Crime podcast: The Glasgow Crime Story of top cop William Ewing

He was known simply as "The Big Fella'" and was head of City of Glasgow CID for 15 years.

Chief Supt William Ewing was always immaculately dressed and often taken for a doctor or a businessman.

Tall, courteous, and distinguished looking, like many of his generation he had been born into a policing family.

His father was the local inspector in Stranraer and he lived above the police station which had its own police house.

His mum would often even give prisoners a share of what they were eating that night.

His dad was a community cop before the term had been devised often interceding in local disputes without recourse to any official police intervention.

Ewing joined the City of Glasgow Police in 1911 travelling to the city for the first ever time, by rail.

What he did not expect at the interview was to be ordered to start work the next day, before he had even had chance to fix up lodgings

Forty years later at his retirement dinner he joked that he still had the return half of the train ticket.

At that time policing was still in its infancy. 

The force only had one car and that was used for transferring prisoners between cells.

While the first defectives had only been appointed five years earlier.

Moving to Glasgow was also bit of culture shock getting used to the poverty and deprivation that was rife in the city at the time.

However, Ewing quickly impressed his superiors with his diligence and hard work.

By May 1921, he had become a detective and was involved in one of the most infamous crimes of the time.

Senior IRA figure Frank Carty had escaped from a prison in Derry and fled to Glasgow where he was given refuge in a house in Springburn.

However, acting on a tip off from informants in the organisation Carty was quickly arrested.

A few days later he appeared in court and was taken by prison van to Duke Street prison in the east end of the city.

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Because of the terrorist threat a number of armed officers travelled in the same van as an escort.

As the van neared the jail a large number of gunmen opened fire killing one police officer Inspector Robert Johnstone and injuring another officer Sergeant George Stirton.

However, they failed to free Carty and instead fled on foot.

Ewing was one of the first officers on the scene and was involved in the arrest of more than 50 suspects.

However, in a sensational development at the High Court in Edinburgh all thirteen accused walked free as they had all provided alibis, and the prosecution were unable to prove they had been at the scene of the shooting.

From there Ewing rose through the ranks and was promoted to Sergeant the same year.

By 1932, he had reached the rank of Detective Lieutenant and was to take charge of what would prove to be two of his biggest cases.

That year he led an investigation into a shares scam in Glasgow involving a bogus silk product where investors had been defrauded out of more than £800,000 - around £60 million today.

The trial lasted a record 33 days yet only one person was convicted, and he was sentenced to just three years.

The judge in the complex case nevertheless paid tribute to Ewing's detectives kills when he said: “The facts of it were far beyond the capacity of the human mind to carry and retain."

By then the City of Glasgow Police, under the leadership of Sir Percy Sillitoe, was at the forefront of the latest forensic technology and their expertise was frequently called upon to help other forces solve crimes on their patch.

On September 29, 1935, two bodies had been found dumped in a stream in Moffat including a severed human hand and arm. Other packages with body parts lay scattered nearby. 

The local Dumfriesshire Constabulary immediately sought assistance from the City of Glasgow force and Detective Lieutenant Ewing travelled south to Moffat the following day.

Both skulls had been defaced and the fingertips and other identifying features removed.

The case was dubbed the 'Jigsaw Murders' by the press because 30 blood-soaked packages had been found dumped in the water, containing a total of 70 body parts. 

Pathologists were left with the job of trying to piece the two bodies together. At this age they didn't even know what sex they were.

While in Moffat, Mr. Ewing read a newspaper report of about a missing maid, Mary Rogerson, 20, who was last seen alive on September 14.

She worked in the household of a Dr Buck Ruxton in Lancaster and had been reported missing by her parents. 

Mrs Ruxton had also not been seen for some time. Her husband was now a prime suspect in the Jigsaw Murders investigation.

Following his arrest in October that year the City of Glasgow police had unrestricted access to his house. 

In the bathroom and on the stair-carpet they found considerable evidence of bloodstaining. However, it still remained to be proved that the mutilated bodies were those of the doctor’s wife and her maid.

If fingerprints from one of the bodies and fingerprints on articles in the house were found to be identical, it would establish beyond doubt that the deceased had lived in the house. 

Ewing ordered a top to bottom search of the doctor’s house and nothing escaped their attention.

Every article likely to bear fingerprints—from the lampshades in the attics to the medicine bottles in the basement—was examined and taken back to Glasgow to be photographed. 

Comparing the prints found on the articles with those of Mary Rogerson confirmed her identity.

Ewing and his team were later praised by J Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI in America for coming up with the idea of using random prints from Ruxton's home to identify Mary Rogerson.  

Ruxton had beaten and strangling his wife as she returned from a night out in Blackpool. 

Caught in the act by Miss Rogerson, he asphyxiated her, fractured her skull and stabbed her.

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Ruxton dissected his victims' bodies in the family bath - with his children asleep in their beds.

The Manchester jury took less than an hour to find Ruxton guilty of both murders. 

In the words of the trial judge, the fingerprint evidence of the City of Glasgow Police had proved the most damning of all

Ewing had been a key figure in the investigation from his visit to Moffat to the arrest of Ruxton 12 days later.

He received many other glowing tributes for his work on the case.

One Sunday newspaper described him:" one of the most brilliant investigators of the Glasgow CID.'

Ruxton was hanged on May 12, 1936 at Strangeways Prison in Manchester with 5,000 people gathered outside.

The Director of Public Prosecutions in England also wrote to Glasgow's Chief Constable congratulating Ewing and his men on their investigation.

The pioneering techniques the city's detectives had employed had presented prosecutors with a watertight case against Ruxton and would form the template for all future murder inquiries.

Lancaster Police also held a whip round and used the money to buy a rose bowl to be used as a price in a police competition. Ewing won it the year after. 

In 1937 he was given the rank of Detective Supt, awarded an MBE and made head of the City of Glasgow CID.

By 1945 he had been promoted to the newly created rank of Detective Chief Supt.

That year he investigated one of the most callous and cold-blooded murders ever committed in Glasgow - even by the city's violent standards.

Two railway workers were shot dead in a botched robbery in which the gunman escaped with only a few pounds.

It was Monday, December 10, and clerkess Annie Withers, porter William Wright and junior porter Robert Gough were on the late shift at Pollokshields East Railway Station near Albert Road.

About 10 pm that evening the door burst open and a young man brandishing a gun appeared.

He immediately fired at Annie Withers and she fell to the floor.

Gough went to help Annie and threw his body across his colleague in a bid to save her.

The gunman finished her off with a second round of shots as she lay screaming on the floor.

He then turned towards 15-year-old Robert and shot him through his right wrist and then in his stomach.

William Wright, 42, managed to turn away as the gunman fired at him and the bullet just grazed his body.

Crucially Robert gave a deathbed statement to a sheriff describing the killer, before he died two days later William also supplied a detailed description of the smartly dressed murderer to detectives.

Detective Chief Superintendent William Ewing ordered the railway line and surrounding streets to be searched in case the killer had dumped the gum.

A number of fingerprints were also found in the stationmaster’s left by the gunman.

A wage packet with £4.20 (worth £185 now) was all that had been stolen.

Ten months after the double murder - a tip off came about a possible suspect.

He was Charles Templeman Brown, a 21-year-old railway fireman who lived with his mum in Brisbane Street in Battlefield, a mile and a half from the murder scene.

The police were also told that he kept a gun in the house, and he was later arrested in the street after making a bizarre confession to a passing beat cop, who had only just joined the force.

He went on trial at the High Court in Glasgow on December 9, 1946, one year to the day of the double murder.

After hours' deliberations Brown was found guilty and the trial judge Lord Carmont sentenced him to death by hanging.

However, a petition saved him from the noose was successful and the sentence was commuted to that of life imprisonment

During his time in the force Ewing was also responsible for arresting a cop killer and a killer cop.

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Retired detective James Straiton, 62, had been shot dead while trying to foil a burglar who had tried to rob a neighbour’s house in Edinburgh Road, Carntyne.

Around 8.30pm on March 26, James and Annie Deaken had asked for his assistance suspecting someone had broken into their house and was still there.

Without a thought for his own safety the former detective fetched his old police baton and went immediately to help.

Mr Deaken offered to go into the house while James Straiton covered the front.

Once inside the neighbour saw two men at the top of the stairs.

One was armed with two guns which he carried in both hands.

When the intruders tried to flee the house Mr Deaken blocked their escape.

The older of the two-armed intruders opened fire but narrowly missed him.

There was a violent struggle and James Straiton hit the gunman on the head with his old police baton.

The blow knocked the intruder to his knees and in retaliation he shot James Straiton in the stomach.

Both burglars then ran off, leaving the retired police officer dying in the gardens.

There had been two previous burglaries in the Dennistoun area involving a firearm where the intruder got in through a drain pipe. In one in Whitehill Drive a bullet was fired to force open a door.

In the second in nearby Golfhill Drive, a gun was used to threaten the owner after he disturbed them.

Ewing ordered his men to search for all criminals between the ages of twenty and twenty-five who had previously broken into homes using a drainpipe.

Their fingerprints could then be compared to a fingerprint which had been left at the scene of the Golfhill Drive break-in.

If they could get a match, they would then have a credible suspect for the murder.

They quickly found one belonging to John Caldwell, a twenty-year-old soldier, who lived in Bridgeton, Glasgow

Caldwell stood trial at the High Court in Glasgow in June 1946 where he was found guilty and sentenced to hang.

Four years later another major headline grabbing case would further test his detective skills.

On midnight on July 29, 1950 the crumpled body of Catherine McCluskey was found in Prospecthill Road, Govanhill.

Catherine was 42 years old, a single parent with two children, both by different fathers.

Something that was frowned on at that time in post war Britain.

Catherine had been in a relationship with a serving police officer and they both planned to make a new life together, or so she thought.

Therefore, the first person detectives had to track down, if only to rule him out, was the victims mystery policeman lover. 

None of her family or friends had met the man and only knew his surname - Robertson.

Catherine had also told her friends that he was the father of her second child.

Following investigations, the mystery lover turned out to be 33-year-old married father of two Constable James Robertson.

However, Constable Robertson when he was questioned by Ewing's team denied knowing Catherine McCluskey.

They then found out that Robertson was patrolling the beat in Cumberland Street where she lived on the same night and while she was murdered.

It soon became clear that he had been living a double life.

His beat partner PC Dugald Moffat confessed he had been covering for Robertson for some time to allow him to slip off for couple of hours, when things were quiet, to see a mystery woman.

That's exactly what had happened on the night of the murder. 

Robertson had gone off to see his mistress around 11pm and turned up again for duty two hours later.

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The period covering the death of Catherine McCluskey.

He also owned an old-fashioned Austin saloon car which it the merged had been stolen and had false number plates.

A quick forensic search of the undercarriage revealed blood and fragments of Catherine's flesh, hair and clothes. The cops had their man.

Constable Robertson was arrested for murder and remanded in Barlinnie Prison in Glasgow to wait trial.

That was PC Robertson's defence when he turned up for trial at the High Court in Glasgow on November 6, 1950, before Lord Keith and a jury of eight men and seven women.

The involvement of a city bobby in an unmarried mother’s violent death made for one of the most scandalous trials Glasgow had ever witnessed.

A terrible and brutal murder had been committed and the police were accusing one of their own

The interest in this trial in the North Court was so huge that there was a queue outside the court every morning, often hours before proceedings began. A further 100 had to be turned away each day.

Robertson denied murdering Catherine, saying instead that he did not know her well and gave her a lift.  

He said he reversed back and accidentally knocked her down. 

In reality Robertson had decided to end the relationship with Catherine.

He was paying her money each week on top of the money he gave to his wife for the upkeep of their home and to provide for his own children.

The fact that he had drove back to his beat and resumed his patrol as if nothing had happened did not sit well with the jury.

After a trial lasting seven days, the jury took just 64 minutes to find the PC guilty of murder on November 13, 1950. 

He betrayed little emotion as sentence was passed and he was led down to the cells.

An appeal against conviction failed as did a petition for a reprieve of the death sentence.

PC Robertson, who was a member of the ultra-strict Plymouth Brethren, was the only serving policeman in Britain to be executed for a crime committed while on duty.

However, Ewing had not allowed the fact that he was a colleague to interfere in the process of bringing him to justice.

In March 1951 he retired after 40 years’ service and died in 1979 in Mearnskirk Hospital in Newton Mearns.

He had never married and reporters would often write that he was married to the job.

At his retirement speech at police HQ Ewing didn't tell the usual jokes or reminiscences.

Instead, he called for more men on the beat and tougher sentences for the criminals.

He also recalled with some satisfaction that most of the people he had put behind bars had ended up destitute, murdered or hanged adding: “Very few died peacefully in their beds."