Yeardley: Hey, Small Town Fam. It’s Yardley. How are you guys? I hope you’re all well. I love the case we have for you today. It comes to us from retired Detective Constable Simon. We’ve had Simon on the podcast many times and he is the loveliest storyteller. So, this episode is not a devastating murder or child sex abuse case, which might actually be a welcome reprieve for once. What it is, is the story of young Simon, who, as the new guy, takes it upon himself to disrupt the drug trade on the tiny Scottish Isle of Bute. And while the logistics are contained, the story is universal. I think we all know someone in our lives who is so competitive, so insecure, that winning is the only option, even if they have to cheat to get there.

And maybe you’re not bothered by that because that’s them. It’s not you. But I admit, I am not so Zen. And my friends, this episode pissed me off by the end because as a person who is highly competitive but also plays by the rules, I expect the contest to be won by the person who did the best job, full stop. That’s the way the world works, isn’t it? [laughs] I know, I know. You’re wondering, how have I survived this long in the world? It’s a mystery. Anyway, my point is, I’m certain we can all agree that the phrase “winning at all costs” has no place in police work or the pursuit of justice. Here is “Sorry, Not Sorry.”

Hi there. I’m Yeardley.

Dan: I’m Dan.

Dave: I’m Dave.

Paul: And I’m Paul.

Yeardley: And this is Small Town Dicks.

Dan: Dave and I are identical twins-

Dave: -And retired detectives from Small Town, USA.

Paul: And I’m a veteran cold case investigator who helped catch the Golden State Killer using a revolutionary DNA tool.

Dan: Between the three of us, we’ve investigated thousands of crimes, from petty theft to sexual assault, child abuse to murder.

Dave: Each case we cover is told by the detective who investigated it, offering a rare, personal account of how they solved the crime.

Paul: Names, places, and certain details have been changed to protect the privacy of victims and their families.

Dan: And although we’re aware that some of our listeners may be familiar with these cases, we ask you to please join us in continuing to protect the true identities of those involved-

Dave: -out of respect for what they’ve been through.

[unison]: Thank you.

[Small Town Dicks theme]

Yeardley: Today on Small Town Dicks, guess what? You’re lucky, because we have the usual suspects. We have Detective Dan.

Dan: Good day.

Yeardley: Good day, sir.

Dan: Good day.

Yeardley: We have Detective Dave.

Dave: Hello.

Yeardley: Hello. So, happy to see you right across the table from me. And we have the one and only Paul Holes. The only part of the OG team who is not at the table with us. But we love you and we miss you. And how are you, Paul Holes.

Paul: Doing great. I’m several states away.

Yeardley: Yes, you are. I don’t like it, but all right.

Dave: Makes me feel safer.

[laughter]

Yeardley: And Small Town Fam. I’m super excited about today because one of my favorite guests, certainly one of yours as well is with us today on the microphone, retired Detective Constable Simon.

Simon: Hi, Yeardley, how are you?

Yeardley: Oh, I’m so good. I’m so good. I have such fond memories of our previous records and I just love the way you tell the stories. I love your cadence. And you’re such a man of detail and humor, which I think especially in this kind of work, is probably a lifesaver, but also somewhat rare. So, happy to see you, Simon.

Simon: You too, Yeardley. Thanks for having me on again. It’s always a pleasure.

Yeardley: We’re delighted. For our listeners Simon gave us two cases previously. One we called “The Penny Drop.” It’s such a good case. It’s in Season 14. And the other one is “The Long Sprint,” also a superb case, and that’s in Season 15. So, if you haven’t heard those or it’s been a while since you heard them, I highly recommend you go back and give them a listen. But today, we have something brand new. So, Simon, you’re an old pro at this. I’m just going to turn it over to you and ask you how this case came to you.

Simon: Thanks Yeardley just to set the context again, it’s a story from Rothesay, the island on the Isle of Bute off the west coast of Scotland, the same place that we did The Penny Drop. And I’ll just refresh it a wee bit for you and for your listeners that I was a freshly detective constable just out the wrapper really. I had just made detective constable. I was probably 26 years of age, just a boy and definitely a small town, population about 6,000 on the island. Only two routes off the island and both by ferry, probably an hour and a half from the city of Glasgow. So that’s where I was working. And I was the only detective on the island. I had my own office. I had my own room for developing photographs and taking fingerprints and things like that. I was really self-sufficient.

Yeardley: So, you said, Simon that you’re the only detective on this little island, but obviously there are a few other officers in the agency, so that if you need backup, like physical presence of your colleagues, there’s other folks.

Simon: Oh, yeah, yeah. Uniform.

Yeardley: How many in your agency were sworn?

Simon: There would be 24 air cover, four shifts of four plus four sergeants, plus some civilians that were employed in the office taping and whatnot. A force of about 20, that was our detail on the island.

Yeardley: That’s so small.

Simon: Yeah. No supervisor, really. My nearest supervision would be about an hour and a half away and my inspector was at least three hours away, so that gives you an idea of the isolation. And island communities are different from anything else, as you could imagine. And when I arrived in Rothesay, I went into the pub that night with some of the boys that I had met to go for a pint and get to know the place. And I could hardly breathe for the smell of cannabis– [crosstalk]

Yeardley: Really.

Simon: Now, this is 1984 and I found out very quickly that there hadn’t been a drugs case in Rothesay on the island for three years. Nobody had been caught or prosecuted or charged with possession or anything else.

Yeardley: Had anybody been investigated?

Simon: No.

Yeardley: Despite the fact they hadn’t been caught or prosecuted, the small police department hadn’t gone, “Hey, we need to look into this.”

Simon: No. The detective whose place I took was from Rothesay, so I can only assume he didn’t want to get involved in that line of work with people that he’d gone to school with.

Yeardley: Ah. Sure.

Simon: So that was the environment that I found myself in. So, you could imagine, for a young, ambitious detective not long out of detective training, this was pennies from heaven for me, because there was about to be some drugs cases.

[laughter]

What I discovered, which is really at the essence of a lot of work I do in regard to drugs and trying to change our laws here in the UK, I discovered that drugs legislation is a fantastic tool for a detective because it gives you leverage when you catch someone or when you suspect someone or when you start getting involved in the supply lines. Intelligence in that regard is power, because you can then influence people’s lives. And it’s not a reportable crime, Yeardley.

By that I mean it’s not a break in, it’s not an assault, it’s not an instant that you go to the police and say, “Someone’s just done this.” That’s why there hadn’t been a case for three years, because it’s totally proactive by the police. If you don’t go looking for it, you’ll never see it or find it. And for the next six months to a year, I went to town. That’s the only way to describe it. I got a lot of encouragement from Caroline, who was her procurator fiscal that’s a prosecutor in Scotland because she liked to stay on the island, but there wasn’t generally enough work for her.

Yeardley: [laughs] So, basically a paid vacation for this prosecutor.

Simon: Yeah. And the sheriff was a man called Irvine Smith. He was a very, very famous sheriff in Scotland, feared by criminals and very strict with the police too. He demanded high, high standards, but he was the very sheriff to put these drugs cases in front of.

Yeardley: And Simon, just to clarify, a sheriff in Scotland is not the same as a Sheriff in the US.

Simon: No. In Scotland, our justice system has sheriffdoms which are geographical areas and they have a sheriff who is the judge for that area. The sheriff court is our top court.

Yeardley: So, like felonies and things?

Simon: Yeah.

Yeardley: Okay. Just for our listeners, a sheriff is a judge in Scotland. Don’t be confused. I know you will be.

[laughter]

Simon: So that was the environment and I started putting drugs cases in. I started arresting people for possession, for supply. An example is the very first drugs case that I did was a man that was supplying to children. He went to court and he got one year in prison for that. And that was unheard of. It sent shockwaves through the community, but it was a shockwave through the police on the island to realize that this was real crime. It was something that they hadn’t been dealing with. I was very busy for that first six months to a year. So, you can imagine my horror when I went to a house one night, probably about midnight, with a warrant, a sheriff’s warrant, and the door opened and a female, I’ll call her Sharon, opened the door and said, “Oh, Mr. McLean, how are you? In you come.

Yeardley: At midnight? Sure, like she was expecting you.

Simon: Oh, and the house was full of smiling faces who were all totally relaxed at the police crashing their party at this time of night. There were no drugs. Probably was cups of tea that they were having, but there was no drugs seized. It was totally [unintelligible ]. So, it gave me pause for thought. And over the course of the next week or so, I realized that we had a leak because every time I executed a warrant, I was expected. So, these sheriff’s warrants were obviously being leaked somewhere. And I must confess, I suspected one of my colleagues was probably doing it. That was my immediate suspicion. Remember, we’re only young men. They probably had friends and family and whatnot that might have been partaking in recreational drugs like that.

I told my detective inspector that worked, three hours away and between us, we set a few traps. We left a few bits of paper lying about and false warrants lying about. Everybody works in the same office. There’s one CID room. I didn’t keep a lock on that room. And what you have to remember is that there are four shifts, so there’s a shift off duty and there are three shifts covering the 8-hour period of any day. So, there’s four pools of suspects, if you like. Between the DI and I, we could rule out the sergeants, we could rule out the senior cops that we knew and had been there for a long time. So, we probably had one suspect on each shift, so we knew who’s on duty at any one time.

So, if I leave something lying on my desk while one shift is on and then I remove it, they’re the only people that have seen that bit of paper lying there. And if I then execute that one two days later, three days later, and nothing’s amiss, then we can start to rule out that suspect. And I’m not saying there’s a corruption here. It could have been loose talk.

Yeardley: Sure, you have too much beer and you’re chatty and you go, “Oh, guess what, we’re doing a raid.”

Simon: Yeah, guess who’s getting raided on Saturday night or whatever, you know. But none of the traps were sprung and I couldn’t pin it on any of my colleagues. [laughs]

Yeardley: Simon, can I ask you how that suspicion of yours was received by your detective Inspector? Because it seems like a big deal to suggest there’s a leak in the department.

Simon: So, him and I were on the same page, right from the word go. He immediately drew up a list of possibles, which was exactly the possibles I had on my list. Young cops, maybe not with a lot of service, maybe still in their first year or two of probation, like to drink, sociable, like to party. We both sought policemen.

Yeardley: Right.

Simon: Thankfully, we were wrong.

Yeardley: How long did you take to set these fake traps to see if anybody was leaking inside the department?

Simon: It probably went on for a month or six weeks, Yeardley.

Paul: So, Simon, I imagine on an island that has had very infrequent or nonexistent enforcement of drugs, [laughs] and now all of a sudden the new guy’s on the island and people are getting jammed up for having weed and people’s doors are getting knocked on in the middle of the night, but they seem to be like, “Hey, we’re expecting you, come on over.” I just imagine in a community like that where you get this shakeup of enforcement, be like, “Who’s this new guy and what does he think he’s doing?”

Yeardley: Sure. Who do you think you are?

Simon: Totally.

Yeardley: So, Simon, you’ve determined that the leak is not within your tiny police department. What do you do next?

Simon: What I did was craved a warrant for the same house, for Sharon’s house, but this time I went with a different kind of warrant. It’s the justice of the peace warrant is what we call it’s a lesser warrant. So, justices of the peace was for minor crimes and the warrant was for stolen property, for a hi-fi stereo system or as my mum would have called it, a record player.

Yeardley: Sure.

[laughter]

My mother had a record player.

[laughter]

Simon: So, that’s what my warrant was for, a stolen music system. And again, we went about midnight, me in two or three uniforms. Because remember, I’m the only detective on the island, so I always needed uniform backup. And we chapped the door and I got a surprised look this time and Sharon said to me, “Mr. McLean, you’re back, there’s no drugs in here.” I said, “I’m not here for drugs, here’s why I’m here.” And I showed her the warrant and there was music playing, so I said, “The music’s too loud, it’s after midnight, you’re causing a disturbance. I’m taking your stereo.” Now that’s really upsetting. When you’ve been at the pub all night, you’re all having a great time, you’re at a party and the music gets taken away by bad Mr. McLean.

But that’s what we did, we took their music and Sharon took her to the police station with her stereo just to have a chat with her out of that environment. And things flip then, Yeardley, Things flip when you go into a police station and sit down. Cautioned her that she wouldn’t be obliged to see anything, anything Sharon does say will be taken down and given in evidence. And my purpose, of course, is to find out how she knew that I was coming looking for drugs. And Sharon told me a story, it had my hair on end.

[Break 1]

And this is what Sharon told me. Sharon met a man in a pub and got on with him really well. He was a lovely guy and when she took him home, she discovered that he was the sheriff clerk in Rothesay Sheriff Court.

Yeardley: Oh.

Simon: And we just call him John. John was the sheriff clerk.

Yeardley: And Simon in this case, clerk is spelled C-L-E-R-K.

Simon: It’s spelled C-L-E-R-K. But he’s the clerk of the court for some reason.

[laughter]

Yeardley: And over here we would call him the clerk of the court. So, he’d be clerk in the US while it’s clerk over by you.

Simon: Yeah, you’re absolutely right.

Yeardley: How old is John, this sheriff clerk?

Simon: I’d day they’re both in the 30s. John and Sharon.

Yeardley: Okay, so he’s young.

Simon: And the sheriff clerk does all the paperwork and does all the administration of the court.

Dave: We have those where we are. It’s basically like the judge’s right hand. They handle the dockets. And while the judge is moving on to the next case, they’re handing out court dates.

Yeardley: I see.

Dave: They make the whole office run.

Simon: Yeah, he’s the hub of the whole court system in there.

Yeardley: Right.

Simon: So, John and Sharon had this relationship. She was saying to him, “Oh, my house got raided or my friend’s house got hit.” And John said, “Maybe I could help you with that because all the warrants come over my desk.”

Yeardley: Wow.

Simon: Now, I didn’t know that, when I craved a warrant, I would phone the procurator fiscal, Caroline would set up a meeting with the sheriff, and Caroline and I would visit the sheriff, and he would swear me in. I would give the oath and swear that the evidence I was giving him was, to the best of my knowledge, true. And he would then sign a warrant or not. But that warrant, then Caroline took it and she put it through her ledger. And the ledger was kept by John, the sheriff clerk. John is one of the only people who’s seen the warrants. So, there was only really four people in the world that knew about the warrant. It was me, the procurator fiscal, the sheriff clerk, and the sheriff himself. So, John was where Sharon was getting her information from.

So, every warrant that I was getting, Sharon would get told about and tell whoever was going to be the recipient. Don’t go home this weekend if you’re using drugs or whatever or don’t have any drugs in the house because that Mr. McLean might be visiting.

[laughter]

Yeardley: Is John new to this job? Is this like a new promotion for him. I’m trying to figure out where, other than, the desire for love and sex from Sharon that would get him to do this thing. How do you compromise your integrity in such a big way?

Simon: I think the motive you gave was perfect. And it’s been the downfall of a lot of men over the years-

[laughter]

-not just sheriff clerk. And I suppose at some point, Sharon had John compromised. I’m speculating now, Yeardley. Sharon knew how to manipulate John. And I dare say she went out her way to do that, to make the sex available on condition.

Yeardley: Sure.

Dan: Simon, I’m curious if you’re executing these warrants and they always seem to be dry holes, are your coworkers, these patrol officers, are they looking at you saying this guy doesn’t know what he’s doing. It’s always a dry hole.

Simon: No, not by that point. If this had happened when I first went to the island, then yeah, because I had to get some credibility when I first went there. But no, my colleagues had no qualms. They knew the same as me that something wasn’t right.

Yeardley: So, Simon, what do you think makes Sharon have this change of heart and basically dime John out?

Simon: I know exactly what it was and it happens a lot of time with interviews. She was bragging.

Yeardley: Oh.

Simon: I remember when tape recorded interviews came in Scotland Yeardley not long after this. And everyone thought, “Oh, that’ll be the end of confession. It will be the of statements by accused. It’ll be the end of admissions.” People admitting things couldn’t be further from the truth. It actually turned out to be a fantastic tool of ours because people could hear it happening because you wouldn’t believe that somebody would be stupid enough to admit it on tape. But you could get them to brag. People tell you for different reasons. Sometimes they’re scared. Sometimes they’re worried about what their co-accused might be saying down the corridor. Sometimes, it’s the rapport between the detective and them that can work, that chemistry can work. And sometimes it’s boasting.

I’ve seen me saying to criminals, “This can’t be interview because you could never pull this off. And you know what’s going to happen then, [Yeardley laughs] you can see it in their face.

Yeardley: How dare you? How dare you diss me.

Simon: Yeah. [laughs] The boys know this is true. Every policeman listening to this knows it’s true.

Dave: 100%.

Simon: But it was the case with Sharon. And part of the trick of interviewing is knowing what type of person you’ve got in front of you. That’s half the battle. And she’s flirting with me.

Yeardley: Sharon is?

Simon: Yeah, she flirts with everyone.

Yeardley: Okay.

Simon: So, there’s a rapport there. And probably my attitude would have been “this will have nothing to do with you, but you know,” so immediately she’s in a quandary. She wants to tell me. She wants to boast that she’s having sex with the sheriff clerk of the court. Sharon told me that she and John had sex in the sheriff’s office. John wore the sheriff’s cloak and wig.

Yeardley: While they had sex.

Simon: Huh huh.

Yeardley: Aye yai ya.

Paul: Am I shocking you here, Yeardley? Is this too much for you?

[laughter]

Yeardley: No, it’s fine. I’m just—People, like people.

Dan: It’s just a little harmless role playing.

Simon: On the sheriff’s desk.

Yeardley: Oh for God’s sake.

Simon: You can imagine the sheriff’s face when they heard all this when you read these comments.

[laughter]

I hope he didn’t have his cloak on when he read that.

Yeardley: Oh, my God.

[laughter]

So, you have this confession basically from Sharon. Obviously, next person you’re going to pursue is John, this sheriff clerk.

Simon: Yeah. Sharon telling me on my own, it’s only of X amount of use. I’ve still got a case to build here. I’ve still got to get some real evidence and I have to go back through the warrants that I craved. So, I’ve got some evidence that the warrants were being leaked, but the only evidence I’ve got that it’s John, is that he’s got the opportunity to leak it because it’s confidential and John knows about it because he’s got it written in his ledger. So, the ledger book is evidence as well. It has to be seized. And the problem here is political as well, Yeardley, because John works for the crime prosecution service in Scotland and it’s the crime prosecution service who prosecute a crime. They do just what it says on the tin.

Every police report goes to the crime prosecution service and their agents locally are the procurator fiscal and the procurator fiscal depute. So, the police can arrest you, charge you, lock you up for a certain period of time, three days, in fact. And within that three days, you must appear at court. That’s a law. And when you appear at court, that’s at the behest of the prosecution service. They’ve read the case. They’ve got the evidence in front of them in black and white. They’ve asked the police about and they have decided to take proceedings. Not the police.

Yeardley: Right. It’s very much, I think, like the DA here in the United States, like, you can have all the evidence in the world, but if the DA decides not to file, the whole thing’s dead in the water.

Simon: That’s it, end of story. And you can’t question that, although I have a couple of times.

[laughter]

But the sheriff clerk is part of that system. John, in this case, he’s employed by them. So, the first thing we had to do was tell his bosses. So, they then made an appointment. They got his union involved, they got a QC involved, a top solicitor in the country. They immediately went down the defensive route of defending John. So, he had no money problems with getting the best defense possible. They set up the appointment when the police would be allowed to speak to him at all. It was all done very forensically, on record, recorded.

But if it wasn’t the sheriff clerk, if it was just Joe Boggs, I would go to his house with another detective and we’d say to him, listen, we’ve got something we need to clear up. It might be nothing and it probably is, but there’s some questions we need to ask you here. And we would know from his demeanor. We would know from his attitude immediately whether he was prepared to chat to us and maybe cooperate with us. And then we would go back to the police station and maybe we’d caution him then, and then have a chat with him. But there was none that ever going to be possible in this case because he represented the crime service itself.

Yeardley: So everybody knows, like the government entity that prosecutes crimes, all know that John is on the hook for leaking information. Is there also a taboo against John having an affair with Sharon?

Simon: He wouldn’t be supposed to fraternize that community the way that he was. But I’ve got no knowledge of that Yeardley because it’s at a political level. It’s not government. I dare say the government would be consulted in some shape or form down the line, but the prosecution service is impartial of government.

Yeardley: Oh.

Simon: It’s impartial supposedly.

Yeardley: That would be like the Justice Department in the United States is supposed to be a separate independent agency from the other arms of government.

Simon: Yes. Totally in Scotland, totally.

Yeardley: Yeah.

Dave: Simon’s right. In theory, none of this should matter, but it’s real life.

Yeardley: Well, it’s human beings.

Simon: Yeah. And nobody’s going to tell a DC and Rothesay what they’re thinking about it.

Yeardley: Right.

Simon: He’s just the idiot that caused this.

[laughter]

Yeardley: How dare you turn over that stone, Simon.

[laughter]

Simon: Yeah, and that’s how I felt at the time. But once you start, where does it end?

Yeardley: You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube, as we say.

Simon: So piecing the bits together, the statements of all the cops, the factuals about the warrants, they all had to be produced as evidence. All the research into the warrants I’d craved and the addresses we had executed them all of that had to be gathered together to make the case. And statement from Caroline, who was our procurator fiscal. Caroline and I had to go through to Edinburgh to be precognosed. It’s a stage of our proceedings where witnesses can go and be interviewed informally to find out what their evidence is going to before it goes to trial. So, all of that has to take place in this climate of nobody really wants this case to go to court. But there was enough evidence out of all of that to go to court. They had to go to court.

If they hadn’t, then they would have been seen to be whitewashing because there was enough evidence to go to court. Sharon had stood up and she told them what she told me. Sharon was always going to be the linchpin here. If she could stand up in court and tell the court what she told me, then we had a chance of a conviction.

[Break 2]

So, the case was standing up at this stage and it was scheduled for the High Court in Paisley, just outside Glasgow. The High Court was a trial. The sheriff clerk’s lawyer was the QC that I mentioned.

Yeardley: Does the QC have a name?

Simon: Ian Hamilton, top lawyer. Sadly, gone now. Ian was top notch. He was regarded as one of the top in Scotland at the time. He’s the guy that stole the Stone of Destiny. I don’t know if you’re aware of that story.

Yeardley: Actually, as luck would have it, your friend and ours, Tom Wood, is telling us the story of the Stone of Destiny on our Superfam Feed this week.

Simon: Tom will tell you all about that. He was probably there.

[laughter]

And you can tell him I said. In fact, please tell him I said that.

[laughter]

Yeardley: We’ll send him a text right away. [Simon laughs] So, Simon John’s case goes to trial.

Simon: Yeah, High Court, highest court in the land. And we all had to travel across for the court, which lasted three days. And I had never given evidence in the High Court at this time. This is my first High Court case.

Dave: Simon, you’re the only one who knows the case from soup to nuts, really, because you were there for these empty search warrant services. But what are the main points in the trial that you remember?

Simon: That’s a very interesting question because I wasn’t the first witness. You know, it’s done chronologically where you would start at the beginning with warrants being issued. So, the procurator fiscal, Caroline, gave her evidence. So, the scene is kind of set before I come in. After the scene was set, Sharon was brought in and she was in the witness box the whole day. In fact, she was kept in the witness box until about an hour before the end of that day’s proceedings. Now, to put you and the listeners into the picture, I’ve got no idea what Sharon’s saying. All the witnesses are kept out. You can’t sit in the court and listen to other witnesses. So, we’re all in one room, all the prosecution witnesses and none of us had got any idea what’s going on in the courtroom.

Sharon was in the box all that time and I had no idea what had gone on. And then I was brought in immediately after her and Mr. Hamilton started to go through my evidence.

Yeardley: This guy, Ian Hamilton, is the defense lawyer?

Simon: Yes.

Yeardley: Ian is defending John?

Simon: That’s correct. Sometimes the big shots like Ian Hamilton are a wee bit arrogant and he was. But more so than normal, he was rude, he was looking for laughs from the court as well. It’s a very difficult place to do that. But he’s so experienced and so well regarded and knows the sheriff, probably went to law school with the sheriff and he knows how to work a jury as well, so he’s having fun.

Yeardley: Ian is walking all over you.

Simon: Yeah, totally. I could sense there was something not right. And come 4 o’clock, he comes out with a bombshell when he asks the sheriff for me to be detained overnight.

Yeardley: 1What?

Simon: Yeah. Ian Hamilton asked for me to be detained overnight because he wanted to ask me about things and he thought that I might have got wind of it and he doesn’t want me colluding with any of my colleagues or the witness who’s just left the witness box, Sharon. Ian knew this was a nonstarter, but for the jury it’s a different ball game entirely. This is lay people who have no experience of court or police or solicitors of the system. But it was all part of Ian’s tactics. I seem to remember his Lordship almost smiling when he told him where to go. And he’d see us at 9 o’clock the next morning.

And when we came out, it was obvious that I was going to be the target the next morning. Nobody would look at me. Ian had convinced everybody that I had done something or been party to something that was either really illegal or totally off the wall immoral.

Yeardley: Simon, you suspect that Ian divulged this information to whoever was in the courtroom while you were in the room sequestered, not allowed to hear what was happening in the courtroom?

Simon: Yes. That whole day I could sense, even entrapped in the prosecution room, any feedback that was coming from the court over lunch or whatever, the whole thing was about me.

Yeardley: Oh.

Simon: You know, because everybody immediately thinks there must be something real, it must be something tangible for one of the top lawyers in the country to be focusing on this and my trial. But it’s just a tight take, that’s all it is.

Dan: If you watch any high-profile case on Court TV, a lot of attorneys have made their living on these high-profile cases and you see it in every one of them, they turn it into a circus and they’re the ringleader.

Yeardley: Right. And it’s all about distraction. Look away from my client. The case is weak, but look over here.

Simon: Yeah. I’ll tell you how good Ian was. I began to doubt myself. I was thinking, there must be something I’ve missed here. I don’t think I slept very much that night, but I went through the notes, I spoke to people, I made phone calls, trying to find what it might be. The weakness that he had found or something incriminating in there that he had found. At that point, I’m thinking, my job’s on the line.

Dan: So, how does day 2 go?

Simon: Day 2 is fascinating. The whole Paisley High Court has turned into a circus. There’s media outside with all the cameras and microphones and lights. And I’m thinking there’s something else going on, a murder trial or something. It wasn’t, it was for her trial because Mr. Hamilton had summoned them. You can imagine the power these guys have if he lifts the phone and says, “I’ve got a story here, but you need to be at the High Court.” They were there. And I’m next. I’m back in the witness box. I’ve got no problem confessing that I’m an absolute wreck by this point. Real wreck. Okay? And I’ve got nobody backing me up. Everybody’s deserted the ship by this point. Because they think there must be something too.

Ian had everyone convinced that I was going to leave the court in handcuffs utmost and certainly totally discredited at best. So, I was on my own. And I’ll never forget that, Yeardley, that when you really put in a hard place like that, you are on your own. You only get your own wits to depend on. You can’t rely on anybody else being there. So, I go in the witness box. Ian Hamilton starts over from his antics. So, he keeps it going until maybe half 11, 12 o’clock. We would normally adjourn at 1 o’clock. And he’s got his press there, he’s got everything in place and he’s teed me up nicely. Ian has me exactly where he wants me and he makes an allegation. Now, I need to tell you a wee bit of the background here.

Sharon had been involved with the police maybe three or four years prior to me going to Rothesay. She had a baby that died in suspicious circumstances and there was a court case and her then partner was convicted of manslaughter. And Sharon turned Queen’s evidence as it was then he got locked up and she didn’t. So that’s Sharon’s background story. The slight problem for me was the detective on the island when that happened was called McLean.

Yeardley: Oh, no. Same as you.

Simon: Yes. So, Mr. Hamilton, clever that he is, had put two and two together and got seven or eight or nine, because he assumed that Detective McLean, who had been on the island and involved in that case, was the same McLean that he had in front of them in Paisley High Court. i.e., me. So, here’s how he put it to me. This is possibly verbatim. I put it to you, DC McLean, that during the course of this inquiry three years ago, you and Sharon struck up a relationship, that you’ve been seeing her ever since then and that you’ve both colluded here against my clients.

Yeardley: Shut up.

Dan: This is going to be so great.

Yeardley: A kangaroo couldn’t make a leap that big.

Dave: None of us are surprised, though, right? We know exactly what’s going on here, and it’s going to be great when the hammer drops.

Simon: Well, it wasn’t. It wasn’t, guys, I’m sorry. It’s one of the biggest regrets of my career.

[Break 3]

So, Ian had his audience. Right after Ian’s story about me and Sharon’s relationship, there was that silence again. And all the journalists have got their pens ready, the cameras are probably rolling. But the relief for me was absolutely incredible because this was Ian’s big play. And one of the biggest regrets of my career is that I immediately said, “I’m sorry, guys, that was a different DC McLean. That wasn’t me, that was DC Robert McLean. I didn’t move to Rothesay until 1983. And that was the case finished. The bubble was burst. Everybody looked at each other and all the journalists left. All the cameras disappeared.

And remember, Sharon had been in the witness box, but Ian hadn’t asked her about that, but he’d got her to talk about DC McLean. So, he had just got it entirely wrong. And I let him off the hook totally. So, I never got a hammer drop because I jumped in and said, “Oh, Mr. Hamilton, you’ve got this all wrong.” And my biggest regret is that I played it that way, but I was so relieved.

Dave: In retrospect, when you talk about a regret, you’re wishing you would have let him ask six or seven more questions and really commit to it. And then you shoot it all down.

Simon: Yeah. You know, I’d have pretended that he was onto something.

Yeardley: Well, I would say, while you didn’t have, the wherewithal, because you were so relieved that this guy Ian is talking about a different McLean, Ian’s credibility is now seriously undermined. The fact that you haven’t done enough good research, due diligence, to figure out, “Oh, there was another McLean on the island before our man Simon arrived.” Like, fuck you. That is some sloppy work, my friend.

Simon: But these guys do it all the time. It doesn’t matter whether they get a result or not, they’ve been paid. He would get paid fortunes for that trial and he’d try any tactics whatsoever and he probably wins. Well, he did win, because the biggest mistake I made was being scared and losing focus on why I was there in the first place. Ian got me in a defensive position where my only concern was me. I got myself off the hook and was totally relieved. It’s only with hindsight, I look back and think there was 15 members of a jury sitting there who had also been led down this path, and all I did was tell them he was wrong.

I could have led him down a different path myself to get it back onto the case again, to tell the jury what Ian just tried to do. And why would he try to do that if it was an innocent man standing before them? But I never got a chance to get back to the case or to let him dig the hole deeper, Yeardley. I just blurted out my innocence. The case folded after that. John got not proven. There wasn’t enough evidence because Ian put that doubt in the jury’s mind. And it turned out that Sharon had been hopeless in the witness box as well.

She had prevaricated, she had told lies, she had contradicted herself, she couldn’t get her story straight, she’d be shown off again and that would play right into the hands of somebody like Hamilton, who only had one motive anyway, was to get my name brought out in the court. So, between the two of them, they managed to mess the whole case up. The punchline was that I came out the witness box and I walked across towards the gate that takes you out. And my detective inspector was standing there, Roddy, and he took me by the arm, he grabbed the cuff of my wrist, of my suit, and he said, “Are you okay?” And I said, “Yeah, I’m fine.” He said, “Okay, come with me.”

And held it as we walked down the corridor to go out, and who’s coming the other way but Mr. Hamilton and his entourage. These guys have always got four or five people with them. And he comes sweeping up the corridor with his cloak out, and he smiles broadly to me and he says, “DC McLean. Oh, was that your first time in the High Court?” And I said, “Yes, it was, sir.” And he said, well, “You’ve been well blooded.”

Yeardley: Oh, my God.

Simon: And then I realized why the DI was holding my wrist. Because he was scared, I would punch him.

[laughter]

And he just pulled me away. “Come on, Simon. Let’s go.” But Hamilton would have forgotten about that within 10 minutes. Move on, next one.

Simon: Yeah.

Yeardley: At least tell me that John, the clerk loses his job.

Simon: He didn’t lose his job. No. He got moved away from Rothesay, thankfully. But I know for a fact that he didn’t lose his job.

Yeardley: What the–That’s like moving a priest who’s abused his congregation just to another church.

Dave: Yeah. Nowadays, John would have been suspended when the first allegation came up from Simon. But police departments do it all the time. Where you get promoted out of responsibility for a certain area, you go up, failing upward.

Simon: [laughs] Yeah. That’s how you get rid of problems. You promote them. That’s how Tom Wood became deputy chief.

[laughter]

I don’t think you should tell him I said that.

[laughter]

Dan: What’s life like back in Rothesay after this trial has ended with an acquittal?

Simon: Nothing dramatic about it at all. I think a good laugh. I think the community thought it was all very funny because everybody knew then. Remember, small town community. They knew Sharon, they knew her history. They knew about the baby and all the rest of it. So, there was no surprises in the town. And possibly the nuances of this case are probably more poignant for police officers or for anyone who’s given evidence in the witness box. Because it’s the loneliest place in the world, Yeardley.

Yeardley: I bet. I’m disappointed that as this rumor that Ian has spread of you hooking up with Sharon, everybody who had been on your side abandons you. I don’t like that.

Simon: I didn’t like it either. But it was a big lesson.

Yeardley: Simon, I’m really disappointed and discouraged in the system that this guy, Ian Hamilton, who was the lawyer for the defense for John, I mean, obviously he wants to get his client off. Not only did he get not guilty verdict for John, he threatened to ruin your reputation, possibly put you in jail. The whole thing is so dirty to me, it’s fucking dirty.

Simon: I think it’s good that we’re talking about it, Yeardley, because I think it’s a big misconception out in the world from your listeners as well, who like the criminal world to talk about it and learn about it and these nuances of the criminal world and police work in particular. And every cop knows, and it’s a fact, it’s not a theory, that when you go in there to present your case, and the bigger the case, the more true this is. The defense team will grasp at anything to discredit you, to put doubt in the minds of the jury and to get the client off on a majority, minority verdict. Whatever it takes. Whatever it takes. The gloves are really hard off. And that’s why as cops, we talk so much about preserving evidence, about recording evidence, about being meticulous with everything we do.

Because at some point you’re going to be forensically tested in the cold light of a court of law. With these guys up against you, it was almost standard to get told. I put it to you, Detective Inspector, that you’re lying. That’s common practice in court. I wish I’d pound for every time I’ve been told that in front of a jury. But as you get older and more experienced, you learn to look at the jury and not look at him and reiterate what you’ve just said and not take a step back, take a step forward. That’s what I always used to say to myself.

Paul: You mentioned that you have a regret in terms of how you responded to Ian. The reality was you’re 26 years old, testifying for the first time in High Court, nervous just because of that.

Yeardley: Right. It was your first time and you’re super nervous. And what’s the takeaway? I hope it helped you trust your instincts because you were right about John committing this crime all along, even though he’s found not guilty.

Simon: Yeah. When Ian said to me in the corridor, you’ve been well blooded, that was probably him doing me a favor, Yeardley, because that was him telling me that this place that we were in is actually a theater. It’s actually a game to these guys. None of them are ever going to go to jail, that’s for sure. He’s making big bucks regardless. The truth of the matter is that it’s a job to them, it’s a money-making business to them. But that’s the way it was and the way it probably still is.

Yeardley: Right. Well, it’s a job well done even though, I got all riled up.

[laughter]

Simon: You would have punched him.

Yeardley: I would have. I would have climbed out of that witness box and said, “Come here, you.”

[laughter]

Oh, Simon, it’s great to see you. Your stories always have a fantastic twist to them. It’s just lovely to have you on the microphone again. Thank you.

Simon: Yeah, it’s great to be here. Great fun. The time flies, doesn’t it?

Yeardley: Yeah, it does.

Dave: Job well done. I’m not terribly surprised about some of the things that we heard today.

Yeardley: I’m the only one.

[laughter]

Paul: No, I think it’s a great example of a battle scar, Simon, that you got early on in your career and it’s something that you learned from and you improved from. We all have those types of experiences. And as long as you pay attention and you recognize this is what I’m going to be confronted with and this is how I’m going to have to deal with it moving forward.

Simon: And it gives you then an understanding of all your job. Because as Yeardley pointed out, when I was doubting myself, what was I doubting? Was I doubting the drug’s job at all? Should I be chasing drugs? Should I be doing this? Should I be doing? What I realized was I was having a profound effect, that it was having an effect on the community that I was serving within and shaking cages all over the place that I wasn’t even aware of. So, it gave me a value in doing the job and doing to the best of my ability.

Yeardley: Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Paul: Even though the case was not proven against John, John was removed from his position, sent back to wherever it was. Sharon lost her source of information and therefore the criminal community that Sharon was informing on, they lost the leads. And so, your job may have been more effective as a result.

Yeardley: That’s well said, Paul. I feel a little bit better.

Dave: Yeah. And this is like marijuana and record players.

[laughter]

Yeardley: Thank you, Simon, so much.

Simon: At least I didn’t say gramophone.

Yeardley: Small Town Dicks was created by Detectives Dan and Dave. The podcast is produced by Jessica Halstead and me, Yeardley Smith. Our senior editor is Soren Begin and our editors are Christina Bracamontes. Our associate producers are the Real Nick Smitty and Erin Gaynor. Logan Heftel is our production manager. Our books are cooked and cats wrangled by Ben Cornwell. And our social media maven is Monika Scott. It would make our day if you became a member of our Small Town Fam by following us on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube at @smalltowndicks, we love hearing from you.

Oh, our groovy theme song was composed by John Forrest. Also, if you’d like to support the making of this podcast, go to smalltowndicks.com/superfam and hit that little join button. There, for a small subscription fee, you’ll find exclusive content you can’t get anywhere else.

The transcripts of this podcast are thanks to SpeechDocs and they can be found on our website, smalltowndicks.com. Thank you SpeechDocs for this wonderful service. Small Town Dicks is an Audio 99 Production. Small Town Fam, thanks for listening. Nobody is better than you.

[Transcript provided by SpeechDocs Podcast Transcription]