Renee MacRae: Murder trial told of police station incident
- Published
Renee MacRae and her son Andrew disappeared in November 1976
The trial of a man accused of murdering a woman and their young son in 1976 has heard how his wife told him to leave a police interview.
William MacDowell, 80, denies murdering Renee MacRae, 36, and three-year-old Andrew MacRae in the Highlands.
The High Court in Inverness heard Mr MacDowell was interviewed in the weeks after the mother and son disappeared.
But the jury heard Rosemary McDowall turned up at the police station and requested to speak to her husband.
Mr MacDowell, of Penrith, Cumbria, has been accused of murdering Mrs MacRae and their son at a lay-by on the A9 at Dalmagarry, south of Inverness, or elsewhere on 12 November 1976.
He has also been accused of disposing of their bodies and setting fire to a BMW car.
Mr MacDowell denies the charges and his lawyers have lodged special defences of incrimination and alibi.
Mrs MacDowell, 80, was asked about the evening of 20 December 1976 when she went into a police station in Inverness, asked a police cadet to take her to her husband and demanded he leave immediately.
Advocate depute Alex Prentice asked her: "Why did you go there?"
Mrs MacDowell said: "I was probably getting annoyed that they were keeping him there because he had nothing to do with it."
'I never stabbed her'
Earlier she was asked about a statement she gave to a Det Sgt Peter Black in November 1986.
The jury was told that both her and her husband had been detained by murder inquiry officers while they were staying in Tweedsmuir in the Borders.
Mrs MacDowell was suspected of attempting to pervert or defeat the ends of justice, the court heard.
Det Sgt Black put to her discrepancies in previous statements about the time she said her husband got home on 12 November 1976. Earlier statements had indicated between 20:00 and 20:30.
In her statement - some of which was put to Mrs MacDowell - she told the officer: "I honestly can't remember when Billy got home. It was very definitely before midnight."
She admitted she got angry with the detective who queried the discrepancies in her times.
Mrs MacDowell said to Det Sgt Black: "I don't know what you are getting on to me for. I never stabbed her or whatever happened to her."
Asked by Mr Prentice why she had said that, she responded: "It just came out that way in the spur of the moment. There was nothing meant by it."
Mr Prentice asked her: "Did you know she had been stabbed? "
Mrs MacDowell replied: "No, I did not. It just came out when one gets annoyed."
She denied she would prevent her husband from co-operating with the police.
Earlier, the court heard from Nan MacDougall, 90, how she had seen a person pushing a pushchair south on the side of the A9 on what was described as an atrocious night on 12 November.
She described a person in a "gleaming raincoat" and said: "I thought it unusual that anyone would be out on such a night with a child. It was atrocious."
Courting couples
The court also heard evidence on cars seen in a lay-by at Dalmagarry on the night of 12 November.
Retired engineer Martin Shand, 65, from Inverness, said he was returning from college in Dundee for the weekend and spotted a Volvo and a BMW between 19:30 and 20:00.
He told the jury it was a popular spot for courting couples and he knew it was a Volvo because he had driven one before.
Mr Shand said he also saw two people, but thought they could have been men due to their build.
Other witnesses spoke of seeing a BMW in a lay-by two miles north of Dalmagarry, outside Meallmore Lodge Hotel, between 18:55 and 20:00.
Retired nurse, 79-year-old Maureen Grant knew Mrs MacRae and her car and said she saw it parked outside the hotel on the A9 as she headed for Aviemore to a dinner.
Marian MacLean, 78, who worked at the hotel, said she also knew Mrs MacRae's car. She had followed it along the A9 before it pulled into the same lay-by at about 18:55.
'Her hairstyle was combed back and high'
Patricia Wilson, 82, who lived in Kingussie at the time, told Mr Prentice she saw a man standing beside a car near either Meallmore or Dalmagarry after it pulled off the road.
She said: "A person pulled the driver's car door open, he had his arms over the door and his head down, was speaking to the driver.
"My mother said it was a man. A woman was in the driver's seat and a child was in the back. Her hairstyle was combed back and high."
Mr MacDowell denies the charges against him, including one alleging he disposed of Renee and Andrew MacRae's bodies, personal effects and a pushchair, and of setting fire to a BMW car and disposing of a Volvo car's boot hatch.
His lawyers have lodged special defences of incrimination and alibi. The defence claims Gordon MacRae committed the offences together with persons unknown.
The trial before Lord Armstrong continues.
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- Published16 September 2022
