63-year-old Eddie Cotogno was found battered to death in the workshop attic of the top floor flat where he lived alone in Dumbarton, north-west of Glasgow in July 1979. He suffered a terribly violent death, with his head being caved in by blunt force trauma from a murder weapon likely to have been a hammer − a particularly brutal and frightening death.
Nobody has ever been convicted of his murder.
His body was found on a blood-soaked mattress, and all around him were scattered nude and pornographic photos of local women, photographs that had been taken by Eddie in his attic studio. In an effort to destroy the evidence, Eddie’s killer had set light to his flat before making their escape.
Photo Shoots
Eddie encouraged women to join him for shoots, suggesting this could be the first step in a professional career as a model.
He sometimes showed those who seemed reluctant some pictures of Marilyn Monroe before she was famous, and describing what she and other women had done to break into the modelling industry. For Eddie, as well as enjoying the photography this generated some good money.
Local businessmen paid very well to join him and take photos of women posing. If those men then went on to have sex with the women in Eddie’s dingy attic, or watched as another man did, the price that Eddie could charge would double.
Angus Sinclair
Eddie’s mate, Angus Sinclair, found plenty of willing subjects for him. Sinclair started off by bringing sex workers from the streets of Glasgow, who often welcomed the extra cash. This wasn’t cheap and the fees they charged were too high, so Sinclair would go to the pubs on Glasgow’s East End and find women of all ages, from teenagers to grandmothers, who were interested in posing for Eddie. Sinclair always had a knack for sensing when someone was vulnerable and could be exploited for his own gratification, and this is yet another example.
Who killed Eddie Cotogno?
Was it an angry husband who had found out that Eddie had been taking explicit photos of his wife and distributing them locally? It could well have been a woman who had modelled for Eddie, and later felt she had been pushed into posing − or more − and told an angry boyfriend or father what had happened. This would certainly explain why some of Eddie’s pictures were scattered around his body. It was a risk that Eddie knew, and he had confided in friends that he had been threatened in the past.
In my book, ‘Gone Fishing’ I argue that Angus Sinclair was likely to have killed Eddie.
Sinclair enjoyed a large number of affairs following his marriage to Sarah. Two of his ex-girlfriends from the mid-1970s, who Sinclair later referred to in prison as ‘K’ and ‘M’, had agreed to pose naked for a series of photos at Eddie’s flat. At the arranged time, the two women stripped off in front of him and his brother-in-law Gordon Hamilton, who was there too that day.
Livid
Sources claim that Sinclair was livid when he discovered that the photos of his two ex-girlfriends were for sale to anyone in the local community at Eddie’s market stall; other wives and girlfriends were fine, but not anybody that Sinclair cared about. He always liked to be in control, so for Eddie to do this without his knowledge or permission would have angered him greatly. It was shortly afterwards that Eddie was killed.
After the Murder
After his murder, police discovered that Eddie had told family members that he had arranged a meeting with an acquaintance for just before he was killed. It is fair to assume that whoever this acquaintance was is likely to know who murdered Eddie, and the man he spent most time with was Sinclair. Is this who he was meeting with on that day?
As is the case in many investigations, detectives kept small details of Eddie’s murder back from the public − key details that only the killer could know.
Murder Weapon
In this case, detectives didn’t publicly reveal the murder weapon, which they believed to be a hammer of some description. This was Sinclair’s weapon of choice for his robberies and other violent attacks that weren’t sexually motivated. As he was only five foot four inches tall, he needed a deadly weapon in order to quickly gain control, with men particularly. If Sinclair has murdered Eddie, he would have chosen a hammer to carry out the attack.
Quizzed
Many reports you will read about Eddie’s death say Sinclair wasn’t quizzed about the murder. These are inaccurate. He was interviewed as either a witness or a suspect, which isn’t clear. Strange as it may seem, back then detectives would sometimes phone ahead of their visit.
This way of operating, as so often in his criminal career, gave Sinclair time to brief his wife Sarah, who told detectives that the two were together when Eddie was killed, having a meal at his mum’s home. Sarah had once again provided Sinclair with an alibi − one of many she knew was totally untrue and later regretted.
It was only much later that Sarah admitted she had lied on numerous occasions to provide Sinclair with the alibi he demanded. On each occasion he had told her exactly what she must say to the police. This was one of those times. The events surrounding the police interview with Sinclair about Eddie’s death are enlightening. At the time, the police were constantly at his house speaking with him about his suspected involvement in some robbery or other. After Sinclair took the call from detectives to make an appointment to interview him about.
How did he Know?
Eddie, although they didn’t tell him that was what it was about, he instantly turned to Sarah to tell her that it would be about the death of a man he knew. He also tape-recorded the whole interview, which doesn’t sound like a man not concerned about what might happen next. Again, it was all about Sinclair trying to take control of the situation.
Eddie Cotogno was a 63-year-old single man. Some would see him as a seedy photographer and the stereotypical dirty old man; perhaps the effort made to solve the murder of a man like Eddie was less than that of other crimes. This is something we still hear today, when you consider the press attention given to the story of Madeleine McCann compared to that of Shannon Matthews, and numerous other missing children.
It seems this is more the media’s attitude to the victim’s family and social background. There is certainly something in this.
But whatever the merits of the investigation, and the efforts made to find Eddie’s murderer, I would strongly suggest that the man who killed ‘Wee Eddie’ went to his grave in 2019. This was another of the many secrets Sinclair took with him.