Murder trial told of horror at OAP’s cottage
POLICE waited a week to launch a murder inquiry after a pensioner was found dead in his blood-soaked cottage because they thought he had died in an accident, a court has heard.
Jurors at Aberdeen High Court were told yesterday that Brian McKandie, 67, was found slumped behind his blood-spattered living room door.
Pictures, used in evidence, showed his body with his left hand stretched out towards some snowdrops, thought to have been taken from his garden, where blood could be seen on the flowers.
Steven Sidebottom, 24, is accused of murdering Mr McKandie. Prosecutors claim he assaulted and killed the pen- sioner with ‘an unidentified blunt implement or implements’ before moving his body and robbing him of cash in March 2016. He denies the allegation.
It emerged yesterday that in the weeks after Mr McKandie’s death, officers uncovered ‘tens of thousands of pounds’ in cash hidden in biscuit and sweet tins in the bedroom at his home in Badenscoth, near Rothienorman, Aberdeenshire.
Jurors were shown pictures of the biscuit and sweet tins stuffed with bundles of £20 notes.
Police forensics examiner John Dingwall, 55, was called out to photograph the cash at the house. He told the court: ‘It was a lot of money. Tens of thousands.’
The court heard police initially thought the mechanic had knocked his head in the garden and then stumbled through the house in an effort to get help. The jury was shown gory images of the blood-spattered hallway, while a red handprint could be seen on the bed nearest the front door.
Trails of blood covered walls, carpets and doors to the room where his body was found.
Firefighters had to break the living room window of the property to move his body which was propped up against the door.
It was not until a week after his death, following a post mortem examination, that a murder investigation was launched. Julie Goodeve, a police scene examiner, found traces of hair and scalp in the hallway in the hours after the body was found.
Asked what she and the other officers attending first thought of the crime scene she replied: ‘At that stage I think it was being treated as an accident.
‘It was thought that the gentleman had fallen into the flowerbed and had come into the house to seek help.’
Mr McKandie’s brother William, 77, told the court his brother was a reclusive retired mechanic who avoided socialising in the community.
But he would happily fix things for other people, including broken down cars in his home garage.
Other witnesses described how Mr McKandie would accept cash payment for odd jobs.
Just a week before his death, the reclusive repairman had sold his brother’s car for £1,500.
The trial, before Lord Arthurson, continues.
‘It was a lot of money. Tens of thousands’