The brother of a woman whose disappearance has been linked to the notorious World's End serial killer has made an emotional plea for help in solving the case, 50 years after she went missing. Patricia Black, then 22, was last seen standing at a bus stop in the Ayrshire town of Irvine on her way home to her parents in neighboring Saltcoats, but she never arrived.
A Brother's Persistent Search
Retired bus driver Alan Black, now 68, is convinced that there are people still alive who know what happened to his "big sister" and has urged them to come forward and finally break their 50-year silence. In recent years, Patricia's disappearance has been linked to Angus Sinclair, who was convicted in 2014 for the World's End murders of Helen Scott and Christine Eadie in October 1977. Police have long believed that Sinclair, who died in prison in 2019, had other victims from that era. However, Alan is certain that the person responsible for his sister's disappearance is a local man she met that day in Irvine, not Sinclair.
Alan expressed his desire to give his sister a proper burial, saying, "I would like to give my sister a decent burial, somewhere I can go and talk to her. The worst part is not knowing where she is or what happened to her." He added, "I still get emotional now even when I think of it. I think of her every day." He believes someone out there knows something: "If you have murdered a person, you couldn't keep that quiet. You couldn't keep that in your head all these years without telling someone like a partner or best mate."
The Disappearance
Three weeks after Patricia vanished, police discovered her handbag in the River Irvine near an area called the Moor, about a five-minute walk from the bus stop where she was last seen. Patricia, one of five siblings, left the family home on Friday, October 8, 1976, to meet a friend at the Turf Hotel in Irvine and stayed overnight at the friend's house. The factory worker phoned her mother, Janet, the following day to say she would be home that evening. That was the last time the family heard from her.
Alan, who has six children and five grandchildren and now lives in nearby Stevenston, was about to turn 18 when Patricia disappeared. He had passed his driving test and was excited at the prospect of taking his sister to the hotel that evening. She invited him in for a drink, but Alan declined—a decision he now deeply regrets. "I am sorry about it now," he said. "I feel as if I had gone in with her that evening, everything would have changed and she would still have been here. All her movements would have been different."
Alan's last words to Patricia were "goodnight" and "enjoy yourself." It was the final time he saw her. He believes the local police were slow to react initially, thinking she might have stayed with someone or left voluntarily. However, the investigation intensified three weeks later when the handbag was found weighted down with stones in the river. Her purse was missing. Alan noted, "The fact that it was weighted down meant someone was trying to hide it. The police thought she had met someone or run away, but Patricia wasn't like that. She wasn't the type of lassie that just disappears." He believes her body was dumped in the river, and she was swept out to sea by the strong tidal current.
Family's Unending Grief
The last official sighting of Patricia was around 5 p.m. on Saturday, October 9, at the bus stop on Irvine's Eglinton Street, opposite the Turf Hotel where she had been the previous evening. Her father, John, passed away aged 65 in 1979, followed by her mother, Janet, aged 76, in 1990, without ever learning what happened to their daughter. Alan said, "The family accepted Tricia was dead quite early. We knew something had happened to her. She was a popular lassie with lots of friends. All my mother and father ever wanted was for a body to be found to give her a decent burial. That's all that I want. The truth. Answers."
A Local Suspect
A month after her disappearance, a 21-year-old man from Irvine gave an interview to the Daily Record, admitting he had walked Patricia to the bus stop before heading to a jewelry shop to buy a Christmas present for his wife. The man and three friends had met Patricia and her friend earlier in a shopping center around 4 p.m. He continued walking with Patricia after the others left. The laborer said, "I have not slept much since I was told she had vanished. That was the first day I had met her, and when I walked her to the bus stop, we were both in a cheery mood. The last thing she said to me was that she was going home to her parents."
Six months earlier, four-year-old Sandy Davidson had vanished from outside his home in Irvine, but the two cases were never officially linked. Both Sandy and Patricia remain missing to this day. Alan has never given up hope, although he has been told that the local man he suspects is now dead. He appealed, "There are people out there still alive who know something. I have been hoping for 50 years for someone to come forward. It is not too late. Somebody is holding back, that is for sure. Put things to rest, now is the time."
Links to Angus Sinclair
Angus Sinclair has been linked over the years to as many as nine unsolved murders, including Patricia's disappearance. In 2004, Operation Trinity was launched by three Scottish police forces to investigate whether Sinclair was responsible for the specific unsolved murders of six women from 1977. Improved DNA profiling techniques had linked Sinclair to the 1978 murder of teenager Mary Gallacher in Springburn, Glasgow, for which he was convicted in 2001 and sentenced to life. At the time, he was already serving a life sentence imposed in 1982 for a series of sex attacks on young girls in Glasgow.
One of the reinvestigated cases was that of teenagers Helen Scott and Christine Eadie, who disappeared in October 1977 after spending the evening at Edinburgh's World's End bar. Other cases included Anna Kenny, Hilda McAuley, and Agnes Cooney, who were murdered that same year after meeting their killer on nights out in Glasgow. Operation Trinity also identified Sinclair as a possible suspect for the 1977 murder of Frances Barker from Maryhill, Glasgow, even though another man was convicted for that killing. Sinclair was convicted of the murders of 17-year-olds Helen and Christine in 2014 at the High Court in Edinburgh and sentenced again to life imprisonment. However, much of the evidence in the cases of Kenny, McAuley, and Cooney was lost or damaged, and Sinclair was never charged. He has also been suspected in the 1979 murder of amateur porn movie maker Eddie Cotogno, the 1970 murder of 24-year-old mother Helen Kane, and the disappearance of Patricia Black. Sinclair died in Glenochil Prison seven years ago without confessing to these unsolved cases.
