Caldwell murder accused threatened teenager for alleging abuse, court told

Murder accused Iain Packer “tried to strangle” a woman and “threatened” a child who alleged he sexually abused her, a court has heard.

Packer, 50, is on trial at the High Court in Glasgow accused of the murder of sex worker Emma Caldwell, 27, in 2005, and faces 46 charges in total including a litany of sex crimes as well as abduction and assault.

He denies all the charges against him, and has lodged special defences of incrimination, consent, defence of another and self-defence.

Giving evidence, a 48-year-old woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, alleged Packer sexually abused her between July 1990 and October 1992, when she was aged between 14 and 15.

The woman alleged Packer attempted to rape her the first time they met at his parents’ home in Baillieston, Glasgow, and “molested her” repeatedly, the court heard.

The witness said Packer, who worked as a signwriter, was “quite big”, while she was “minute” and weighed just 42kg, and she felt he saw her as “vulnerable”.

The witness said she told her mother after the attempted rape and was initially believed, but was later “blamed” by her family and “threatened” by Packer.

She said Packer asked her to be his girlfriend before raping her when she was in bed wearing pyjamas in autumn 1990.

The witness said: “He molested me every single second, every time he got the chance. If I was in the kitchen washing the dishes he would be in behind me. Every opportunity.”

She told the court she “shouted” about the abuse but claimed Packer and his family “threatened” and “intimidated” her.

The witness said: “Iain Packer walked up to a police station that was closed, he stormed out the house, we were all shouting ‘Iain, don’t do it’.

“He stormed off and stormed back because it was closed. I was really hoping it would be open because if it was we could have done something about it.

“It was intimidating to me, I was getting threatened by his parents. After that I was absolutely done.

“Iain’s parents had visited the house, they were going to have the police called and me arrested for accusing Iain of sexual assault.”

She gave statements to police in 2006 and 2015.

The woman told the court: “I shouted about it and spoke about it all the time, and they were sick of it. ‘Stop saying Iain is touching you’ – that’s the response from my mum.”

Packer’s lawyer Renaldo Renucci KC put to her: “I am suggesting you didn’t shout out at any point, because he wasn’t touching you in the way you suggest.” She denied this.

Another witness gave evidence and said Packer “belted her in the face” with a Caterpillar boot and subjected her to sexual and physical violence, including “trying to strangle me with the Hoover”.

The woman, who also cannot be named for legal reasons, said Packer would take her on tours of the red-light districts in Glasgow, and ran up debts due to spending money on “prostitutes, on gambling, on drugs”.

The 49-year-old said she was raped on a weekly basis and that Packer emptied an ashtray over her head.

The alleged offences involving her are said to have occurred between 1991 and 1996.

Giving evidence on commission, she told the court Packer kept a stash of pornographic magazines and would rape her “whenever he felt like it”, describing it as “regularly, every week”.

She said that on one occasion, Packer tried to strangle her with the cord of a vacuum cleaner.

The witness said: “He got hold of the flex of the Hoover and tried to strangle me with it. He was in front of me and had the cord in both his hands, the cord was in between his fists and he put it behind my head and crossed over. He was trying to strangle me with the Hoover.”

The woman spoke to police in 2006 but did not make any sexual allegations, and did not “tell a soul” until 2015.

In a statement from March 2006, she said: “Eventually things began to make sense to me and I realised people had been telling me the truth all along about Iain.”

Giving evidence, she admitted she dismissed allegations that Packer raped a child in 1990 as “jealousy” and said: “I hate myself for it.”

The witness said Packer claimed sex with the child was consensual and told her on Christmas Day 1996 “he didn’t rape her, he had sex with her”.

She also alleged Packer raped her that morning at her family’s home, before he “started throwing things all over the place, shouting and bawling”.

During cross-examination the second witness was asked: “Would you accept what you told us this morning was different from what you told the police?”

The woman said: “Yeah.”

Packer is accused of strangling Miss Caldwell with his hands and a cable, assaulting her, compressing her wrists, intending to rape her and murdering her at an area of woodland known as Limefield woods in South Lanarkshire on April 5, 2005.

He is further charged with attempting to defeat the ends of justice by allegedly disposing of Miss Caldwell’s body, her mobile phone, clothing and personal belongings, as well as cleaning the interior of a car which belonged to him.

He denies the charges and has lodged a special defence of incrimination.

The trial, before Judge Lord Beckett, continues.