‘We want her back ... to say goodbye’
After 8 years, fresh appeal to find body of murdered Suzanne Pilley
THE family of a woman murdered eight years ago made an emotional televised plea yesterday for help to find her body – as police focused the search on her killer’s silver car.
Bookkeeper Suzanne Pilley, 38, was murdered in May 2010. Her former lover David Gilroy, now 55, was jailed for a minimum of 18 years for her murder, but no body has never been found.
Miss Pilley’s mother Sylvia and sister Gail appeared on BBC1’s Crimewatch Roadshow Live to appeal for new information about the whereabouts of Suzanne’s remains.
Mrs Pilley said: ‘We are hoping that one day they might find something belonging to Suzanne and, hopefully, it might lead to where she is. It is upsetting to think that she is lying there and we don’t know where she is.’
Breaking down, she added: ‘We are hoping maybe one day we will get her back and we will be able to have a funeral and say goodbye to her. We’ve never been able to.’
Miss Pilley’s murder was one of the most detailed police investigations in Scottish police history. In April 2012, her colleague Gilroy was jailed for life for her murder.
Now detectives have asked the public to cast their minds back eight years in the hope of uncovering a missing link that will help reveal the whereabouts of her body.
Detective Superintendent Stuart Houston told the programme: ‘What we do know is that on Tuesday, 4 May, 2010, in the morning, Suzanne made her way to her workplace within Edinburgh city centre. Although she got on to the street, Thistle Street, she never actually made it to her desk.
‘We know now that David Gilroy had intercepted her en route to her desk and later murdered her within the building.
‘We know that on the day follow-
ing, David Gilroy took a journey from Edinburgh to Lochgilphead in Argyll.
‘During that journey he travelled numerous routes and eventually came to Tyndrum and later on travelled down to Inveraray.
‘On both these outward and return journeys there are missing time periods between Tyndrum and Inveraray – and this is the area we’ve always been interested in.
‘In fact, we believe it is that area where Suzanne’s body has been disposed of.’
Appealing for sightings of Gilroy’s car, Mr Houston said: ‘It’s a silver Vauxhall Vectra we now know was driven off-road.
‘My appeal is looking for people who may have seen that car where it shouldn’t have been, in a forestry track, in a woodland area.
‘It would allow us to try to focus the search to try to recover Suzanne’s body for her family.’
He added: ‘During the course of the CCTV footage, you can see there was a white and red umbrella lying across the rear parcel shelf.
‘That’s visible throughout that journey but when the vehicle is returned to Edinburgh and is seized by police, that umbrella is back in the boot. It’s quite a distinctive item to be seen.’
In March, Gail Pilley said: ‘Every time she’s mentioned, you struggle with the fact she’s not been found. It’s hard to think about her because we just don’t know where she is.
‘It’s extremely difficult to not know where she is and to not have laid her to rest. She wasn’t treated with any dignity in her death, she was discarded and we just do not know where she is – and that is just sometimes unbearable.
‘But we have to move forward. I would love to be able to just give her that funeral, that dignity, that every person deserves. But unfortunately, we can’t do that.’