THE man who spent 20 years in jail for the rape and murder of a teenager before the verdict was quashed has told how he is still haunted by his years in prison.

Raymond Gilmour was jailed in 1982 for the killing of 16-year-old Pamela Hastie, whose body was discovered in Rannoch Wood in Johnstone, close to her home, a year earlier.

However, he was released in 2007 after three judges at the High Court of Appeal in Edinburgh declared the original verdict unsafe after hearing “important and significant” evidence in the case.

Professor Gisli Gudjonson, an expert in interrogation, gave evidence in court saying the teenager, then 19, was emotionally disturbed at the time and says now: “It is evident that his confession is of the coerced type.”

The teenager was known to police at the time because of incidents of indecent exposure, which he admitted.

Three days after the young woman’s body was found, Raymond, then 19, was taken in and questioned by police.

He claims he crumbled under the pressure of the interrogation and confessed to the crime. The senior police officer who initially questioned him, did not believe his confession and released him without charge.

However, he was later taken back in for questioning by different officers and charged.

He said: “I was picked up by two officers from the serious crimes unit at dawn.

“I immediately thought, something isn’t right. They said, right let’s talk about this Pamela Hastie murder.

“It was again, you better have something to say by the time we get to the police station.

“I was getting threatened, you better have an answer for us or there is going to be trouble.

“We are going to give you five minutes to think about it.

“As far as they were concerned, they had made their decision.

“I started to think, have I done this and not realised. That’s as far as it went with the pressure they were putting on me.It starts to wear your down.

“I just felt like, this is not going to change until I give them what they want.”

Raymond Gilmour spoke for the first time in years about his experience for a BBC documentary series, Anatomy of an Investigation.

He said: “I have dreams which take me back 20 years about being imprisoned. You wake up and wonder where you are because the dreams are so intense.

“That’s how much of an effect those years have had.

“It doesn’t seem real at times.

“Every day I would be hoping it would be sorted out and they would say, it’s all been a big mistake.”

Professor Gisli Gudjonson, who contributed to the BBC documentary, said: “When looking at the confession that Mr Gilmour made it’s evident that its of the coerced type. He was unable to cope with the interrogative pressure of the interview.

“The fact that he retracted his first confession is highly significant.”

Gordon Ritchie, the defence lawyer who worked on Mr Gilmour's appeal case says there is a “real sense of frustration” that the crime has not been solved, 35 years on.

He said: “Ten years after Raymond Gilmour was released police have done nothing to try to find out who actually committed this crime.

“In order for police to re-open the case, they have to accept that officers lied.”

A spokeswoman for Police Scotland said: “The passage of time is no barrier to the investigation of unresolved murder cases and in the view of Police Scotland, these cases are never closed.”

Anyone who has new information is asked to contact police on 101.