Lydia Reid
Lydia Reid has been pushing for answers about her son's death for 40 years.
A mum is demanding new DNA tests after she discovered her son's coffin was empty when it was exhumed decades after the tot died.

Lydia Reid has been pushing for answers for more than 40 years and is now demanding that tissue taken from her son, Gary Paton, shortly after he died be analysed to confirm they really were his remains in the first place.

Lydia Reid gave birth to her son in July 1975, with the tot dying seven days later.

But the distressed mum said she believed she had been handed the wrong baby at Scotmid Co-operative Funeral.

The mystery deepened when she successfully campaigned to have his body exhumed decades later - only to find in September this year that the coffin had been buried with no body.

She said: "My son wasn't there. Someone stole the body of my son. I had buried my empty coffin."

Garry Paton
The only objects to be found after his death in 1975 were a shawl, hat, cross and a name tag.
The 69-year-old is now pushing to have tests conducted on the DNA taken from Gary at the time of his death, to ensure the tot really was her son.

But she said she wanted the firm Cellmark to conduct the tests - fearing the samples could be lost or damaged if processed by others.

She told the Daily Record: "I want them tested for DNA as I want to know if there is any part of my son there.

"I want them to go to Cellmark because afterwards, they give me the legal right to have them back. Police Scotland do not give me that right."

The Scot pointed out it was her last chance - and she couldn't take the risk of having the samples lost.

Gary Paton died when he was just seven-days-old in July 1975, at Edinburgh's Sick kids hospital.

The grieving mother has long claimed that staff at had brought her the body of a child who was not hers.

She said it was "devastating" to have had her son's coffin exhumed - with no body found.

Along with the coffin, with a nameplate that had spelled Gary's name wrongly, an academic found a shawl, a hat, a cross and a name tag. She said there were no skeletal remains and no sign of decomposition.

Lydia has previously said that when she asked to see her son she was shown a child that wasn't hers.

Lydia told the BBC: "I objected but they said I was suffering from post-natal depression.

"This baby was blonde and big, my baby was tiny and dark-haired. This was not my son."

Lydia has campaigned for years to find out what happened to her son.

She was a leading figure in the Scottish push to expose how hospitals had unlawfully retained dead children's body parts for research.

Scottish NHS bosses were forced to admit the widespread practice after an investigation into organ retention at Alder Hey hospital in Liverpool. Lydia continued to suspect her son's organs were taken without permission but she hasn't any proof.