Murderous teen spent boozy night with pals before going on to commit horrific act
LIKE many teenagers on the Isle of Bute that July weekend, Alesha’s killer was celebrating the end of exams.
The 16-year-old spent his Saturday night camping and drinking with pals in Ettrick Bay on the opposite coast to Rothesay before arranging a lastminute party at his home the next night to stave off his hangover.
He persuaded his mum to allow him to have 15 friends around to the house, where he drank a bottle of Mad Dog and a bottle of Echo Falls wine.
The teenager seemed in good spirits but when his friends left his house around midnight, he got into an argument with his mum, who said he was “angry” because he had no cigarettes. One friend said he returned to the house to get a bag after midnight and found the teenager “thinking about harming himself”.
But the killer reassured him he was going to “get stoned and go to bed”. The reality of what he would go on to do in the early hours of July 2 will haunt his friends forever.
In the early hours, he made repeated attempts through Facebook to contact Alesha’s dad Rab McPhail and his girlfriend Toni McLachlan, both of whom he had bought cannabis from before. They didn’t respond. He left his house just before 2am. Carrying a kitchen knife, the teenager went to their home, where he found the door to the attic flat
unlocked. Alesha was sleeping in the nearest bedroom.
The teenager abducted her from her bed and carried her half a mile to the site of the former Kyles Hotel where he shook her violently, raped her and suffocated her.
He left Alesha’s body in the woods in the grounds of a former hotel and then returned home to shower at 3.35am.
But he would leave his home and return on a further two occasions during the early hours of the morning, once in just his boxer shorts.
The next morning, the killer spoke calmly to his mum and chatted to friends on group chat as news of Alesha’s disappearance spread across the island.
He even spoke to Toni McLachlan on Facebook messenger about the search after she returned his call, chillingly telling her he was sure Alesha had “not went far”.
To his friends, the killer kept up his “joker” persona, posting a picture of himself to the group chat saying he had found “the guy who done it” before Alesha’s body had even been found.
Later, paranoia seemed to creep in as he told a female friend he was anxious and that “police would try to blame him”.
He was arrested two days later when his mum saw his suspicious movements on the night of the murder on the property’s CCTV and called police to “eliminate him from their inquiries”.
The DNA swab he provided to officers would later be linked to Alesha’s body.