Scottish Mysteries. Murder of Elizabeth McCabe.

Contains Sensitive Material.

The February 1980 murder of Elizabeth McCabe in Dundee, Scotland is one of Scotland’s most notorious unsolved murders, and led to one of Scotland’s largest manhunts. McCabe had disappeared after a night out at Teazer’s Disco in Dundee city centre, and was found strangled to death two weeks later in Templeton Woods on the outskirts of the city. This was only 11 months after another woman, 18-year-old Carol Lannen, had been found dead only 150 yards away in the same woods, leading to the killings being labelled the Templeton Woods murders in the press and causing many to fear that there was a serial killer at large in the city at the time, although police have not linked the murders.

The case was re-opened with advances in DNA profiling in 2004, and was briefly one of seven cases officially linked to serial killer Angus Sinclair as part of an inquiry named Operation Trinity, before Sinclair was conclusively eliminated from the cases. However, a taxi driver and criminal who had been a suspect in the original McCabe inquiry and who admitted to being a “peeping Tom” in Templeton Woods was tried for the murder in 2007, after it was heard that DNA was found on exhibits that had only a 1 in 40 million chance of belonging to anyone else. He also admitted being in the woods that night. However, he was found not guilty by a majority decision at the conclusion of the trial. Afterwards, police said they were not looking for anyone else in connection with the murder.

In 2004, both the Lannen and McCabe cases featured on the STV documentary series Unsolved, which focused on some of Scotland’s most notorious unsolved murders.

Murder

Elizabeth McCabe was a 20-year-old trainee nursery nurse who was described as quiet and shy.[1] She rarely drank or went on nights out, until about three or four months before her murder. On Sunday 10 February 1980 she left her home in Lyndhurst Avenue, Lochee for a night out with friends. They went to several pubs but eventually ended up at Teazer’s Disco in Union Street, Dundee. Her friend Sandra Niven said McCabe had been crying in the disco toilet that night because she thought no one liked her. Niven said that at the end of the night at around 12:30 am the pair became separated as they were leaving, and she had expected to find McCabe at the entrance of the nightclub waiting for her but she was not. Niven looked for her and checked a nearby taxi rank, but couldn’t find her friend and assumed she had gone off on her own. Her mother later said that she would normally have taken a bus or a taxi home after a night out.