Prosecutor Alex Prentice KC, a leading advocate depute and crown counsel, presented compelling circumstantial evidence to disprove the lies behind which Christopher Harrisson has hidden since 1978.

A minute flake of paint found on Dr Page’s bedroom window, which had been forced open, matched the paint on Harrisson’s Mini Traveller car.

Further, DNA samples taken from within Dr Page’s flat were examined by specialists using the latest forensic techniques. The court heard that one sperm sample was 590 million times more likely to have come from Harrisson rather than from any other male unrelated to him.

Along with original statements, some still in manuscript from the 1970s, and carefully recorded testimonies of witnesses who had since passed away, these breakthroughs became powerful circumstantial evidence.

Harrisson’s conviction is the latest cold case to come to trial and comes just months after the resolution of another of Scotland’s historic murders.

In September last year, 81-year-old William MacDowell was sentenced to at least 30 years’ imprisonment for the 1976 murder of his lover and child. The bodies of his victims have never been found.

In 2021, a DNA breakthrough helped secure the conviction of Graham McGill, some 37 years after he murdered Glasgow woman Mary McLaughlin.

And, in 2019, Zhi Min Chen was jailed for a minimum of 20 years for killing Tracey Wylde at her home in Glasgow in 1997.

There are currently several unresolved murders being reinvestigated under the direction of the Crown’s specialist homicide prosecutors.