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Is this the man who savagely murdered Scots nurse in U.S. 33 years ago?

By Stuart MacDonald

COLD case detectives probing the brutal murder of a Scottish nurse at a religious college in the US 33 years ago have identified a suspect.

Elizabeth Mackintosh, 50, was found strangled and stabbed in the neck in the toilets of a chapel at the Covenant Theological Seminary in Creve Coeur, Missouri, in March 1990.

Miss Mackintosh, the daughter of a former Moderator of the Free Church of Scotland, was from Edinburgh and was studying at the seminary for a degree in counselling. Police launched a murder probe at the time but no one has ever been brought to justice.

The Creve Coeur Police Department has now said it is hopeful of bringing charges against Michael Johnson, who was also a student at the seminary at the time.

Now 67, he was Miss Mackintosh’s supervisor for her cleaning duties at the college and the pair had an argument in the days before the killing.

American true crime documentary Cold Justice showed Johnson being confronted by investigators and admitting he had gone to the chapel on the day of the murder to speak to Miss Mackintosh. He said: ‘I just walked through the hall. I mean I walked by the bathroom but I didn’t go in the bathroom. I think we have talked too much.’

Miss Mackintosh was attacked while cleaning the men’s toilets in the chapel.

She was beaten, strangled and stabbed in the neck. There was no sign of sexual assault.

Miss Mackintosh was the daughter of former Free Church Moderator Rev Professor James Mackintosh and his wife Hughie. Her parents died within six years of the murder.

Her sister, Helen Miller, said: ‘She was a very loving sister to me, she was very bright and creative.

‘It was an unnatural, horrible death and it caused the people who loved her a great deal of pain.

‘Perhaps they can bring it to a conclusion now, I’m so very hopeful they can do that.’

Sergeant Douglas Manninger, of Creve Coeur Police Department, said: ‘We worked very diligently, we talked to a lot of different witnesses and we feel we have a good case.’

A spokesman for the police department said its findings on Johnson had been presented to the St Louis Prosecuting Attorney’s office and it is awaiting a decision on whether he will be charged.

‘It was an unnatural, horrible death’

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