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Amber Gibson was born on New Year’s Day in 2005 in Scotland & from the start her life was surrounded by violence & trauma. From a young age, she & her brother Connor, who was two years older, were subjected to abuse at the hands of their parents, Peter Gibson & his much younger partner, Ann Marie Adams. The two met online & by the time Amber was born, a pattern of abuse was well established. At their home in North Berwick Crescent, their father was both physically & emotionally abusive of their mother & for years, they were forced to watch their mother be subjected to horrific physical assaults that involved their father punching, kicking & choking her. This unfathomable violence happened openly, in front of Amber & Connor which caused them to suffer emotionally & psychologically.
In 2008, when Amber was only three & Connor was five, they were removed from their parent’s home & placed in foster care. They were placed in the care of Craig & Carol Niven who, a few years later, became their permanent guardians & provided them with a stable & loving environment which was in stark contrast to what they had previously been exposed to. Despite the change of environment, Amber & Connor suffered from the lasting effects of their early exposure to violence.
Craig Niven indicated that they were sure to never leave Amber & Connor alone together because they were “not a good mix.” Connor exhibited deeply disturbing behavior that included making threats about killing other students as well as once threatening to rip an unborn baby from the womb of a pregnant student. His Facebook profile picture was a cartoon of a male angel-turned-demon holding a blood-stained knife with blood covering his hands & face. He raised many red flags but his actions & words were often just brushed aside as attention-seeking behavior.
During their time with the Nivens, Connor & Amber attended two separate schools, Amber going to Moore House Academy twenty-five miles from their home in West Lothian’s Bathgate, while Connor attended Kear Campus, a school designed for students suffering from emotional & behavioral issues. He was very much alienated from his peers due to his inappropriate behavior & sudden fits of rage. Neither child was getting the specific care they required for the trauma they had lived through as young children.
When Amber was fourteen, her foster arrangement with the Nivens broke down & resulted in her being moved to a children’s residential unit while Connor remained with the Nivens until he was eighteen. At that point, it was 2020 & Connor continued to struggle greatly & he was moved to a housing program for homeless youths. A friend of Amber’s described Amber & Connor’s relationship as turbulent.
In June of 2021, while in the care of the state, Amber had just turned sixteen when she was raped at the home of a 20-year-old man named Jaime Starrs who had just been released on bail for another sexual assault charge when he violated a teenager while she was asleep or unconscious. Amber woke to find herself asleep in Starrs’ bed & saw that her pants were next to her on top of the covers. She looked to the side & saw Starrs asleep next to her & when he got up, she saw he was completely naked. She managed to pull her pants on while still concealed by the covers & told him that she was leaving. When she returned to her unit, she courageously reported the attack & told police that she has no recollection of hugging or kissing him at all. Starrs was eventually convicted & sentenced to 10.5 years but tragically, she would never see her attacker brought to justice since she was murdered only weeks later.
On November 26, 2021, Amber was told by her home manager that Connor called & wanted to speak with Amber. He arranged for the two to meet up & despite the fact that the manager tried to discourage her from going out, Amber was very excited to spend time with her brother. She left the Hillhouse Children’s home in Hamilton that evening & sent a Snapchat selfie with Connor that she captioned, “My big bro.” This was the last time anyone saw or heard from Amber while she was on Church Street, turning onto Common Green, entering Cadzow Glen.
Alison Leonard, a residential worker where Amber lived, said that she had unsuccessfully tried calling both Amber & Connor after she hadn’t returned by midnight. When she got through to Connor, he told her that he had been with Amber but that he’d had a bad night & everything was a bit fuzzy & he had no recollection of when his sister left. Alison continued to press him for a specific time, but he insisted that he did not know. Her gut instinct told her that something was not adding up so she went out driving in search of Amber. When she failed to locate her, she contacted the police at 2 am in the early morning hours of Saturday, November 27.
The investigation quickly focused on Connor, knowing he was the last person to see Amber alive. He told police that he’d been wearing a Rangers Football Club shirt & camouflage shorts on the night that he was with Amber but this proved to be a lie & he instead wore a white shirt & gray shorts. CCTV footage showed him walking with his sister at 9:55 pm & ninety minutes later at 11:44 pm, Connor was again seen on CCTV footage, this time, he was alone. At 11:51 pm, he could be seen stopping for a few seconds to lean on a fence as if to compose himself. Data from his phone indicated that he was trying to coordinate help with “something”; at approximately 12:34 am on November 27, he wrote a Snapchat message to a group of five recipients, “I’m really going to need you guys help with something when yous come back. I’m being serious.” He contacted the children’s home where Amber was staying, pretending she was still alive.
He told police that he & Amber had argued on the night they were together & he left her, going off to someone else’s home. When he returned to the Blue Triangle project where he was living at about midnight, an employee named Suzanne Duddy said he pushed the door to her office open & slumped into a chair in a dramatic fashion. She described him as being very disheveled & out of breath. His hands were extremely dirty up to his wrists & there was a bleeding cut on his left shin. When she asked him if he was okay, he didn’t answer. She asked him if he had fallen into a ditch. He told her that he was arguing with his sister & wanted to call her to be sure she was safe. After making the call, he went & took a shower & then left the building carrying a bag. CCTV footage showed that he walked toward the garbage bins & returned without the bag. His blood-stained shorts & t-shirt were later found by police in these bins. He told an assistant manager of his housing facility, Robert Maitland, that he & Amber had been going to a party but they’d had a big argument & she’d run off. He claimed he’d fallen near Hamilton Academicals stadium & gotten muddy.
He said he was worried about his sister & the fact that if something had happened to her, people would think that he was at fault due to their argument. Robert Maitland suggested that Connor make an appeal on social media to help find Amber but Connor was immediately dismissive, saying that it wouldn’t be helpful since they had different social circles.
Two days after Amber went out with Connor, her naked body was found on Sunday, November 28 at 10:10 am, covered in mud & concealed with bushes & branches in a wooded area in South Lanarkshire in Cadzow Glen, a park near the center of town. Post-mortem examination found significant blunt-force trauma to Amber’s head & eight individual bruises to her neck. The type of injuries found to her neck indicated manual gripping & compression to her neck which was her cause of death. Her eye was swollen, her nose fractured & her brain appeared to be swollen to the naked eye but there were no signs of traumatic brain injury.
Amber’s clothing, which included jogging bottoms, a bra, a top & a jacket were found near her body. Her underwear had been forcibly torn from her body & damage to her pants appeared to be caused from a dragging motion. Her injuries suggested a violent sexual assault. Forensic evidence showed widespread blood staining on Connor’s jacket that was compatible with Amber’s DNA. A footprint was found on the left side of the inside of Amber’s bra that appeared to match Connor’s Adidas Gazelles shoe. Connor’s DNA was found on several different parts of Amber’s body that included her chest, buttocks & thighs. When questioned about the findings of DNA, he repeatedly said he didn’t understand why & he was at a “complete loss” as to how his DNA got there.
Craig Niven hadn’t been in contact with Connor during the time that Amber was missing, but he spoke with Connor on the day that Amber’s body was found & noted that he didn’t seem very emotional & told him that he & Amber had had a falling out when they saw each other two days earlier.
When he was asked if he had been in the area where Amber’s body was found, he said, “I have maybe dropped into the bush for a pee if I’ve had a drink or something.” He told police that he had nothing to hide.
In a devastating twist, a 45-year-old man, Stephen Corrigan, had initially found Amber’s remains between November 26 & 28th & instead of notifying police, he sexually abused, before attempting to hide her body from view. His father, 79-year-old William Corrigan claimed that his son stayed at his home in Blantyre after a fall on ice on November 23 that left his arm in a sling. He said that on Friday, November 26, he’d taken his son for his third COVID vaccine so that arm was sore so he decided to spend the night at his dad’s house where he stayed up late playing video games. William Corrigan claimed that the next day he left the house for a number of hours to go to the bookmakers & when he returned, he saw that his son had left. He laid down & took a nap & when he woke, his son had returned & he was unaware what he had been doing during that time.
Corrigan went to trial & was found guilty of attempting to defeat the ends of justice & breach of the peace by intimately touching & concealing Amber’s body after discovering her rather than contacting emergency services. Corrigan had no knowledge of Amber or Connor before Amber’s death & denied the charge. He was found guilty & sentenced to nine years in prison. The judge spoke during his sentencing: “Any decent human being coming across the naked body of a young girl who was unconscious or possibly dead, would immediately call the emergency services. You, on the other hand, did not do so. Instead, you touched her sexually on her buttocks, thighs, breasts, pubic area & elsewhere on her head & body. You then moved her body & clothing, concealing it under bushes & branches.” Corrigan’s DNA was found everywhere on Amber’s body from head to toe & back to front. The fact that he’d concealed her body delayed the discovery of her body & had the potential of altering & destroying evidence.
Corrigan was also given a four month sentence that will run along his nine-year term for assaulting a former partner when he grabbed her by the throat & pinned her against an argument. The incident happened in 2006 but she never reported it & the details were revealed while they were investigating Corrigan in relation to the finding of Amber’s body.
On November 30, Connor posted a tribute to Amber on Facebook, writing, “Amber, you will fly high for the rest of time. We will all miss you. Especially me. I love you ginger midget. GBFN (goodbye for now) X.” Connor was arrested on December 1, 2021. He was allegedly supposed to have met a reporter from Daily Record on December 2, claiming that he wanted to pay tribute to his sister & said, “I’d like people to know what Amber was like. The real Amber. Not the Amber that people saw but the person she was on the inside. I’d like them to know. Connor failed to show up at the meeting because he’d already been arrested.
After a thirteen day trial at the High Court in Glasgow, he was found guilty on July 25, 2023. The judge spoke & said, “She was looking forward to meeting up with you on the night she was murdered. She even posted a selfie of both of you on Snapchat. You walked with her to Cadzow Glen. There you beat her about the head, breaking her nose, removed her clothing & sexually assaulted her with the intent to rape & then manually strangled her to death. The last person she saw alive was you, her brother, strangling the life out of her. What you did was truly evil.” He was given a mandatory life sentence & will serve a minimum of 22 years before he can apply for parole.
Court documents also showed that their father, Peter Gibson, sexually assaulted two young boys & assaulted & raped a woman after he tied her up & blindfolded her. These crimes were committed between 2001 & 2008 & he was sentenced in April of 2023.
Craig & Carol Niven described Amber as the most giving, caring, loving, supportive & admirable person. She had a love of art & singing & had an amazing outlook on life despite all the suffering she had experienced. They felt that Amber & Connor had been let down throughout their lives by the system. “We now have one daughter buried in Larkhall Cemetery & another child in prison. Life will never be the same.”
Amber’s murder has brought light to concerns about vulnerable children, especially those that have experienced trauma & abuse at critical developmental stages. Amber had been exposed to violence, abuse & rape by various men & had been unable to find safety, even with her own brother. An independent review of Amber’s care will examine what went wrong to hopefully prevent future failures.
Amber was an optimistic, kind girl who deserved a chance to heal & build a life that didn’t involve pain & violence & this tragic loss has highlighted the measures that are still needed to protect at-risk youth.
References:
- Sky News: Amber Gibson: Connor Gibson on trial accused of sexually assaulting & murdering sister
- Sky News: Amber Gibson’s murder trial hears footprint found on teenager’s bra ‘matched brother’s shoe’
- Sky News: Amber Gibson: Girl allegedly sexually assaulted & murdered by brother ‘had injuries consistent with being strangled’
- STV News: Accused looked like he ‘fell in a ditch’ on night of sister’s murder
- Yahoo News: Brother found guilty of sexual assault & murder of Amber Gibson, 16
- BBC: Amber Gibson’s brother jailed for life for killing teenager
- Judiciary of Scotland: Sentencing statements
- Independent: Man accused of touching Amber Gibson’s body was with family, father tells trial
- Daily Record: Man who violated Amber Gibson’s body ‘grabbed ex by throat & cut off her breathing’
- Daily Mail: A tragic life: How Amber Gibson, 16, spent years in care after escaping home where her father viciously attacked her mother & was raped by another man weeks before being sexually assaulted & murdered by her own brother
- Medium: A brother’s betrayal: The devastating murder of Amber Gibson
- Daily Mail: The devil-obsessed teen loner who killed his own little sister: Connor Gibson changed his Facebook picture to a devil brandishing a knife, terrified classmates & threatened to rip the unborn baby from a pregnant woman before murdering his sister
