By leading criminologist Professor David Wilson 

NEXT year is the 130th anniversary of a series of murders that took place in Whitechapel in London and which are attributed to a killer called Jack the Ripper. The passage of time has allowed this dreadful series of crimes to become a dark tourist destination where people walk “in the footsteps of Jack” and also something akin to a parlour game where various authors, historians and members of the public try to guess the identity of the killer. So far, most have been unsuccessful, so the debate continues to ebb and flow as to Jack’s real identity.

Closer to home, November 28 marks the 13th anniversary of another unsolved murder – that of 30-year-old banker Alistair Wilson, who was shot on the doorstep of his family home in 2004 in Nairn, near Inverness, at around 7pm and who died later that night in hospital. No one has ever been arrested for this murder, although the police have suggested that the killer is believed to have been in his 30s, was between 5ft 4in and 5ft 8in tall and was wearing a baseball cap and a dark blouson-style jacket.

Several days later, on December 8, 2004, council workers carrying out gully cleaning found the gun that had been used to kill Mr Wilson in a drain in Seabank Road in Nairn. Detectives later identified the gun as a Haenel Suhl Model 1 Schmeisser, which was made in Germany between 1920 and 1945.

I became interested in this case when studying the activities of British “hitmen” – contract killers who undertake to murder a third party on behalf of another person. My research into contract killing took me to dark places both in prisons and elsewhere, where I would interview these criminal undertakers about their work, the costs involved and how they would go about executing a hit. The costs were surprisingly low – sometimes as little as a few hundred pounds – and far from hits taking place in smoky bars and casinos in the “criminal underworld”, they were much more likely to take place in suburban pubs and clubs in the “overworld”, often in front of disbelieving witnesses. It was more difficult to track down the contractors of the hitmen, but the motives for the hits – based on what the hitmen told me, or which were later reported in the press – were ordinary, often bordering on the banal. Unfaithfulness or divorce, business arrangements breaking down, usually leading to bankruptcy, or warnings being sent out by one gang boss to another.

Based on this research, I suggested that there were four types of British hitmen: novices, dilettantes, journeymen and masters.

I saw plenty of examples of the masters at work, such as the murder of TV host Jill Dando in Fulham, London, in 1999 and Frank McPhie in Maryhill, Glasgow, in 2000.

These hitmen seemed to enter a community, execute the hit – often in broad daylight and with witnesses present – then disappear immediately, usually leaving their gun behind, at or near the scene of the crime, as this could not be connected forensically to the killer and he did not want to be seen carrying a gun after the hit. Often they would commit the hit on the doorstep of their victim and, because they had been contracted from outside the area, there was usually little or no local intelligence that would prove to be useful to the police in their investigation. I was advised that this type of hitman was often Irish and had learned his trade during “the Troubles”.

I spent some time agonising, as academics are prone to do, about the doorstep location. The doorstep, after all, is where the private meets the public and the public can become private. Was this liminal space chosen for instrumental or psychological reasons? Did it suggest something personal and domestic, or was it simply chosen for practical reasons?

One reformed hitman that I interviewed in a cafe in Manchester assured me that it was the latter. As he put it: “You know where your victim is and they don’t expect to be shot on the doorstep, so their guard is down. They’re thinking about the day ahead if you do it in the morning, or making tea or getting their kids ready for bed if it’s at night.”

Given all of this background, I had always presumed that the murder of Mr Wilson was carried out by a master hitman and had suggested this publicly on a number of occasions, especially on John Beattie’s BBC Radio Scotland programme, and that, like the killers of Jill Dando and Frank McPhie, I believed that this killer would never be caught and so justice would not be done.

All of that was to change when a package with a Glasgow postmark addressed to me dropped into my pigeon-hole at my university address at the beginning of November.

The package contained eight typed pages and was entitled “Alistair Wilson: A Cold Case Thesis”. No author was identified, although it was signed “Nate”.

It is not unusual for me to receive packages, letters or emails of this kind, either asking for help or suggesting new lines of inquiry in relation to a cold case. I call this type of correspondent an “armchair detective” and I have sometimes benefited from what they have suggested. Correspondents of this kind usually increase when I have appeared on TV, or it is publicised that I am about to appear on TV and, as I have a new TV series airing at the moment, I simply presumed that Nate was another armchair detective with time on his hands. However, as I started to read, I was aware that Nate was drawing my attention to two pieces of information that were unknown to me. I had always been aware that Mr Wilson’s wife Veronica had opened the door to his killer and that he had handed over an envelope, although the police have never revealed its contents. What I was unaware of was that the name “Paul” was written on the envelope.

Nate also described an independent witness called Tommy Hogg, who claimed to have seen the killer and could describe him. Furthermore, Nate made a number of comments about Mr Wilson’s work at the bank – which he had planned to leave in the coming weeks – and suggested that he was not as “squeaky clean” as he had been described.

This information was news to me, although I wondered if perhaps what Nate had written was already in the public domain.

I called one or two people who knew about the case but they too were equally surprised by what Nate had said. I again appeared on John Beattie’s programme talking about the murder and, leaving aside the accusations about Mr Wilson’s professional life, suggested that there were consequently two particular lines of inquiry that could be pursued based on what Nate had written – if it was accurate.

First, that we could attempt to identify his killer by having Tommy Hogg produce an efit – and clearly Mrs Wilson had also seen her husband’s killer – and that a forensic accountant could look more closely at Mr Wilson’s dealings at the bank and identify particular transactions that might be suspicious.

I ended the radio interview with this quote. “I always thought that this case was unsolvable, but if what Nate says is true now I’m increasingly of the view that I’m surprised it hasn’t been solved already. It is eminently solvable.”

A small earthquake took place. Police Scotland appeared to know all about the details that Nate had described and, as if to distance themselves from what he had said, suggested that everything that he had written was already well known. And, of course, if it was already well known, it could be discounted. A senior policeman also sent me an email and we subsequently had a very pleasant conversation during which he suggested that no efit had been produced as it probably wasn’t a very good likeness.

However, that simply made me more curious, especially when Tommy Hogg then went onto Beattie’s show a day later and assured him that he had been able to get a very good look at the suspicious man that he had seen walk in the direction of Mr Wilson’s house, wearing clothing that appeared to him to be remarkably like the description of the clothes worn by the killer provided by the police at the time of Mr Wilson’s death.

I called Mr Hogg myself – he’s in the local telephone directory – and he told me all about his statements to the police and, specifically, that he was shown an efit that had already been produced when he went

to the police station. “It was the spitting image” of the person he had seen, he said.

So an efit was already in existence. Who had provided the description that had resulted in the efit being produced and which was shown to Mr Hogg? Perhaps Mrs Wilson, who had opened the door to the killer? If this efit was already in existence, why had it never been circulated to the public?

Police Scotland then issued another statement saying that the person whom Mr Hogg had identified had been traced and eliminated from their inquiries. Really? Mr Hogg didn’t know that and how had the police been able to track down this person without appealing for help from the public? Did they themselves know who was being described in the efit? Was he a well-known villain? Perhaps he might even have been a policeman or an ex-policeman? Perhaps it might even have been my correspondent Nate?

These comments are not intended to be frivolous but instead are meant to suggest that the already strange story of Mr Wilson’s tragic murder had just become even more curious.

If all these details were already in the public domain, why didn’t the police seem to be connecting the dots between any business deals done by Mr Wilson at the bank which would establish a motive for him to have been murdered and identify the likely contractor of the hit? Who was this suspicious man wearing clothing similar to the type that the police had stated was worn by Mr Wilson’s killer and, if they had never released any efit of that person because they had ruled him out of their inquiries, how had they been able to do that?

I got the distinct impression that public statements were being made to protect reputations – specifically of Police Scotland – rather than trying to track down the killer of Mr Wilson by harnessing the great public willingness to solve this case. Indeed Nate, my armchair detective, went even further and suggested that the police didn’t want to solve the case at all, partly because powerful local interests were at the root of the murder. That’s one of the problems with armchair detectives – they do love a conspiracy theory. Personally I have always favoured “cock-up” as an explanation when things go wrong.

So what should be done? With every cold case I always argue that they are solved by “shaking the tree”. When a crime first occurs, that “tree” of suspects, witnesses, alliances, people of interest – local networks of friendships and work colleagues – is strong and resolute and not too much intelligence can be gathered. However, over time, old friendships falter and people move on; local networks that had once been firm and unwavering begin to break down.

Shake the tree years after the event and leaves and branches begin to fall to the ground in greater numbers and this becomes intelligence which can be harvested to help to solve the case.

For me there should now be two separate but connected investigations. First, I would be asking all about the person who was seen knocking on Mr Wilson’s door on the night that he was murdered and issuing any efit that had been produced to the public.

Second, and this is more difficult, I would be looking very carefully at Mr Wilson’s business clients at the bank. Who did he have particular dealings with and who stood to lose by him leaving his job? What was it that they feared that he might discuss after he had left the bank?

Frankly, I have never seen a statement from HBOS about Mr Wilson’s work, or his list of clients – although I have had one very interesting telephone conversation with someone suggesting that I should investigate a local firm – for it seems to me that the contractor of the hit will emerge from this aspect of Mr Wilson’s life.

In short, this hit increasingly bears the hallmarks of white-collar crime, as opposed to the blue-collar crimes of drug dealers, robbers and street hustlers.

My hypothesis is that the contractor of this hit is likely to be a regional – perhaps even national – businessman who had it in his interests to kill Mr Wilson when he outlived his usefulness in his role at the bank and could, at any time, have revealed what he might have been engaged in at the bank.

However, in exactly the same way that Police Scotland have a reputation to lose and uphold, so does HBOS. Would it permit the necessary forensic accounting that would need to be done to test this hypothesis?

I don’t know the answer to that question, although there have again been various press statements suggesting that this is an “active line of the investigation”. Really? Has it actually taken 13 years to identify the one aspect of Mr Wilson’s life that transcended the local and the tranquil and which took him into a world where fortunes could be made or lost?

Frankly, if that is the case I am horrified and would appreciate some information being put into the public domain from Police Scotland, or indeed from HBOS, about this line of inquiry and just how thoroughly it is being pursued.

However, we all need to remember that the murder of Mr Wilson is a tragedy; it is not a parlour game. We need to solve one of Scotland’s longest-standing cold cases because a man was murdered and his wife has been left without a husband and his children without a father.

Someone out there – more than likely living and doing business in the area – commissioned a hit to have a man killed and, if a similar situation arises again, what’s to prevent them from commissioning another hit in the future too?

That’s what motivates me to comment on this case and, although I have no way of knowing, perhaps that’s what also motivated Nate. Above all, I sincerely hope that we have been dealing with cock-up for 13 years, rather than a conspiracy.

Detective Superintendent Gary Cunningham, who is leading the investigation, said: “We remain committed to investigating the murder of Alistair Wilson and a review into the evidence collected so far remains ongoing. Any new information provided will be robustly investigated as part of our inquiries.”

A Bank of Scotland spokesman said: “We assisted the police with their investigation at the time and, if new inquiries are raised by the police, then we will of course assist them further.”