Twenty-five-year-old mother of four Helen Kane was out and about with her husband Joe and some of their friends in Leith, Scotland on the evening of May 24th, 1970.
Somewhere around eleven-thirty p.m., though, Helen parted from the group and went off on her own. Shortly afterward, a woman fitting her description was seen getting into a taxi with an unidentified man. The vehicle started heading toward Easter Road. Later that night, a man and woman thought to be Helen and the unknown man were spotted in Holyrood Park.
The following morning, a dog walker came across the remains of Helen Kane on a building site near Pleasance in Edinburgh. The woman had her head bashed in with a paving slab.
Initially, police attempted to link the murder with the infamous (and still unidentified) Bible John, who had killed at least three women in Glasgow between 1968 and 1969. However, it was eventually determined that the crime was unconnected to that series.
There was also speculation that Helen may have been murdered by notorious serial killer Angus Sinclair, who was responsible for the so-called World’s End Murders, the killing of seventeen-year-old girls Christine Eadie and Helen Scott in 1977. Sinclair was also convicted of killing his eight-year-old neighbor Catherine Reehill in 1961, and the 1978 murder of seventeen-year-old Mary Gallacher. Sinclair is also believed to be responsible for the murders of at least four other women between 1977 and 1978.
Notably, Angus Sinclair lived only about a half-mile away from where Helen Kane’s body was discovered at the time of the crime. Although some members of Helen’s family suspect that Sinclair was responsible, investigators are not so sure, as the killer had an alibi for the night of Helen’s murder, and was also known to strangle his victims whereas Helen was killed by blunt force trauma. At any rate, Angus Sinclair died in prison in 2019 and took any knowledge he may have had about Helen Kane’s death to the grave with him.
The inquiry into the murder remains open, and police are determined to solve the case despite the passage of more than half a century.
Crime Immemorial 