Woman who says dad murdered Moira Anderson claims body may be 'buried in mine'

Calls are mounting for police to launch a new search for thebody of a schoolgirl murdered nearly 70 years ago.

Sandra Brown believes her father Alexander Gartshore may have murdered Moira Anderson, 11, back in 1957 and claims to have fresh information of the whereabouts of her body.

Sandra - who first accused her father in her book, Where There Is Evil - says an informant told her that Moira's body was dumped in a disused mineshaft in Blairhill, Coatbridge.

She said: “There are public records and these show that only a very small number of the shafts were accessible. It’s also known that the area was near a bus-route that my father drove on, and calculations can be made about which shafts were most likely to be reached safely from the road, and presumably in darkness.

“If you assume that he and any accomplice would not want to be seen from the road but might need enough light to see what they were doing, it might be possible to narrow it to one or two shafts.

“Then it would be a matter of checking records to see if they were accessible in 1957.”

The details have been passed to police, claims Sandra, by an associate of Gartshore’s fellow suspect, James Gallogley. Bus driver Gartshore and church elder Gallogley are both now dead but are strongly suspected of involvement in Moira’s murder in Coatbridge.

Moira’s sister Janet, 81, who lives in Australia, welcomed the new information and said her family are still desperate to know where Moira’s remains are, reports the Daily Record.

She said: “It’s amazing that even after all this time, information still comes forward. I still believe there is someone alive who could lead the police very close to the spot and I’d appeal to anyone who could help us to share that information.

"It’s nearly 70 years and I still feel the pain every day of her life being cut short and her body lying unfound. It’s tragic. I pray every night she’ll be found in my lifetime so I can give my sister the Christian burial she deserves.”

Sandra added: “In February next year it will be 69 years since Moira vanished, and it’s understandable the police tend to devote its finite resources to more recent crimes. But Moira’s disappearance affected an entire community. I remember it when I was growing up. Moira would have been 80 this year and Janet is 81."

"Their parents died without knowing what happened to her. They left a light on every night to guide her home and we don’t want it extinguished until every effort possible has been made to find her.”

Gallogley is said to have confessed to the murder to a cellmate at Peterhead Prison while serving a sentence for sex attacks on five girls. He died from stomach cancer aged 68 in April 1999.

Gallogley is said to have admitted that he had helped Gartshore and another man who had abducted and abused Moira to dispose of her after she had died “by accident”.

The new information suggests Gallogley had shown a relative where they disposed of her.

Detective Superintendent Colin Hailstones said: “Any new information we receive relating to Moira’s case will be fully assessed and investigated.”