Childhood friends Helen Scott and Christine Eadie met at school and enjoyed listening to Donny Osmond and David Cassidy records together.

Christine was the more worldly-wise and outgoing of the pair. She lived with her grandmother during most of her childhood, and worked as a typist in a surveyor's office in Edinburgh when she finished school. Trial painted Sinclair's pal as a monster

Gordon Hamilton died a decade ago with no criminal record but during Sinclair's two-week trial he has been painted as a monster.

Unlike his friend and brother-in-law Angus Sinclair, Hamilton had no previous convictions, yet Sinclair said he was the World's End killer.

Hamilton grew up in Glasgow with six brothers and three sisters.

He was described as "a loner" and had no close friends. A football and karate fan, he worked in a Glasgow warehouse.

Close family ties with Sinclair brought the pair together. His sister Sarah married Sinclair and their brother David was Sinclair's closest friend.

The 22-year-old Hamilton stayed with 32-year-old Sinclair and Sarah in Glasgow in 1977.

Sarah said her husband and brother would go on weekend trips in Sinclair's caravanette claiming they were going fishing but would return with no fish.

Hamilton was 5ft 7in, with medium build, fair hair and heavy stubble. Sinclair was a diminutive 5ft 3in, but boasted a strong, stocky frame, dark eyes and stubble.

Hamilton met his future wife in 1978. On the day of the wedding, he and Sinclair had a massive fall-out and never spoke again. The reason is not known.

Some years later Hamilton had a relationship with Lorna Carmichael, now 51, They lived Slatefield Street, Dennistoun, in the early 1990s and Ms Carmichael said they had redecorated the flat and he had stripped walls, re-lined bedroom ceilings and built a fireplace in the lounge.

She was later contacted by police and asked back to the flat to point out DIY work Hamilton had done - from this police were able to get Hamilton's DNA.

Hamilton died of a heart attack during an emergency operation to fit a pacemaker in 1996. His body was cremated.

A party girl, she was popular and regularly went out drinking with friends. She kept detailed diaries of her teenage years which revealed she had several boyfriends.

Helen was a family girl who was very close to her parents and had only a limited social life before she died.

Her father Morain, 77, was in court for each day of the trial, and gave evidence that her mother Margaret died 12 years after her daughter's murder, having never recovered from it.

Helen worked at a kilt-makers in Princes Street and went straight from work to meet Christine on Saturday, October 15, 1977.

Christine wore a trendy denim jump-suit and a wool coat with a fur collar. Helen wore a new black coat with Burberry lining that she had bought days before.

The two 17-year-olds met up with two other friends, Christine's flatmate Toni Wale and Jacqueline Ingles, and the foursome began a pub crawl.

They got to the World's End around 10pm, and found the traditional bar packed with more than 200 drinkers; locals, tourists and football fans alike all crammed in under the wooden rafters.

Helen and Christine sat in the crowded bar, drinking whisky, while Toni and Jackie spoke to a friend in another part of the pub.

While they were there, the girls were invited to a party in Portobello with a friend of Toni's, but turned the invitation down. It was to prove a fatal mistake.

Drinkers later said they remembered the girls talking to two men, one of whom had a "brooding presence".

Helen and Christine left the pub just before closing at 11pm. One of the girls, thought to be Helen, was so drunk she fell over in the street.

Ironically, it was a policeman on the beat who picked her up and then watched her go down the street with a "shifty-eyed" man who had been standing nearby. It was the last time the girls were seen alive by anyone except their killers.

Around 2pm the next day, Sunday, two dog walkers came across Christine's body at high water mark at Gosford Bay, Aberlady, East Lothian.

She was lying naked on the ground, face up, and just 10ft from the water. One leg of a pair of ripped tights bound her wrists behind her back, and the other leg was tied around her neck.

Her pants had been stuffed into her mouth as a gag and held in place with her bra. She had been badly beaten, sexually assaulted, and had died from strangulation. A necklace and rings had been stolen from her and neither they, nor the rest of her clothing, were ever recovered.

Footprints were found in the sand nearby and one in particular was a size eight or nine boot with a ribbed patterned sole.

Police were examining the scene when they got a call at 6pm to say a second body had been found seven miles away in a field by the Huntingdon to Coates Road, near Haddington. A farm worker had spotted what he thought was a mannequin.

It was Helen Scott's body. She was lying face down, and was naked from the waist down, partially covered by her new coat.

Her tights had been tied round her neck and her hands were bound by her belt. Christine's belt had been tied round her neck as an extra ligature. There was no gag in her mouth but her pants were found on the ground near her face.

Her jeans and clogs were never found but her coat was to play a crucial role in the investigation.

Helen too had been badly beaten, sexually assaulted and her head stamped on, leaving a pattern which resembled the boot print found on the beach near to Christine's body.

Police believe the girls died in the early hours of the morning. Trail of crime as killer moved to capital and back

ANGUS Sinclair moved from Glasgow to Edinburgh in 1968 after being released from jail.

He had been convicted of killing seven-year-old Catherine Reehill and jailed for 10 years in 1961, serving six years.

He took a job as a painter and decorator, and workmates described him as a skilled tradesman and an extremely good worker.

He was easy-going but could fly off the handle at the slightest provocation, and was known to bludgeon people senseless in pub toilets.

In Edinburgh, he met his future wife, Sarah Hamilton, a trainee nurse and sister of Gordon Hamilton - whom police also accused of the World's End murders but who is now dead.

In the early days of their courtship they would drive around East Lothian, the area where the bodies of Christine Eadie and Helen Scott were found almost a decade later.

The couple married in 1970 and lived in Hill Place, a five-minute walk from the Royal Mile.

They then moved to Glasgow in 1975, living in Horndean Crescent, Queenslie, until 1979.

In 1977 - the year of the World's End murders - Sinclair owned a Toyota Hiace Suntor van, converted into a caravanette.

At the World's End murder trial last week, the prosecution claimed there was a link between Sinclair's van and the abduction and murder of the two teenagers.

In 1982, Sinclair was jailed for life after he admitted raping 11 children - boys and girls aged between eight and 12 - in Glasgow over four years from 1978.

He would wait in alleyways and flats and grab the children at knifepoint. But he was caught after one child spotted paint on his hands and another smelled turpentine on him. He was suspected of attacking many more children.

Two decades later, Strathclyde Police were reviewing the unsolved murder of 17-year-old Mary Gallagher, who was dragged into bushes as she walked home from a friend's house in 1978. She was raped, her throat was cut and ligatures tied round her neck.

Technological advances meant DNA found on her body could be matched to Sinclair's. He was convicted of her murder and given a second life sentence.

A prisoner at Peterhead, he's in charge of the kitchens and is described as "a model prisoner".