'My 11-year-old neighbour vanished, then my father made a shocking confession' (2024)

As snow fell in the Scottish town of Coatbridge in North Lanarkshire, schoolgirl Moira Anderson wrapped herself up in a navy coat and knitted hat and made her way to the local Co-op supermarket, just a five minute walk from her grandmother’s house.

The 11-year-old had set out to buy some lard for her uncle who was making a fish supper for the family. Little did they know, as Moira closed the door and headed out, it would be the last time they would see her.

Sandra Brown, who lived nearby, was eight-years-old when the older girl vanished on Saturday, February 23, 1957. Like other local children, she was plagued by questions surrounding the mystery, as she grew into adulthood. What happened to Moira? Would she ever be found? Why was the person who took her never caught?

Moira’s parents died not knowing what happened to their ‘bubbly’ daughter, while her sisters, Janet and Marjory, moved away from Coatbridge for fresh starts. As the years stretched into decades, the disappearance faded into history.

That was until 1992 when Sandra’s estranged father, Alex Gartshore, mumbled to his now 42-year-old daughter how Sandra’s grandfather had ‘never forgiven him for Moira.’

His words made her blood run cold.

‘It made my flesh crawl. I felt absolutely chilled to the bone because suddenly I was eight-years-old and thinking of Moira,’ Sandra tells Metro from her home in Edinburgh. ‘I think, as an adult, my father thought I wouldn’t remember her name. But an entire generation of Coatbridge children were impacted by her disappearance and lived with the memories of what happened that day.’

Coatbridge was a bustling working-class town in the 1950s. Men often worked in mines or steelworks while women routinely stayed at home to take care of families. Sandra remembers how families rarely locked doors and neighbours happily popped into each other’s home to say hello or borrow ingredients.

When Moira left to go to the Co-op on the cold winter’s afternoon in 1957, it wasn’t uncommon for children to walk the streets alone. She had told her sister she hoped to buy her mum, Maisie, a surprise 40th birthday card in Coatbridge town-centre.

As the hours passed, Moira’s family grew concerned. Her mum Maisie searched local cinemas – the little girl had plans to see a film with her friends that night – and her father Andrew searched the streets. Both alerted the police to their daughter’s disappearance. Searches, which included locals and scout groups, yielded nothing.

A witness called police to report they saw a tall man carrying a large sack towards Monkland Canal the morning after Moira disappeared, but this possible sighting was never acted upon in 1957.

Local woman Agnes Smith also rang police with evidence which was brushed off. She remembered seeing a young girl who matched Moira’s description on a bus to Coatbridge town centre on the day the schoolgirl vanished. Agnes was bemused when police grumpily told there had been ‘no girl’ on the bus and refused to take further action.

If detectives had investigated, they would have found out that the driver on this particular bus was Alex Gartshore, Sandra’s father, who was awaiting trial after the rape of his children’s 13-year-old babysitter. Gartshore, who had previously flashed young girls in parks, had been a freemason in a lodge where many local officers were said to be members.

‘There’s no doubt the original investigation was hugely flawed,’ Sandra, 75, recalls. ‘They [the police] made a promise to leave no stone unturned, but there were witnesses they didn’t speak to, questions they didn’t ask and a whole number of stones they did not turn. For weeks, they told Moira’s family she had probably run away from home. It’s worth noting that when she vanished there were no women in Coatbridge Burgh Police station.’

For years, Sandra had no clue her father had been one of the last people to see Moira. She also didn’t know about his rape conviction, as her mum had told the children he was in hospital, rather than in jail, for the 18 months he was absent from home life. By the nineties, Sandra – who was in her forties, by then – had swapped Coatbridge for the countryside where she worked as a teacher and had a son, Ross, and daughter, Lauren, with her husband Ronnie.

Her father’s revelation at her grandmother’s funeral in 1992, left Sandra rattled.After their conversation, she discovered that her paternal granddad had been so convinced his son was implicated in Moira’s disappearance that he tore up kitchen floorboards to ‘search for that wee lassie.’

Sandra began her own detective work as a result of her father’s declaration. The following year, Gartshore admitted that Moira had been on his bus the day she vanished.

Sandra revisited moments from her childhood, such as friends who didn’t want to come and play as they said her father did ‘funny things.’ Heartbreakingly, she found out that several relatives had been sexually abused by her father.

Despite some family members accusing her of ‘dragging up the past’, Sandra went to the police to accuse her father of murder. But the Procurator Fiscal in Scotland said there wasn’t enough evidence to charge Gartshore, who was by this point in his seventies and living in Leeds.

‘I just knew this man, my father, was guilty,’ Sandra says. ‘I had to put my head above the parapet no matter what it took. Moira had missed out on university, a career, starting a family – and why? She was a wee girl in the wrong place at the wrong time. It just wasn’t right. I had started on this path and I had to see it through, I couldn’t wheesht and let Moira down.’

Gartshore died in 2006. Down but not out, Sandra kept speaking out and raising awareness of Moira’s case and her father’s involvement. She wrote ‘Where There is Evil’ – a Sunday Times bestseller about how she came to be convinced of her Gartshore’s part in Moira’s disappearance – and performed an acclaimed one woman play; ‘One of our Ain’, based on the book.

Sandra has also told her story in the new Audible series ‘Coatbridge: The Disappearance of Moira Anderson’, which speaks to relatives, police detectives and journalists, and features archive audio and tapes from hypnotherapy sessions Sandra underwent in her search for answers.

Justice, of sorts, finally came for Moira’s loved ones in 2014, when the Scottish Crown Office issued a statement that had he still been alive, Gartshore would have been indicted for the abduction and murder of Moira in 1957.

The news was a sort of ‘bittersweet irony’ Sandrasays – as the breakthrough came after her father was already dead. As a result, there was no closure for Moira’s sisters Janet and Marjory on how exactly the schoolgirl met her death as the suspected killer never faced trial. Sandra keeps in touch with Moira’s relatives and shares updates with them.

‘At least the world knows what he [Gartshore] did now,’ Sandra says wistfully. ‘Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland- who put out the indictment statement- saw Janet when on holiday in Australia. He apologised about how things were handled. We’d got it right, but the authorities got it badly wrong.’

In 2000, Sandra set up the Moira Anderson Foundation to help people afflicted by child sexual abuse, violence, bullying and related problems. Between January 2023 and December 2023 alone, staff dealt with nearly 900 cases. The charity is her way of preserving Moira’s legacy.

‘When I started it someone asked me if there would be enough work, and I just thought: “Oh, well you’re not living in the real world,”’ Sandra recalls.

‘I set up the Foundation because I realised there really was very little there for people who had been abused. It’s such a hard thing for children to speak up about.

‘I was an adult, 42, when I reported my dad for murder and, even then, I struggled to get the words out. Imagine how difficult that is for a child. They might be told “stop making up stories” or “no, he’s really nice – he’d never do that” which destroys a child’s faith in themselves but also other human beings.’

After Sandra’s campaigning led to Gartshore finally being identified as Moira’s suspected killer, police searched several areas for a body; from graveyards to canal paths. But, to date, no trace of the 11-year-old has ever been discovered.

Detective Superintendent Graeme Lannigan, of Police Scotland, promises all new leads will be explored. He tells Metro: ‘Undetected and unresolved homicides are never closed. Working collaboratively as the Homicide Governance Board, the potential for new investigative and forensic opportunities are regularly assessed to maximise the ability to deliver justice for grieving families.

‘Police Scotland never closes the book on any homicide where elements remain unresolved. Any new information we receive relating to Moira Anderson’s case will be fully assessed and investigated.’

And asked if she thinks the mystery will ever truly be solved, Sandra says: ‘The podcast has already led to several people forward to the police or the Foundation, so who knows. I haven’t given up hope.’

Coatbridge: The Disappearance of Moira Anderson, a nine-episode Audible Original podcast, is available now

To support the Moira Anderson Foundation, click here or email info@moiraanderson.org for a £13.99+ppp signed copy of Where There is Evil

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Kirsten.Robertson@metro.co.uk

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