgow on April 4 2005 and whose body was found in Limefield Woods, near Roberton, South Lanarkshire, the following month.

He was also convicted of indecently assaulting Miss Caldwell and raping nine women among dozens of sex offences spanning 26 years, following a trial at the High Court in Glasgow.

Packer, from the east end of Glasgow, was convicted of raping an underage girl in 1990, which the court heard during the trial was dismissed by the child’s family.

He was first reported to police in March 1999 after a sex worker stole a tax disc from his vehicle to have proof of his identity after he raped her.

He preyed on “young, vulnerable and drug-addicted” sex workers in Glasgow’s red light area, and had a pattern of violent behaviour which included strangling women, the court heard.

Packer presented himself as a “jack the lad” who worked for a family business and enjoyed “treating women rough” and wore women’s underwear, according to one victim who was assaulted between 1993 and 2004, near the Tennent’s Brewery in the east end of Glasgow – the area where many attacks took place.

Miss Caldwell vanished on April 4 2005, days after telling her mother Margaret about her hopes to kick a heroin addiction, which began following a family bereavement in her early 20s.

She came from a close-knit family and saw both parents twice a week and spoke to them daily.

She was reported missing after she failed to respond to attempts to change a planned meeting with her mother.

A dog walker found Miss Caldwell’s body in woodland, with a “garotte” around her neck, on May 8, 2005.

Her father William, who died in 2011, made his family promise they would get justice for her.