I am not sure what I expected to feel standing outside the imposing and long-derelict Victorian villa in Dundee’s West End. During my visit in February, it felt as if little had changed since my years as a student in the city back in the early-2010s. There were the same boarded-up windows and flimsy metal perimeter fence. The crudely scrawled graffiti also seemed familiar, though the rain-damaged security camera perhaps represented a more recent addition.
The house’s history is as grim as its appearance. On 18 May 1980, the badly beaten bodies of its elderly owners – a popular retired GP and his wife – were discovered by a passing student. Their killer was Henry John Gallagher, a 29-year-old Dundonian with a penchant for violent home invasions who immediately fled south to Kent, where he was to murder an 88-year-old Benedictine monk and his housekeeper. Gallagher was soon captured and committed to the high-security confines of Broadmoor hospital, where he remains to this day. The terrifying events were left to drift into Dundee folklore, while the building began its slide into apparently permanent abandonment.
