SOLVED: The tragic case of Renee and baby Andrew MacRae - murdered by his own father

SOLVED - ONE OF SCOTLAND'S MOST BAFFLING UNSOLVED MURDER CASES dating back to 1976 has now been solved. 

In September 2022, William MacDowell, who was the man Renee MacRae had been having an affair with and allegedly meeting on the night of her death, was convicted of her murder and the killing of her 3-year-old son Andrew who was also his son. Their bodies have never been found. 

MacDowell who tried to blame the dead woman's husband for her murder, was given a minimum sentence of 30 years. As he's 80 years old, he's expected to die in prison. 

Renee who was described as a devoted mum, left behind an older son. Rennies sister and the police I have called on the callous killer to reveal where the bodies are buried.

Read on if you want to know more about the tragic case- 

The last picture of Renee and little Andrew

Usually when a child goes missing they don't have either of their parents with them. But in the case of the longest open missing persons case In Britain's history, 3-year-old son Andrew was with his mother Renee MacRae when he disappeared along with her, way back in 1976.

Renee was separated from her husband Gordon and dropped her oldest son Gordon who was 9-year-old off at her husband's in Inverness. She was meant to be going to see her sister in Kilmarnock and she was heading that way in her BMW when she was last seen.

The burning car

12 miles away that very same night, a train driver spotted a burning car in an isolated lay-by. It turned out to be Renee MacRae's car.

No trace of either her or the little boy was found. All that police found was a rug stained with blood that was tested and matched MacRae's blood type.

What happened to Renee and little Andrew?

So, how did a car carrying a mother and her child end up on fire and more importantly, where were Renee and little Andrew? Despite an intensive search no trace of either them was ever found.

The Sightings

Witnesses spotted a man dragging what looked like a dead sheep along the road where the mother and child were last spotted driving along. Renee MacRae was wearing a sheepskin coat when she was last seen.

Other witnesses saw a man with a pushchair near the quarry. Could it have been the little boy's?

The Theories

Unbeknown to her husband Renee had been having an affair with a married man called Bill MacDowell who worked for her husband. According to Renee's best friend she'd been going to see him that night and not her sister as she claimed. 

What's more she confided in her friend that wee Andrew was her lover's son. This friend claimed that Renee was planning to start a new life with her lover.

If that was true, Renee never got the chance of happiness. Her little boy never got the chance to enjoy his childhood.

Whatever happened to the pair that night it seems certain that they were murdered. Will their bodies ever be found so they can rest in peace?

Some hope

The man in charge of the search, Detective Sergeant Cathcart was convinced he'd found Renee and Andrew in a quarry after removing the topsoil and being hit with the stench of what he believed to be corpses. He hired a bulldozer, but was ordered to stop digging by a senior officer because the vehicle had to go back to the contractors due to lack of money.

Over twenty years later, the quarry was dug up again but there were no sign of any bodies. Had they been removed? We'll never know.

Could the tragic pair be buried beneath this motorway?

The prime suspect

Bill MacDowell, Renee's lover was the main person of interest. At one stage he went into a police station to make a statement, but was dragged out by his wife.

Had he been about to confess? He denied any involvement in Renee and Andrew's murder.

The prevailing theory appears to be that mother and child were killed and buried under the A9 motorway that was being upgraded. If that is this case, maybe one day future roadworks will give all unearth the tragic pair.

Update -

See "Suspect in MacRae case fled to US http://www.scotsman.com/news/suspect-in-macrae-case-fled-to-the-us-1-4383307

UPDATE - On September 2019 a 77-year-old man later named as William MacDowell was charged with the murders of Renee and little Andrew. MacDowell is allegedly the man Renee was having an affair with and who she was meant to be travelling to meet on the fateful night she went missing. There were rumours he was little Andrew's biological father.

The suspicious death of Scottish independence hero Willie McRrae - murder, cover up or suicide you decide

 

charismaticWillie McRae

I have always been fascinated by conspiracy theories even if I don't believe most of them. There is a fair few going around after former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon's arrest and subsquent release in connection with alleged missing funds from the SNP an accusation which she vehemently denies. 

I can't comment on that when it's an ongoing police inquiry but many people I have spoken to don't trust the police and that's hardly new.

One of the many mysteries/conroversies that has always interested me was the death - or was it murder or execution of - Scottish independence hero Willie McRae. 

Who was Willie McRae?

Born in Falkrik, he was a razor sharp prominent lawyer and politician who had won cases against the then English based UK government (remember, this is many years before devolution). He didn't want Scotland used as a nuclear dustbin and was an advocate for Scottish independence. 

He also wasn't as cosetted as so many of today's politicians having served in WWII as a naval officer and then in the Royal Indian Navy. He was also an advocate for Indian independence.

Against nuclear power and pro- independence for both his beloved Scotland and India, these were considered dangerous views by some back then. 

The car crash?

In 1985, Mr McRae's apparently crashed car was found by two tourists who flagged down a passing car driven by Dr Dorothy Messer.  Immediately, the doctor attended to the man inside the car,  noticing that Willie McRae was still breathing but suspecting he might have brain damage, probably from the crash.

It was only in hospital when a nurse was washing Mr McRae's head that a bullet wound was found. He'd been shot. An x-ray proved this to be the case. 

What had first appeared to be a car crash now became something more sinister. Who shot Willie McRae? Or, did he really shoot himself? 

Suicide was suspected but the gun was nowhere to be seen. It wasn't until later it was found 60 feet away from the car's supposed resting place in a burn. How had it got there?

There were two theories - 

1. The car had been moved by the police and that's why the gun wasn't next to the car. Well, dead men can't throw guns away after they shoot themselves in the head can they? 

Note - later it was claimed that the police assumed the car has been in an accident and had it moved but they moved it back once they discovered McRae had been shot. 

If that was the case, it sounds like a sloppy investigation right from the start. Can we trust the findings of such sloppy police work? 

2. Someone else had shot Mr McRae. Friends believed the secret services had been following him. To give that theory credence, a former serving British police officer (at that time there was no Police Scotland) who had become a private investigator insisted he had been hired to keep tabs on Mr McRae. 

There was good reason to believe that Mr McRae had been got at.

A man of strong principles and an even stronger constitution, he was a boil on the backside of the pro-nuclear British establishment and a fervent believer in Scottish independence. Firmly anti-nuclear, he was credited with almost single-handedly having plans to dump nuclear waste in the Galloway Hills of Scotland turned down by the local authority. 

Could he have brought down the Thatcher government? 

There were rumours McRae had evidence of a paedophile ring at the heart of the Thatcher government which would be bad enough to bring down the whole English government. 

He was also currently working on stopping even more nuclear waste being dumped in Scotland. He was so paranoid about what he was working on that he carried a copy of his files around with him at all times. No such paperwork was found in the car. 

Had it been removed by someone else? Or had he suspected he'd been followed and hidden it somewhere?

Stolen files before his death

To make it even more suspicious, it was claimed the only other copy of his files had been stolen in a break-in at his home before his death. Nothing else had been stolen. Coincidence or something more sinister? Will we ever know? 

Yet more questions that still haven't been answered. 

Questions still abound and it doesn't kill off the conspiracy theories when those seen as part of the establishment have refused to - 

1. hold a FAI (Fatal Account Inquiry)

2. give them investigator Winnie Ewing who was a qualified lawyer and SNP President a copy of the police files.

3. meet with Fergus Ewing the son of Winnie. He requested a meeting with the Solicitor General for Scotland and was rebuffed. The Official Secrets Act may have been quoted. 

What do they have to fear from the truth? 

Then there was the investigation into his death conducted by 'A Justice for Willie' group. In the report in 2016 they said there was nothing to suggest that his death had been anything other than a suicide. 

Did that investigation put the tin lid on it? Well, sadly not.

The nurse who says someone shot McRae

In 2018, one of the nurses who treated the dying man, insisted that the bullet wound had been to the back of his head and not his temple. It's not completely impossible that someone could shoot themselves in the back of the head or neck but less likely than putting a gun to the temple of their head or the gun in their mouth and then pulling the trigger. 

Also, why would a man who respected the rights of other people to live their lives shoot himself whilst driving his own car, something that risked injuring or killing someone? 

With time marching on, maybe we will never find out the full truth of what happened to Willie McRae on that lonely road.  The one thing that is certain is that he was a great loss to the Scottish independence movement of which he was a strong advocate. 

Who was Peg Entwistle the Hollywood sign (jump) girl?

I'd heard the story of the actress who's said to have jumped from the H of the Hollywood sign to her death. But until I watched the Netflix miniseries Hollywood, I hadn't delved into what happened. 

Why would a beautiful, young, rising star in Hollywood who starred in a stage play with one of the greatest actors ever Humphrey Bogart throw herself from the very same Hollywood sign that had so first entranced her when she'd arrived in town as a teenager brimming with dreams?

The full story of what I discovered both fascinated and saddened me because I felt as if I was reading the story of an actor who died too soon. 

Peg's parents, both actors, had a very acrimonious divorce where - according to the BBC - her mother stated that she'd never loved her husband or her five-year-old daughter.

The psychological impact that might have had on such a young child can only be guessed at but can't have helped her mental state. But that wasn't tragic Peg's only heartbreak. 

Triple heartbreak for Peg 

In 1921 her stepmother actress Lauretta Ross died from meningitis. Peg adored her.

In 1922, 6 years after they'd immigrated to New York from the UK, Peg's beloved father Robert was killed in a hit and run. Peg was 13 at the time. Her uncle, an agent to an established Hollywood star took her and her two step-brothers who were now orphans into his home.

At the age of just 19, Peg married actor Robert Keith, a man who she later divorced for cruelty and failing to tell her he'd been married before and had a little boy who was 6*.

Behind the Hollywood glamour
there's heartbreak

In a career path full of disappointment and backstabbing, Peg might not have had the tools necessary to deal with disappointment even although she was used to it in her turbulent personal life.

But what led her to leap to her death (no foul play was ever suspected far less proved) at the point where she was starting to make it in Hollywood?

Peg was cast in her first and only movie Thirteen Women but after test audiences watched it her role was cut back. Even worse, her contract with film studio RKO was cut leaving her demoralised and penniless. The die had been cast.

Leaving a note saying she was off to visit friends, Peg made her last, tragic climb. She wasn't found for two days and only after another woman found her shoes and bag near the famous Hollywood sign along with a jacket that contained a goodbye note.

One thing they can't take away from Peg Entwistle is her influence on Bette Davis, one of the biggest Hollywood stars of all time.  She credits seeing Peg acting in the theatre play The Wild Duck as her inspiration for becoming an actress herself.

Without Peg Entwistle, we might never have got to see Bette Davis's eyes light up the screen. But the main reason Peg Entwistle will never be forgotten is that maybe in her crushed dreams we see our own. 

*Tragically his son, Brian Keith, later ended his own life using a shotgun at the age of 75. He had lung cancer and had lost his daughter Daisy to suicide. He has a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame.