Jekyll and Hyde killer Andrew Hunter took his secrets to the grave when he died in Perth prison 30 years ago.
He strangled his pregnant wife Lynda then concealed her body in a wood in 1987.
No one will ever know for sure if the man who died of a heart attack while serving his life sentence was, in fact, a multiple murderer.
But he would not be the first serial killer to go to his grave with a number of his crimes undetected.
The 42-year-old — a man of many faces — suffered the fatal heart attack about 30 minutes before he was due to be examined in the prison surgery by a doctor after complaining of chest pains.
In hearing the news of his passing, unsurprisingly very few tears were shed.
“I just wish he’d finished his sentence first and then died,” said Dorothy Cairns, who still cried every day for the daughter she lost in the summer of 1987.
“Not a day has gone by that I’ve not wished him dead, and often I’ve felt like doing it myself,” she said from her home in Glenrothes following his death on July 19 1993.
“I can’t say I’m sorry because I’m glad.
“I’ve cried every day since Lynda went missing.
“It does not go away.
“It’s living hell.”
Mrs Cairns lost her husband Robert 16 months after Lynda was buried.
He had been ill in the lead-up to the murder and never got over her tragic death.
“Robert’s last two years were terrible and I also blame Hunter for that,” she said.
“My husband wasn’t well as it was, and he couldn’t help in the searches.
“All he could do was cry.”
Trail of bodies followed Andrew Hunter
Originally from Paisley, Hunter married Christine in 1973 and had a son three years later before moving to Broughty Ferry in 1977 to work in a Salvation Army citadel.
He eventually got a job as a social worker attached to children’s homes in the city.
In October 1984 Hunter met fellow social worker Lynda Cairns, who lived with her partner, lecturer Dr Ian Glover, in the house across the road.
His first wife killed herself just before Christmas 1985, after he had taken up with Lynda, whom he would later marry at Barry Church in 1986.
That second marriage lasted only nine months before Lynda, too, was dead.
Hunter went to the police on August 22 1987 to report the disappearance of his wife, then a few weeks pregnant, from their home in Carnoustie.
Hunter claimed at the time that she stormed off after a row, concealing the truth that he murdered her then drove her distinctive Vauxhall Cavalier Antibes car to Manchester, wearing a woman’s wig, in an attempt to throw the police off the trail.
Lynda’s body lay among trees in Melville Lower Wood, Fife, for six months, during which time it was dismembered by wild animals, until being found in February 1988.
Throughout the period he cynically made appeals for her return and even helped to search for his wife.
He went so far as to cooperate in a televised reconstruction of his wife’s last known movements for the BBC Crimewatch programme.
It was a pack of lies.
Hunter had strangled Lynda to death using her pet dog Shep’s lead after the pair had had an argument in the car on the way to Lynda’s mother’s house in Glenrothes.
Hunter’s web of deceit unravelled and he was jailed for life at the High Court in Dundee in August 1988 after a jury of eight women and seven men returned a majority verdict.
Following his death in 1993, Mrs Cairns said she knew that, as the years passed, Hunter may have been eligible for parole and even liberated to walk the streets again.
“But my life ended when my daughter died,” she said.
“People say time heals, but it doesn’t, it really doesn’t.”
Even Lynda’s beloved pet dog died as a result of Hunter’s actions.
Shep was found wandering near St Michael’s only days after Lynda disappeared, having been abandoned by Hunter.
The dog was captured and put down before Fife police realised its significance to the case.
Hunter later had an appeal against conviction thrown out by the Court of Criminal Appeal in June 1989, with the three appeal judges ruling that not only was there sufficient evidence against him but it was “ample and eloquent” of his guilt.
Was Andrew Hunter responsible for more deaths?
Alexander McGregor, former Chief Reporter of The Courier, who wrote extensively about the murder of Lynda in his best-selling book, The Law Killers, is convinced Hunter went to his grave taking many more secrets with him.
He has long held the belief that the depraved social worker may also have been responsible for, among other things, the unsolved murders of 18-year-old Carol Lannen, whose body was found in Templeton Woods on the outskirts of Dundee in 1979, and 20-year-old Elizabeth McCabe, who was found 11 months later in the same woods.
Both killings took place after Hunter arrived in Dundee from the west of Scotland and occurred a few years before he strangled Lynda and left her body in a wood in Fife.
“Hunter was a complete Jekyll and Hyde,” said Alexander.
“Some considered him a ‘perfect gentleman’ – a caring member of the Salvation Army whose job saw him dealing with problem and needy children.
“Others, who also knew him, had a different story to tell.
“The sentencing judge, for instance, described him as ‘an evil man of exceptional depravity’.
“What is often forgotten is just how ruthless and cold blooded Hunter was.
“A few hours after murdering pregnant Lynda, her sister Sandra arrived in Carnoustie for a pre-arranged get-together with her.
“Hunter explained her absence by saying he and Lynda had had a disagreement and she had gone off to visit her mother.
“He thought she would return soon. While they waited, he took Sandra for a game of putting and, later, tea in a nearby hotel.
“Some time after that he went to a works social evening out and, later still, drove through the night to Manchester in Lynda’s car to lay a false trail.
“These are not the actions of an angry husband who, in the heat of the moment, killed his wife during an argument and instantly regretted what he had done.
“They portray a character who is detached and calculating, capable of a range of unsavoury activities.”
Dark secrets taken to the grave
It was only during and after the trial that the full extent of Hunter’s ruthlessness and lust for women became public knowledge.
“He left a trail of heartache for Lynda’s family,” said Alexander.
“They not only lost Lynda, but what would have been their first grandchild.
“Just as devastating, Lynda’s father died 16 months after her funeral.
“Her mother believes that he died of a broken heart, and few would argue with that.
“It was just another death that could be laid at the doorstep of their wicked son-in-law.
“Because of his untimely demise, we will never know the full extent of Hunter’s probable crimes.
“But we can be pretty certain that the day he died a number of dark secrets went with him.”
