Why did my beautiful daughter die on this lonely beach?
Annie Borjesson had everything to live for... yet her horrific death was ruled a suicide. And, ten years on, her anguished mother is STILL searching for the truth
‘Too many unanswered questions’
‘An active, happy, lively young woman’
THE light was already fading when Annie Borjesson crossed the bridge to Prestwick airport that cold December afternoon. At 30 years old and with shimmering, waist-length blonde hair, she cut a striking figure as she strode along the walkway smoking a cigarette.
Annie may have adopted the city of Edinburgh in recent months but home for her was in Sweden, where plans for Christmas were already under way. There were family meals and nights out with friends to look forward to, and an appointment with her hairdresser, the only person she’d allow to touch her beautiful hair.
But although there was a flight from Prestwick to Gothenburg that afternoon, Annie didn’t board it. Entering the terminal, she went straight past the check-in desks to an exit.
Walking outside into the cold air she crossed the road, out of sight of the CCTV cameras. Three minutes later she returned to the terminal, walked back over the bridge, and vanished. Sixteen hours later, she was dead. Prestwick beach is a lonely place in winter. Waves crash on to the flat empty sands while high above, seagulls circle the air. The wind coming off the sea is so fierce it whistles over the esplanade.
This is where they found her, behind the sea wall, her golden hair matted with mud, bruises blooming under her pale Nordic skin.
Some time between 4.05pm on December 3, 2005, and 8.23am the following morning, Annie Borjesson had drowned. Her death was ruled a suicide.
Ten years on, Annie’s parents still don’t understand why their bright, beautiful daughter died this strange death on an empty beach hundreds of miles from home.
They have never believed she would take her own life. ‘She was a very happy, outgoing girl,’ says her mother, Guje Borjesson.
‘When she was born she didn’t even cry. She was just so pleased to be out in the world. That’s how she continued life. She loved to live.’
Outwardly, all seemed well in Annie’s busy schedule that week. She had recently finished a scholarship at the Whisky Heritage Centre in Edinburgh, and after a brief stint back in Sweden had returned to Scotland in October to look for a job.
She was interested in working in the hotel industry and had sent out sheaves of job applications.
A rugby fan and a keen traveller, she was drawn to the romance of the Scottish capital’s cobbled streets. She had made friends at the Murrayfield Wanderers rugby club, and often socialised there.
Living off her Swedish unemployment insurance, she had paid the rent on her flat just a few days earlier, and bought a leisure card for swimming.
In her bag, recovered a short distance from her body, were library books due to be returned in Sweden.
But scratch beneath the surface and there were anomalies in Annie’s life – mysteries and discrepancies, unanswered questions.
Why, for example, did she phone her brother a few days before her death and ask how people can be traced using computers?
Who was the strange man she met the week before she died who claimed to be a famous rugby player?
Why, in her final phone call with her mother, did she tell her ‘I have to take care of this myself’?
Why had so many of her emails been deleted from her private mailing account, and where was her beloved Filofax, which she took everywhere with her and yet was not in her bag or at her flat?
She was found fully clothed, yet a red fleece – which is clearly visible on the CCTV footage from the airport – was missing.
When her body was returned to family in Sweden, her long hair had been hacked off. And a forensic test conducted by Swedish experts found that despite having seemingly drowned in the sea, freshwater diatoms – algae – were found in Annie’s body.
Lastly, why does Prestwick airport’s own CCTV show Annie walking over the bridge and then leaving by the far exit 55 seconds later – a physical impossibility given the distance involved?
‘The police think she walked from the airport through the town of Prestwick, went on to the shore, into the water and drowned herself,’ says Guje.
‘But if so, where is her fleece? Why is her Filofax not with her? Why are there freshwater algae in her body? There are too many unanswered questions.’
Retracing Annie’s steps on a cold bitter day ten years later, it takes two minutes and 12 seconds to walk from the airport bridge to the terminal’s far exit. Annie would have had to run, exceptionally fast, in order to make the trip in 55 seconds.
What makes even less sense is that instead of checking in for a flight, she went outside.
ATMs had recorded her earlier that afternoon making two attempts to withdraw money at Central Station in Glasgow, where she caught the train to Prestwick. She had insufficient funds for either withdrawal. There is a car parking pay station opposite the door she exited. Could she have confused it for an ATM? The CCTV image that shows her walking back into the airport three minutes later shows her grim-faced – ‘upset and angry’ is how Guje recognises her daughter’s expression.
She wonders if perhaps Annie met someone in the car park – or waited there for someone who hadn’t turned up.
For whatever reason, Annie walked past the check-in counters again, back over the bridge, down to the station and out into the gathering dusk. It was now 3.20pm, and she had spent less than five minutes in the airport.
The path towards Prestwick runs beside the dual carriageway. Strewn with rose hips, cars race past it while the sea, just visible in the distance, crashes in the background.
At 4.05pm, Annie – or someone the police identified as her – was seen on Prestwick’s Station Road, a busy street in the heart of the town.
Blurry CCTV footage shows a figure dressed similarly to Annie heading past dog walkers and towards the shore.
Her family don’t believe it is her. Looking at the poor quality images, it is difficult to tell whether it is a man or a woman.
Annie was, say those who knew her, a kind, open person. She liked big groups and enjoyed socialising. Her best friend Maria Jansson says she would chat to anyone.
‘She was an active, happy, lively young woman and she loved life,’ Maria says.
‘She loved Scotland and the interesting and nice people she met and she was not afraid to start a conversation wherever she went.’
Annie’s constant companion was her Filofax, which was always on her person, and in which she recorded names, numbers, email addresses, and memories.
‘Annie used her Filofax as a travel journal and she wrote down many things, funny expressions, times and dates, meetings,’ says Maria.
‘It would have been filled with information and contact details to Scottish friends and contacts as well as notes of when and where and who she met and did something fun with.’
Back at her Edinburgh flat, other strange things were missing too. All of her toiletries, her makeup, her toothbrush and toothpaste for example, none of which were found in her bag.
There were clothes missing too – a couple of items of underwear that she had bought just before returning to Scotland and had shown Maria, as well as a favourite t-shirt that Maria had given her and she always slept in.
What happened to them? Another mystery.
In the week before her death Annie had gone to an Edinburgh nightclub named Mood. There she met a man claiming to be Martin Leslie, the rugby internationalist. He offered her
‘Impossible to find out exactly what happened’
Champagne and while she declined, they chatted for several hours.
She then met him a second time, when he turned up unannounced at the swimming pool she had recently joined.
This time, she told Maria, she had felt unnerved by his behaviour. She was uneasy, and decided she would keep away from him.
Except that Annie did not meet Martin Leslie. The rugby player was not in the country in 2005. He hadn’t been in Scotland for two years, but had instead returned to his native New Zealand. Who was this imposter? It has never been made clear.
Around 4.30pm on December 3, 2005, a local walking along Prestwick esplanade spotted a figure standing on the beach, looking out to sea.
They were around 150 yards out, and 20 minutes later, the figure was still there. Was it Annie? The witness later clarified to the Borjesson family that he was unable to say whether it was a man or a woman. Either way, no one saw Annie alive again.
At 8.23am the following morning, a dog walker found her body lying under the sea wall.
It was 11.30pm the following night when three police officers and a priest arrived at the Borjessons’ door. Guje thought first that perhaps Annie had witnessed a robbery.
‘It was the worst thing I could have imagined happening to her,’ she says now.
When the police told the family what had happened, her siblings started screaming with shock.
‘I did not scream,’ says Guje. ‘I froze, inside and out. I understood my new task would be to help the police find her killer.’
Over the years, some questions have been answered.
The long blonde hair that had been hacked off for example, and at first seemed as though it could only have been done by murderous hands, was explained as the act of an inept undertaker.
The Crown Office said funeral staff had cut it, because they did not want her loved ones to see it matted in mud and debris from the sea.
The family are sceptical, and have spoken to undertakers who say such behaviour is highly unusual.
Maria and Guje find solace in each other. They spend hours each week going over information, poring over documents, contacting people and attempting to find new witnesses.
They have travelled to Scotland numerous times to retrace Annie’s last day.
‘We believe that it would be impossible to find out exactly what happened.
‘However, I do believe that the truth is out there and that is what keeps us going,’ says Maria. ‘We have so many unanswered questions.’
The Crown Office, however, has never wavered. ‘There has been a full probe into the death,’ it says. ‘There is no evidence of a crime.’
This is not enough for the family, who want a new investigation, or a fatal accident inquiry – a fresh look at the evidence.
Annie’s death has affected each member of the family in different ways. Her father has had two strokes. In the first six months after her death he aged ten years.
‘I can’t say that I think about her every day, because I think about her every minute,’ her mother says. ‘She’s always on my mind.’
Annie was laid to rest in a tiny, rural churchyard in Sweden, close to her grandmother’s house. Each season Guje creates a fresh tableau by her headstone – vibrant floral displays in summer, apples and hedgehogs in the autumn, a gingerbread house and a little Christmas tree in the winter.
‘It’s important for me that I have something I can do for her,’ she says. ‘I try to think of the way Annie was. I think it’s important to think about what kind of person she was.
‘She was very brave and not easily scared – she could handle any situation and she did. Except for this very last one.’
Today, a little plaque on the esplanade wall marks the spot where Annie was found. It reads: ‘Annie Borjesson, born 7 February 1975. Found dead 4 December 2005. Her loved ones never found out how or why. A blot on Scotland’s reputation for fairness.’
Nobody knows who erected the plaque. ‘We were sent a picture of it,’ says Guje. ‘We thought it was a very touching gesture. We are very grateful. Although sometimes I wonder – was it the killer? Who would put it there?’
Like so many things surrounding Annie’s strange and unexplained death, it seems yet another mystery destined to remain unsolved.