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Moira McCall Anderson was a young girl who vanished during a snowstorm in 1957.

Background[]

Moira was a tomboy who enjoyed playing with marbles, playing pranks, and swimming. Her father, Andrew Anderson, described her as a “high-spirited little girl” but said she would never deliberately annoy anyone. She was known for being very punctual, and she knew not to talk to strangers.

Moira wanted to be a missionary and travel to Africa someday.

Case[]

Moira vanished after leaving her grandmother’s house at 207 Muiryhall Street in Coatbridge, Scotland, around 4:00 P.M. on Saturday, 23 February 1957. She went to buy some butter at the Co-Op shop on nearby Laird Street during the worst snow storms the area had ever experienced. That evening, she was last seen getting on a local Baxter’s bus in Coatbridge at around 5:15 P.M.

When Moira didn’t come home that evening, a search party was organized by neighbors and police. They combed all of the surrounding districts and Dunbeth Public Park. This included probing bushes and slag hills from the nearby ironworks, but no trace of Moira was found. The police also asked the managers of all cinemas in the area to search their premises in case Moira had decided to watch a movie and then accidentally got locked in overnight. The police interviewed the manager of the Co-op and all the assistants working there that day, but none of them could recall seeing Moira at the store that afternoon.

The local community was significantly affected by the situation and came together to try and find Moira. This included almost 80 Corporation cleansing workers, who had been on strike, breaking their protest to offer to help in the searches. Multiple people sent tips of possible sightings of Moira, some as far away as Doncaster. When Moira wasn’t found, some of them began to criticize the police because they felt that they hadn’t handled the investigation well. There was also some speculation that Moira’s family was responsible for her disappearance. However, there was no evidence supporting this theory, and the police have always believed Moira was abducted on the bus ride and then murdered.

In the book “Where There is Evil”, author Sandra Brown suggests Moira may have been murdered by her father, who was a convicted pedophile. The suspect, Alexander Gartshore, was known to be driving the bus Moira was last seen boarding in Coatbridge. At the time, he was out on bail after having been arrested in connection with the rape of his daughter’s babysitter. He would later be convinced of the crime and sentenced to eighteen months. Two years after Moira vanished, Gartshore also sexually assaulted her sister after asking her to help him with a car he was fixing. However, she was able to escape and run away. Two policewomen came to speak to her at school, but no further action was taken. This came to light when Sandra confronted Gartshore about being a lousy parent. He mentioned that his father would never “forgive me about Moira Anderson” and that he was convinced he was responsible. He didn’t directly confess to the crime, but he did say Moira had been “too bonny for her good.”

According to Gartshore’s cousin, Jim Clark, he admitted to his father, Sanny, that he had murdered Moira. Clark claims Sanny didn’t report this to the police because he was worried about what would have happened to Gartshore’s wife if he did, and it was already too late to save Moira. Clark himself chose to come forward because he believed Sanny wouldn’t have told him Gartshore was the killer if it wasn’t true, and he wanted Moira’s body to be found.

Gartshore was interviewed by the police in 1992, and he admitted Moira had got on the bus that day with plans to buy her mother a birthday card. It was her mother’s birthday the next day, which strongly suggests he was telling the truth. However, Gartshore denied having any involvement in Moira’s case. In 1999, his friend, who himself was also a convicted pedophile, wrote a deathbed confession in which he claimed Gartshore had abducted Moira on the bus by drugging her with chloroform, sexually abused her, and left her in the vehicle where she died from the cold. He then hid her body in a spot called Tarry Burn. The police chief investigating the case at the time dismissed this confession, and Gartshore died in 2006 with no charges ever being brought against him.

In 2013, the Cold Case Unit took on Moira’s case, and they exhumed a grave in the Old Monkland Cemetery, where one of Gartshore’s friends had been buried around the same time of Moira’s disappearance. The theory was that Garshore had used the funeral as a cover to place Moira’s body in the grave after her murder. However, nothing was found in the process. The renewed interest in Moira’s case caused two new witnesses to come forward. The first was a woman who claimed that as a young girl, Gartshore had exposed himself to her and Moira in a local park in 1956 and called Moira names. The second witness claimed that on the afternoon of 23 February 1957, he saw a man who looked like Gartshore “dragging a young girl”, who resembled Moira, “by the arms” near the Carnbroe bus terminal. According to the police, both witnesses had “credible reasons” not to come forward with this information in 1957.

In January 2014, the Crown Office announced that if Gartshore hadn’t passed away, he would have been indicted for Moira’s murder. This ended the criminal section of the investigation, but the search for Moira’s body continued. In 2017, forensic experts searched a stretch of the Monklands Canal based on a tip in 1957 from a man who said he saw a man matching Gartshore’s description walking along the edge of the canal with a sack. The canal was built to carry coal, and it wasn’t uncommon to see men take stolen sacks of coal in the area, so at the time, the signing and been dismissed, but this was reconsidered in 2013 after the police found that Moira’s bus route would have traveled nearby. However, nothing was found in the search.

Moira’s sisters believe her body is hidden somewhere in a graveyard in Lanarkshire, Scotland.

Sandra Brown used the proceeds from “Where There is Evil” to set up the Moira Anderson Foundation, which provides counseling and legal support to child sexual abuse victims and their families.

Characteristics[]

  • Fair hair.
  • Blue eyes.
  • Slight build.

Clothing and accessories[]

  • Fawn-colored kilted Burberry school coat.
  • Blue jumper.
  • Lemon yellow cardigan.
  • Thick tweed skirt.
  • Navy blue woolen pixie hat with red bands.
  • Blue winter scarf.
  • Fawn-colored socks.
  • Brown shoes.

Gallery[]

Sources[]