UKC

Shocking and unbelievable turn of events.
Still remember the news footage and I hope the poor families have managed to move on somehow. Fairly sure I wouldn't be able to.

In reply to Denni:

I remember at the time thinking it was the worst murderous event in my lifetime. There have been higher death tolls, much higher, but nothing so upsetting still another 20 years on. I always think of the teacher shielding the youngsters with her body. So brave.

In reply to Denni:
I remember coming home from school and my dad seeming troubled by what happened, having gradually learnt about it from the news on the TV while he worked at home at the kitchen table. No parents expect to send their children to school for them to be killed by one of the people who are ment to look after them.

In reply to Denni:

It sticks in my mind more than other atrocity, partly because it was primary school children, and partly because it was so close to home.

I left Stirling that morning to go to an exam in Edinburgh.

As I headed away, there were a huge number of emergency vehicles on the move, sirens and blue lights everywhere. I thought it odd, but had other things on my mind.

When I joined the others waiting outside the exam hall, everyone was in shock; that's when I found out what had happened.


My girlfriend's lecturer lost his daughter; almost everyone seemed to know someone affected by it. A friend's mother kept talking about the time Thomas Hamilton had come to her door furious that she'd taken her son out of the club he was running (or was it one of her friends he came to? I can't remember any more; several parents had become concerned at his behaviour with the kids).

What I find particularly horrible is how he seems to have planned it, rather than just snapping and going mad. How on Earth can someone think that primary school children could be valid targets for their 'retribution'?

In reply to Denni:

Another paedophile cover up. For whose benefit?

In reply to Jim C:


I'm a bit surprised by your comment, care to expand on the comment.

In reply to L'Eeyore:

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/11901710.Who_is_really_being_protected_b...

In reply to Jim C:

Possibly, or probably, a paedophile.

I'm not aware of any suggestion of a cover-up, though.

In reply to Jim C:

Oh.

In reply to Denni:

Andy Murray was in that school I think.

In reply to Denni:

There is a memorial garden at my children's primary school (in another part of Scotland). A girl from their school went to live in Dunblane and was one of the children killed. The garden was started in her memory. Strangely though, some of the children have been told that she was killed in a road traffic accident. I'm assuming that the reason for this was so as not to upset or scare the littler ones.

In reply to Denni:

20 years on, only another 80 years now until my grandkids find out what actually happened. ( and who else was implicated in what)

I wonder if the bookies would take some 80 year long bets .

In reply to skog:

I remember seeing it on the evening news and asking myself where I'd heard the name [Thomas Hamilton]. It later hit me like a bolt from the blue that I'd spoken to him on the phone a few months earlier and actually bought from him, a Minolta lens that he'd advertised in the Amateur Photographer classifieds.

In reply to Glyno:


He was into boys and buoys
He did have some female interest at Loch Lomond, Tropical Linda and Lady Sheila.

In reply to Jim C:

He was into boys. Alot should read the book called Dunblane unburied by Sandra uttely.
It's been silenced for 100 years.
I went to a close by school.

In reply to skog:

You have never heard it was a cover up? Have a read of this book. It may open your mind a little.
There is lots of pictures with Hamilton with the high and mighty pedophiles even jimmy Saville.

In reply to ryan p:

I never heard anything about the cover up, this remember how shocked everyone was, I was only young at the time though.

In reply to Wsdconst:

I was in high school, I've only just in the last year or so been reading alot on what happened up until then I just believed what everyone was believing, i still haven't got a clue I just know alot doesn't add up. I have just got the book for my wife to read as she was only 7 when it happened so has always understood what the papers and news said.

In reply to skog:



Considering that just about anyone who ever met Hamilton, be it parents of children who went to his camps, the neighbours he threatened with a handgun in a parking dispute, the detectives from four different Scottish Police forces who investigated the allegations of child abuse, the local gun club and the copper in charge of Firearms licencing were all firmly of the opinion he was a nutcase who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a gun - yet were overruled by the Chief Constable, then I suspect something very nasty was, and still is, being covered up.

In reply to Ridge:

Yeah, I suppose so - it seems to take much more convoluted ideas to explain it away as anything else.

I'd heard talk of him getting his gun license, due to connections, when he clearly shouldn't have - but I didn't know the rest.

In reply to Ridge:

And he was turned down by the Scouts when he applied to be a leader, even though he did run other youth groups.

I was told personally by a (now-retired) Detective Inspector who dealt with inter-force communication and co-operation that, and I quote; "that Report will never be seen".
Also this was yet another event when Police Officers involved had their retirements and pensions fast-tracked.

The Police have something to hide.

In reply to Denni:

My ex's little boy (who I still regularly see) is just over 4 and it gives me a lump in my throat just imagining something like that happening to him. God knows how on earth any parent is supposed to get over something like that. Even after 20 years it must still be almost unbearable.

In reply to Foxache:

Great username!

In reply to Foxache:


Life goes on.

In reply to Indy:


Lovely to see the milk of human kindness flowing so freely.

In reply to Indy:



Yeah of course. Your child gets murdered so you just forget about it don't you?

In reply to Yanis Nayu:

Shit happens.You can deal with it or you can let it wreck your life either way life goes on.

In reply to Indy:

I suppose in essence you're right, but the way you express it appears cold and heartless. Maybe life does go on, but I can't imagine it would ever be the same.

In reply to Denni:
I live in Dunblane and it gives me a lump in my throat everytime I think of it and pass the memorial. My child is 6 1/2 and goes to one of the primary schools here and I don't even want to think about what would happen...I think it is great that we still have open schools without walls, gates and barbed-wired fences as we can't be prisoners in our own free world. However, it is very cold-hearted (as Indy said) to say "life goes on, hey" It must be an almost insurmountable obstacle to overcome something like that if you would have been involved. To say, "hey, oh well, my 5,6, 7 year old just got killed by a random gumman, but that's life, never mind, life goes on", seems flippant to say the least. How can you move on from something like that??

In reply to Heike:

Like, WTF!

I said "Life goes on" I didn't write anything else.

"hey, oh well, my 5,6, 7 year old just got killed by a random gumman, but that's life, never mind, life goes on and I'll have fries and a coke with that."

In reply to Indy:



It's not as easy as saying "you can deal with it" at all. It has already wrecked your life and regardless of what you think, there is no way you could get over anything like that. Of course life goes on, not for those children though and it will never be the same for the families.

In reply to Indy:

best to shut up now, your just making yourself sound more of a tw*t.

In reply to Denni:


Might I suggest you look at Jim Swire and then at Neil and Kazumi Puttick.

In reply to Indy:

It might not have been how you meant it, but you said "life goes on" in direct response to someone saying that, even after 20 years, it must be almost unbearable [to have had your 5-or-6-year old child murdered in a massacre such as the one at Dunblane Primary School].

If you were trying to say something worthwhile, rather than just indulging in a little attention seeking, it would probably be worth clarifying what.

Simply saying, as you later did, that you "can deal with it or you can let it wreck your life" shows, at best, a total failure to understand that you wouldn't have to let it wreck your life - that would have been done for you. At best, you might be able to rebuild a very different life.

In reply to Indy:

"life goes on"


If that's what you think then why have you mentioned Jim Swire and the Putticks who I know about thank you.

Jim Swire is still looking for the truth about Lockerbie so he clearly hasn't let it go and as for the Putticks, well their life clearly couldn't go on now could it? Bad examples of you trying to justify what could have been a better phrased point.

In reply to Indy:

And to quote Jim Swire; "The idea of “moving on” after the death of a child is presumably a nonsense".