POLICE Scotland could have prevented the murder of a vulnerable woman if they had reacted properly to her call asking for help.

Instead, operators at the trouble-hit Bilston Glen control room left a voicemail for 50-year-old Elizabeth Bowe on the phone of her murderer, asking her to stop phoning 999.

The Police Investigations & Review Commissioner (Pirc) investigation into the death of Bowe found a “number of failings” in the way the force responded.

Bowe was choked to death by her older brother, Charles Gordon, in her St Andrews flat in September last year. Police who arrived at the scene found Gordon calmly smoking a cigarette while his dying sister, who was naked from the waist down, lay just feet away from him with blood coming from her mouth and a blue dressing gown wrapped round her neck.

The mother-of-one was taken to Ninewells hospital in Dundee where she died on September 20 last year.

In evidence, Gordon admitted that he killed his sister, but not murdering her.

He said: “I grabbed hold of her by the throat with my left hand. I kept a hold of her until she hit the floor. She slumped and went down. When she went down I let her go.”

He was sentenced to life imprisonment in July.

Gordon had phoned police at 9.24pm saying: “I think I’ve killed my sister. She’s dead and I’m alive.”

But Bowe herself had used her brother’s phone to call 999 about an hour and a half before to say her brother had stolen her mobile phone. She informed the call centre that she was a vulnerable person, who was in a “domestic violence situation” and required her telephone to “call for help” if she needed it.

She was known to Police Scotland and had been extensively recorded on their systems as a vulnerable person who had been the subject of domestic abuse.

In her report to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, the Commissioner, Kate Frame, was critical of the police response.

After a lengthy investigation, she found that the call centre had marked the call as a “grade 2 priority” requiring urgent response within 15 minutes.

The incident was then transferred to the Police Scotland Area Control Room (ACR) at Bilston Glen where it was assessed by a communications controller who considered that a crime had not been committed and there was no requirement to send police resources to deal with the incident.

The Commissioner’s report found that at 8.12pm the controller then attempted to contact Bowe via her brother’s mobile phone and on receiving no reply, left a voicemail message stating that as her brother was in the house he had not stolen her phone and that the police would not be attending. The controller further advised that the 999 number should only be used for emergencies.

Frame said the advisor who dealt with the initial call from Bowe had failed to record all relevant information.

The Commissioner added: “I have made a number of recommendations to the Chief Constable to ensure that priority calls from vulnerable persons such as Elizabeth Bowe are responded to appropriately.”

She said: “Had Police Scotland timeously dispatched resources in accordance with their call priority system following Elizabeth Bowe’s 999 call one hour and 24 minutes earlier, officers may have arrived at her home prior to her receiving the injuries from which she died and thereby prevented her death.”

A statement on behalf of the family of Bowe said: “The circumstances of the death of Elizabeth, who was a caring mother and grandmother, was a shock to us all and we appreciate the support we have received, but would now wish our privacy to be respected.”

Police Scotland have accepted the findings of the Pirc report, and have implemented a revised process where vulnerability is identified.