The grieving mother who ambushed a top cop on a radio show ... and why her son’s brutal death remains a dark mystery
THE last time June McLeod saw her son, she told him to put on a coat. It was a wet night, the wind howling across the northern coastal town of Wick, and Mrs McLeod was concerned 24-yearold Kevin might get cold.
‘He laughed that he was a big boy now and could look after himself,’ she recalled years later. Yet her son never came home that Friday night in February 1997. The following Sunday his lifeless body was pulled from Wick harbour. He had suffered massive internal injuries including a damaged liver and pancreas, a ruptured spleen and three torn arteries.
Two decades on, June and Hugh McLeod still don’t know what happened to their son. Right from the start they have maintained that his death could not have been an accident.
This week, after 20 years of investigations, complaints, an inconclusive fatal accident inquiry and a highly damning report into Northern Constabulary’s handling of the case, Police Scotland ruled out a new inquiry into their son’s death.
During a meeting on Tuesday with police, Mr McLeod’s family were told a reassessment of his case had concluded his death had ‘no evidence of criminality’ and remained unexplained. There would be no new investigation and the family would be left with no answers.
It is an astounding U-turn from Police Scotland. Only weeks ago, in an extraordinary demonstration of Mrs McLeod’s dogged determination to get to the truth of her son’s death, she ambushed Scotland’s most senior policeman, Chief Constable Phil Gormley on a live radio programme, demanding to know why Police Scotland would not open a new investigation.
Mr Gormley told her he would be ‘quite happy’ to examine the circumstances of her son’s death and even wrote to the McLeods, assuring them that ‘further investigative work’ would be carried out ‘as a priority’.
The family is devastated. ‘They said Kevin’s death will not be reinvestigated unless new information comes to light,’ said Allan McLeod, Mr McLeod’s uncle. ‘We were gutted about it, especially since Northern Constabulary were instructed 20 years ago to investigate Kevin’s death as a murder inquiry. We were hoping they would say they were going to correct Northern Constabulary’s wrongs.’
Certainly it is a case enshrouded in mystery. Did Mr McLeod – as police suggested – walk into a bollard then fall into the water? Or was he the subject of a brutal attack that resulted in his murder?
Mr McLeod’s night started when he left his parents’ house and went to meet a friend. He was a quiet, unassuming young man, more prone to nights in with his fiancée Emma Sutherland, a psychiatric nurse, than big nights out with the lads.
The couple were planning a May wedding and had been allocated a council house. An electrician, he was well liked and had spent recent months working as a labourer at a pipe yard.
That evening, Mr McLeod and his mother had visited the new house before returning home. Miss Sutherland was in Glasgow, shopping for a wedding dress.
At 9.30pm, his friend Mark Foubister phoned and asked him out for a game of pool. They went to Carter’s Bar, near Wick harbour, where they enjoyed a few drinks, then headed to The Waterfront nightclub.
At 1.30am the two men took a taxi, intending to go to a party. However, they changed their minds and walked back to Wick town centre. Mr McLeod had consumed a ‘significant’ amount of alcohol. Mr Foubister went off to find another taxi, but when he returned to find his friend, he had vanished.
Mr McLeod’s parents reported him missing the next day when he did not come home. On the Sunday morning he was found face down at the bottom of the harbour by a police diver.
Right from the start, any criminal aspect to the case was downplayed. Although a postmortem examination had yet to be carried out, the constable who first arrived on Mrs McLeod’s doorstep informed her there were ‘no suspicious circumstances’.
IT took my breath away,’ she said, years later. ‘I felt like someone had taken a big lump out of me. I knew deep down Kevin wasn’t coming home but I didn’t want to think it was him.’
The police’s theory was that Mr McLeod had hit a bollard on the harbour wall then fallen into the water. The McLeods could not accept the explanation and began their own inquiries, going door to door with his two brothers, appealing for information.
‘We decided to look into it all ourselves because it didn’t take us long in a small place like this to realise the police hadn’t been interviewing all the people they said they were,’ Mrs McLeod claimed at the time.
Wick is a small fishing community in Caithness, 18 miles from John O’Groats. With a population of 7,000, most have known each other since their earliest schooldays. Perhaps it is unsurprising, then, that locals closed ranks.
The post mortem examination conducted on February 10 revealed Mr McLeod’s massive internal injuries, concluding they were of such severity that they would have been enough to kill him. Yet the family was not made aware of the extent of his wounds for three months.
The discovery only strengthened their resolve to find out what happened to their son. But while a fresh investigation was opened by Northern Constabulary five months on, it failed to find any evidence that a crime had been committed.
However, a private investigator, Les Brown, a former Glasgow detective who has investigated 200 murders and was employed by the McLeods to probe the death, found plenty.
‘He was followed by three men and these three men on at least one occasion, but probably two, assaulted Kevin, the second time quite severely,’ he said. ‘Witnesses saw Kevin being kicked by at least one of the three men.’
His belief was shared by US pathologist Ed Friedlander, who claims the abdominal damage was consistent with Mr McLeod receiving a violent kick.
‘Kevin McLeod was murdered,’ said Mr Brown. ‘There are witnesses who saw Kevin being attacked and I supplied the police with the name of a man whose own girlfriend told me had admitted to the killing.
‘She told me he had come home and said, “I have done something I will regret for the rest of my life. I have killed Kevin McLeod.” I emailed the Crown Office and named this guy, but the police said he declined to be interviewed.’
Witnesses prepared to go on
the record to police certainly seemed thin on the ground. At least four people who offered information later withdrew their statement or admitted it was untrue.
A taxi driver said he saw a man covered in blood sitting at the harbour but later withdrew his statement. Another taxi driver also retracted a statement.
At a Fatal Accident Inquiry, Sheriff Ian Cameron said Mr McLeod’s injuries were ‘compatible with having been assaulted and with great force such as by kicking or kneeing’. But he added there was ‘insufficient’ evidence to prove whether or not the injuries had been sustained from a fall or an assault’.
Jeanette McFarlane, a pathologist based at Glasgow University, said she had seen such extreme injuries only three times before, each time the result of an assault.
Detective Inspector Angus Chisholm, drafted in from Inverness for the second investigation, admitted he had ‘difficulty’ accepting the bollard theory, saying: ‘I find it not credible but I can’t discount it.’
The FAI also heard that Mr McLeod’s injuries could have occurred up to one hour before he entered the water. Yet the inquiry recorded an open verdict, leaving the death unsolved.
The initial investigation was also criticised at the inquiry for basic failings. Detective Sergeant Richard Martin, who had headed the investigation, was later demoted from CID and moved to uniformed duty in Inverness.
The case has had an enormous and at times deeply disturbing impact on the family. not long after Mr McLeod’s death, while the family were conducting their own inquiries, they received an anonywitnesses mous letter pushed through their letterbox with pasted letters reading ‘Tomorrow may never come’. In February 2002, Mr McLeod’s uncle received two anonymous threatening phone calls, one saying: ‘We know where you are. Bang bang.’
AneW theory was put forward in October 2002 as detectives sought to draw a line under the case, suggesting Mr McLeod’s injuries could have been caused as he fell from the quay onto a boat below.
Les Brown refuted that suggestion, discovering that when Mr McLeod entered the water, boats moored alongside the quay would have been level with the harbour wall, ruling out a fall.
A highly critical report published by the Police Complaints Commissioner for Scotland in 2007 stated that northern Constabulary’s attitude towards the McLeod family ‘smacked at times of constitutional arrogance’.
northern Constabulary Chief Constable Ian Latimer and the police board had to apologise publicly and consider reopening the investigation.
Detective Chief Superintendent Gareth Blair, head of major crime, said this week that although the investigation would not be reopened, they were still appealing for new witnesses to come forward.
He added: ‘I informed Kevin’s parents there is no evidence of criminality and his death remains unexplained, leading me to determine that there is no basis on which to begin a full reinvestigation.
‘Police Scotland appeals for any who have information about Kevin’s death to come forward and we will fully consider any new and additional information which comes forward.
‘The Chief Constable has asked the head of professional standards to carry out a separate assessment to ensure that all matters/complaints raised by the family over the years have been appropriately considered and addressed.’
For the McLeods it is not enough. ‘The family are furious, frustrated and disappointed with the outcome of Police Scotland’s re-examination of paperwork relating to the case. This again stinks of a cover-up and of institutional arrogance,’ said Allan McLeod.
‘We are determined, whatever it takes, to bring those responsible to justice. northern Constabulary failed us. Police Scotland failed us. The justice system failed us.’