The Shooting That Shocked a Nation

Before Sandy Hook, there was Dunblane.

Josie Klakström

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Outside Dunblane Primary School via aoav.org.uk

Wednesday the 13th of March 1996 started like many others. Men and women went to work, store shutters opened welcoming customers, and children entered their classrooms, ready to learn. It took just three minutes to change that day for an entire community, forever.

43-year-old Thomas Watt Hamilton spent a lot of his life helping out with the Scouts. In July 1973, he was made assistant leader within the Stirling Scout Association and later was made leader of his own group.

The complaints quickly began, when parents found out the Scouts were forced to sleep inside Hamilton’s van during overnight outings, with their leader. Some boys told their parents that he’d ordered them to strip and run around in their swimming trunks and there were photographs of boys in their swimwear, covering the walls of Hamilton’s home. In 1974, Hamilton’s Scout Warrant was taken from him and he was blacklisted.

Rumours about Hamilton began to spread across the small town but still, he continued to run several clubs, including football and summer camps for boys at nearby lochs. He was eventually banned from Loch Lomond’s campsite when the police turned up, inquiring about him. The council also got Hamilton banned from using Dunblane schools for his clubs, due to the inaccuracies that he was still part of the Scouts Association.

In frustration, he wrote to Buckingham Palace, in the hope of clearing his name but he received no reply. He set up new clubs for athletics, citing his leadership in the Scouts as evidence of his legibility, but attendance began to decline as word spread of his behaviour. By 1995, there were almost no boys going to the clubs. In August, he posted letters through the parents’ doors, explaining that the gossip about him was false, but by then he had already been given the nickname Mr Creepy by the local children.

When he wasn’t helping out with the boys’ clubs, Hamilton owned a kitchen fitting store in Dunblane. When the allegations from the Scouts began and the rumours circulating about his inappropriate behaviour around children continued, his business eventually collapsed.

Between November 1981 and March 1996, Hamilton ran or was involved with fifteen…

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Josie Klakström

Josie is a freelance journo who writes about writing, true crime, culture and marketing. www.truecrimeedition.com