A tribute for Renee and Andrew MacRae. Photo Credit: The Press & Journal. 

Last month, Renee and Andrew’s family spoke off the heartache of losing them and still seeking closure. It’s been forty years since their disappearance and we seem to be no closer to finding out what actually happened on that fateful night.

For obvious reasons, both Gordon and Bill remain key suspects.

Gordon has been outspoken in the media throughout the years, making appeals and even offering a monetary reward. If he was the murderer, we’d also have to question what his motive was. He had already moved on and living with his secretary at the time.  Renee had only told Valerie about the affair when she had been pregnant with Andrew and Valerie only told the police after the disappearance. But what if Gordon had known all along and just couldn’t take it anymore? Could he have used his money to hire a hitman to kill Renee and Andrew?

Then there’s Bill, who has avoided speaking to the media almost entirely for 28 years until breaking his silence in 2004 to state his lack of involvement. Renee had nothing to lose about going public about the affair but Bill certainly did; his family and his job were all on the line. He wanted to end the affair and just be with his family but he was now forever linked to Renee through Andrew. According to Valerie, Bill had insisted that Renee bring Andrew along that night despite never showing that much interest in getting to know his son. Did he see arrange to see them both that night and then kill them to destroy any connection?

Bill does have an alibi for that night which was provided by his wife, Rosemary, who said that he had been at home with the family all night. It’s curious that despite the fact he had been cheating on her for four years, she has been standing by his side and continues to do that till this day. Could Rosemary have ordered the killing of Renee and Andrew? Or is she telling the truth because Bill had orchestrated the killing but hired someone to do the dirty work?

Bill has been arrested before in 1990 with dishonesty and forgery involving sums of around £240,000. Throughout his career in finance, financial records were destroyed in four separate fires at four separate companies he worked at. Coincidence? Unlikely.

Further details have since emerged of a suspect who had fled to America after being interviewed by an investigator. A man named James Taylor said that his late friend Sandy Thompson who had carried out fieldwork investigating he case had been sure that Renee was buried on the A9, near a flyover. Reporting his concerns to Police Scotland, Taylor said that Sandy has spoke to a foreman in the roads department who said someone had dug up a section of the road the day the mother and son disappeared. Taylor said that Sandy told him that when this man looked at it, he knew far more than he was letting on. The same man fled to the US the very next day and only returned when the case had gone cold.

We also have to question the police investigation:

Why was the anonymous letter not followed up upon?

Why was the anomaly on the A9 only considered a decade after it had been pointed out?

Why was the smell of rotting flesh not returned to when funds were made available?

Why would you not consider investigating what could only be referred to as a human head?

Why are authorities covering up what really happened on the night of the MacRae’s disappearance?

By the end of 1972, police had exhausted all of their leads and the case began to wind down. However interest into the disappearance was renewed when it was on Grampian Television’s documentary, ‘Unsolved’ in 2004 and screened throughout Scotland. The investigation was soon re-opened.

Although, in the years between 1972 and 2004, there had been some notable developments. Detective Sergeant John Cathcart who coordinated the search for Renee and Andrew had a breakthrough eight months into the investigation. Whilst excavating Dalmagarry quarry he was hit by the smell of decomposing flesh after removing a layer of topsoil. He kept digging however he was told by a superior officer to stop because the bulldozer they were using had to go back to the contractors due to a lack of funds. Later, a digger working at the quarry said that he had been hit by the same smell.

Police and army search woodside in November 1976. Photo Credit: Scotland Now. 

In 1977, naval divers searched Leanach Quarry on Culloden Moor and filmed what appeared to be a head wrapped in a supermarket carrier bag. They made a sketch of what they had seen and handed it to the police however the quarry was soon eliminated from the inquiry. Five years later, an anonymous source wrote to the Northern Constabulary about activity at an unnamed quarry but nothing came of it.

There were also some leads which went cold. For example, in 1998, a digger working on a house in Inverness near where Gordon MacRae used to stay uncovered a bank card with the name R MacRae. However the card was traced back to another R MacRae from Inverness. Then at the turn of the century, bones were discovered in a woodland area near Bonar Bridge in Sutherland. Police ruled out any connection to the case.

Following the renewed interest in the mystery in 2004, police carried out a comprehensive dig of the disused Dalmagarry quarry. The process lasted a month and cost around £150,000. After 35,000 tons of earth had been excavated by internationally experienced forensic archeologists and anthropologists and 2,000 trees had been removed, all that was found were two crisp packets, some men’s clothing and rabbit bones. Whilst no human remains were found, police said that their excavation ‘substantially enhanced’ evidence. Two years later a report naming a suspect was sent to prosecutors however insufficient evidence meat that it was not going to be considered in court  proceedings.

A local farmer called Brian MacGregor took it upon himself to commission a radar survey which identitied an anomaly underneath the northbound carriageway of the A9, where Renee’s car was found ablaze. Only ten years layer in 2016 did investigating officers confirm that they would work with the appointed contractors of the latest A9 project to establish what the anomaly may be. This followed a fresh appeal for information in October 2016 on the run up to the 40th anniversary.

Most recently, investigator Stuart Goodcare, has made the sensational claim that he knows where the bodies are hidden and also has the names of two suspects who the police aren’t considering. He has launched a bid to raise £7,700 which he says will help him reveal his findings to the public before he hands over his information to police.

In October 2018, police released a photograph of Andrew and image of the Silver Cross pram model which was owned by his mother in an appeal for sightings of it on and around 12 November, 1976. They are also on the lookout for an Antler-made, tobacco-coloured suitcase which they want to trace back as belonging to Renee, labelling it a “significant” piece of evidence.

   36-year-old Renee and 3-year-old son Andrew. Photo Credit: The Scotsman.

This year marked the 42nd anniversary of the disappearance of Renee MacRae and her toddler son Andrew after they left their home in Cradlehall on the outskirts of Inverness on November 12, 1976.

Renee, 36, had taken both her sons with her: 9-year-old Gordon and 3-year-old Andrew. She dropped Gordon off at her estranged husband, Gordon’s house before going to visit her sister, Morag, in Kilmarnock.

Later that same night, her BMW was discovered on fire in a lay-by off the A9 near 12 miles from Inverness and eight miles. The only evidence gathered from the car was a single spot of blood on the rug of the car boot which proved a match for the mother and son’s shared blood group. Yet there was no sign of them.

Neither Renee nor young Andrew have been seen since and the case is Scotland’s longest running missing persons investigation.

Officers inspecting Renee’s burnt out BMW. Photo Credit: Police Scotland. 

Concerns were raised about their disappearance after she failed top pick up her elder son from school on Monday. She was a loving and committed mother and it was not in her nature to do this. Soon, Renee’s best friend, Valerie Steventon, revealed that on the evening of her disappearance Renee had actually set off to meet her lover Bill McDowell in Perth. Bill was an accountant and secretary at her husband’s building company and was married with two children. He was also the biological father of Andrew. The couple had been planning a holiday together which Renee saw as a precursor to a new life in the Shetland Islands. Bill had told Renee that he had found a job with Texaco and a house for them all to live in but Valerie said this “turned out to be a pack of lies.”

When the case broke, detectives confronted Bill in his home, where he admits that they did have an affair for four years. However he denied that he ever had any plans to leave his wife for Renee, adding that he’d grown tired of the affair. Renee’s house, on the other hand, was packed up as though she was about to move. As well as this, the morning of the day she went missing, she had been talking to Valerie about how she didn’t want to go on the trip her and Bill had planned because she had too much packing to do. Bill has always maintained that they never did meet that night.

Renee’s husband, Gordon had always suspected that his wife had been having an affair but he was not sure who with. He had moved out of the family home after splitting up with his wife but the two had remained good friends and only ever had good things to say about each other. He continued to support the family financially which he could do easily as his business had an annual turnover of £30 million.

He had no idea he wasn’t Andrew’s biological father when Bill’s name came out as the man Renee had been having an affair with, he was fired as Gordon had always considered Bill to be a good friend.

Significantly, though, Bill told police officers that he and Renee had a certain way of communicating. They would let the phone ring a certain number of times leading to a missed call to contact each other. Bill said that his phone had rung in such a way twice since her disappearance and that she must, therefore, still be alive.

 Renee MacRae pictured with Bill McDowell. Photo Credit: The Press Association. 

A police search began with other forces such as the Scottish Crime Squad and the sub-aqua team from Stirling came up to Inverness for assistance.  The search continued to expand with 80 local police ranks and the army base at Fort George supplying 70 soldiers. Renee’s house, Gordon’s offices, 533 houses in Inverness and sheds, garages, crofts and outbuildings were all searched. The car which was found ablaze was checked by a BMW expert and a bomber from Canberra RAF Strike Command used heat cameras to scan the A9 from above. Meanwhile, geologists, shepherds, gamekeepers and trackers searched the area whilst the police carried out up to 5000 interviews.

Yet after this extensive search all they had was a witness reporting seeing a man dragging something they thought was a dead sheep not far from the car, while another saw a man with a pushchair near the quarry. Renee was reported to have been wearing a white sheepskin coat when she disappeared. Police concluded that Renee and Andrew MacRae had been murdered and that the individual or individuals responsible had made meticulous plans, disposing of their bodies without leaving any clues.

Then suddenly Bill McDowell walked into Inverness Police’s HQ to make a voluntary statement. Upon spotting his car outside the police station, his wife, Rosemary, walked in and dragged him away, telling officers to leave him alone.

Had he been about to confess?