Elite detective team begins new probe into mystery death
BY MARCELLO MEGA TOP detectives from Police Scotland’s Major Investigation Team have been deployed to probe the violent death of Stefan Sutherland more than six years ago.
Stefan died aged 25 in September 2013, his body washing up on the beach at Occumster, Caithness, 11 days after he was last seen.
His family believed he had been murdered but local officers insisted it had been an accident or suicide.
Multiple witnesses told the Daily Record they were pressured by police to sign witness statements based on lies.
Now, Stefan’s family believe they have the right officers involved to give them hope.
Det Supt Graeme Mackie and Det Chief Inspector David Hadden visited Stefan’s parents, Sandra and Sandy, yesterday to tell them the investigation was going to the next stage.
Officers have already reviewed paperwork on the case and interviewed family members.
They told the family before Christmas they had identified actions local officers should have carried out but had not.
The MIT officers, from Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee, will be in the area for at least a fortnight, interviewing witnesses ignored until now and re-interviewing others.
A caravan unit will be in Lybster for people to pop in and speak to the police if they have information to share. Stefan’s sister Katrina said:
“Local people do not trust the police because of the way they handled this in 2013 and beyond and because they bullied people into signing witness statements that did not reflect what they had said.
“These officers have not worked on the case before and all the signals we have had as a family have been positive that they genuinely want to find answers.”
Stefan’s family believe he was murdered by a man who beat him unconscious a year earlier and vowed to kill him.
He was last seen going into the man’s home and no one except the man who lived there claimed to have seen him leaving.
DNA tests on traces of blood in the property proved it was Stefan’s. Witnesses revealed a carpet was lifted that night and later destroyed.
Stefan showed signs of a severe beating. His finger joints had been pulled apart and his front teeth smashed. A post-mortem showed he had not drowned and his body was badly decomposed, indicating he had not gone into the sea alive or just after death.