For 36 Years, Her Killer Walked Free | World’s Most Evil Killers | Forensic Files

[audio logo] [tense music] ♪ ♪ narrator: In September 1984, 58-year-old Mary McLaughlin was walking home after
a night out at her local pub. - Mary met her killer on that route, and we don't know how or why, but that killer
ended up in Mary's home. narrator: The stranger was 22-year-old Graham McGill, a convicted sex offender who was on temporary
release from prison. Once inside Mary's flat, McGill brutally murdered the popular grandmother.
- McGill overpowered her quite easily. He beat her up. It was a horrific murder.
narrator: Mary's body was discovered six days later, by which time her killer had seemingly
vanished without a trace. - We were looking for a perpetrator of a sexually motivated crime.
There was no doubt about it. But we got nowhere. ♪ ♪ narrator: The case went cold for nearly four decades,
until DNA evidence left behind at the scene would expose McGill. - The probability of the DNA which was discovered
was one in a billion. Narrator: Graham McGill had finally been revealed as one of the World's Most Evil Killers.
[theme music] ♪ ♪ [somber music] ♪ ♪ narrator: It was justice 37 years in the making.
In April 2021, 59-year-old Graham McGill was found guilty of the 1984 murder of Mary McLaughlin.
- It was a cold case that hadn't been covered for a number of years by any journalist in Scotland.
And in 2016, I decided to feature it in an Unsolved Murder series I was running in the Daily Record.
Mary's case hadn't been in the newspapers for quite a long time when I decided to have a look at it.
narrator: Detective Iain Wishart worked on the original murder investigation in 1984.
- What I remember of Mary was that she was well liked in the area, and she was an absolute character.
She had 11 children. Anyone who knew her said she was a wonderful person. It was evidence collected at the crime scene by Iain
and his team that would prove crucial 37 years down the line. - Graham McGill probably thought
he got away with his murder. He felt that 30 years have gone by and nobody has come to arrest me.
He lived a full life, never being held liable for what crimes he had committed. - It only proves that murders and very serious crimes
are not forgotten. narrator: This killer's story begins in Scotland on the 30th
of September, 1961. [tense music] - We don't know very much about Graham McGill's early life.
- There isn't a lot known about his past. We know that he's from the West of Scotland.
Iain Wishart: But I do know that in later life, he was charged with attempt to ravish or attempt to rape.
narrator: In 1981, aged around 20, McGill was sentenced to six years in prison for the assault.
- The younger that men like this start to offend, the more likely it is that this offending is going to continue
on and on into the future. Misogyny is a much bigger problem than people think it is.
And starting at that young age is predictive that there are going to be big problems in the future.
narrator: By September 1984, Graham McGill was in Edinburgh prison, three years
into his six-year sentence. 50 miles away in Partick, a suburb of Glasgow, 58-year-old Mary McLaughlin, a mother of 11
and grandmother of 26, was a popular member of the neighborhood. - Mary McLaughlin was a divorced woman.
She lived in a flat alone. She was well known in her local community. She liked to go to the local pub, where she'd
play a game of dominoes, and then quite often she'd stop for chips on the way home.
And she would talk to everybody. Everybody knew her as wee Mary. She was really quite a popular member of our community.
narrator: One of Mary's 11 children is her daughter, Gina McGavin. - And from the area where she would go and do
her socializing at night, there was a lot of people liked her. She was well liked.
Don't she had any close friends, but she was well liked. She liked to have a little drink.
She liked the company of people. I feel she didn't ever like being alone, and that was her way.
It was her escape. narrator: Mary's need to be surrounded by people may have stemmed from her tough start in life.
Jane Hamilton: Mary had a very tragic upbringing. Her mother died when she was only five years old.
And her dad was a merchant seaman, so he was away quite a lot. So what he did was he left Mary in the charge
of his two sisters, who weren't very kind to Mary. There was no affection. There was nobody that cared about her.
So she was basically left just to her own devices. And quite frankly, if Cinderella
was a real-life story, Mary fitted that bill. narrator: Mary's troubled upbringing
may have been why she struggled when she had children of her own. Gina McGavin: My Mum wasn't there.
I was mostly brought up by my father, and I have vague memories of her coming and going in my life, having my first child.
She wasn't there when I got married. She wasn't there at the crucial points in my life.
I never understood why. The memories that I do have of her, she to me always seemed happy outward, but inward,
I always had that feeling she wasn't happy. She was lonely. narrator: Although Gina and her mother
had a challenging relationship, Mary was thriving in her role as a grandmother.
- The times that they did see their granny, they loved her. They loved her humor.
They loved her fun. She was always making jokes. But I knew deep down that was all just
a front for the sadness that she was feeling and the loneliness that she was really feeling.
narrator: By September 1984, Mary and Gina's relationship showed signs of improvement after they crossed paths
at Gina's father's funeral. - She explained a lot of things about her life and my dad and her life with her other relationship.
And I understood her more because I was married, and I had children myself, so I understood
where she was coming from. And she opened up quite a bit. And we did arrange to meet, but it didn't happen
because she was murdered. That just was cut short. narrator: Just a few weeks after Gina's dad's
funeral in early October 1984, Mary McLaughlin was found murdered in her Partick home.
[tense music] Jane Hamilton: Mary's body lay in her flat for six days before she was discovered, so it's suspected through forensic
examination that she died on either the 26th or the 27th of September 1984. Her body was discovered when her son, who
used to visit her maybe once a week, went into the flat with his girlfriend at the time,
and she ran out screaming. - Martin finds his mother lying on the bed. She has her dressing gown cord tied round her neck three times
and double knotted. And her dress, her green dress is on back to front. Jane Hamilton: And they called the police.
And that's when the murder investigation started. narrator: News of Mary's horrendous murder
left her daughter Gina distraught. - My maternal half brother called my house to say that he'd been in her mum's,
and she'd been murdered. I was in shock, stunned, but I just couldn't believe what I was hearing.
[suspenseful music] narrator: The investigation into Mary's murder began immediately.
Who would want to kill the popular grandmother? Detectives needed to find the killer fast,
but with minimal evidence and few witnesses, it would be like finding a needle in a haystack.
[tense music] narrator: When Mary McLaughlin was found murdered in her Glasgow home in October 1984,
Detective Iain Wishart was one of the first investigators at the scene. Iain Wishart: When I arrived at the house, obviously,
there was a policeman at the door. The scene was Mary lying on her bed, partially clothed
but clearly strangled by what looked like the tie of a dressing gown. There was no sign of the house being ransacked,
but what was rather obvious was an ashtray full of cigarette ends, plus a partially smoked cigarette.
Obviously, a very quick inquiry revealed that no one had heard her entering the house that night,
so it would have appeared at a very early stage that she may have known her attacker
because obviously, there was no kerfuffle, no noise, whatsoever. narrator: Mary's family, including her daughter Gina,
needed to rule themselves out of the inquiry. Gina McGavin: We were directed to Gullane Street police
office in Partick to get fingerprints taken for, obviously, elimination purposes.
I just was totally-- I was babbling. I couldn't get my head round it. And it was just awful.
Awful. An awful experience. When you hear of murder and you read it in the newspapers
or you hear it in the media, and you think, oh, that's awful, that's sad. But when it actually is close to home,
the impact is unbelievable. And you start feeling all sorts of mixed emotions, and you can't think straight.
Your head just can't get around it. narrator: Mary's partner also had an alibi.
He was working away at sea. Iain Wishart and his team had no early leads. - The following day, I gave a television interview
and naturally appealed for witnesses. Obviously, we would like to get in touch with anyone
who lived in the area who may have been in the area of Crathie Court over the past week,
or who may have seen Mrs. McLaughlin alive after last Wednesday. This was very positive because it turned out
that we were able to establish, first of all, she had been in a local chip shop.
narrator: Mary had last been seen on the 26th of September 1984, six days before her body was found.
Tracing Mary's final footsteps, detectives, with the help of locals, soon pieced together
the story of the night of her murder, which began at a local pub in Partick. - The Hyndland bar wasn't far from Mary's flat.
She probably had about a 5 or 10-minute walk, if that. Mary probably stayed there that evening until roughly about 9
o'clock, half past 9:00, and she decided that she wanted to go and get some fritters.
That was part of her routine. She enjoyed a bag of fritters, which is basically fried potatoes instead of chips.
She said to her friends that she was time to go home, about 45 minutes maybe, an hour before the pub was closing for the evening.
narrator: Witnesses placed Mary in the fish and chip shop at around 10:45 PM. Jane Hamilton: She was in the chip shop,
very chatty, very happy, speaking to the people that worked there. They knew her.
She was a familiar face to them. There was nothing in her manner to suggest that she
was worried about anybody. She didn't tell anybody she was being followed or that anybody had approached her.
So there was nothing there to suggest that anything untoward was going on that night.
Iain Wishart: We were left with a lot of interviews with the people in the chip shop, the people
in the public house. Nothing ever came of that. narrator: After leaving the takeaway,
witnesses saw Mary talking with a stranger. Iain Wishart: Two witnesses state that they saw her walking along the road,
accompanied by a young man. But they only take her accompanied by this young man
as far as Crow road or Ashley street, which are two roads that lead up to Crathie Court.
No one saw her going up to her house, and no one saw her in the house. So at that stage, yes, we have witnesses,
but it becomes very, very difficult to track down this young man. And indeed, we cannot, at that stage,
say that this young man was a perpetrator because we have absolutely no evidence that he had accompanied
her up to her house. narrator: It's impossible to know what happened Next, But at some point, a killer was invited
into Mary McLaughlin's home. - I think what we need to remember about Mary is that she's mum to, like, 11 children.
This is a woman whose my whole identity is around being mum. And she meets a young man in the street.
Now, this is a mum. She may have been very maternal towards him if he was saying things to her like, I've got nowhere to stay,
or I'm feeling really sad. I need someone to talk to. It's quite possible that it's that kind of thing
that got Mary to trust him. - The tragedy of this story is that she encountered a predator
and didn't recognize the predator when she saw one. narrator: When Mary's body was eventually found,
it was hard to determine exactly what had happened. - The scene is quite problematic
because there is a dead woman in the house for several days. This is where now they have to be very careful what they bring
into the scene and what they take out of the scene because the killer probably walked
in and out of that scene. Are there footprints on the floorboards? Are there any marks of shoe prints?
Everything needs to be carefully examined, carefully documented, and carefully removed.
narrator: A post-mortem revealed that Mary had been strangled to death with the cord
from her own dressing gown. Jane Monckton-Smith: It's a very personal way to kill someone.
You're right up. You're really close to them. They are going to fight you. You're going to have to watch them struggle for breath.
So this is somebody who's quite happy to be up close and personal. He hasn't gone up behind her and hit her.
It's like there's some sadism involved here, and he wanted to see her suffer. He wanted to know what it felt like to watch somebody die.
narrator: Any relevant items at the crime scene needed to be handled with care by the forensic team.
- If you went to a murder scene-- and I have been at quite a few, unfortunately--
anything that was relevant to the murder had to be taken possession of, bagged, labeled, and preserved.
Because you might catch someone one day, and you would have to present this evidence in court.
narrator: Items bagged and taken away included the dressing gown cord, a discarded cigarette, and an item of clothing
found in Mary's garden. Geoffrey Wansell: One of the things they discover a few days later in the garden behind the flat
is a bra of hers. It's not on the body. It's been dumped in the garden, but they have got
no idea of how it got there. [somber music] - Due to the passage of time, it was inconclusive whether they would say she had been raped.
They couldn't say. But when you picture the scene of the crime, you felt, even then, there was some form
of sexual motive in this because of the way the body was dressed. narrator: The revelations coming from the crime scene
were hard for Mary's large family to comprehend. - Although Mary had a complicated relationship
with her family and her children, her death, particularly the violence of it and
the brutality of her murder, it absolutely devastated her family and quite literally ripped them apart.
- I went home that night and wasn't expecting when I put on the TV for it to be on,
and I remember shaking and things like that and going, I can't watch this because I didn't
really want to accept in really bad had happened to her. Oh, it was horrible. narrator: After ruling out family members,
detectives were still trying to find a potential suspect. And there was no sign of a break in at Mary's flat.
- When police began their investigation, one of the most striking things that stood out
at that very, very early stage in their murder hunt was that Mary's front door was locked,
and the front door key was gone. It was missing. Iain Wishart: The man who lived next door,
he had the keys for the house. He had the ability to have entered that house. We interviewed him at length.
And, well, we were quite satisfied at the end of the day that he was not who we're looking for.
[tense music] - They exhausted every avenue, and no one came forward. They couldn't pinpoint anyone.
They couldn't arrest anyone. narrator: As the investigation continued, detectives were left stumped.
There appeared to be no ill will towards Mary and no evidence of an intruder. As the leads dried up, there was
a real concern that Mary's killer was going to get away with murder. [suspenseful music]
narrator: As investigators widened the net in the search for Mary McLaughlin's killer, there
appeared to be no obvious suspects linked to the brutal murder. [suspenseful music]
Jane Hamilton: There were eight different police forces in Scotland at the time, and
communication, shall we say, was not particularly brilliant between every fourth area.
And Iain Bishop told me that they put a dragnet around the media area, and they pulled in known sex
offenders, housebreakers. Iain Wishart: So you look at the family. You look at the neighbors.
You look at people who have access to the house. You also look at people who have motive.
There was just nothing that we could say, oh, yes, it's this type of person, it was that person.
We had no way to go. The minute a stranger, a complete stranger comes into the picture, we have difficulties.
narrator: Not knowing who may have killed Mary was an extremely difficult time for her family.
- When I was told by one of the CID officers that they had exhausted every avenue,
but the case would still lie as a cold case on the shelf, and when they said that to me, don't give up hope.
And I said anything at all that you hear, if you think it's relevant, let us know.
And I just went on a mission myself to end, I felt, would have been relevant to solving my mum's or identifying
who her killer was. And I thought I was getting older, and I would go to the end of my life
without knowing what happened to her. [unsettling music] ♪ ♪ Jane Monckton-Smith: I work with a lot
of bereaved families, bereaved through homicide. And the one thing that they all consistently say
is, we just want to know what happened. We need to know what happened. And Mary's family, they just kept the fight up
year after year after year. They were not going to let Mary get forgotten. narrator: As the days turned into weeks and the weeks
into months, by the summer of 1985, detectives were no closer to tracking down Mary's killer.
Iain Wishart: I would say about six to nine months later, you realize you're not getting anywhere, but it's never dead.
If someone gave some information, there had to be an officer nominated who would look into that case.
Jane Hamilton: Murder investigations nowadays are typically solved very, very quickly.
Back in the 1980s and the '70s, there was a bit more legwork needed before anything was solved.
But police did not have endless resources, so the hunt for Mary's killer was scaled down.
Iain Wishart: People put things to you. Should you have done this? Could you have done this?
No. Nothing came out of it. For some reason, I always remembered her name, and I always remembered that case because of the fact
that when I was in charge of murders, this was the only one that hadn't been solved.
narrator: The investigation into Mary's murder remained cold for decades. It appeared it would never be solved.
Journalist Jane Hamilton began looking into the case over 30 years after the horrific attack.
- By 2014, there had been four case reviews into Mary's murder by police. Unfortunately, DNA prior to 2014
was not advanced enough for the police to make any significant breakthroughs in Mary's murder.
And I read an interview that Gina had given. And in it, she had spoken about her devastation
and how she couldn't move on until her mom's murderer had been caught. And I just wanted to see if there was anything I could do.
narrator: Jane's article in the Daily Record, published in 2016, shone a light on the case again.
But unbeknown to her, investigators had already begun the process of retesting the evidence
collected at the murder scene. - Mary dies in 1984, and the DNA is eventually revisited 30 years later.
Now, in those 30 years, the DNA sensitivity and specificity capabilities skyrocket.
We have better technologies, and we can actually identify more specific genes on every DNA profile that can pinpoint one person as opposed
to many, many, many others. And so, in this case, in 30 years, we go from looking just a handful of DNA markers
to over two dozen DNA markers. Narrator: Forensic scientists began by analyzing the murder weapon, the makeshift ligature
that strangled Mary to death-- her dressing gown cord. [unsettling music] When recovered from the crime scene in 1984,
there were two knots along the cord. One was untied during the original investigation,
while, crucially, the other was left untouched. ♪ ♪ - Anybody's DNA was on that knot
had to be at that death scene. Mary and her killer are more likely to be the only people
whose DNA would be found on that second never-touched-before knot. Jane Hamilton: I got a phone call
from a contact who said that police were interested in a man for Mary's murder, and that they believed that they
had a DNA match to a man because of Mary's dressing gown cord. - The search on the sex offenders database
gives us a name. It's Graham McGill. ♪ ♪ And his DNA is on the database because many years
before, he was convicted of a sexual crime. So 30 years after Mary's death, we get a match.
narrator: Graham McGill had been jailed for assault and attempt to rape in 1981, and was supposedly behind bars
at the time of Mary's murder. But in the light of the DNA results, a new revelation was discovered.
Jane Hamilton: McGill was on day release from Edinburgh prison, where he was serving a six-year sentence for attempting
to rape women in 1981. He was on a two-day training for freedom program. ♪ ♪ narrator: During his trial release from prison,
McGill had traveled 50 miles from Edinburgh to Glasgow to kill Mary. Investigators had no way of knowing that back in 1984.
Iain Wishart: It's all very well in hindsight to say, should we have known about Graham McGill?
Well, no. There was just no way that we could have at that time homed in on Graham McGill.
- There's never, ever been any real explanation as to why, back in 1984, when transport wasn't as reliable as it
is nowadays, why he decided to get a bus, why he decided to do that when he only
had two days out of prison. ♪ ♪ - He'd have been obsessing about this whilst he was in prison, thinking
about the type of woman he's going to attack, how he's going to do it, almost enjoying the thought of it.
So by the time he gets out, he's ready. He's ready to go. And that's exactly what he did do.
♪ ♪ narrator: The motive for McGill's apparently unprovoked attack on Mary has never been established.
Jane Hamilton: It's always been a bit of a mystery as to why McGill targeted Mary,
and nobody quite knows how they met. Did he see her in the street? Was he in the Hyndland bar that she was drinking in that night?
And did he see her, or did he follow her? It's thought that when Mary and McGill got back to her flat,
he's attacked her almost instantly. Mary wasn't a violent person, but she did try to defend herself, and she would have fought quite
ferociously for her life. But she was 58 years old. McGill was 22. He was quite a strong young man,
and it would have been very easy for him to overpower her, which is what he did.
narrator: After murdering Mary, Graham McGill casually returned to Edinburgh prison
until he was released just a few days later in October 1984, after serving half of his six-year sentence.
McGill lived a seemingly normal life working as a welder, but his misogynistic behavior never went away.
[unsettling music] - In 1993, he gets married to a lady called Suzanne, and at one point in a conversation with his wife,
he tells her that he's killed a woman and says to her, I wanted to know what it felt like to kill someone.
And he also says, if you tell anybody about that, I'll kill you. It's a good indication of McGill's attitude.
He didn't care for women, and he was prepared to use violence. - He's probably been dying to brag about it for years.
This is not the type of person who worried about what he's done in the past, but he will use it to control people in the present.
Geoffrey Wansell: McGill actually said to her that no one was going to come after him for the murder of Mary McLaughlin
because, and I quote, "because she was on her own, she didn't have anybody. And she may be more like a prostitute."
Oh, it was a dreadful thing to say about the poor woman. She certainly wasn't, but that's
the way it occurred to him. Jane Monckton-Smith: He said she had no one. That was not true.
She'd spent that evening with her daughter. Her family have fought and fought and fought over the years to find out who Mary's killer was.
He could not have been more wrong. narrator: By the time DNA revealed McGill as Mary's killer, he had already been back in prison
and subsequently released for another sexual assault on a woman. ♪ ♪ - In 1999, McGill is convicted of the attempted
rape of a 24-year-old woman and is sentenced to life. He does not serve a life term.
In fact, he's released on license in 2008. narrator: In December 2019, over 35 years after murdering
Mary McLaughlin, Graham McGill received an unexpected knock at the door. - Unsurprisingly, perhaps, McGill
is astonished when the police arrive at his door to charge him with the murder of Mary McLaughlin.
♪ ♪ - I was delighted, but don't forget what was at the back of my mind. Had I made a mistake?
Had the person they were about to arrest been someone we had interviewed? I was delighted they caught the murderer,
and I was delighted that it wasn't somebody we had let slip through our fingers.
Jane Hamilton: I spoke to Gina, Mary's daughter, in the immediate aftermath of the news,
breaking that there had been a man arrested. And she was relieved but nervous and didn't want to get her hopes up
that finally she would get justice for her mum. Gina McGavin: When he was arrested,
some of the newspapers were saying that he had committed previous crimes of rape,
and the parole board felt that he was able to go back into the community and he wasn't a danger to other women again,
when, in fact, he went on and murdered my mother. narrator: Despite the overwhelming evidence
against him, Graham McGill, now aged 58, wasn't going to confess to anything. As preparations were made for his upcoming trial,
McGill refused to admit to murdering Mary. In a final insult to her family, McGill was going to plead not guilty.
[somber music] ♪ ♪ - Graham McGill was absolutely convinced that he would take Mary's murder as a secret
to his grave. He thought that he would get away with it. It possibly made him quite cocky and quite arrogant.
And as time went on, he probably just thought that nobody was ever going to look at Mary's murder
again, and therefore, he would get away with murder. narrator: 36 and 1/2 years after
the murder of Mary McLaughlin, Graham McGill finally faced justice. - It wasn't until April 2021 that he
appeared in the Glasgow High Court to face trial. McGill pleaded not guilty. narrator: Mary's daughter, Gina McGavin,
was in attendance at the trial. She finally got to look Graham McGill in the eye.
The 59-year-old welder was now aged one year older than Mary McLaughlin was when he killed her.
- I seen him because I was sitting two rows behind him. I just looked at his face.
But how can you tell what a murderous face looks like? They can just look like nobody.
You can look at somebody or-- you can't see it. You say, oh, he looks like a murderer to me,
because you can't tell. Geoffrey Wansell: The prosecutor during the trial said-- and I think it's very telling-- that Mary
was friendly and trusting. And I would suggest that ultimately, this brought about her death.
These were different times. We have to accept that. The awareness of stranger danger of vulnerable women,
which is so clear to us all now, was much less evident then. narrator: Although McGill pleaded not guilty,
the DNA evidence against him was indisputable. - McGill's DNA is on the database.
And when compared to other people's DNA, we get a statistical probability of 1 in 85,000
chances of any other male depositing that DNA at the scene of Mary's death. McGill's DNA is found in multiple items.
Each one of them has its own statistical probability of belonging to somebody else.
But when you combine his DNA on the bra, his DNA on the knot, his DNA on a cigarette butt found
near the scene, the probability of any other human being depositing that DNA on that day at that scene
skyrockets to 1 in a billion. It is no small number, and it points that our killer
is definitively McGill. narrator: McGill appeared unmoved as the overwhelming DNA evidence against him,
collected when he was just 22 years old, was presented in court. - McGill chose not to give evidence at his own trial.
He reportedly sat with his head bowed throughout, not, I think, from very much in the way of remorse,
but more from the sense of embarrassment. After all, by this point, he's an old man
and is being tried for something that happened 37 years ago. But it doesn't disguise, not for one moment,
nor does it is excuse the utterly wicked nature of the crime. [somber music] narrator: On the 9th of April, 2021,
the jury had unanimously reached their decision. ♪ ♪ Gina McGavin: I felt relieved.
When I heard the guilty verdict, I felt relieved that it was coming to an end and someone's been held to account.
And family can get on with their lives. For me personally, I didn't have closure.
- In my experience as a crime reporter and having dealt with literally hundreds of families of murder victims, I don't think
closure is the right word. I don't think that they ever get such a thing as closure because they know
their relative isn't here. narrator: Graham McGill got away with Mary McLaughlin's murder for nearly 37 years.
But in the end, he could not run away from the DNA evidence he left behind. - In order for a conviction to happen,
jurors have to believe beyond a reasonable doubt that we're talking about the correct suspect.
Without DNA matching, this would not have been the case in this case. - The thing is, when a lot of these men
were committing their offenses, there was no such thing as DNA. They would have had no idea that leaving behind all
of these things at the crime scene would eventually come back to get them. But they are starting to realize it now.
And I think that there's a lot of serious offenders sitting in their homes waiting for that knock on the door,
because it's almost inevitable. Gina McGavin: For anyone considering committing crimes
like this, then hopefully, that's a deterrent that you will get caught. No matter how long it takes, you will get caught.
narrator: In May 2021 at Aberdeen High Court, 59-year-old Graham McGill was sentenced
to 14 years in prison for the murder of Mary McLaughlin. Geoffrey Wansell: The family, not surprisingly,
were upset at what they saw was a very short sentence, and it's difficult not to sympathize with them.
♪ ♪ Jane Hamilton: There was 37 years between Mary's murder and McGill's conviction.
And in that 37 years, he was able to lead a very full life, which included getting married.
He was able to work, socialize, have lots of jobs and move around the country and basically just live his life.
And unfortunately, he took that away from Mary. Gina McGavin: 14 years is nothing.
And I think life should mean life for people who do heinous crimes. But there's nothing really compared to the last nearly 30,
40 years of family had gone through, but nothing at all compared to the torment that my full siblings and
my maternal half siblings had gone through. ♪ ♪ Narrator: McGill has never confessed to Mary's murder
or spoken about it on record. What exactly led him to kill the 58-year-old grandmother on that night in September 1984 remains unknown.
- There is nothing about the killing of Mary McLaughlin that really makes sense to me, except that it was a man,
a 22-year-old man, anxious to fulfill his sexual desires. And if that was really the only reason, why on earth
would he wind her dressing gown cord around her neck three times and then double knot It?
I find it very, very hard to find any possible excuse for Graham McGill's actions.
They are truly wicked. Jane Hamilton: I see McGill as somebody who is just particularly depraved for the fact
that he not only got away with murder for 37 years, but in the intervening years, he actually
bragged to somebody that he had killed a woman just to see what it felt like. And for somebody to have such a callous disregard for life
is just evil personified. [unsettling music] ♪ ♪ narrator: McGill was a convicted sex
offender who traveled 50 miles to kill a stranger in September 1984. ♪ ♪ We may never truly know what happened that night,
but we can be sure that innocent victim Mary McLaughlin was simply in the wrong place
at the wrong time. It took almost 37 years and an advancement in DNA technology
to finally unmask Graham McGill as one of the World's Most Evil Killers. [theme music]
♪ ♪ [audio logo]

Mary's murder haunted Glasgow for 36 years with no witnesses or leads until advanced forensic techniques finally revealed Graham McGill as the killer, ending decades of uncertainty for her family and investigators.

An in-depth look at the lives and crimes of some of the world's most evil killers, including Jeffrey Dahmer, Richard Ramirez, Cary Stayner, Leonard Lake, Dorothea Puente and more.

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Brief Summary

Mary McLaughlin was murdered in 1984; Graham McGill was convicted in 2021 after DNA evidence linked him to the crime.

Key points

The Murder of Mary McLaughlin. In 1984, Mary McLaughlin was brutally murdered in her home, leaving her family shattered.
Cold Case Reopened. After decades, DNA evidence finally leads to the identification of Mary’s killer, Graham McGill.
Mary's Tragic Upbringing. Mary's difficult childhood may have shaped her relationships and life choices.
DNA Technology Advances. In 30 years, DNA analysis has evolved from a handful of markers to over two dozen.
The Untouched Knot. A crucial piece of evidence, the second knot on Mary's dressing gown cord, remained untouched.
Graham McGill Identified. After 30 years, DNA links Graham McGill to the murder of Mary McLaughlin.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

He probably thought he got away with his murder.

Narrator discussing Graham McGill's belief he would never be caught.

3:04WatchJun 3, 2026

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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