No murder probe until week after body found

A SENIOR police officer did not launch a murder inquiry despite finding a man with severe head injuries and covered in blood.

Police initially believed that pensioner Brian McKandie had fallen in his garden.

A week later it was discovered that he had been the victim of an assault and a murder inquiry was launched.

Steven Sidebottom, 25, is on trial accused of murdering and robbing Mr McKandie.

The 67-year-old mechanic had nearly £200,000 in cash stashed in his cottage near Rothienorman, Aberdeenshire.

Detective Inspector Kerry McCombie told the High Court in Aberdeen she saw ‘nothing at all that raised any suspicion’ when Mr McKandie’s body was discovered in March 2016.

Officers initially thought the pensioner, who was taking blood

‘Nothing that raised suspicion’

thinning medication, had tripped in his garden and banged his head before stumbling inside and dying in his living room.

Prosecutors claim Sidebottom assaulted Mr McKandie on March 11 by repeatedly striking him with an ‘unidentified implement or implements’.

Sidebottom’s brother Robert, 35, told the court his family, who own two farms, regularly got Mr McKandie to fix vehicles and also borrowed tools from him.

He told the jury his brother had borrowed a tool from Mr McKandie for a job and returned it on the Wednesday before the body was found. However, another one of Mr McKandie’s customers told the jury she saw Sidebottom and his van at the cottage on the Thursday night.

Sidebottom, also of Rothienorman, has lodged a special defence of incrimination, accusing another man of the crime.

The trial before Lord Uist continues.