A POLICE officer was so concerned about the threat posed to children in Dublane by Thomas Hamilton that he paid a visit to prosecutors to try to persuade them to take action.

But although the detective sergeant believed that the former scout master may have committed “lewd, indecent and libidinous practices” by taking photographs of boys in swimming trunks, he said that he was told not to bother the procurator fiscal’s office unless he could provide more damning evidence. The detective’s concerns are contained in more than 3,000 documents published yesterday, which reveal the full scale of official incompetence that left Hamilton free to kill 16 children and their teacher at Dunblane Primary School in March 1996.

The files detail dozens of complaints about Hamilton’s summer camps, concerns about his suitability to hold a firearms licence and his increasing exasperation as he sought to protect his reputation by writing a steady stream of letters to senior police officers, politicians and even the Queen.

In June 1993, the detective forwarded a report to the procurator fiscal after receiving complaints from parents whose children attended evening classes with Hamilton at high schools in Dunblane and Stirling. On one occasion a parent found Hamilton locked inside the gym at Stirling High School with just one boy, dressed only in “very scant trunks”, who was being made to do press-ups while Hamilton took photographs.

On another occasion a child was made to sit “crouched on his knees, between the legs of another boy. He had to hold this boy’s neck whilst the boy carried out sit-up type exercises. This caused (the boy) to go across the body of the other child, almost in a lying position, and Mr Hamilton photographed this”. In a report to prosecutors, the policeman, whose named has been removed from documents, requested a warrant to search Hamilton’s house, but was denied. He testified in May 1996 that he had been told by prosecutors “that although the conduct of Hamilton was concerning, it approached but did not amount to criminal conduct”. He added: “I was told that unless there was additional evidence . . . then he (the prosecutor) didn’t wish reports to be made as there would not be any proceedings taken.”

Relatives of those killed in the massacre said yesterday that the documents displayed a “lack of joined-up thinking” in the failure to prosecute Hamilton and strip him of his firearms licence.

However, the papers appear to discredit many of the conspiracy theories since the massacre, including claims that Hamilton was given special favours by Freemason friends in the police, that officers knew that the massacre was about to take place, and that he was part of a paedophile ring. The papers, which were placed under a 100-year closure order following a public inquiry into the shootings by Lord Cullen, were made available after a review by Colin Boyd, QC, the Lord Advocate, Scotland’s most senior law officer.

Reports of Hamilton’s strange, effeminate manner aroused suspicion throughout his life. “I found him polite enough but thought him a bit strange,” recorded a firearms examiner for Central Scotland Police in January 1992. In 1995, another officer thought him so odd that he asked for his firearms application to be double-checked because he felt sure that Hamilton had previous convictions. He was wrong.

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