Police are investigating the death of a baby in Dundee over 40 years ago as a possible case of murder.
The tragic death of Colin Blair in a tenement flat in Arbroath Road in October, 1968, six weeks after his birth in Maryfield Hospital, was the subject of a routine investigation.
A medical examination concluded the cause was inhalation of vomit and intercranial haemorrhage and the episode was filed as an unexplained tragedy.
The death is now at the centre of a new police investigation which could lead to the exhumation of the child”s body from the Eastern Cemetery.
New information was received earlier this year and Tayside Police”s major crime review team have been interviewing hundreds of former officers who may have walked the Stobswell beat at the time.
An exhumation of the youngster”s body from Eastern Cemetery could be ordered if information gleaned in the new examination of the death points towards foul play.
Colin Blair was the son of a 24-year-old juteworks labourer father and housewife mother. His birth notice described mother and son as “both well.”
The infant died in the tenement flat in Stobswell around 3pm despite the efforts of police and ambulance workers who had been called to the scene.
Officers from the major crime review team, who also examine “cold cases”, have been working on the re-examination since April.
The team has been speaking to former officers to identify who originally dealt with the 1968 incident and to find any documents, including witness statements, relating to the case.
Matters have been complicated by the passage of time and the fact that the Arbroath Road tenement, close to Glebelands Primary School, has since been demolished.
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The site of the flats a far cry from the bustling industrial area that was Stobswell in the 1960s is now covered with trees.
Detective Chief Inspector Graham McMillan said: “I can confirm that Tayside Police have been reviewing the circumstances of the death of a child in the late 1960s.
“At the conclusion of our review of the circumstances relating to this, a report will be submitted to the procurator fiscal.”
Retired superintendent Craigie Fisken said it was likely only a few documents relating to Colin Blair”s death would be in existence and officers would have to rely heavily on forensic examinations.
He said: “If it was a cot death then it may not even have reached CID. In that case, there would have been a report submitted to the procurator fiscal and that would be all there would be to go on.
“The (investigative) tools they will have will be minimal. They may have the statements from the family and the police who attended, and perhaps the doctor as well.
“I can”t see there being anything in relation to forensic (material) from that time.”
Mr Fisken said modern police officers had tools at their disposal that simply were not invented at the time of the child”s death.
Techniques such as DNA profiling can be used along with forensic pathology to try to discover cause of death.
He said: “It is a completely different world. Doctors and pathologists would be able to tell you what they could hope to achieve by exhumation of a body more than anything a policeman could say.
“I think they would have to rely on that entirely to define whether a person had been killed or died from natural causes.”