John Coughlan murder: Shocking tale of how Glasgow cops found killer Michael Topham

It’s the only case where a suspect confessed to murder even though there was no body.

It’s also the only homicide where the killer claimed to have heard his victim’s voice from beyond the grave.

Michael Topham was caught purely by chance while detectives from the Strathclyde Serious Crime Squad were investigating a series of jewellery thefts in Pollokshaws.

People’s homes were being broken into in the spring of 1980 while they were at work.

The cops, as is normal practice, checked on known local burglars but there was no evidence linking them to the crimes.

An undercover operation was launched one afternoon using an unmarked police car and detectives in plain clothes in a bid to trap the robber.

They spotted one youth acting suspiciously and saw that he was also carrying a heavy-looking bag – one which the officers were hoping was carrying his housebreaking equipment.

They jumped from their unmarked police car, arrested the youth and looked inside his bag.

What they found was even more than they expected. To their astonishment it was full of jewellery.

However, their suspect admitted under questioning that the jewellery had in fact been stolen from houses in the north side of the city.

He’d been simply waiting to hand over the stolen items to a “fence” – or resetter, as they are known in Scotland.

The detectives checked the items in the bag and they did not match the items that had been stolen on the South Side.

However, the youth was still facing some jail time for being caught in possession of stolen goods.

Back at the police station the young suspect asked the detectives if they might go easier on him if he told them of a more serious crime.

His father had said that if he was ever arrested he should always offer up some information to the police about an unsolved crime in the hope of avoiding charges on the less serious matter.

The officer in charge of the case, Detective Sergeant Bryan McLaughlin, jokingly asked the youth if he was going to help them solve a murder.

To their astonishment he said yes – and to their even greater surprise it was a murder they didn’t know about.

The youth had been working with a tradesman called Michael Topham on a house renovation and they had been listening to a radio programme about seances and life after death.

The presenter played a selection of voices he claimed were from the afterlife.

Topham told the suspect that he thought one of the voices he had just heard on the radio was of a man he had murdered.

DS Mclaughlin thought the youth was bluffing them, particularly as he had no name for the victim or date for the murder.

There were no unsolved murders or even deaths on the books that matched what he was telling them.

However, the young man had given them enough information to track down the address in the West End where the murder was supposed to have taken place.

It appeared that Topham had murdered another colleague while working on a customer’s house in Knightswood.

They went to the house and the owner gave them the names of contractors who had worked on his property.

One of the builders said that a former employee, John Coughlan, had gone missing five years earlier.

Coughlan, 57, a family man from Blantyre, had left home in 1975 and never returned.

His wife Eleanor had reported him missing at the time but police drew a blank in their search for him.

So rather than being a murder victim he was technically a missing person.

A forensic search was done of the flat where the fatal attack was said to have taken place and bloodstains found on the floorboard matched Topham’s blood group.

Michael Topham was brought in for questioning and eventually admitted to murdering Coughlan with a hammer and a lead weight taken from a sash window that he was repairing.

It turned out that Coughlan was a caretaker for the contractor who looked after empty houses being renovated.

He had confronted Topham after catching him stealing paint from a building site in Glasgow where they both worked.

After the attack Topham took the body in his car to his grandmother’s house in Aberdeenshire, hiding it in a septic tank.

Topham told police he then buried John in Alltcailleach Forest on the A93 between Braemar and Crathie, next to the Queen’s estate.

However, weeks of searching by police, trained dogs and military thermal imaging equipment failed to locate the body.

Topham was charged with murder and a second man was charged with helping him to dispose of the body.

The case when it came to court made legal history.

He pleaded guilty at the High Court in Glasgow on September 8, 1980, and was given life imprisonment. 

READ MORE: Appeal for body of man missing for 45 years

It was the first time that an accused had confessed to murder where the victim’s body was still missing.

The second man’s plea of not guilty was accepted.

Topham was freed from prison 11 years later in 1991 and died in 1999.

More than 40 years later John Coughlan’s body is yet to be found.

A new investigation was launched in 2018 after human remains were found on the Invercauld Estate, where the Alltcailleach Forest is sited, but there was no match with the missing caretaker.

Topham died in 1999, taking the location of his victim’s body to his grave.

The case has echoes of the murder of Edinburgh office worker Suzanne Pilley 30 years later.

Her body was dumped in the Argyll Forest in May 2010 but despite extensive searches has never been found.

Work colleague and former lover David Gilroy was given life for her murder later that year at the High Court in Edinburgh.

At the time of the hunt for Suzanne 10 years ago, members of Mr Coughlan’s family said they were still haunted by his murder.

They also admitted that the Suzanne Pilley case had brought painful memories flooding back.

John Coughlan’s wife Eleanor died never knowing what happened to his remains.

The man who brought Topham to justice, Bryan McLaughlin, retired in 1997 at the rank of Detective Inspector.

Now 74, Bryan said: “John Coughlan’s killer may never have been caught had it not been for these jewellery thefts, which in many ways was a stroke of luck for the police.

“He had been reported missing five years earlier and there was no suggestion at the time that he’d come to harm.

Michael Topham

“Our suspect and Topham were working together on a house and listening to a programme about the afterlife.

“The presenter claimed to have recorded voices from beyond the grave which he then played.

“He was so shocked that he even fell off the trellis he was standing on.

“That was when he broke down and told the the colleague he’d heard the voice of a man he had murdered.

“Topham genuinely believed he was being taunted by the victim – over the radio.”

While a separate police team searched for the victim’s body, Topham was interviewed and charged with the killing by DS McLaughlin.

Bryan added: “At first we thought the lad was stalling for time when he told us this incredible tale but to his credit it all checked out.

“I’m not sure why Topham confessed to him as they were not particularly friendly.

“It may have been a boast. Human nature is incredibly complex.

“As far as I could make out he was just pleased to get it off his chest.

“He wasn’t known to the police and to all intent and purposes was a law-abiding citizen

“It made legal history at the time and in a busy career in the police it was definitely one that stood out.”

More than 40 years later the location of John Coughlan’s body still remains a mystery.

Bryan added: “I hope the victim’s remains will be found one day and his family finally given the chance to lay him to rest.”