Iain Packer, 51, was jailed for at least 36 years for Caldwell's murder and found guilty of 32 other charges against a total of 22 women that amounted to a horrifying course of unchecked physical and sexual violence over two decades. The offences included 11 rapes and multiple sexual assaults.
Sentencing Packer to the second longest term in Scottish legal history, the judge, Lord Beckett, said the killer was responsible for an "extreme campaign of sexual violence", preying on the vulnerable and causing "extreme and enduring suffering for so many women and their families".
Immediately after the verdicts, Bex Smith, Police Scotland's assistant chief constable for major crime and public protection, apologised directly to Caldwell, her family and "many other victims", saying they were all "let down by policing in 2005".
Caldwell was living in a hostel in Glasgow when she disappeared in April 2005, aged 27. Her naked body was found five weeks later in Limefield Woods near Biggar, South Lanarkshire.
Her mother told the trial that Caldwell had started taking heroin to numb her grief over the death of her older sister. She had been making money through sex work at the time of her death. The court heard from a friend of Caldwell's that Packer had become "obsessed" with her, following her and attempting to scare away her other clients.
Although a rape allegation was first made against Packer in 1990, the prosecutor advocate depute, Richard Goddard KC, told the jury that at that time, police were "dismissive" of reports made by sex workers. He said it was a "tragedy" that sex workers felt forced to accept sexual assault as "part and parcel of their job".
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der February 29, 2024-Ausgabe von The Guardian.
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