Depraved Alastair Thompson killed the family pets then butchered his gran before committing the hideous crime that would see him labelled the Law killer.
One of seven brothers and sisters, Edinburgh-born Thompson had become bossy, aggressive and violent even before he was even out of short trousers.
He killed his sister’s pet rabbit, wringing its neck with his bare hands and about the same time butchered the family cat after breaking its back.
A spate of juvenile crime included possessing an offensive weapon and attempted robbery which eventually led to a spell in and out of facilities for youth offenders.
Thompson once said that the happiest time of his life had been when he had been detained in an Approved School and could study for Higher exam passes.
He remained in the school longer than necessary after asking to remain there to complete his studies.
Thompson then achieved national notoriety 55 years ago in January 1968 when he murdered his 74-year-old gran in a frenzied attack at her home in Edinburgh.
He was 19
He stabbed the old lady 20 times with a carving knife and smashed her skull twice with a coal hammer.
His 13-year-old brother Patrick found the body by chance, the 14-inch blade of the carving knife still embedded in her throat.
Thompson, who later told the High Court that his grandmother had been nagging him, spent the rest of the evening on the town drinking and dancing with a girlfriend.
Thomson was arrested by stunned Lothian detectives as he calmly walked back to the scene of the killing in the city’s Colinton district.
The trouser legs of his new jeans were still stained with his grandmother’s blood.
Despite strenuous denials he was convicted of what trial judge Lord Wheatley described as the “vicious, brutal and dastardly murder” and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Led away to begin his term, Thompson, who by this time had affected a liking for poetry and literature, handed his factory worker girlfriend a book of essays by English author Thomas De Quincy.
One was entitled: On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts.
Lord Wheatley’s sentence meant a 16-year stretch spent in Perth and in time his mother Gwendolyn and sister Lynn were to forgive Thompson for his original crime.
It was in jail that he met his wife, then a social worker attached to the prison service.
They were married in a quiet registry office ceremony in Perth a few months after his release on parole in July 1984, setting up house within sight of the prison walls.
The marriage was doomed almost from the start, Thompson finding it difficult to adjust to life outside while displaying all the anti-social traits that had landed him in bother.
The following year he was driven to seek help from the Scottish Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders for marriage problems and shortly afterwards he and his wife, who had two children by a previous marriage, separated.
He moved to Dundee shortly afterwards and got a job in a city amusement arcade.
Then in December 1989 he was charged with the serious assault of a Perth bus driver outside a Dundee casino, the prosecution alleging he’d stabbed his victim in the neck with intent to rob.
The jury found the charge against him not proven.
Nevertheless the bisexual killer spent about 30 months in custody before being released again in January 1992.
He was working as a caretaker
Thompson moved to England for a brief spell and then returned to Dundee in March 1992 where he secured accommodation at the SACRO hostel in Haldane Terrace.
He took up the role of caretaker of the premises and by December 1992 he had actually secured a house on his own in Dundee to which he had been planning to move.
SACRO had been set to mark Thompson down as one of its successes before various body parts were found dumped in plastic bags on Dundee Law on December 30.
The green bags had been tied at the necks with masking tape and the torn half of a paper label was found inside one of them.
Police built up a profile of the dead man from the body parts including tell-tale scarring and issued a description to the public on December 31 and appealed for help.
More than 90 people responded to the appeal, which led police to James Dunbar from Carnoustie, whose brother Gordon had failed to arrive for Christmas dinner.
The 52-year-old, who was openly gay, was staying at the Anchor Guest House in Victoria Road and had somehow met Thompson in mid-evening on Christmas Eve.
A tip-off from an informant soon led police officers to Thompson and among his possessions they found a key to a ninth-floor flat at Butterburn Court in Dundee.
Inside they discovered plastic bags of the type used to wrap the body parts, the other half of a torn label found in one of the bags and tape matching that sealing the bags.
They also found a bloodstained hacksaw and blood and tissue from Mr Dunbar were found near the bath.
Police could only deduce that an argument broke out and Thompson murdered Mr Dunbar for his bank card.
Thompson was charged with murder in the early hours of January 9 and, some time afterwards, all the missing body parts, except the head and stomach section, were found discarded in shrubbery off the access road to the Dudhope Park car park.
It included a severed foot in a ladies’ stocking.
During the trial at the High Court in Edinburgh, Thompson protested his innocence in the killing and robbery, claiming he had merely disposed of the body parts for the two Glasgow “heavies” he said had carried out the murder.
But he was sentenced to life in prison.
Trial judge Lord Weir told Thompson: “The jury have convicted you of nauseating and barbaric crimes.
“The sentence is imprisonment for life.
“In view of the fact you have previously been convicted of murder and in view of the atrocious and utterly wicked nature of these crimes it is my duty to recommend to the Secretary of State that you should not be released on licence until at least 20 years have elapsed.”
During his second life term, he was appointed a prison “listener”—someone who would advise fellow inmates.
Thompson ‘found God’ in prison
Alexander McGregor, former Chief Reporter of The Courier, and author of The Law Killers, where Thompson’s murderous activities are described in detail, said:
“Thompson predicted he would die in prison.
“However, as his time progressed, the man who had twice brutally killed people apparently ‘found God’.
“He became a ‘bible-basher’, annoying other prisoners.
“He even began to nurse a dream that one day he might be released, allowing him to become a Church of Scotland minister—which, all things considered, was a fairly unlikely proposition!”
He suffered heart failure in his sleep and passed away in cell 446 in Perth Prison’s C Hall in the early hours of December 21 2010.
Nurse practitioner Alexandra Johnston was the first member of the prison’s medical staff to arrive at Thompson’s cell.
She told a fatal accident inquiry in 2011: “He had a word processor running and I checked it to see if he had written a suicide note.
“It appeared instead that he had been writing a journal.
“The last entry was made at around 3am on the 21st and it just said that he was beginning to feel very cold.”
