RENEE AND ANDREW MACRAE: MacDowell believed he had escaped the long arm of the law, top criminologist David Wilson claims
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A top criminologist has said that William MacDowell firmly believed he had got away with the 1976 double murder of Renee MacRae and her son Andrew.
William MacDowell spent more than four decades a free man despite the brutal executions of his former lover and her three-year-old boy.
Justice finally caught up to the 80-year-old last week when a jury found him guilty of taking their lives and the subsequent disposal of their remains.
Renee and Andrew's bodies have never been found in the intervening years despite one of the biggest and lengthiest cold case investigations that Scotland has ever seen.
However, David Wilson the professor emeritus of criminology and the founding director of the Centre for Applied Criminology at Birmingham City University, said the conviction of MacDowell at the High Court in Inverness should be a beacon of light.
He said it shows how modern policing and forensic science as well as determination can help others who may find themselves in similar situations with missing and murdered loved ones.
Professor Wilson said: "This does give hope to others. It really does.
"I'm delighted to see there has been a result.
"Murder creates ripple in time and space.
"There will be people who this has hung over for years.
"I have my fingers crossed for the family that the bodies will one day be found."
Professor Wilson said evidence heard during the trial that MacDowell had attended a police station back during initial enquiries did not necessarily suggest he was going to admit the murders due to his guilt over what he had done.
He said: "He thought he got away with it.
"He wouldn't be expecting in his eighties to have charges brought against him after all this time.
"He will now be living in the knowledge that he will die in prison. He is not going to get out with a 30 year sentence."
The trial of MacDowell at the High Court in Inverness heard from a long list of witnesses, may of whom gave their recollections of the immense efforts to to try and find Renee and Andrew after they were reported missing in November 1976.
Compared to modern murder trials, there was a distinct lack of forensic evidence due to the limitations of the time.
However, Prof Wilson said written and oral testimony, which much of the trial relied upon, was credible - and enough to convince the jury to return their guilty verdicts and send MacDowell to spend the rest of his life behind bars.
Prof Wilson said: "One of the most popular misconceptions is about circumstantial evidence.
"Circumstantial evidence is nonetheless good evidence – as long as there is enough to link a perpetrator to a crime.
"It's very rare for there to be DNA that links a perpetrator to a crime.
"And it's often circumstantial evidence that brings justice to a murder case.
"It's been enough here to convince a jury of MacDowell's guilt.
The High Court heard that MacDowell went to police headquarters in Inverness in December 1976 to speak to officers but that the interview was cut short.
Prof Wilson said this was not necessarily over any guilt he felt over the double murder.
He said: "Sometimes the accused go to police stations for different reasons – to rule themselves out. They can go to police stations for all different reasons. You shouldn't necessarily see it as a pang of guilt.
"I feel that is less likely as those feelings of guilt do not go away – they often become more magnified over time.
"If you put yourselves in his shoes – he has never felt able to come forward since 1976 and actually say 'I did it'."
Police have since vowed to keep up the search for Renee and Andrew's remains and say only one part of the case is finally closed.
Prof Wilson said he has suggestions for the police.
He said: "People who have lost loved ones want a place to go to memorialise and not having a body is a really hard thing to deal with.
"Now that we have established his guilt a key thing to do would be to do some geo-profiling to look and see where he lived, where he worked, where he went.
"The bodies will be disposed of somewhere where he naturally had access to and that he knew that he had time to be able to dispose of them and they would not be discovered.
"My view is that since 1976 the bodies will have been disposed of somewhere where there has been subsequent development. There will have been a road built, a housing estate or factory.
"I think he will have been well aware of where he could dispose of those bodies and they would not be discovered.
"I would urge the police to use a geo-profiler to help them in identifying likely places where they could then use geo-physics to see if there's been earth disturbed that might indicate a grave."
