Killing of Elizabeth McCabe

Elizabeth McCabe, a 20-year-old trainee nursery nurse from Lochee, Dundee, disappeared in the early hours of 11 February 1980 after a night out that included a visit to Teazer's Disco in Dundee city centre. Her friend Sandra Niven became separated from her as they were leaving the venue and could not find her afterward. McCabe's parents reported her missing, and 16 days later her naked body was discovered in Templeton Woods on the outskirts of Dundee by two men out hunting rabbits. A post-mortem determined she had died of asphyxia from compression of the neck. Some of her belongings, including clothing, jewellery and shoes, were later found discarded at separate locations in the city over the following weeks.

McCabe's death occurred less than a year after another young woman, 18-year-old Carol Lannen, was found dead in the same woods, roughly 150 yards away, giving rise to press descriptions of the "Templeton Woods murders" and public fear of a serial killer, although police stated the two cases were never officially linked.

During the original 1980 investigation, witnesses reported seeing a taxi resembling that of local taxi driver Vincent Simpson near the woods on the night McCabe vanished. Simpson was questioned, admitted being in the woods that night, and admitted to being a "peeping tom" who spied on couples there, though he denied recognising McCabe. No charges were brought at the time, and the case was wound down but left open.

The case was reopened in 2004 amid the broader Operation Trinity inquiry, which briefly linked McCabe's murder and six others to serial killer Angus Sinclair; Sinclair was later conclusively ruled out for the McCabe and Lannen killings, as prison records showed he was incarcerated at the time of both. Advances in DNA profiling led to renewed analysis of case exhibits, and in 2005 Simpson was arrested and subsequently charged with McCabe's murder. He went to trial in October 2007 in Edinburgh. Prosecutors presented DNA evidence from a jumper found on McCabe's body and a hair from the plastic sheeting used to move her, with combined odds against the profile belonging to anyone other than Simpson estimated at 1 in 40 million. Simpson did not testify but denied the DNA evidence had been legitimately obtained, and his defence argued contamination. In December 2007, a jury found Simpson not guilty by majority verdict, and he left court a free man having denied the killing throughout. Following a 2011 change to Scotland's double jeopardy law, the case was reviewed again, but as of 2020 police indicated there was no active plan to reinvestigate. The murder remains unsolved.