Triple murder 30 years on

Edinburgh. Wednesday January 5 1972. Elaine was in the basement of the Scripture Union building near the West end of Princes Street, rehearsing for an evangelistic concert.

Elaine was a gifted, warm-hearted extrovert, a few months away from sitting Higher exams at James Gillespie's High School. She was an achiever: academically across a range of subjects; on the sports field; as a musician with a fine soprano voice; and as a leader. That evening she sang a song about discovering faith, strumming her guitar.

Her father arrived around 9.00 pm, chatted with some of her friends, then drove her home. The new school term started next day. He was proud of his children: Elaine, who would have been 17 at the end of the month, and her brother, Scott, two years younger. The eldest, Martin, had died of leukaemia a few years earlier. It was a massive loss for the family, and Elaine said it rocked her parents' faith.

The evangelistic concert was to be put on by Torch, a city-wide fellowship of 4th-6th year school pupils, run by Scripture Union, which met on Saturday evenings. It had a fine teaching programme. Elaine was there every week. On Sunday evenings she would join scores of others, from school and university, who piled up the staircase to the balcony in Holyrood Abbey Church, where James Philip was the minister.

Tragedy discovered

Elaine didn't arrive for the new term. Classmates who telephoned received the 'engaged' tone. Friday was the same. She wasn't in school, and didn't cancel an arrangement for the evening. Friends waited at the agreed rendezvous, telephoned again, and finally drove round to her home. There was no reply when they knocked. Had there been a gas leak? That was the worst scenario they could imagine. But the discovery Portobello police made ten minutes later was beyond imagination. She, Scott, and her grandmother, who lived with them, had been beaten to death. Her mother was very badly injured, but still alive. Her father, it transpired, tried to commit suicide and take his family with him. He, too, survived.

How Scripture helped us cope

Elaine was in Holyrood Abbey Church the previous Sunday evening, as usual. James Philip drew us into Scripture as he preached, and through his prayers we learned an awe of God: a holy God, who is also an intimate God. That evening, January 2 1972, preaching from 2 Corinthians 4, he took us to the kernel of Paul's message: the glory of God in the face of Christ, shining in a Christian; treasure in jars of clay; death at work in us for life in others. It was passionate and profound.

Here was the essence of biblical evangelism, and of the gospel. It was an eternal gospel. It cast suffering into an eternal perspective. How reassuring for us that Elaine heard these things so near her death; surely a mark of God's providence and care. What better place in Scripture could we have reached to prepare us, and, a week later, to comfort us? The following Sunday we looked at our Bibles through tears, as James Philip urged us again into the message of the apostle. There were, he said 'dark and obstinate questions' for all of us, older and younger Christians alike, but we must not lose heart. We must look beyond the things that are seen, to the things that are unseen. How deeply those chapters have penetrated since.

That Sunday morning, Jim Philip recalled how Elaine, a few months earlier, had introduced a friend to him who had just professed faith. 'Her face shone like an angel's,' he said.

Julia Cameron, a pupil at Broughton School, was a friend of Elaine through Torch and Holyrood. Julia reflects: 'We learned from James Philip's ministry how to engage with Scripture ourselves; we dialogued with the text as he preached. But after Elaine died, we interrogated it. We needed to know it was true, to be sure it was true. We scrutinised those chapters in 2 Corinthians, and others describing heaven, for every detail and nuance.'

Elaine at school

Elaine was fun. Her faith in Christ and her vitality for friendship and humour were all of a piece. In an open letter to her parents, in the 1971 Gillespie's school magazine, we see a happy home, with an adolescent yearning for more privacy and more freedom in a healthy and wholesome way. 'Mum, about your passion for moving furniture around. Can you not restrict it to other rooms? It's terrible to come home from school, rush into my bedroom, and fling myself down on the wardrobe...'

Elspeth Friedrich became a Christian through Elaine's death. She and the friend Elaine brought to Holyrood the year before, wrote a tribute in the school magazine. It reflected her warmth, her hilarious exchanges with staff and pupils, and her 'versatility'.

'There was always one undaunted face when exams came around, and her versatility could be seen in the results - top in English, bottom in Maths! Elaine was also adaptable on the games field, playing goalkeeper or centre forward in much the same manner'.

It went on:

It was her Christian faith which gave her that love of life and people. As a Christian she believed in a richer, even fuller life after death, and it is this that keeps her loss free from bitterness.'

The tribute concluded with Paul's words: 'For I am persuaded that neither death nor life shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.'

Susan Middleton played with Elaine in the first XI hockey team. She recalls: 'When Elaine died, my response was "there has to be a God - her God has to be real". What an indictment that it took such a tragedy to make me think seriously about what Elaine stood for. Through death came life - to me, and to many others over the coming months, as we grappled to make sense of it all.'

Reconciliation

Elaine's mother, Dorothy, was never able to speak again, apart from the words 'yes' and 'no'. She lost use of her right arm and leg, and could only hobble around. She died last April, having managed in a sheltered flat since 1974. Her sitting room was bedecked with photographs. She struggled hard to understand why she had been called to undergo such agony in losing her children and her mother at the hand of her husband. What mother wouldn't? Yet her generous spirit gave her a warm interest in the children in our families; she followed news of them, and loved to see them.

Without speech, she wrote words down, and with patience, occasional frustration, and humour, she and friends conversed. She turned to Scripture to draw comfort. It was deeply moving to read and pray with her. 'Yes,' she would say, from the bottom of her heart, as we affirmed the great truths in the Psalms or the Epistles: profound truths of God's glory; of his love; of heaven.

Friends from Dublin Street Baptist Church, where Elaine was baptised in 1971, visited weekly, and drove Dorothy each month to see her husband. Later he was allowed to visit her in her home. She urged one or two of Elaine's friends to keep in touch with him, and some of us did. 15 years ago, she bought him a wedding ring, as a public declaration that they still belonged to each other. It was a wonderful expression of God's grace. The almost inexpressible triumph of that reconciliation went barely mentioned at her funeral, but we, Elaine's school friends, knew, and we rejoiced with the angels as they welcomed this very special saint.

At Dorothy's funeral we sang 'O Jesus, I have promised to serve Thee to the end'. We had sung it at the funeral in 1972, in Dublin Street Baptist Church. Elaine had chosen it for her baptism. Anne Allan recalls that occasion: 'Her whole family was so proud of her. Scott took up the offering, and he couldn't stop smiling at his sister.' She added: 'I still can't sing "O Jesus I have promised" without remembering that day.'

We didn't know Scott's friends at the Royal High, but we can testify that Elaine's death was greatly used by God among her friends in drawing people to faith, and in deepening faith. Some have struggled since; we do not want to pretend otherwise.

We bow before the mystery of God's providence. He is God, and he does not need to justify himself. May he be glorified through our telling this story.

Anne Allan, nee Walker (Edinburgh)
Elspeth Friedrich, nee Dollar (Linkenheim, Germany)
Susan Middleton, nee Hay (Edinburgh)

Julia Cameron, Oxford

Audio tapes of James Philip's sermons will shortly be available from the Proclamation Trust Tape Ministry. For a catalogue, including tapes from Dick Lucas, David Jackman and others, write to PO Box 36618, London SE1 1XR or email tapemin@proctrust.org.uk