FOUR former detectives who worked on the Emma Caldwell murder probe told of their worries over how a top cop handled the original botched enquiry.
The ex-detectives broke their silence to reveal the evidence against Iain Packer was known to the then Strathclyde Police since 2005.
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But they said senior investigating officers were blinkered to Packer’s involvement and instead turned their attention to four Turks who were wrongly charged with murder.
We told earlier how Packer was finally convicted of Emma’s death.
Speaking to the BBC, former detective sergeant Willie Mason said: “They couldn’t lose face.
“If they were to turn around and say, ‘We have made a mistake here. We’ve spent all this public money’, their careers would have been finished and they knew that so they bluffed it out.”
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Another former cop Stuart Hall told how he was brushed off when he asked for Packer to be made a suspect.
The retired detective constable said: “There was identification there.
“Several girls had picked him out of the photographs. He is admitting more and more.
“So I phoned Willie Johnston who was the senior investigation officer and I said to him, ‘I want to detain Iain Packer for the murder of Emma Caldwell’.
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“To which he replied, ‘Do not detain him. He is not our man. Release him’.”
Ex-detective David Barr recounted what happened after he had been told to bring Packer in to give one of the several statements he gave to police.
Mr Barr recalled: “And I’m told at that point, ‘Davie, when you get Iain Packer and bring him in it doesn’t matter what he tells you, he won’t be an accused ever in this case’.”
When asked by journalist Sam Polling who told him that, he replied: “The SIO, Willie Johnston”.
Mr Barr went on to say: “I phoned Wilie Johnston, the boss, at home and gave him the information that Iain Packer has had Emma Caldwell at the deposition site.
“He just relays what he told me previously, ‘Davie, I told you at the start of the week he would never be an accused.”
Another former detective sergeant Mick McCarron added: “There were loads of good people on that enquiry – colleagues of mine who identified him in the enquiry – the mistakes were made elsewhere.”
Mr Johnston – who retired as a detective superintendent in 2014 – declined to provide a statement to the BBC.