Mum’s stark conclusion over Fife soldier’s death

Gary Kinnear’s body was found in the Tay five weeks after he disappeared

The mother of a Fife Black Watch soldier believes she has finally solved the mystery of her son’s death, 14 years after his body was recovered from the River Tay at Dundee.

In an exclusive interview with The Courier, Mrs Catherine Kinnear, 63, who lives near Strathmiglo, said she believes her son Gary was suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

While she will never know for certain, she accepts he probably committed suicide.

Mrs Kinnear, who remains “heartbroken”, has spent more than a decade seeking answers about his mysterious disappearance a month before his remains were found.

Having read a copy of the 2015 PTSD book Aftershock by Matthew Green, and spoken to army veterans in England, she believes her son was so affected by trauma, including witnessing the loss of colleagues in Iraq, he took his own life.

“If I’d known half of what I know now about PTSD, then my son would still be with us today, I’m sure of it,” she said.

“If I’d known about the kind of stresses he’d been under I might have been able to help – to speak to him about it.

“Having read what others have been through, I now believe he went into the water at Dundee by himself – not because he wanted to die – but as a cry for help.

“It breaks my heart to think what he must have been going through but I’m determined now to raise awareness about this condition.”

Gary, who served with the 1st Battalion Black Watch on their first tour of Iraq in 2003, and his wife Michelle, had been drinking in a nightclub in St Andrews Street, Dundee, on Saturday November 1 2003, when he told her he needed some fresh air.

He never returned to the club. Michelle went home and the following morning, with Gary still not returned, she contacted police in Dundee.

Private Kinnear, who was 31, was due to join his regiment in Germany the following Wednesday.

On December 5, around five weeks after Gary went missing, the police and RNLI were searching the Tay for an old lady missing in Dundee when they found his body.

Catherine said the body was so badly decomposed that they needed to check dental records.

The postmortem stated he had died by salt water drowning. She was told it appeared to be a “tragic accident”.

Picture: George McLuskie. Mrs Kinnear with a photo of Gary near where his ashes are buried in Falkland Cemetery.