Patricia Black went missing in 1976 and her younger brother Alan Black is still looking for answers 50 years later.
The brother of a woman whose disappearance has been linked to serial killer Angus Sinclair has made a dramatic plea for help in solving the case 50 years after she went missing. Patricia Black, then 22, was last seen standing at a bus stop in the Ayrshire town of Irvine on her way home to her parents in neighbouring Saltcoats but was never seen again.
Retired bus driver Alan Black is convinced there are people still alive who know what happened to his ‘ big sister’ and has urged them to come forward and finally break their 50 year silence. In recent years Patricia’s disappearance has been linked to Sinclair who was convicted in 2014 of the World’s End murders of Helen Scott and Christine Eadie in October, 1977.
Police have always believed that Sinclair who died in prison in 2019 had other victims, particularly from around that time. However Alan is convinced that the person responsible for his sisters disappearance is a local man who she met that day in Irvine and not Sinclair.
He added: “I would like to give my sister a decent burial, somewhere I can go and talk to her. The worst part is not knowing where she is is or what happened to her.
“I still get emotional now even when I think of it. I think of her every day.
“Someone out there knows something. If you have murdered a person you couldn’t keep that quiet. You couldn’t keep that in your head all these years without telling someone like a a partner or best mate.”
Three weeks after Patricia’s disappearance police found her handbag in the River Irvine in an area of the town called the Moor, about five minutes walk from the bus stop where she had last been seen. Patricia, one of five siblings, left the family home, on Friday, October 8, 1976 to go to meet a friend in the Turf Hotel in Irvine and stayed overnight in the town with the pal at their home.
The factory worker phoned her mother Janet the following day to say she would be home that evening. It that was the last the family ever heard from her. Alan, who has six kids and five grandkids and now lives in nearby Stevenston, was about to turn 18 when Patricia vanished.
He had passed his driving test and was excited at the prospect of taking his sister to the hotel that evening. She invited him in for a drink but Alan declined. Something which he now regrets.
Alan, who believes his sister was murdered, added: “I am sorry about it now. I now feel as if I had gone in with her that evening everything would have changed and she would still have been here. All her movements would have been different.
“My mother and father are dead and my two brothers are dead. When I talk about them I am fine.
“For some reason when I talk about Tricia I break down down. I don’t know what happenned to her or where she is now.”
Alan’s departing words to Patricia were “goodnight” and “enjoy yourself”. It was the last time he saw her.
Alan says the local police were slow to react in the early days of the inquiry believing that she was staying with with someone or had gone away of her own free will. However the police investigation was stepped up three weeks after she went missing when the handbag was found in the River Irvine weighted down by stones. Her purse was also missing.
Alan added: “The fact that it was weighted down meant someone was trying to hide it. The police thought she had met someone or runaway but but Patricia wasn’t like that.
“She wasn’t the type of lassie that just disappears. She wouldn’t go away even for a few nights without telling her mum.
“If the police had acted had acted quicker at the time they might have found more evidence.”
Alan believes that his sister’s body was dumped in the river, which had a strong tidal current, and she was swept out to sea. The last official sighting of Patricia was around 5pm on Saturday October 9, at the bus stop in Irvine’s Eglinton Street opposite the Turf Hotel where she had been the previous evening.
Their father John passed away aged 65 in 1979 followed by wife Janet, 76, in 1990 without knowing what had happened to their daughter. Alan added: “The family accepted Tricia was dead quite early.
“We knew something had happened to her. She was a popular lassie with lots of friends.
“All my mother and father ever wanted was for a body to be found to give her a decent burial. That’s all that I want. The truth. Answers.”
A month after her disappearance a 21 year old man from Irvine gave an interview to the Daily Record and admitted that he had walked Patricia to the bus stop before heading to a local jewellery shop to buy a Christmas present for his wife.
The man and three pals had earlier met Patricia and her friend in the local shopping centre in Irvine around 4pm.
He then continued walking with Patricia after her friend and the other three men had gone home. The 21-year-old labourer, who had a young son at the time, said: “I have not slept much since I was told she had vanished.
“That was the first day I had met her and when I walked her to the bus stop we were both in a cheery mood. The last thing she said to me was that she was going home to her parents.
“Since I heard of her mystery disappearance I have gone out of my way to help in the search.”
Six months earlier a four year old boy Sandy Davidson had vanished from outside his home in Irvine but the two cases were never linked. To this day both Sandy and Patricia remain missing. Since her disappearance Alan has never given up hope the case will be solved although he has been told that the local man he does suspect is now dead.
He added: “There are people out there still alive who know something. I have been hoping for 50 years for someone to come forward.
“It is not too late. Somebody is holding back that is for sure. Put things to rest, now is the time.”
Police Scotland were contacted for comment.
Angus Sinclair has been linked over the years with as many as nine unsolved murders including the disappearance of Patricia Black. In 2004 Operation Trinity was launched by three Scottish police forces to investigate whether Sinclair was responsible for the specific unsolved murders of six women from 1977.
Improved DNA profiling techniques had linked Sinclair to the 1978 murder of teenager Mary Gallacher in Springburn, Glasgow for which he was convicted in 2001 and sentenced to life. At the time he was serving a life sentence imposed in 1982 for a series of sex attacks on young girls in Glasgow while working as a painter and decorator.
One of the cases which was reinvestigated was that of two teenagers Helen Scott and Christine Eadie who had gone missing in October, 1977 after spending the evening in Edinburgh’s World’s End bar. Three others were Anna Kenny, Hilda McAuley and Agnes Cooney who had been murdered that same year in a three-month period after meeting their killer on nights out in Glasgow.
Operation Trinity also identified Sinclair as a possible suspect for the 1977 murder of Frances Barker from Maryhill, Glasgow even though another man was serving time for the killing. Sinclair was convicted of the murders of 17 year old’s Helen and Christine in 2014 at the High Court in Edinburgh and sentenced again to life.
However much of the evidence from the cases of Anna Kenny, Hilda McAuley, and Agnes Cooney was said to have been lost or damaged and Sinclair was never charged with them Sinclair has also been suspected of the murder of amateur porn movie maker Eddie Cotogno at his home in Dumbarton in 1979, 25 year old mother of four Helen Kane, 24, in Edinburgh in 1970 and the disappearance of Patricia Black in 1976.
He died in Glenochil Prison seven years ago without ever confessing to the remaining unsolved cases.
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