THE man a judge effectively decreed had killed Amanda Duffy in 1992 has died from cancer at the age of 45 in an English hospice.
Francis Auld stood trial for the murder of the 19-year-old Motherwell College drama student months after her body was found on waste ground in Hamilton in May, 1992.
Auld was then 20, an unemployed motor mechanic and body-building enthusiast from Hamilton who had known Amanda at school.
It was a case that shocked the Scottish public, because of the brutal savagery of the murder of the teenager and because at one point during his trial the killing was described as “ritualistic”.
During the trial Auld admitted he and Amanda had a heavy petting session on the night of the killing, including a bite to her breast.
Two doctors swore on oath that the bite was the result of an act of violence and a pathologist testified that the depth of the teeth marks meant the pain it caused would have been “excruciating”.
The pathologist also explained that Amanda’s bra would have been covered with blood – but none was found. Nevertheless the charge against Auld was found not proven on a majority verdict after his defence counsel, Donald Findlay QC, kept the accused man out of the witness box and concentrated on a forensic examination of the prosecution case.
Auld blamed a man called “Mark” for the killing but no such suspect ever emerged, and although he was later convicted of harassment charges, Auld served no time for the murder of Amanda, above.
The criminal case having failed, the matter moved to the civil courts when, in 1995, Amanda’s parents sued Auld for £50,000 claiming “loss of society” through the murder of their daughter.
Auld did not contest the case, and the judge, Lord Morrison, awarded the full sum against him, effectively branding Auld as the murderer.
Amanda’s father, Joe, began the Abolish the Not Proven Verdict campaign which attracted 60,000 signatures. Former MSP Michael McMahon took the matter to the Scottish Parliament in 2007, seeking reform of the law to get rid of the verdict without success.
Five years ago it was revealed that the cold case unit set up to examine cases where no-one had been convicted of murder had begun looking at Auld.
That was because Scottish Parliament had passed the Double Jeopardy Act in 2011 “to make provision as to the circumstances in which a person convicted or acquitted of an offence may be prosecuted anew” and the old law under which an accused person could not be tried twice for the same crime was abolished.
Investigators using DNA analysis were confident they could prove Auld was the killer, but High Court judges threw out the new case last year because a conversation between Auld and a prison officer in 1992 was ruled inadmissible.
Joe Duffy told STV News last night: “It’s tragic to lose a family member whatever the circumstances but our sympathies for Francis Auld are limited.”
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