Crime Immemorial

Twenty-six-year-old Karen McGregor came from a respectable, law-abiding family in Glasgow’s working-class Tollcross neighborhood. She was a devoted mother to two young children, but heroin addiction cast a long shadow over her life. To fund her habit—and that of her husband, Charles—Karen turned to street prostitution. She worked “The Drag,” a notorious strip along Hope Street and nearby lanes, where an estimated 850 women plied their trade amid the heroin epidemic ravaging 1990s Scotland. Up to 80% of these women were addicts.

On the evening of April 17th, 1993, Karen and Charles argued fiercely in their flat on Maukinfauld Road. She stormed out into the night, determined to earn money for drugs. It was a routine she knew all too well: hailing a cab, negotiating with clients under streetlights, and slipping away before dawn. But this night would be her last.

Two days passed before Karen’s battered body was discovered on April 19th in Car Park Seven, a secluded spot near the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre (SECC) frequented by sex workers and their clients. She lay naked in the undergrowth, her throat compressed by what appeared to be a choker; remnants of the garment still clung to her neck, with another piece found fifty yards away. Forensic examination revealed a horrific toll: 93 separate injuries, including savage beatings to the head and body, consistent with a frenzied attack. Tucked into the sole of one of her tights was £73 in cash, perhaps earnings from that final night’s work.

The scene yielded few clues. No witnesses had seen a car pull up or a figure fleeing into the night. Glasgow’s city center lacked widespread CCTV in 1993, leaving detectives to rely on the whispers of the street. Karen’s fellow sex workers, themselves entangled in addiction and distrust of authority, offered little. Clients, fearing exposure, melted into anonymity.

For six grueling months, Strathclyde Police chased shadows. The brutality evoked memories of Diane McInally, a twenty-three-year-old mother and fellow sex worker whose body had been dumped in Pollok Park’s undergrowth eighteen months earlier, beaten to death in a strikingly similar fashion. Both women were young addicts working The Drag to feed their habits; both were savagely assaulted and discarded like refuse. Whispers of a serial killer began to ripple through Glasgow’s underworld.

A breakthrough came unexpectedly. Joseph McGinty, a twenty-one-year-old drug addict arrested on unrelated charges, cracked under questioning. In five detailed statements, he implicated Charles McGregor, claiming he had seen Karen’s bruised body slumped on their couch post-murder. According to McGinty, Charles had strangled her in a drug-fueled rage after she failed to bring home heroin, then staged the scene to mimic a client’s attack: wrapping her body, driving it to the SECC under cover of darkness, and dumping it without detection.

Supporting McGinty’s account were initial statements from two other witnesses, Samuel Main and Derek McNaught, who described overhearing the fatal argument and seeing Charles wield a hammer before disposing of the body. But uncertainty emerged quickly. Main and McNaught later retracted their testimonies in court, alleging police coercion and vowing they’d rather face perjury charges than condemn an innocent man.

In February 1994, Charles McGregor, then twenty-nine, faced trial at Glasgow’s High Court on charges of murder and attempting to pervert the course of justice. Prosecutor Bill Totten painted a vivid picture: the couple’s explosive argument, Karen’s desperate return, the choking strangulation, and the calculated dump to deflect suspicion onto an anonymous john. McGinty’s testimony was the linchpin, bolstered by forensic ties like fibers from their flat found on Karen’s body.

Yet the defense dismantled the case with surgical precision. McGinty was branded a “master of fiction”—a compulsive liar with a history of embellishment, possibly angling for leniency on his own charges. Additionally, inconsistencies abounded: why would a desperate addict like Charles leave £73 untouched in her tights? How could he navigate the body to the SECC unseen?

After three hours of deliberation, the jury returned a unanimous “not proven” verdict on both counts—a Scottish legal quirk that falls short of acquittal but clears the accused. Charles maintained his innocence until his death a few years later, leaving the case in limbo.

Karen’s murder was the second in a string of at least seven killings of Glasgow sex workers between 1991 and 1998, including Leona McGovern (1995), Marjorie Roberts (1995), Jacqueline Gallagher (1996), and Tracy Wylde (1997)—most unsolved, their bodies discarded in parks, rivers, or alleys. Police dismissed direct links but couldn’t quell public dread of a phantom slayer. In response, Strathclyde launched Operation Lynwood in 1997, a pioneering team of plainclothes officers focused on building trust with sex workers rather than arrests, aiming to prevent further deaths amid the heroin crisis.

As of this writing in November 2025, Karen McGregor’s murder is still a mystery, one of four unresolved from that era.