Glasgow Crime Stories: Family recall hurt years after killing of Jamie Campbell

In 1987, when only 11 weeks old, his mother Elizabeth Gallagher died in a fire at the family home in Knightswood, Glasgow.

She left behind four children, who all survived the blaze including Jamie.

There was no question of him being fostered or adopted by strangers as he had a large and loving family.

His aunt and uncle Kim and Robert Gallagher took Jamie and his three siblings to live with them at their home in the sprawling Drumchapel housing estate.

Kim, who was a nurse, and Robert, a driver, brought up the four orphans alongside their own two children.

Life slowly but surely began to get better for wee Jamie, who the couple treated as their own son.

Then one Friday morning on August 24, 1990, Jamie was suddenly taken from them.

He had been playing in the front garden of his grandmother’s home in Tallant Terrace in Drumchapel around 10am.

He was a mischievous but well-behaved boy who didn’t wander, but when his gran looked out of the window he was gone.

There was a catch on the gate to make sure that Jamie didn’t stray. So, where the hell was he?

Panic stricken, the grandmother alerted family, friends and neighbours.

It quickly emerged that some people had spotted a crying Jamie being led to Garscadden Burn in Drumchapel’s Bluebell Woods by an older boy, aged around 11.

One local woman had become suspicious of the older boy’s behaviour and followed him to the woods which was around 600 yards from the grandmother’s house.

Her natural concern increased when she saw the 11-year-old emerge on his own.

The same woman discovered Jamie lying face down over a large stone with 14 wounds to his head and neck.

He had been pummelled with stones and sticks and then drowned.

By this time frantic family members were looking for him and Kim and Robert had both been called from work.

The mystery boy with Jamie was quickly identified as Richard Keith who lived locally.

He was arrested by police around 12 noon calmly sitting on a play park swing watching the emergency services at the murder scene.

One officer asked him why he wasn’t at school and became suspicious when he saw he was wet and dishevelled.

Keith said he hadn’t felt well and had got wet from jumping in a puddle, none of which the cop believed.

Around 6pm that night, Robert and Kim were officially told that Jamie had been murdered and Keith was taken into custody.

In January 1991, at the High Court in Edinburgh, he was found guilty of the reduced charge of culpable homicide after a four-day trial.

Jamie’s family weren’t allowed into court until after the trial had finished in case their presence influenced the jury.

Keith was ordered to be detained without limit of time by Judge Lord Sutherland, who described the attack as sheer wickedness.

At the age of 11, Keith had become Scotland’s youngest convicted killer.

He was sent to Kerelaw Secure Unit in Stevenston, Ayrshire, a residential school which held children convicted of serious crimes.

Jamie’s family have always believed that the fatal attack on Jamie could have been avoided.

On the night of his death a local mother had gone to Kim and Robert’s home in tears with an incredible story.

She claimed that Keith had attacked her three-year-old son in Bluebell Woods only weeks earlier.

However, the charges had been dropped by the procurator fiscal because of a lack of evidence.

Instead, Keith spent two days in police custody and was set free and returned to his family who also lived in Drumchapel.

The frantic mother claimed she had disturbed Keith during the earlier attack and had begged the authorities to lock him up.

Keith was also known to social workers at the time of Jamie’s murder, because of personal and family problems he had. One is believed to have written a report recommending Keith be taken into care and seen by child psychiatrists.

In January 1999, the Parole Board decided he was fit to be released at the age of 20 after less than nine years of incarceration.

Keith had been on a training for freedom programme and was allowed out of Kerelaw during the day to go to college.

At the time Kim attacked his release saying there had been no consultation with the victim’s family adding: “Keith is evil to the core and you can’t cure evil.

“It has devastated our family, we are just not the same anymore.”

Jamie’s cousin Kimberley Cassells, now 35, says they were both very close and remembers the tragic events as if they were yesterday.

She told the Glasgow Times: “I was a year older than Jamie and we were at nursery together in Drumchapel.

“There was always the two of us together.

“Even though I was only four years old I remember that day very vividly, particularly as my mum was heavily pregnant at the time.

“I was at home with her making breakfast when an aunt said ‘we can’t find Jamie’.

“I said he was not here as Jamie would often wander up and get me.

“Gran was watching him because Kim and Robert were at work.

“My mum met a neighbour in the street and asked if she had seen Jamie.

“Her face was white and said they had found a wee boy drowned in the park.”

Kimberley is now married with a nine-year-old son and lives in Dumbarton.

She is studying psychology at the University of West of Scotland in Paisley and hopes to work with the police and criminals in the future.

Kimberley added: “I remember walking into my gran’s house and the room was filled with police and my gran standing in the middle. A police officer was holding her and she was sobbing.

“As much as the family tried to shield it from the children I knew exactly what had happened.

“I knew Jamie had been drowned and battered and left for dead.”

Kimberley’s last memory of that day was being on a bus and seeing all the police at the scene of Jamie’s murder.

She added: “People don’t want to believe that a child is capable of doing that.

“I didn’t realise how much Jamie’s death had affected me until I became an adult.

“When you have been through something as horrible as this it never leaves you.

“It plays on my mind constantly, particularly now that I am a mother. I am probably overprotective because of that.”

To this date Keith still remains the youngest convicted killer in Scottish criminal history.

Kimberley added: “When we get together as a family with our children, we are thinking what would Jamie be doing? How many kids would Jamie have?

“He has three sisters who are grown women with their own families but they are still very much affected by it.

“We are all quite broken by Jamie’s death including my aunt Kim and uncle Robert who brought him up from the time he was a small baby.”

Kimberley says his case was remarkably similar to that of James Bulger, who was murdered by Jon Venables and Robert Thompson after being abducted from a Merseyside shopping centre in 1993.

While James is remembered to this day, she believes Jamie’s plight has been largely forgotten.

In the last few years Kimberley has tried to publicise his case through social media to increase awareness.

She added: “I’ve had thousands of emails and messages from people who can’t believe that they had not heard this story.

“Even people who are from Drumchapel.”

In 2018, Kimberley discovered Keith had his own Facebook account but no details were given of his whereabouts.

However, it’s believed he may be living and working in the Perthshire area. Last August Kim and Robert called for a public inquiry into Jamie’s death and allegations that there had been a previous attack.

In a moving interview, Kim, 61, said: “Even now I’m very angry about what Richard Keith did to Jamie. I want him to suffer in the way that we have suffered.

“When the family are together, we can’t even talk about Jamie as it is too raw even after 30 years.”