Mother of murdered Emma Caldwell warns inquiry delays could kill her before truth is exposed
The mother of murder victim Emma Caldwell has accused Scotland’s prosecutors of deliberately stalling a long-promised public inquiry, warning she may die before the full truth of her daughter’s killing ever emerges.
Seventy-seven-year-old Margaret Caldwell spoke exclusively to the Sunday Mail, saying her health is failing and that every delay risks burying the justice campaign she has fought for two decades.
Emma, a 27-year-old sex worker, was murdered in April 2005 by serial predator Iain Packer. He was not convicted until February 2024, almost nineteen years later, following one of Scotland’s most notorious criminal justice scandals.
For years, police had interviewed Packer yet failed to arrest him, despite his admission that he had driven Emma to the remote woodland where her body was later found. In 2015, when the Sunday Mail unmasked him as the “Forgotten Suspect”, officers pursued the newspaper’s sources rather than the killer himself.
When Packer finally faced trial nearly two decades later, he was found guilty not only of Emma’s murder but also of 32 other charges, including 11 rapes and sexual assaults against 22 women. The conviction closed one of Scotland’s longest-running cold cases — but it did not end the fight for accountability.
Embed from Getty ImagesAfter Packer’s life sentence, the Scottish Government pledged a full, independent, judge-led inquiry into a litany of police and prosecution failures. That was nineteen months ago. Yet the inquiry has still not begun.
Margaret now fears that prosecutors are obstructing the process. “I will meet with Solicitor General Ruth Charteris next Wednesday and plead with her to stop this delay,” she said. “Time is not on my side. Some victims have already died. This public inquiry must start now before it’s too late for me or others.”
Her frustration is visceral. “For nearly two decades the police gave Packer a green light to rape and assault women without fear of being arrested,” she said. “It’s clear to me that both the Crown Office and police cynically hoped that I would eventually just give up fighting for justice — or just die.”
The Crown Office insists a parallel criminal investigation into officers involved in the original inquiry must be carried out first. Charteris has argued that an English police force should lead it. But more than a year on, no outside investigators have been appointed.
Margaret is scathing. “I have lost all faith in the Solicitor General,” she said. “She has blocked the public inquiry from even starting by claiming she wants a police force from England to investigate Police Scotland. It will never happen. It’s a complete waste of money. The only people who will benefit are those lawyers in the Crown Office and the police officers who betrayed Emma and so many of Packer’s victims, by delaying the real truth coming out.”
For Margaret, the delay reopens old wounds. When Dorothy Bain took over as Lord Advocate in 2021, she believed real change might finally arrive. Bain pushed Packer’s case through court and secured his conviction. But since then, Margaret says progress has again ground to a halt.
“I finally had hope,” she said. “But more than a year has passed since the public inquiry was announced, and nothing has happened.”
Nineteen years after Emma’s murder, her mother is still battling the system. And now, with age against her, Margaret fears the institutions that failed her daughter are counting on time to finish their work.