'Did I think after my interview with MacDowell that he could have been the murderer?' ponders reporter who covered the Renee MacRae and Andrew tragedy down the years
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Highland News and Media reporter Neil Macphail recalls reporting the Renee and Andrew MacRae mystery over the years.
As a young reporter covering the MacRae case during the 46 years that have passed since Renee's burned out BMW started the massive investigation, the guilty verdict returned last Thursday was something I feared would never happen.
From the elation of being the first journalist to get an interview with William MacDowell into print (in the Aberdeen Evening Express) eight days after the blazing car was found, it seemed logical to assume that very soon the massive police investigation would quickly get to the bottom of the mystery.
The interview was conducted in surreal circumstances, in the middle of a paddock that MacDowell was ploughing with a wee grey Fergie tractor beside the upmarket family home at Nairnside near Culloden. Was that a calculated red herring, I wondered later?
We stood in the doorway of a pony shelter in the middle of the field – and I saw that there was a patch of recently laid cement of the shed floor.
I checked later if the police knew about this, and was told they did. Another red herring.
MacDowell was perfectly polite, calm and contrite as he went public for the first time about his four-year affair with Mrs MacRae, the estranged wife of one of his bosses, Gordon MacRae.
His wife Rosemary – who had donned wellies to jog over the recently turned earth to ask her husband if he would speak to the press – was standing by him, he said.
At that time police were treating the case publicly as a missing persons inquiry, but there were darker suspicions among the officers in charge.
It was a murder inquiry in all but name, and it was big news when many months later the police called yet another press conference and said officially they thought the mother and son had been killed.
But still there was no big breakthrough in the inquiry.
The daily stories and regular media conferences petered out gradually and soon the case became a yearly re-hash of what had happened, with the police remaining optimistic that their deaths would be solved.
Gradually the yearly special reports every November revisiting how Mrs MacRae and her toddler son Andrew simply vanished, dwindled to be replaced with 10-year specials when the events would again be gone over in the hope that perhaps a nugget of crucial new information would be gleaned to bring new impetus to the case.
With some trepidation, I would once more ring Renee's long-suffering sister Morag Govans, who despite her obvious sadness, would tell me bravely how she was hoping that one day she would know what had happened to the sister and wee boy she missed so much.
As feared, she now knows they were murdered by MacDowell, and has heart-rendingly implored him to reveal where he has disposed of their remains to give her and others full closure.
Did I think after my interview with MacDowell that he could have been the murderer?
I was cited as a witness, but not called, for his trial, and thought over what I would I reply if asked that question.
Looking back it is hard to say, although I am no criminal psychologist.
As he denied being responsible for their disappearance there were no trembling hands, no head down feet scuffing the ground, and he made eye contact as he answered my questions. Minutes later he combed his hair before leaning on a gate to pose with his his wife for press photographs.
He was all calm and controlled... but perhaps that in itself was telling.
