This week, crime reporter Norman Silvester examines the brutal and chilling murder of a young woman who was held captive and tortured for two weeks before being killed.
The murder of Lynda Spence fifteen years shocked Scotland with its’ levels of depravity and sadistic violence. The financial advisor endured 14 days of hell bound helplessly to a chair as the hands of two men Colin Coats and Philip Wade.
During her confinement, she was subjected to extreme and systematic torture as her captors tried to force her to reveal the location of £85,000 they claimed was owed to Coats on a land deal. They cut off her thumb and pinkie with a bolt cutter and smashed her kneecaps, burned her hands and body with a hot clothes iron. Beat her repeatedly with a golf club. Denied her basic food, water, or the use of a toilet.
The 27-year-old was bound her to a chair with tape, put tape over her mouth to stop her screams and glasses with taped-up lenses placed over her eyes. Finally she was murdered inside the flat in West Kilbride, Ayrshire around April 28, 2011, which had been her chamber of horrors for the past fortnight.
View 6 Images(Image: Daily Record)
View 6 Images(Image: Daily Record)
Coats used Lynda’s mobile and email accounts to pretend to her family and friends she was alive and well. They hired two small-time crooks to guard her between the lengthy torture sessions.
Her worried parents, Patricia, 56, and Jim, 68, reported her missing in May and appeals were made to the public for information. Coats, a computer expert who had done wok for the Civil Aviation Authority, quickly became a prime suspect but detectives initially found witnesses too scared speak out.
The breakthrough came after one fearing for his life finally went to police. In October, six months after Lynda’s murder, officers raided the West Kilbride flat.
View 6 Images(Image: Daily Record)
Both Coats and Wade had gone to great lengths to cover their tracks. The loft carpet was removed, floorboards were replaced and a massive clean-up operation was carried out, including burning the chair that had been used to to hold Lynda.
Forensics however found a spot of Lynda’s blood on the bathroom floor and Coat’s fingerprint on the door handle. Mobile phone evidence also placed Coats and Wade, who were both aged 42, in West Kilbride throughout Lynda’s ordeal.
The two men stood trial in February 2013 at the High Court in Glasgow accused of Lynda’s murder – despite there being no body. The two men who had guarded Lynda agreed to give evidence for the prosecution.
View 6 Images(Image: Daily Record)
The jury heard how Lynda was snatched off the street in Broomhill in Glasgow’s West End and taken by car to Ayrshire. A number of witnesses took the stand to implicate Coats and Wade in Lynda’s murder.
Her business partner Tony Kelly, 56, recalled a confession from Coats who told him: “I killed her last Thursday.” Another witness said Wade confessed to her that he and Coats had disposed of a woman’s body in the hills.
A third, an inmate, who met Coats while he was on remand in Addiewell prison in West Lothian, claimed Coats had told him that he cut off Lynda’s head and put her body in a furnace. Company director John Glen, who gave his evidence from behind a screen, said Lynda had phoned him to cancel a meeting and it was the last time he spoke to her.
He told jurors: “She made reference to Colin Coats and said: ‘He is going to kill me. I need to get his money back for him.’ She sounded very distressed at the time.” In late April he met Coats at a shopping centre who he claimed pulled out a plastic supermarket bag with a thumb inside.
The following day he told Coats he would need a copy of a valuation from Lynda. Coats replied: “If you want one, you will need to organise a seance.”
To this date Lynda’s body has never been found. Coats is believed to have suffocated Lynda in the bathroom before putting her bloody remains in the boot of her silver Vauxhall Astra.
Like Lynda’s body it still remains missing to this day. During the trial it was revealed that she had committed a number of alleged frauds. One was said to involve 30 members of Glasgow’s Chinese community who handed over £175,000 in deposits on flats at a housing development in the city’s Maryhill.
It also emerged that the murder victim had been recruited as an informant for the Scottish Crime and Drugs Enforcement Agency (SCDEA) weeks before her murder. She had agreed to spy on an Albanian underworld network with links to alleged drug dealing and people trafficking.
The jury took around 20 hours to find Coats and Wade guilty of murder following a trial that had lasted 46 days. Both were handed life sentences.
Coats was ordered to serve a minimum of 33 years before he can be considered for parole. While Wade was given a tariff of 30 years. The two men who had helped hold Lynda captive were each jailed for 11 years.
In a statement outside the court after the verdict, Lynda’s parents said: “There is no verdict that will bring our daughter Lynda back or spare her the terrible ordeal that took her life.” An appeal was also made by police to Coats and Wade to say where they had buried Lynda.
After the trial the Daily Record published video footage of Coats taken in 2008 dressed as a woman and in full make up. In the clip filmed in the style of a spoof advert he says:” New gangster in town seeks young men for extortion, abduction and tying up…funerals and bar mitzvahs.”
Over the years various attempts have been made to find Lynda’s remains. The biggest was over five months in 2022 at a remote spot 12 miles from Dunoon in Argyllshire. However the search drew a blank.
Graeme Pearson, a former Director General of the SCDEA compared the levels of violence against Lynda to a war crime. He added:”No matter what she was involved in the extent of the violence that she suffered and the time period under which she suffered that violence was completely disproportionate and something under any other circumstance would be designated a war crime.
“It goes well beyond what any criminal operation at that time would have deemed acceptable.” Mr Pearson also says it’s unlikely the SCDEA would have recruited Lynda had they thought she was ‘knowingly’ involved in a particular crime.
He added:”By approaching her there was the opportunity to open up the internal workings of a criminal network. “Had they thought she was an actor in the whole thing, they would have been putting her under surveillance rather than trying to sign her on as an informant.”
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A Police Scotland spokesperson said: “Two men were convicted for the murder of Lynda Spence in 2011 and two other men were convicted of assault and attempt to defeat the ends of justice. “Ms Spence’s remains have never been found. Should any new information be received it will be fully assessed, and any necessary action will be taken. “Anyone with any information is asked to contact Police Scotland via 101.”