So I'm in my flat,
and Sandy's on the way.
He knows I've gone to the police.
I'm the one who marked the grave site.
All of a sudden, Sandy's slamming the car door
and storming up to the door.
My God,
I think he's got a spare key.
I honestly thought he was gonna kill me.
But I was finding this anger just bubbling up inside me.
What right did he have to threaten me?
He was the one that did this.
And so I hit the record button.
If he dares lay a finger on me, I can take that to the police.
"Do you know what? Fuck you, Sandy. Fuck you."
Sandy, why did you get me involved in all of this?
Why?
What good did you think was gonna come of it? You have--
I'll never forgive myself for what I've done to you.
-You will for what you did to Parsons? -No!
I was expecting Sandy to kick off.
But actually,
in that moment, he was a bit broken.
-Sandy, you told me after a month. -I know.
Why?
I fucking loved you and I trusted you.
I mean it, Caroline, when I say, fuck me, I never felt so comfortable.
I never loved somebody as much as when I met you.
And I said, "But you've just heard about this Red Bull can."
He went, "See, at the end of the day,
whatever happened, happened."
"But you weren't involved."
"I involved you."
Deep down, like, it's not your fault.
It's my fault.
Him apologizing to me for everything…
…it released a lot of the fear.
Christ, you've done more for me than anybody's ever done in my life.
One side of my brain is saying, "This is the loving man that I fell for."
"The gentle Sandy."
The other side of my brain is saying, "Caroline, this guy's dangerous."
My emotions were all over the place.
Sandy and I decided we would stay in touch,
and he went back to the estate.
Now, Sandy didn't hurt me that night,
but it could've gone a very, very different way.
I went to the police.
I'd done the right thing.
But I thought, "The police will support me through this."
And they didn't.
They just completely revealed me as the betrayer.
It made me see the police in an entirely different light.
What is your complaint?
Do you understand how much me going to help you guys
has literally ruined my life?
And you couldn't even promise me safety.
Do you understand why this is so sad and serious?
The police abandoned me that day.
As head of Homicide and Major Crime,
I had investigated many, many murders.
Every one of them is a jigsaw.
You don't necessarily have all the pieces,
but you have to put together enough
to present that compelling picture to a jury.
At this stage in the investigation,
the information that we had from Dr. Muirhead led us to the body,
but it wasn't sufficient to allow us to take proceedings against the McKellars.
We needed to find more pieces of the jigsaw.
The police were conducting very, very extensive searches
to see if they could recover
Tony Parsons' bicycle, his helmet, his rucksack.
We needed to find out what vehicle had been involved.
It was essential that we recover
every single possible shred of forensic evidence,
so that we don't allow them to get away without any consequence of their actions.
On top of that,
Dr. Muirhead told the police that Robert McKellar had confirmed to her
that Tony Parsons was alive at the time they removed him to the estate.
If he was still alive,
that takes you into the territory of murder or culpable homicide.
In order to corroborate what has been said to her,
we need to conduct a full postmortem examination.
In this case, the receiving mortuary would be
the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Mortuary in Glasgow.
Incredibly,
the human remains of Tony Parsons
was brought to the same mortuary I was contracted to work at.
For which I had specialist access to files, to computer programs,
ID badges, staff access.
It really wasn't appropriate that she should be in or around the mortuary
during the time Mr. Parsons' body was there.
I was then put initially on special leave,
in case I became a conflict of interest.
I didn't anticipate there would be any problem for her.
I was devastated.
I loved my job.
In medicine, work does kind of become all-consuming.
It's just all you do, all you talk about.
She'd have been training for 11 years by that stage.
Every day has been about medical school or work as a doctor.
To have that taken away from you, it's devastating. That's all you have.
Suddenly, you're at home.
There's no one to speak to.
And this was during lockdown.
Left to her own thoughts.
Oh, my life!
It must have been extremely distressing for her.
It was difficult.
I had no purpose, nothing to wake up for.
Oh, my gosh.
I would start recording everything, even myself,
trying to keep a grasp on my own reality.
It was a terrible time.
She became totally paranoid.
-Mm-hm. -Um…
And anti-police.
Anti seeing anyone, talking to anyone,
doing anything.
I felt like such a failure to my parents by this point in my life.
I knew I'd thrown their world into turmoil.
And I couldn't face that.
My mum explicitly asked the detectives
if I could have someone professional to talk to.
The officer said, "Your daughter's not allowed to speak to anyone,
or she could compromise the case."
My support network of colleagues was gone.
My family was torn apart by this.
I had nothing in Glasgow.
I was getting occasional messages from Caroline.
She was a mess.
You know, a whirlwind romance, an engagement…
I don't know if you have an opportunity to suddenly turn those feelings off.
I was so broken and feeling as if
no one would want to be with me.
Sandy would send little photos and little videos,
saying, "Oh, my gosh, I miss you so much."
I had handed him in and ruined his life.
He should hate me.
It made me feel loved, made me feel wanted.
And that… feeling of being treated well
when you've not been,
you cling onto it so strongly.
I still had that toxic draw
when he would message me.
You make me smile more than anybody.
You make me laugh more than anybody's done in my life.
I've never met somebody like you before in my life.
As mad as it may sound to people,
you can't just turn your affection off even if they've done a terrible thing.
I drove to the Auch Estate,
back to Sandy.
It weirdly felt like I was going home.
Being somewhere where maybe…
…I'm actually loved.
Even if it's the most warped love in the world.
We've all, at some point,
done or kept to something we know is bad for us.
We're all human.
Morning!
Aye…
Being on that estate, you could hide yourself away from the world.
Ah, to be alone in Scotland.
Yeah.
Sandy and I, thereafter, lived in a bubble of our own little false reality.
It's just the best.
His brother, Robert, he accepted me back.
I remember Robert once saying,
"This is the most fucked-up, dysfunctional situation,
but we all love each other."
Me, Robert, and Sandy were the only three in the world who knew
the intensity of what was going on.
When you're on the estate and the police turn up…
Every time a police car would even come past the road, everyone would freeze,
thinking they were gonna get rearrested.
I was made aware by the police that she was back living with him.
And it seemed to me to be a very, very odd decision, indeed.
He had told her he'd killed somebody.
A funeral has taken place of a charity cyclist
whose body was found three years after he went missing.
The fact that she was still associating with Sandy
certainly created in my mind a-- a nagging worry or concern
that she may not be willing to participate as a witness at a later stage.
She told me that she was moving back to the boys' estate.
That sounded completely mental.
I didn't know what she was doing.
How do you think people will judge that decision to go back to the farm?
My brain couldn't fathom and cope with the idea
that the man that I'd fallen in love with was a murderer.
And I was able to…
Poor coping strategies or whatever, I was able to change my beliefs.
I'd be like, "It's the parents' fault."
"He had a bad childhood," "Didn't mean it," "Under the influence…"
Or, "If I do this, I can improve, I can change this, I can control this."
That little bit of your brain that holds onto this idea
that, "Maybe I was wrong, maybe they are a good person," which is…
And… we had a bond,
which, obviously, is not healthy at all,
but it was a bond, and there was an awful lot of love.
Love is such a strong emotion.
It pulls you away from the reality because reality is too painful.
In this moment, I was desperate to see the good in Sandy.
Deep down, she didn't want the reality to be that…
Hello, friend.
…this person that she'd fallen for had killed somebody.
I think Caroline wanted, hoped,
that Sandy had admitted it to her
so that, actually, he could redeem himself.
-You found it very hard to… -I did, yeah.
I think she should just have cut the ties and… and distanced herself.
So, at this point, we're still awaiting the pathologist's written opinion.
The police did what they could to search for Mr. Parsons' possessions.
But no trace of his bicycle or his equipment had been found.
What they did discover was the vehicle that was believed involved…
was Robert's vehicle.
It's an Isuzu pickup.
When examined,
it became evident that the vehicle had been involved in a collision.
The McKellar brothers had arranged to have the vehicle repaired
at a remote garage where it would never normally go to be repaired
at a time that was consistent with the aftermath of the accident.
And, astonishingly enough,
when the police went there,
the mechanic was able to show them photographs
of the vehicle as it had come into the garage.
And the damage is perfectly consistent with a road traffic accident.
As it transpired, the McKellar brothers told the garage,
that they'd had a collision with a deer.
They didn't want to claim on their insurance.
It was a cash-in-hand job.
All of which is plainly an attempt to cover
their involvement in the accident involving Mr. Parsons.
Now, because the vehicle had been repaired,
that meant that there was not going to be a possibility
of finding forensic evidence, say, paintwork from the bike,
fabric from Mr. Parsons' clothing.
Those sorts of things were lost.
But the repair itself was highly significant,
redolent of their guilt.
All the little bits of the jigsaw were beginning to fit together.
But it wasn't direct evidence that tied the McKellars into Tony Parsons' demise.
It was clear to me that Caroline Muirhead was the foundation of this case.
If we were to try to secure justice,
we would need her in court to give evidence against the McKellars.
The days were flowing into weeks, into months,
and this harmonious little bubble was becoming more somber and quite menacing.
I tried to go back to work,
but I really wasn't in a fit state to practice.
We all knew they were gonna get rearrested,
but it just seemed to go on forever.
Myself, Robert, and Sandy indulged in drugs and alcohol.
Three-day bender, no surrender for me.
Two for you.
It was a way of escaping.
Fuck off.
Oh, fuck.
But we were arguing much more.
In the middle of fucking nowhere,
and Sandy's in a cunt of a mood.
Here I was, isolated on a farm,
just in this haze and limbo,
wasting my life,
waiting.
One night, we're playing Scrabble,
and… then being high on drugs,
he started talking about the case.
And I clicked record again.
See, when I hit him, we looked at each other and said,
"What the fuck was that?" And he's like, "I don't know."
Anyway, I thought it was someone homeless.
I was like, "Who'd be cycling this time of night?"
He then starts talking about the bike. "It's under a waterfall somewhere."
I took it down, like, to the loch and tried to launch it.
But the loch goes up and down.
So I had to, like, swim in and get it. Fucking hell.
Is that up by Loch Lyon?
Hm.
Have the police found that bike?
I have no idea. Fuck knows.
Then Sandy started to talk about the police investigation
and conversations he'd had with his own lawyer.
He says they might have one little thing, which is Caroline,
but they've got nothing else.
It's very circumstantial.
There was an arrogance, almost disdain in his voice,
of, "We've got away with this."
"How did that man get there? Was it the boys?"
"We don't know."
There was no compassion, no remorse.
Normal people don't do that.
He was someone's husband.
Someone's dad.
It was a huge wake-up call.
Who is this man? Who is this monster?
Whoever I loved didn't exist.
I was living a lie.
And being high and drunk made that possible.
I'd lost my sense of self and my sense of right and wrong.
Anyways, that's good. Could be an option.
After that, this false bubble of reality, I knew, was gonna burst.
I'm not allowing you to completely ruin my life anymore,
because that's what you keep doing.
I finally just had to accept that he was never gonna change.
And so I had to leave.
-This really how we're ending it? -Yes, it was already ended.
You're going to jail.
You have literally ruined my life. Look what you've got me involved in.
Get out!
And I actually moved back to Glasgow.
To my parents' house.
Hello.
Because…
Hey, darling.
…I'd given up my flat.
Oh, Blue, hello.
When she came back, it was such a relief.
But very often she was up all through the night,
and she was in her room all day.
Being back at my parents' house forced me to acknowledge
my behaviors and my decisions.
I felt like I'd let a lot of people down.
She was not in a good place at all, was she?
No.
Oh fuck. Cunt and shitty fuck.
I just wanted the investigation to be over.
Sandy had no idea about the recordings I'd taken.
I thought to myself,
"Maybe the investigation is taking so long because they haven't got the bike."
Maybe the bike is vital, crucial evidence to the prosecution.
And so I called up the detectives, and I said, "I have another recording."
And two detectives came to my parents' house.
I played them the secret recording where Sandy was talking about the bike.
I took it down to the loch and tried to launch it,
but the loch goes up and down.
The police acted on that information and searched every waterfall.
There are countless waterfalls on the estate.
The police were keen to find the bike
because there may have been paint from the vehicle that was involved on it.
But…
they found nothing.
-Was the windscreen not fucked? -It was all right.
Having to sit and listen to this recording,
I can hear myself snorting the cocaine.
It's vile.
And I said, "Look, I need help."
The detective said, "Have you not been referred
to the Victim Support Service yet?"
And I went, "No."
He said, "You should have been with them from the word go."
In Scots law,
witnesses who are in relationships with an accused person
are to be treated as vulnerable witnesses.
The police and the Crown had a duty to provide…
Fuck it.
…emotional and mental support
to Dr. Muirhead right from the very start.
Let's go home.
As I understand it,
the relationship was not a lengthy relationship.
It was a matter of weeks or months.
I have no doubt that that played a part
in the risk assessment the police made at the time.
The length of a relationship bears no relation
to the fact that she was a highly vulnerable person.
We could have referred her to help,
but you have to bear in mind that we're talking here
about someone who is highly intelligent.
She's a fully qualified doctor,
someone who knows exactly what's available to her.
Dr. Muirhead did not fit the police's stereotype
of a vulnerable witness.
And that's where the system started to let her down.
I just think she was treated appallingly.
Finally, the results of the postmortem came back.
The forensic pathologist found
that Mr. Parsons had sustained multiple blunt force trauma injuries,
consistent with being struck by a motor vehicle.
But they were injuries that did not indicate
he would've died immediately.
The pathologist's opinion was very clear.
Mr. Parsons was still alive after the collision.
Immediately, we need to have an expert in accident and emergency medicine
to provide an opinion as to how long Mr. Parsons might have lived.
The expert's opinion was between 20 to 30 minutes.
It's utterly central to the jigsaw of evidence.
In Scots law, you can commit murder,
either intentionally or by what's known as wicked recklessness,
the carrying out of an act where you don't care
whether the person lives or dies.
They don't call for assistance.
They don't call the police, don't call the ambulance service.
They don't take any steps whatsoever…
…to give Mr. Parsons a chance at life.
It's callous beyond… beyond anything that I can imagine, really.
Finally, all the pieces of the jigsaw were in place.
I instructed the police to arrest the McKellars.
This was the most serious crime it could be,
murder.
Can you confirm your name?
Alexander Gardner McKellar.
Can I ask you your name, please?
Robert McKellar.
During the interviews, the police tactic was to try to humanize Mr. Parsons,
try to unsettle the McKellar brothers.
You know who that is?
Look at that picture and think what you did to him.
His family.
I can see the photo.
Can you see the man?
Your actions could have kept that man alive,
and you chose not to.
Police play a recording Caroline Muirhead had made of Sandy to him.
We seized a laptop, which was later examined.
On this laptop were several recordings…
It was quite clear,
from the way Sandy reacted,
that he knew nothing of the recording.
And you can see that in the way he cracks his knuckles.
…one of the audio clips in here.
Because it was either my life or his.
Fucking stupid cunt shouldn't have fucking been there.
He was plainly shocked by it.
It doesn't sound like me, to be honest. It sounds like it's been messed with.
In my opinion,
Sandy's body language, his reaction to the tape recording,
was going to be dynamite in front of a jury.
Have you no regrets about what you've done?
No comment.
Twin brothers have been charged
in connection with the death of a cyclist reported missing four years ago.
Alexander McKellar and Robert McKellar
were charged with murder.
Both were remanded in custody.
My phone went, and it was one of the detectives.
And he called me and said, "Caroline, we just wish to inform you
that the boys have now officially and formally
been charged with the murder of Tony Parsons."
And he said, "Look, Caroline, they'll be held in jail now."
"A trial date will be set."
"You'll be called as a witness."
There was a… a relief,
but there was also, then, that huge, impending anxiety
and apprehension of the murder trial.
I recognized I was gonna get torn to shreds.
The most common question one gets is,
"How can you defend people who are accused of murder?"
My answer to that is,
"It's not my job to decide whether the person is innocent or guilty."
"My task is simply to represent someone to the best of my ability."
When I first met Mr. McKellar,
he no longer disputed that he and his brother
killed and buried Mr. Parsons.
On his instructions,
I approached the Crown offering a plea of guilty
to causing death by dangerous driving.
But I was informed that such a plea would not be accepted.
The Crown intended to proceed with a charge of murder.
The Crown's principal sources of evidence
were the statement from Caroline Muirhead
that there had been a confession
that Mr. Parsons had been alive at the time of the collision,
a matter which I think it's only fair to say Mr. McKellar totally disputed.
The other evidence was a report
saying that it was theoretically possible Mr. Parsons had survived the impact.
But the Crown's expert was really expressing an opinion.
It was not sufficient, in my view, to take the Crown to a charge of murder.
Their entire case, in my opinion, was built around one witness.
And in my opinion,
Miss Muirhead was unreliable as a witness.
Following the arrest, I'm still in this limbo.
Until it's resolved in the courts,
you still haven't shaken off that shadow of what's happened.
It's a very long waiting room.
All great stories do not start with, "I bought a box of home hair dye,"
but I went, "Do you know what? Fuck it."
Wow.
I didn't want to even think about my old life or my old reality.
It is bad, isn't it?
The trial date was set for July.
I was told I would be cross-examined
by both Robert's barrister
and then Sandy's, back-to-back.
I'm worried that they will destroy my character to such an extent
that I might never be able to practice medicine again.
And, you know,
the human brain can do
some really wild things when it's under pressure.
Doing a 1:00 a.m. hike.
I started hanging with a crowd in Glasgow I shouldn't have been with.
Talk to me, baby
And I turned to drugs and alcohol.
Namely, cocaine.
I was on a path of destruction.
Caroline, when I first met her,
was the last person on earth who would have ever taken drugs.
But after she met Sandy,
she'd been taking drugs pretty regularly.
That had coincided with her life completely spiraling out of control.
This is why I don't do ketamine.
There's been times she didn't come home,
times when we… we thought we'd lost her.
According to a number of witnesses,
Miss Muirhead was significantly under the influence
of both drugs and alcohol.
That would, in my opinion, impact upon a jury's view
as to whether what she was telling the police was, in fact, accurate or not.
That, together with Miss Muirhead's decision to continue the relationship,
would be the starting point
of discrediting Miss Muirhead as a witness.
If the jury could not be satisfied about her evidence,
then that would mean they could not convict of murder.
At this point, I am saying repeatedly,
especially to the Victim Support Services,
I am not in a fit place to do this.
I was concerned about her.
I was concerned for her.
But she had placed herself in a situation
where the Crown had no option other than to compel her to come to court.
And I wrote a letter to her explaining that.
This letter, it said, if I didn't testify,
I'd be held in contempt of court.
It was, "You do this, or you'll end up in jail yourself."
I was just trying to help her.
Because I'm looking at this situation, thinking,
"You're about to throw your life away."
"You're a young, intelligent woman
with a fantastic career in front of you,
and you're about to literally pull the pin on the grenade and go, 'Boom.'"
There are ways to convey
the consequences of not turning up without it being blunt.
As a Crown witness,
Dr. Muirhead should have been offered the special measure
of having her evidence taken by a commissioner.
It's a procedure for vulnerable witnesses
where the evidence is recorded long before the trial process.
In my view, she didn't fit the criteria.
I'm a prosecutor. My job is to prosecute people.
Her giving evidence in person would be much more impactful to a jury.
I wasn't the strong person who'd gone to give them evidence.
I was this pathetic waste of space.
What if I actually am so discredited they lose their case?
Twin brothers are due in Glasgow High Court today,
accused of killing a cyclist and covering up their crime.
Alexander and Robert McKellar face life imprisonment
if found guilty of murdering Anthony Parsons.
You have in the dock
a man accused of killing somebody
and the person who's gonna testify against him,
the woman he was going to marry.
Whether you, uh, view court as a spectacle or not,
you know, that is high drama.
If the Parsons family were to see justice done,
Caroline's testimony was going to be absolutely crucial.
I thought that being a woman of significant intelligence,
she would be a difficult witness to cross-examine.
I anticipated that she would be quite volatile.
Nothing suggested she was going to be an easy witness to deal with.
I woke up early hours.
My mum's laid out an outfit.
I'm looking at it and I'm thinking, "That doesn't even fit me anymore."
It's an extraordinary feeling, really, being in the court of justice.
As people begin to gather,
from the lawyers
to this poor man's family,
there's a rising sense of expectation.
And then the accused are brought up into the dock.
These country lads are wearing their best suits.
They've had nice new haircuts.
It's a moment of real tension.
I was so ashamed…
…of who I was and what I'd become.
Court.
And you're waiting for Caroline…
to take the stand.
Call the diet. His Majesty's Advocate
against Alexander McKellar and Robert McKellar.
And I just thought I was going to let everyone down.
And I just panicked.
I wanted to get as far away from there as possible.
There was a sense that something had gone wrong for the Crown.
-Advocate Depute. -Thank you, My Lord.
I regret that I move
that the case be adjourned until tomorrow morning.
Very well.
The no-show on the first day of the star witness…
it… it's just extraordinary.
The phone went. It was the police.
"She hasn't turned up. Where is she?" And I'm saying, "She's not here."
And now I don't know where she is.
You're having to stop your mind catastrophizing
about what might have happened or where she might have gone.
I just had this crazy notion that if I found that bike,
maybe it'd all be okay.
I know where the bike is. That's something else. It's not just me.
You know? It's not just the word of a crazy person.
There might be proof they haven't found that they did do this.
And so there wasn't much sense in it. Of course there wasn't.
So, basically, no signal.
So no one knows I'm here.
To get to that waterfall…
Slight issue.
…that's a long walk.
If I go all the way round with the flooding,
that'll take another 40 minutes.
But…
Let's go.
…I had half a bottle of wine once I got out of the car.
The adrenaline was coursing through me so much.
Fuck.
Shit, man!
I'm getting to that waterfall, getting that bike.
No one's gonna stop me.
I'm gonna show the police. I'm gonna do their job for them.
Three miles in to an 18-mile hike.
I haven't got much time.
I was taking snaps of myself.
Didn't send them to anyone.
And I think there was this, "Look at me and look at what I'm about to do…"
And, "I'm this victim. Like, look what people have done to me."
What now?
When you start something, you've gotta finish it.
You're…
I'm not sane.
You know, this was my home. I lived here, I love it.
I lost everything.
I miss it so much.
It would be fair to say on that first morning when this happened,
the defense team was a bit more upbeat than the, uh, prosecution team.
If your key witness is not prepared to take the stand,
that's a problem.
Dr. Muirhead did not appear in answer to her citation.
A warrant was sought for her arrest.
She had been sighted on the estate.
Hello!
I've only done seven miles.
I was supposed to testify, what, three hours ago?
The hours are going by.
They'll be looking for me.
All the cars are going to come along there.
I've still got another, what, seven miles to get to the dam?
Then I heard the low hum of the helicopter.
I mean, it's echoing.
They're coming, boys!
Run into the barn.
Seeing that helicopter
took even, like, whatever little bit of rational thought there was there,
and then it was gone.
I'm so fucking lucky I got here before they did.
I'm under a table, I'm in a shed.
There's nobody here.
There's no trace of me, right?
For me to get to this waterfall, I am running out of time.
I needed a faster form of transport.
Oh my God. See if the keys are in this.
Oh my God.
Fucking idiots left the keys!
Now, I have no idea how to drive a tractor.
Shit!
Turn around, and there's the manual,
still in its plastic casing, in the back seat.
And I went, "Right."
With the manual on my lap,
putting the key in, being like, "Turn this, do that," then… Vroom!
I have stolen
a tractor.
Oh… my… fucking…
God!
Whoo!
I drove the tractor to where the waterfall nearly is.
Blocked the road.
Now the police can't get past me.
Fuck.
Like…
I mean, this is crazy!
We see right there, there's a wee cave bit behind.
And the pressure of the water, when you throw the bike down,
it churns it up into the back.
And… if that bike is still there,
I'm going to try and find it.
I'm wading through the water.
I mean, the water is freezing cold.
And the shock of the cold water
actually made me very emotional.
In that moment, my brain was working so fast.
Not logically, but so incredibly fast.
I thought, "Do you know what? Fuck it all."
"Non, je ne regrette rien."
Mania.
Psychosis.
And that's what I'd become.
You're an hysterical, broken person.
Don't let anyone else
get abandoned and broken like me.
I have just fucked my whole life up.
For what?
For a man who actually killed somebody.
And that grief, and that loss, and that stress
culminated into that
psychotic finale.
I need to know if the bike is here.
If there is something more than me.
I did not start a murder trial for something I didn't fucking see.
I am found at the waterfall,
and I am then arrested
for contempt of court.
I never found the bike.
I then get taken to the High Court.
I'm sitting there, waiting to testify.
And I'm thinking,
"My mum and dad will be so angry and upset with me."
The police called…
Oh, yes.
…and said they found her.
She faces prison.
I was just
stunned by the whole situation.
I couldn't cope with it.
So much of her young life has been wasted
by this sequence of events.
That pains me.
Because, you know…
young life is to be lived.
And that…
…hurts me.
The next day the court reconvenes.
I've heard various rumors why Caroline hadn't shown.
Someone told me she'd been in the cells overnight.
Court!
Sat in the court.
We thought we were getting a live court case.
And it… it… it worked in a completely different way.
It was very unusual.
I can advise that there has been a development in the case.
I was waiting for the guard to take me to testify.
And in front of the court,
the prosecutor requests that the indictment is amended.
My Lord, in relation to charge number one,
in line 11, to delete the word "murder"
and substitute the word "kill."
It's very significant indeed.
The murder charge has become unsustainable.
I have instructions to tender a plea of guilty to charge one.
I received a telephone call from the prosecution.
If Mr. McKellar was prepared to plead guilty to culpable homicide,
the Crown would accept.
Culpable homicide is a crime less than murder.
Those pleas are acceptable to the Crown.
Because a plea was agreed, then there is no trial.
The twins Alexander and Robert McKellar had been due to stand trial
for the murder of Anthony Parsons.
But today, here at the High Court,
at the start of what was expected to be a lengthy trial,
Alexander instead pled guilty to the lesser charge of culpable homicide
whilst his brother Robert admitted to teaming up with Alexander
to hide and then bury the body.
The court official said to me that "The boys have accepted a plea."
"So you are free to leave."
"And you don't have a criminal record for contempt of court."
"And the Parsons family want to thank you very much."
-Did you go to the sentencing? -I did.
It was the final door to close.
Call the diet. Adjourned diet for sentence.
His Majesty's Advocate
against Alexander McKellar and Robert McKellar.
Please be seated.
From where I was sitting, I could see Sandy.
And that…
was really overwhelming.
Mr. McConnachie.
Sandy's barrister read a statement
on Sandy's behalf to the judge.
He accepts that whilst catastrophically injured,
Mr. Parsons was alive at the time.
The only explanation
which he offers is simply fear and panic.
Using his words, he says he was too much of a coward to come clean.
When he met Caroline,
and she went to the police,
he fully accepts that, ultimately,
she made the right decision in doing so.
Very well. Alexander McKellar and Robert McKellar, please stand.
Then the judge gave out the boys' sentences.
Robert McKellar,
the sentence which I now impose on you
is one of a period of imprisonment of five years and three months.
Alexander McKellar,
you have pleaded guilty to grave and serious crimes.
He wasn't convicted of murder,
but he did take an innocent man's life.
So for me, he's a coward and he's a killer.
Alexander McKellar,
I will impose on you a single sentence of imprisonment of 12 years.
That is all.
At sentencing, a friend of Tony Parsons said these boys
had got away with murder.
There was a sense that without Caroline's evidence,
the full facts of this case,
the full horror of it, perhaps, never quite got across.
I can well imagine that the family feel there hasn't been a closure, in a way.
If people think or wonder,
if I had testified, would they have had a harsher sentence?
The state I was in,
who knows?
Had Caroline Muirhead decided to say nothing,
then Mr. Parsons would still be buried on the estate.
She did absolutely the right thing.
You have to applaud her bravery,
but the pressure must have been unbearable.
You'd be a hard person indeed not to sympathize with her.
Does part of you sympathize with Caroline Muirhead?
No.
The whole circumstances
in which she did not deal with things
in a manner which people would expect her to,
take away, I think,
from any sympathetic view I might feel about her.
If the criminal justice agencies
want people to come forward as witnesses,
they have to do better at every single stage.
There needs to be a real awareness
of the trauma experienced by witnesses.
I have no regrets about coming forward.
This is what happened to me. It's my story.
I just hope other people can learn from it,
so they don't make the same mistakes I made.
Because, my God, I made a hell of mistakes.
I am so lucky to be able to move forward in my life.
I've moved to the coast.
I've managed to get myself clean.
I now see a psychiatrist.
And I tackle a lot of the insecurities that led me
to be in the vulnerable relationship to begin with.
Change…
Three, two, one, smile!
I've got a much better relationship with my family.
Like skin…
I met someone new,
who is incredibly kind.
When you love yourself,
you will attract healthy love.
Like the leaves…
Onwards and upwards.
Like a butterfly…
-That's it. -Thank God.
Would you live forever…
-We're done. -We're done, Caroline.
While everything around passes?
Would you smile forever Never cry?
While everything you know passes
Death's like a door
To a place we've never been before
Death's like space
The deep sea
The suitcase
Would you stare forever at the sun
Never watch the moon rising?
Would you walk forever in the light
To never learn the secret Of the quiet night? mily.