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Was this bank manager shot dead on his doorstep over a trivial hotel planning row?

It’s one of Scotland’s most baffling unsolved murders. 18 years on, a new lead could finally help nail the killer...

By Gavin Madeley

IT IS shortly after seven o’clock on a bleak November evening in 2004 when a woman’s anguished voice is patched through to the 999 control room. ‘My husband’s been shot,’ she blurts out in a breathless panic before her words are drowned out by her own bone-chilling screams.

Asked again which emergency service she needs, the woman pleads: ‘Police and ambulance. My husband’s just been shot.’

The victim was Alistair Wilson, a father of two who was gunned down by an assassin’s bullets on the doorstep of his family home. At the time, the shooting made national headlines, not just for its unlikely setting in the quiet coastal town of Nairn on the Moray Firth, but for the apparently senseless nature of this act of extreme violence.

Eighteen years on from those terrible events, the case has become one of Scotland’s most notorious and baffling unsolved murders – and that harrowing exchange between his distraught wife, Veronica, and the emergency call handler has lost none of its visceral, shocking impact.

With each passing anniversary, the pressure increases on police to unmask whoever carried out the brazen execution of a happily married and hard-working bank manager – and why.

But all their efforts to piece together this complex jigsaw had so far come to nothing, spawning

‘Homicides often come from disproportionate, irrational reasons’

ever wilder theories involving organised crime, dodgy bank dealings and even an IRA hitman.

But having remained an unfathomable mystery for almost 20 years, a new documentary suggests the truth may lie close at hand – indeed, within a stone’s throw of the Wilsons’ front door.

Investigations are now focused on a planning row over wooden decking outside a pub directly opposite the Wilsons’ home in Crescent Road, to which Mr Wilson objected just days before his death. Cold case detectives, many of whom worked on the recent Renee MacRae reinvestigation, have issued an appeal to drinkers at the Havelock Hotel in the belief they hold vital information that could unlock the case.

It may be scarcely credible that something as mundane as decking erected without proper planning consent should lead to a man’s murder, but police are adamant that it is their strongest lead. What is more, they have already identified a particular individual to whom they wish to speak.

‘Homicides often come from totally disproportionate, irrational reasons. Trivial matters escalate to disproportionate levels,’ Detective Superintendent Graeme Mackie told Channel 5’s Murder On The Doorstep: Who Killed Alistair Wilson?

He added: ‘I know it’s really difficult to try and comprehend but that is the only aspect that we can see in Alistair’s life that was causing upset.’

In retelling the shocking story of the brutal killing, the programme reveals the Havelock Hotel’s thenowner, Andy Burnet, applied for retrospective planning permission after the decking was built, prompting Mr Wilson to lodge a letter of objection. In it, he complained about broken beer glasses ‘strewn in the street’ and his family feeling ‘uncomfortable’ with customers ‘staring’ at them.

The document was sent to Highland Council’s planning department the week before he died and a copy of the correspondence – revealing his identity – was sent to the pub landlord two days before the 30-year-old banker was shot dead on Sunday, November 28.

‘The Havelock pub at that time was a really popular venue,’ said Mr Mackie. ‘People were invested in this decking. People who attended that pub helped build it. They took a lot of pride in it.

‘We’ve interviewed a lot of people who were in that pub that night. There was a level of conversation within the pub being upset towards Alistair complaining about it and the potential that it could be taken away.’

It is understood that the police’s new suspect, who has not been named, was living in Nairn at the time of the shooting but now lives elsewhere in Scotland. The man, who worked for the emergency services, is thought to have kept guns in his house, frequented the Havelock and is linked to the former landlord on social media.

Mr Mackie said: ‘We want to find out if, during that weekend, anybody was making any threats. Was anybody speaking disproportionately about taking action against Alistair, demonstrating a level of real concern that would suggest

Alistair may well be coming to harm at some point in the future?’

The detective added: ‘We believe it’s the motive or part of the motive and we need the community’s help – those that associated with the Havelock, those who might have been in the Havelock, just to get a better understanding of what was being discussed.’

If one thing should be prized above all else in this muddle of bizarre clues amassed over two decades, it is clarity. For the Wilson family, nothing has made sense since Mr Wilson was called away from putting his young sons to bed that Sunday night to answer the door to a complete stranger.

The stranger had asked for him by name and handed over a blue envelope – the sort used for birthday cards – with the name ‘Paul’ written on it.

Confused, Mr Wilson went back inside to talk to his wife before returning to the doorstep to talk to the man again.

Soon afterwards, Mrs Wilson heard three shots ring out and rushed to the front door to find her husband had been shot at

point blank range. Hysterical, she called for an ambulance and raced across the road to the Havelock screaming for help.

Three women rushed over before an ambulance took Mr Wilson to Raigmore Hospital in Inverness, where he died an hour later.

The blue envelope, whose use is just one of the strange elements to the case, was never seen again.

Detective Inspector Gary Winter, who is leading the inquiry, conceded: ‘We are no further forward with ascertaining whether it meant anything. There is no evidence to support that Alistair had a grievance with anyone called “Paul”. ‘Did it mean anything, or was it just a prop? Who knows? Only the shooter.’ Even the murder weapon has thrown up more questions than answers. The antique German pocket pistol, made by Haenel Suhl in the 1930s, was found ten days after the shooting in a drain half a mile away. However, when forensic experts examined the gun, no useful evidence that could be linked to a suspect, such as DNA, was detected. ‘These types of handguns have been known to be found in loft clearances,’ Mr Mackie said. ‘Access to it might have been easier because it could have been among antiques a family has retained over a period of years’. After carrying out checks, officers discovered that two other preSecond World War handguns had been discovered since 2004. However, neither weapon was found to have any connection with any criminal activity.

The documentary delves into the various theories – from the plausible to the preposterous – that have been considered and dismissed down the years. They included the suggestion of mistaken identity, an affair gone wrong and even involvement with organised crime or dodgy dealings in banking.

After his murder, police started to delve into Mr Wilson’s past to see if there was anyone who might have wished him harm. The picture they built up was of a fun-loving, loyal and generous spirit with few, if any, enemies.

His sister, Jillian Bynon said: ‘He was a person who was able to make me smile, tell me a funny story, make me laugh, my special little brother.’

Teachers at his old secondary school, Garnock Academy, in Ayrshire, describe a quiet, unassuming child with a flair for numbers who was ‘a pleasure to teach’.

Close friend Andrew Mackenzie, who joined the Bank of Scotland as a trainee on the same day, said they bonded on nights out where Mr Wilson ‘certainly wasn’t one of the shrinking violets’, always keen to stay out late.

All that changed after a posting to Fort William, where he met his wife-to-be. The pair were smitten, as Mrs Wilson recalls in an archive interview: ‘When you meet the right person, you just know he’s the right person. And he was... Nobody had ever loved me that much ever before.’

Within months they were married and had moved to Nairn, an easy commute from Mr Wilson’s job in Inverness, to raise their family surrounded by the peace, quiet and beauty of the seaside town.

By the time of his death, he had become disenchanted with life at the bank and was working his notice. But despite exhaustive searches of his professional life, police could turn up nothing that suggested he had left under a cloud or was threatening to blow the whistle on anything illegal.

Detective Inspector Winter said: ‘Alistair’s role shouldn’t bring him into great conflict with anyone. Although the “bank manager” term is used often, he’s not a guy with the keys to the safe.

‘He’s not handing out massive sums of money. He’s developing business plans. His job is solely to get new business in for the bank.’

Another now rejected theory was that he was targeted by a paramilitary group such as the IRA. Although the IRA were known for carrying out doorstep shootings and his killing – two shots to the head and one to the chest – bore the hallmarks of a paramilitarystyle execution, any links to terrorism had been ruled out.

‘It’s difficult to understand why that theory has come about,’ Detective Superintendent Mackie told the documentary. ‘There’s been a number of inquiries both within the UK, within Ireland and we are content that there is no substance to any information that would suggest that specifically the IRA were involved in Alistair’s murder. There’s nothing in Alistair’s personal or work life that would even suggest or hint that he was in associated with paramilitary or organised crime groups.’

This has brought the investigation back round to the Havelock and what conversation topics may have been discussed by regulars.

In the winter of 2004, high on the news agenda would have been the Queen’s recent official opening of the new Scottish parliament, the Iraq war – which was in full flow – and plans to ban smoking in pubs and restaurants.

Against this backdrop, was the more localised antagonism towards the hotel’s newly-built decking and whether any of the bar’s regulars may have overheard threats being made against Mr Wilson’s life the night before he was shot dead.

Earlier this year, it emerged officers travelled to Nova Scotia in Canada to speak to former landlord Mr Burnet, although they stress he is being treated as a ‘key witness’ and not a suspect.

At the time, Mr Burnet, who left Nairn in 2013, said: ‘It had no relation to me other than somebody they thought I might have known. I didn’t particularly know them. I think they got the information they were looking for.’

In March, Police Scotland revealed that two men were seen with a handgun on Nairn’s East beach, just a month prior to the tragic murder.

A witness had finally come forward, telling detectives the younger of the pair, a man in his 20s was handling the weapon, and the other was aged between 40 and 60 years old. Police have remained tight-lipped about their new suspect, but former Metropolitan Police detective Peter Bleksley, who has written a book about Mr Wilson’s killing, says he is on the trail of the same man.

Writing in The Mail on Sunday, he revealed the suspect was in his early 20s and living in Nairn at the time of Mr Wilson’s murder. He was even convicted in a Scottish court this summer of possessing a knife, an offence dating back to 2019, which was dealt with by way of a community punishment.

Mr Bleksley said that the man retains a registered address in Scotland which he visited, speaking to neighbours and a relative who described the man as ‘difficult to get hold of’. He added: ‘I know who police have in their sights... Solving this murder should not be far away.’

Having been critical of the investigation, the retired detective said he was reassured that the same detectives recently helped to convict 80-year-old William MacDowell of the murders of Mrs MacRae and her young son Andrew, who went missing in 1976.

‘If they can achieve that kind of success with a case well over 40 years old,’ he said, ‘then hope springs eternal that they can achieve some justice for Alistair’s [wife and family].’

But as Mrs Wilson herself points out, there is a wider need to solve this case: ‘Somebody out there does know something,’ she said. ‘I just can’t believe that they can’t come forward because there’s still a murderer out there.’

n Murder On The Doorstep: Who Killed Alistair Wilson? is now streaming on My5.

‘Solving this should not be far away’

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