Youths face total of 54 years behind bars

● Trio who murdered a vulnerable OAP can be named says shocked senior judge

A trio of drug and alcoholfuelled “feral” youths who callously murdered a vulnerable pensioner in his home will spend a total of 54 years behind bars.

The horrific nature of the attack on defenceless Alasdair Forsyth, 68, so shocked a senior judge that he took the rare step of ordering all three killers be publicly named.

Keirin Mcmillan, now 20, was ordered to serve at least 18 years in jail for his role in the attack of frail Mr Forsyth, who suffered a horrific catalogue of injuries.

Mcmillan was 19 at the time of the appalling attack.

His younger brother, Aron, now 17, who was 16 when he took part in the fatal attack, was told that he would serve a minimum of 17 years and three months .

Levi Hunter was ordered to serve at least 17 years for the killing.

Hunter, who is now 16, was just 15 when he took part in the murder and robbery of Mr Forsyth at the flat in Prestonfield, Edinburgh where he lived alone.

The attackers – who assaulted their victim with a string of weapons including his own walking stick – were searching for cash they believed he had hidden between the pages of books.

Jailing them, a judge told the trio at the High Court in Edinburgh: “Mr Forsyth suffered the most terrible injuries.

“He sustained a total of 80 injuries and died of blunt force chest trauma.”

Lord Uist said: “It is a scandal in a supposedly civilised society that a man should meet his death in this manner.

“The attack on Mr Forsyth was a planned robbery in which each of you took a tool to be used as a weapon, namely a screwdriver, a wrench and a hammer, and battered him to death in his home.”

The judge, Lord Uist, added: “Fortunately, neighbours who heard a disturbance in Mr Forsyth’s flat phoned the police who were quick to arrive on the scene and apprehended all three of you as you made off.”

The judge said it was concerning that Keirin Mcmillan had previously broken into the home of a different OAP in 2015 and had assaulted and robbed him while acting with others.

Mcmillan was originally given a community payback order for that crime.

The judge said he was satisfied that it was in the interests of justice that any report of the court proceedings should be able to reveal the names of the two younger murderers.

Up until yesterday they could not be identified because they were offenders aged under 18.

The trio were sentenced at the High Court in Edinburgh with a large police presence in the courtroom.

The Mcmillan brothers and Hunter had earlier denied murdering Mr Forsyth, a former Edinburgh University student, at his in Clearburn Road, on 21 February last year.

All three were found guilty following a trial last year and the two younger killers were also convicted of a violent crime spree in the days leading up to the murder in which a number of children and adults were attacked in Edinburgh.