The police did not think about Emma for a moment. All they thought about was covering up their mistakes

THE mother of murder victim Emma Caldwell yesterday accused police chiefs of forgetting her daughter as they mounted an unlawful hunt for journalists’ sources.

Margaret Caldwell spoke of her sadness after a withering report confirmed Police Scotland launched a molehunt instead of a manhunt immediately after a newspaper revealed a forgotten suspect on the 10th anniversary of her daughter’s murder in 2005.

Mrs Caldwell, 68, said officers had been more interested in covering up their failure to find her daughter’s killer than relaunching the inquiry into her unsolved murder.

She said: “It’s sad to see it laid out so starkly, in black and white. It is clear the police weren’t thinking about Emma, not for one minute.

“They were only thinking about themselves, about being embarrassed and covering up their mistakes.

“When the story appeared, we didn’t know what to think but the police assured us everything was being done and all the inquiries were under way.

“That wasn’t the case at all. The only inquiries that were going on were into the journalists’ sources.

“Properly relaunching the murder investigation and trying to get justice for Emma does not seem to have crossed their minds.

“For 10 years, we were told the case would never be closed but it had been closed and the police wanted to keep it closed. Meanwhile, whoever killed my daughter had been allowed to enjoy his life for all those years.

“It is very hard to think about it.”

The then-Lord Advocate ordered Police Scotland to reopen the investigation into the murder of Emma, seven weeks after press reports revealed a suspect had been interviewed six times by police, changed his story several times and admitted taking her to isolated woods in South Lanarkshire, where her body was found, many times. The relaunched murder investigation continues.

Police Scotland last week finally released the damning report by Durham Chief Constable Mike Barton into the spying scandal. The inquiry was ordered after watchdogs branded officers’ decision to access the email and phone records of two serving and two former officers unlawful and reckless.

A judge must authorise the use of intrusive techniques to identify journalists’ sources but, Mr Barton said, there was never any evidence that the story had been leaked by a serving officer, in any case.

Gerry Gallacher, the former detective who uncovered the forgotten suspect and was one of the four targeted, said: “The report criticises the actions of almost every officer directly involved in putting this unlawful operation in place.

“However, Mr Barton is also very critical of an executive culture at Police Scotland characterised by defensiveness and summed up in their refusal to deal transparently and quickly with these serious issues.

“Given that, their refusal to release the report for seven months and only then in a heavily-redacted form is beyond ironic, it is shameful. Meanwhile, 13 years after her death and almost three years after the police were ordered to reopen their murder inquiry, Emma Caldwell’s family continue to wait for justice.”

Chief Constable Barton’s report reveals the force’s Counter-Corruption Unit (CCU) launched a hunt for journalists’ sources on April 7, 2015, two days after the Sunday Mail report was published. The following day had been Easter Monday, a bank holiday.

His 132-page report confirms the now disbanded unit was asked to identify serving officers suspected of speaking to journalists about the initial murder inquiry. But, he said, to get their spying approved they acted “dishonestly” by “wilfully and deliberately manipulating intelligence”.

He found Detective Chief Superintendent Clark Cuzen, the CCU boss, ignored expert advice that judicial authorisation was needed to access phone and email records, and branded intelligence supporting the operation a “complete invention.”

Misconduct investigations are under way against seven officers including DCS Cuzen. Mr Barton’s report suggests two others including Detective Superintendent David Donaldson may have faced misconduct inquiries but have retired.

In one scathing section, the report details how CCTV footage used to justify the police spying operation went missing for five months before turning up in a detective’s locker.

This section was one of the most heavily-redacted by the police but the full report, seen by the Sunday Post, lays bare the unfolding fiasco.

A meeting between a serving and former officer at the Hillington branch of Costa Coffee was seen and flagged up as suspicious by former detective Colin Field. It was used to justify the seizing of phone records but had, it was soon established, nothing to do with the press reports.

Mr Barton accused the officers’ handing the disc of carelessness and incompetence and their bosses in the CCU of a “lack of supervision and direction” but, he said, the DVD had not been mislaid deliberately.