Has a secret armchair sleuth cracked Scotland’s most baffling murder case?
Alistair Wilson was gunned down 13 years ago. Police have failed to find his killer, but now, an amateur detective’s extraordinary dossier may have given them a new lead...
IN early December 2004 workmen cleaning drains in the Highland town of Nairn found a gun so tiny they must at first have wondered if it was a toy. It was anything but. Ten days earlier, the 70-year-old ‘ladies’ pistol was used to fire three bullets into banker Alistair Wilson on his doorstep, ending his life.
The chance discovery of the Germanmade murder weapon was a major breakthrough for the team of 63 detectives hunting the killer.
And, as far as anyone outside the investigation is aware, it remains the most recent breakthrough in a case that is now Scotland’s highest-profile unsolved murder.
Little wonder that, as the 13th anniversary of the shooting approaches this month, criminologists and private investigators with a professional interest in unsolved crimes ask why that should be.
This week, a new voice joined the chorus railing at Police Scotland for its apparent failure to progress the investigation. Known only as Nate, he describes himself as an ‘armchair detective’ with no specialist knowledge or connection – personal or professional – with the murder case.
Yet, according to one top criminologist, Nate may have done more than anyone to solve the mystery of Mr Wilson’s killing.
Professor David Wilson told the Mail: ‘Of all the people who might have unlocked this case, or at least pushed it further on, it’s Nate.’
The publicity-shy sleuth sent a dossier on the Alistair Wilson murder to the professor at his office at Birmingham City University. A copy of the same document arrived through the post at the Scottish Daily Mail’s Glasgow office.
In it, Nate pulls all the reported facts on the murder together and constructs a ‘balance of probabilities’ narrative which seeks to explain why a much-loved husband and father was gunned down on his doorstep by
ARMCHAIR deductions from amateur Sherlocks rarely impress the professionals. But these ones have breathed new life into the most baffling of murder cases.
‘The only reason we’re talking about this,’ says Professor Wilson, ‘is because Nate has put things together, come up with a hypothesis based on the evidence and made suggestions.’
The bare facts of 30-year-old Mr Wilson’s final moments are no less shocking for their familiarity. He was putting his two young sons to bed when the bell rang. His wife Veronica answered it and the man on the doorstep in a baseball cap and a blouson jacket uttered two words: ‘Alistair Wilson.’
Mrs Wilson fetched her husband, who spoke to the man at the door for a few moments before coming back inside holding a blue A4-sized envelope. He had a brief discussion with his wife then returned to the door with the envelope.
Two minutes later, three shots rang out and Mrs Wilson rushed downstairs to find her husband bleeding profusely from wounds to the head and body.
Outside, she caught a glimpse of a man hurrying from the scene. The blue envelope was gone. Mr Wilson’s last discernible words to her were instructions to call an ambulance. He died in it on the way to raigmore Hospital in Inverness.
To Mrs Wilson, those horrific moments on the steps of her home must have seemed quite surreal. How was it possible that the father reading his children bedtime stories upstairs a few minutes ago now lay dying on his front stoop? There were surreal elements to the crime for investigators too. In all, the gunman had remained on the doorstep for approximately seven minutes.
The house was opposite a busy pub and overlooked by a CCTV camera, yet no one appeared to have seen the killer and the camera was not working that day.
Furthermore, this was Nairn, a sleepy seaside resort where no murders had been recorded in almost 20 years. The victim was a clean-cut young professional who had never been in any trouble. Who could possibly want him dead?
Confident, perhaps, that such an incongruous crime would not remain unsolved for long, the force which began the investigation, Northern Constabulary, kept many details confidential. Indeed, it was not until almost six months after the shooting that detectives went public with the murder weapon, a semi-automatic Haenel pistol firing rare .25 calibre bullets.
Twelve-and-a-half years on, several other key pieces of information remain undisclosed, despite repeated urging by cold case experts to reveal them. What was in the envelope? Did Mr Wilson open it or appear to know what, if anything, was inside? What was written on it? Early reports suggested the single word Paul was handwritten on the front, but police have never confirmed that.
And, crucially, what was the substance of Mr Wilson’s brief conversation with his wife when he came inside, appearing troubled, holding the envelope?
For 13 years Northern Constabulary and the national force which replaced it, Police Scotland, have refused to release this information. Why? While it is common for detectives to hold certain details of any investigation back to allow them to rule in or out potential suspects, here a wealth of information has remained unpublicised as police have persisted in seeking the public’s assistance.
Is it possible that what began as a strategy has, over the years, become bunker mentality defiance?
NATE certainly believes so. ‘Why,’ he asks, ‘have [the police] ducked behind the wagons and adopted a strategy of concealment since late 2005, dispensing occasional media platitudes while evading pertinent questions in a case costing taxpayers millions of pounds?’
And why no e-fit of the gunman? It emerged this week that one was prepared. It was based on information given to the police by Tommy Hogg, a community councillor who saw a suspicious character answering the gunman’s description on an Inverness to Nairn bus shortly before the shooting occurred.
He recalled: ‘I made eye contact, he looked away and put his head down. I thought he was shifty. He didn’t look comfortable.’
Just like the killer, the man Mr Hogg saw wore a peaked cap and a blouson jacket. He also disembarked from the bus at the nearest stop to the Wilsons’ house.
For 13 years Mr Hogg believed this man could be the killer and, indeed, had spoken to the media several times over that period about that bus journey. Only this week, amid growing criticism of its handling of the case, did Police Scotland reveal the man on the bus had been identified in the weeks after the shooting and eliminated from their inquiries.
It is, then, against a background riddled with missing information
that the would-be sleuth with no Police Scotland privileges tries to make sense of the murder.
Yet, based only on a wealth of press reports and common sense deliberations, Nate would appear to have done just that.
He believes certain key pieces of information suggest this was an underworld killing relating to Mr Wilson’s business activities. First, he was a young father living in an expensive house – worth around £400,000 in today’s money – where, until recently, the Wilsons had run a restaurant and B&B business. The venture had recently failed, resulting in financial difficulties.
Did Mr Wilson borrow money? And, if so, who from? Press reports dating back to 2007 quote sources close to Glasgow’s gangland fraternity claiming Mr Wilson had borrowed up to £50,000 from underworld money lenders.
Police at the time would only say: ‘We will not discuss specific lines of inquiry.’
Then there was the fact Mr Wilson was due to leave his job as HBOS new business banking manager in the next few days – a detail, often glossed over, which Nate believes is pivotal.
Did these underworld figures have their hooks in Mr Wilson by dint of the money he owed? Did they need him as their ‘man on the inside’ who could move cash around for them? Indeed, might Mr Wilson’s concern about being treated as such have persuaded him to leave banking?
Positing that as his predicament, the visit from the gunman with the envelope starts to make sense.
Nate writes: ‘I believe this comparatively large envelope was in fact empty, and that Mr Wilson was being pressured into providing bank-related documents and/ or money outstanding from his loan, to be lodged in the envelope and returned to its source (Paul).’
This would explain why the killer did not open fire on Mr Wilson straight away, as a professional hitman might. He was there to demand something from Mr Wilson – and, if he failed to provide it, to kill him.
‘Yes,’ admits Nate, ‘it’s speculative, a balance-of-probabilities deduction, but it’s the only scenario that pulls everything together in a credible way.’
How seriously, then, should the deductions of an anonymous amateur be taken? According to Professor Wilson, a highly renowned criminologist with a reputation to defend, very seriously.
‘What Nate did and we didn’t do – and I’m including myself – is really look carefully at all the evidence that has ever been reported on in relation to what happened in Nairn in 2004. This is somebody who has quite clearly studied what this case has been about.’
Professor Wilson takes a special interest in doorstep murders and believes they are often the most difficult to solve. Significantly, perhaps, the hunt for the killer of TV celebrity Jill Dando continues 18 years after she was murdered at her front door in London. The killing of gangland figure Frank McPhie, gunned down on his doorstep in Glasgow’s Maryhill in 2000, almost remains unsolved.
But the professor believes this case remains ‘eminently solvable’ and that it could be unlocked by a forensic accountant drilling down into Mr Wilson’s business interests. For their part, the police have insisted there is no evidence Mr Wilson was involved in unscrupulous business practices.
Yet, in the community of Nairn, there is a sense of diminishing confidence in the police investigation – an impression that strategic errors first hampered the case and ultimately derailed it entirely.
Among the most vocal critics of the force is Peter Bleksley, himself a former detective for the Metropolitan Police who has been investigating the Nairn murder for the past 12 years. He claims to have uncovered a ‘credible thread for a motive’ for the crime, which will be detailed in a book he aims to complete next year.
WITH 21 years of experience in cracking cases for Britain’s biggest police force, he had hoped for cooperation from Police Scotland. Instead, he says, it steadfastly refuses to share information.
‘There are inconsistencies in how the police deal with me,’ says the former detective. ‘Some open the door, open the files and put the kettle on – others I’m convinced would prefer me just to crawl back under the stone from which I came and mind my own business.’
Police Scotland, he says, falls firmly in the second category.
Mr Bleksley says Mr Wilson’s widow Veronica has also refused to co-operate with him, he suspects on the advice of the police.
He reflects: ‘I’m puzzled as to why Veronica would place her trust in a police service that has manifestly failed to catch her husband’s killer after nearly 13 years.’
Police Scotland’s response to all this is characteristically succinct. There is no discussion of operational decisions to reveal or not to reveal details of the case, only the familiar reiteration of the commitment to solve it.
Detective Superintendent Gary Cunningham said: ‘The investigation into the murder of Alistair Wilson remains open and we urge anyone with new information or anyone who hasn’t spoken to police to speak to us.
‘Investigations into Alistair’s personal and professional life have been a focus on the inquiry into his death. These matters remain under review.’
Also under review – increasingly so by a concerned public – is Police Scotland’s performance in solving this murder. Could Nate’s deductions prove the vital new breakthrough it desperately needs? j.brocklebank@dailymail.co.uk