It’s Scotland’s most notorious murder mystery which has horrified a nation for decades.
For nearly half a century there has been enduring hurt and heartbreak over the plight of a Highland mother and her innocent three-year-old son.
Renee MacRae and her toddler son Andrew, vanished from the face of the earth one wet and foggy Friday night in November 1976 and have never been seen since.
Now, almost 50 years on, police could be tantalisingly close to finally finding their remains and providing closure to a family riven by the 1970’s love affair which had tragic consequences.
The MacRae case is unusual in the annals of Scotland’s criminal history in that it eventually unmasked a murderer….who was convicted while his victims remain unfound.
Eighty-year-old William MacDowell was convicted of the “premeditated executions” of his one-time lover Renee and their son Andrew.
But the Crown managed to achieve the 2022 guilty verdict at the High Court in Inverness, despite the absence of even a single body.
Successive Highland police chiefs have attempted to right that wrong over five decades, ordering labour-intensive searches of quarries and forests and removing a staggering 2,000 trees from the Highland landscape.
Doting Mum Renee MacRae with three-month-old Andrew and oldest son Gordon
Until now, it was thought knowledge of the final resting place of mother and son died along with wicked Bill MacDowell in 2023.
Yet these latest searches could eventually provide some solace for those tortured by events from another time.
Only a small coterie within the Highland capital were aware of the romantic goings-on within the offices of a local building firm.
Renee had split from her husband, Gordon, who was happy to support her living in a luxury bungalow on her own.
He, meantime, had taken up with his receptionist but was unaware that his own employee, Bill MacDowell was romantically involved with his wife.
In 1976, the only tangible sign that something bad had happened was provided by the burnt-out wreck of a car on a remote A9 layby.
We would later discover MacDowell had lured the pair to the rendezvous on the promise of a new life in Shetland but instead callously murdered them both after torching the luxury car she had arrived in.
The blue BMW 1602 was a shiny symbol of the MacRae family’s middle class credentials.
The West German marque was rare on Scotland’s roads at the time but it could be easily afforded by the successful business of Hugh MacRae & Son, a local building firm and a major employer in Inverness.
Renee MacRae’s BMW was found burnt out in a layby beside the A9 south of Inverness
It was driven by Christina Catherine MacRae, known as Renee, the boss’s wife.
The blackened shell of the BMW bore little in the way of evidence, possibly as a result of extensive dousing with water by firemen called to the roadside blaze.
A bloodstain, said to be the size of ‘a half crown’, was found in the boot and matched to Renee’s blood type.
Another vehicle came to the attention of detectives. It was seen parked nose-to-nose with the BMW in the layby by a passing motorist, another foreign executive vehicle, a Volvo.
Bill MacDowell, an early suspect once his relationship with Renee became known to police, drove a dark-coloured Volvo 145 estate.
Another witness, teacher Jean Wallace, saw a man with ‘wide and staring eyes’ wheeling a pushchair on the A9. Andrew’s pushchair has never been found, nor has the luggage they had been carrying in the boot.
It transpired MacDowell later fetched up at his local Volvo dealership, demanding a replacement floor for his rear cargo area.
He explained he had burned the original when he threw building material in the back, leaving the garage in a rage when he couldn’t have a new one fitted that day.
When Renee’s husband learned of the affair, he sacked MacDowell and demanded the return of the company car. An employee sent to retrieve it found MacDowell scrubbing out the Volvo’s boot.
Farmer’s wife Eva MacQueen said she heard “a blood-curdling scream” at Dalmagarry Farm, near to where Renee’s car had been found, between 7.30pm and 8pm.
Yet for all the mounting suspicion, the killer had an alibi from his wife. Rosemary MacDowell told detectives her husband had arrived home on the night of the murder between 8pm and 8.30pm, after her daughters watched a TV show about cowboys.
The case against MacDowell may have remained purely circumstantial were it not for Renee’s decision to confide in her best friend, Val Steventon.
Mrs Steventon knew all of her friend’s secrets, including MacDowell siring Andrew and the lovers arranging to meet up that fateful Friday night.
She told detectives the secret lovers had a fractious relationship. Her last words were “Have a nice weekend, Renee. No fighting.”
By now, the search for the missing mother and son was costing taxpayers £10,000 per day. It involved police divers, search dogs, helicopters and door-to-door inquiries.
RAF bombers with heat-seeking equipment flew over the Highlands, looking for something that could betray a lonely burial location.
Dalmagarry Quarry was excavated. Then Leanach Quarry became the new focus of searches. Still nothing.
Years later, Rosemary MacDowell was re-interviewed by police under caution, regarding the alibi she had provided her husband with.
An old TV listings magazine showed the programme she had mentioned, The Quest, had started at least an hour and a half later than she had said it had.
To avoid the whispers, the couple left Inverness for an itinerant life, variously living in Saudi Arabia, London and a remote cottage up a farm track near Penrith in Cumbria.
Anniversaries of the Highland disappearance came and went but it was not until 2019 that William MacDowell was arrested and formally charged with the murder of his lover and their son.
Rosemary was still there at his trial in 2022, wheeling the terminally-ill accused into court in a wheelchair.
The 30-year sentence handed down for double murder conveyed the outrage over his crimes but no-one really believed it would ever be served.
Just five months later, MacDowall was dead from a combination of cancer and cirrhosis of the liver.
He had taken to the grave the secret of the tragic last moments of Renee and Andrew….a secret which may now be revealed after 50 tortuous years.
