The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
THE MISSING Loved ones
Not everyone who goes missing comes home. Today we hear from those whose loved ones never returned — and explore the cases that have never been solved.
FOR ELIZABETH TEMPLETON, not knowing was the worst part. Her son Alan went missing in 2006 when he was 26 years old. The young f ilmmaker vanished on a Sunday morning in November after going shopping in Edinburgh with his flatmate.
Elizabeth, who lives with her husband Douglas near Pitlochry, said: “The not knowing was pretty hellish. Every day and often half the night my thoughts would be about Alan — what was happening to him, where was he, hoping he wasn’t in pain or distress.”
Alan’s remains were found in March last year, six years after he disappeared. Incredibly, his body had lain on the slopes of Arthur’s Seat for all that time. It was discovered one morning by a pair of female students out for a walk.
“They found a skeleton,” Elizabeth continued. “I feel sorry for the poor girls having to encounter that.
“It seems unbelievable that he lay in Holyrood Park for years without being discovered but he was in a sheltered area and hidden under gorse bushes.
“The remains were too decomposed for police to reconstruct what happened but it looks like he either jumped or fell from Salisbury Crags.”
The suppor t of the police, the Missing People charity, her church and the community were invaluable during the years when Alan’s fate was unknown.
“Now that I’ve done some work with Missing People and met other parents of missing children I realise how fortunate we were,” she said.
“Detective Inspector Marshall McKay from Tayside Police was amazing. He kept us up to date with the investigation from the moment it started — even if it was just to say there was nothing more they could do at the moment — and he came to visit us personally when they found the remains they thought were Alan’s. “The community in Pitlochry, our church and our circle of close friends offered so much in the way of support.” Even after his skeleton was discovered in Holyrood Park, Elizabeth faced an agonising monthlong wait for DNA testing to confirm the remains were those of her missing son. “I’m not very scientifically literate so I thought it would be a quick process ,” she said. “But it dragged on for weeks — his body was left in a fridge for a weekend when they said someone would be working on it — and we kept being told it would only be a few more days.
Eventually, however, Elizabeth was able to lay her son to rest.
“The funeral was a wonderful affirmation of Alan. We received dozens of letters from people, all saying how good a guy he had been.”
Elizabeth and her husband Douglas took their son’s ashes to the Isle of Gigha. “We didn’t know where he wanted to be buried — ‘where would you like to be buried’ isn’t a question you ask your 26-year-old son.
“But we visited Gigha as a family when he was a child and I think he had very good memories of it.”
Following Alan’s disappearance, Elizabeth became involved with the charity Missing People and even took part in a BBC documentary The Missing. She says f inally knowing what happened to Alan was a relief, even though the outcome was tragic.
“You obviously don’t stop thinking about it and it doesn’t stop hurting but at least you can grieve,” she said. “Closure’ isn’t a word I like very much but I know now what people mean by it.”