Revealed, tragedy of ex-soldier found dead in his tent
THE discovery of human remains in a tent in a disused quarry left locals and police mystified.
But now the body has been identified as former soldier James Fernie, his son has asked locals to help him piece together his father’s life.
The 64-year-old was found dead in a tent at Torvean Quarry, near Inverness, on September 18 by a dog walker.
Police said he may have been living in the quarry for some time.
His son Ben, 36, has now said he wants to know how his father had managed to move hundreds of miles away from the family home in Cornwall to Inverness without access to funds.
After making a family connection, police took a DNA sample from Mr Fernie Jnr, who lives in Redruth, Cornwall. He said he last spoke to his father at his grandmother’s funeral in 2001, when the pair fell out – and had been searching for him ever since to put the past behind him.
The father of two said: ‘I wanted to find him for my kids, to tell him he was a granddad and to find out if he had made anything of himself.
‘We don’t know anything about what happened. We don’t know why he was in Inverness, where he had been, what he had been living off.
‘Somebody must know something about where he has been all this time and how he ended up in Inverness and ended up in a tent in the quarry.
‘I’ve got so many questions and we just don’t know any of the answers. We are appealing for information, no matter how small, which might give us an idea of what happened.’
Mr Fernie Snr, originally from Stirling, was a soldier in the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards in the 1970s and 1980s, serving in Northern Ireland and Germany.
He settled in Cornwall with his family but when his son was only eight, he left and never returned.
Mr Fernie Jnr said: ‘We didn’t hear from him. We reported him missing but didn’t hear anything. Obviously, if someone goes missing and doesn’t want to be found, they can manage that. But it was difficult for us.’
The family later discovered that Mr Fernie Snr had been to Penzance to be treated for cancer, but returned to his own parents in Stirling before disappearing again.
Mr Fernie Jnr contacted the Department for Work and Pensions,
‘We just want some answers’
but was unable to access his father’s records despite being his next of kin.
But he did manage to find out he was not drawing his Army pension and fears that the impact of his military service might have had an effect on his mental health. He said: ‘He was in Northern Ireland and we are afraid that might have made him forget himself somehow later on. He wasn’t taking his Army pension, so he might have been taking cash-in-hand work to survive.’
Mr Fernie Jnr has urged anyone who thinks they may have seen his father to make contact with him.
Police said the body appeared to have lain in the tent for some time before being discovered.
A spokesman said extensive inquiries had been carried out but that ‘there are no suspicious circumstances surrounding this death’.
It is believed Mr Fernie Snr died from natural causes.