Pan Am Flight 103 Bombing Investigation - Mary's House, Sliema, Malta

Mary's House, Sliema, Malta

As well as the Babygro carrying the label "Made in Malta" detectives discovered that Yorkie-brand trousers are manufactured in Ireland and Malta by Yorkie Clothing. In August 1989, Scottish detectives flew to Malta to speak to the owner, who directed them to Yorkie's main outlet on the island—Mary's House in Sliema, run by Tony Gauci, who became the prosecution's most important witness.

Gauci recalled that about two weeks before the bombing he had sold the Yorkie trousers to a man of Libyan appearance, who spoke a mixture of Arabic, English, and Maltese with a Libyan accent. Gauci remembered the sale well, he told the police, because the customer didn't seem to care what he was buying. He bought an old tweed jacket that Gauci had been trying to get rid of for years, a blue Babygro, a woollen cardigan, and a number of other items, all different styles and sizes. He described the man as "5 ft 10 in, muscular, and clean-shaven" (U.S. News & World Report, November 18, 1989). A Scottish police artist flew to Malta to compile a detailed sketch of the man.

Gauci had seen this customer before and, he told police, had seen him since the bombing, too, in Malta, just a few weeks previously. At this point, the Scottish police believed they might be in a position to make an arrest.

However, days later the Sunday Times of London became aware of the story, not least because of the Scottish detectives' habit of going for a walk together at lunchtime every day, conspicuous as a group in their black police officers' trousers and white shirts. Rumours spread around the island that the Lockerbie police were in Malta looking for the bomber. An American journalist who approached one of the detectives to ask whether he was from Lockerbie was told "No comment" in a broad Scottish accent, which was taken as confirmation, and the story reached David Leppard, then an investigative reporter with the Insight team of the Sunday Times, who published the story. Any chance of arresting the suspect in Malta was lost.

Before the detectives left his store that day, Gauci remembered something else. Just as the Libyan-looking customer reached the door, it had started to rain. Gauci had asked him whether he also wanted to buy an umbrella, and he did. The detectives bought an identical umbrella from Gauci, took it back to Lockerbie, and searched through the remains of the black umbrellas that were found at the crash site, until they found parts of one that seemed to match Gauci's.

The parts were sent to DERA for examination, where traces of the blue Babygro were found embedded into the umbrella's fabric, indicating that both items had been inside the Samsonite suitcase. This match confirmed to the Scots that the man Gauci had sold the clothes to was, indeed, the man they were looking for.

Doubt has since been cast on the reliability of Gauci as a witness; five years after the trial, former Lord Advocate, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, publicly described Gauci as being "an apple short of a picnic" and "not quite the full shilling", and it was revealed in 2007 by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission that Gauci was interviewed 17 times by Scottish and Maltese police during which he made a series of inconclusive statements. In addition, a legal source said that there was evidence that leading questions had been put to Gauci.

In the BBC Two The Conspiracy Files: Lockerbie shown on August 31, 2008, it was claimed that one significant reason for Megrahi's latest appeal was that Gauci, who had picked him out in a line-up, had seen a magazine photograph of him just four days before he made the identification.