Police have begun exhuming a family grave in the search for the remains of a schoolgirl who vanished almost 56 years ago.
Moira Anderson was 11 when she went missing from her home in Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire, in February 1957 while running an errand for her grandmother.
It is widely believed she was abducted and murdered, but her body has never been found.
The case remains unsolved, although convicted paedophile Alexander Gartshore, a Coatbridge bus driver who died in 2006, has been connected with the disappearance.
Yesterday, investigators began excavating the plot of Sinclair Upton, said to have been an acquaintance of Gartshore, to see if the schoolgirl’s remains were hidden there.
The excavation at Old Monkland Cemetery in Coatbridge is being led by Professor Sue Black and a team from the forensic anthropology department at Dundee University.
Police believe the burial plot has three layers and there may be up to eight people interred there.
Experts are exploring the possibility that Moira’s body may have been dumped under a coffin in the grave, which was thought to have been open around the time of her disappearance.
The operation comes after a sheriff gave police the go-ahead last month.
A large section of the cemetery has been cordoned off with police tape, with a large black tent and a series of smaller blue tents erected around the excavation site.
Officers in overalls went in and out of the tents as work started yesterday morning.
Gartshore has been blamed for Moira’s murder by his own daughter, Sandra Brown, in her book Where There Is Evil.
The Moira Anderson Foundation was started by Ms Brown in 2000 to support children and adults affected by sexual abuse. It campaigned for further investigations into Moira’s disappearance and last year Scotland’s Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland ordered cold case detectives to reopen the case as a murder.
Strathclyde Police said officers stood down at 5pm, with work continuing today.