Deirdrie Kivlin

Deirdrie Kivlin was found dead in a drain at the rear of 100 South Clerk Street in August 1995.

A 26-year-old man was tried for her murder but a verdict of not proven was returned.

The man was described as a glue-sniffing drifter that had been ostracised by his family. It was claimed that he had bludgeoned her with a brick in the stair at 100 South Clerk Street in the early hours of 9 July 1995 and then put her body in the drain at the rear of the building.

The court heard that Deirdrie Kivlin had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. She had been from Greendykes Drive in Edinburgh and had gone to Newington expecting to move into a flat with a friend, however, she had been deceived by her friend as there was no flat for them. As such, after arriving she was thought to have hung around and at some point gone into the stair where she was beaten to death.

There was no evidence that Deirdrie Kivlin and the man had been together in the stair, however, police found scraps of his unemployment benefit form with his National Insurance number on it in the stair and the police later traced a man that said that the man had been in the area at the time. However, the witnesses girlfriend pick out someone else as having been the man they had seen ion the area.

Bloodstains were also found on his jacket and DNA tests showed that Deirdrie Kivlin's blood was on one sleeve and a mixt or Deirdrie Kivlin's blood and the man's blood was found on the inside of the lapel. It was also heard that on the day before the murder that the man had gone to hospital for treatment to a cut on his hand.

However, the man's defence attacked the evidence of the blood stains and asked the jury to consider how much blood would have likely to have actually ;been on the murderer's clothes, stating:

The defence noted that there were in fact only two small stains on his clothing and commented on how in the prosecutions face he had been a man that had swum in the river and come out dry.

The defence further noted that it was shown that the stain on the man's sleeve had been produced by contact between the man's jacket and a bloodstained surface, and not transmitted through the air and that scientists had similarly been unable to say how the other stain on the lapel had got there.

It was then heard that the man had said when interviewed by the police that he always 'dossed' on his jacket and that the stair at South Clerk Street was a dosser's hideaway and one of the man's haunts.