A guy who was found guilty of murdering his girlfriend and their three-year-old kid has passed away without revealing the location of their graves to the authorities.
When a jury convicted William MacDowell guilty of killing Renee and Andrew MacRae, he was handed a life sentence with a mandatory minimum of 30 years in September of last year.
After 1976, Renee and Andrew have not been seen together. Police had long suspected the 81-year-old of murdering them, but it wasn’t until last year that they thought they had enough proof to get him convicted.
Renee and Andrew’s remains have not been discovered, and recent efforts to persuade William MacDowell to do the right thing and reveal any information he may have that may help the police were fruitless, according to Detective Chief Inspector Brian Geddes, who helped bring MacDowell to prison.
“These killings seem to have been deliberate, planned, and carried out in the most methodical fashion – not a spontaneous act or spur of the moment,” judge Lord Armstrong told the murderer as he sentenced MacDowell to at least 30 years in jail, sealing his destiny to die in prison.
“They seem to have been executions in essence.
“You killed your victims, removed their corpses, and then threw away their belongings, including the boy’s stroller.
Afterwards, “you made preparations to hide the atrocities you had done.”
According to LancashireLive, MacDowell always maintained his innocence, but it took the jury of seven men and eight women little under four hours to find him guilty.
The trial heard evidence that MacDowell, who afterwards relocated to Penrith, murdered or kidnapped Mrs. MacRae and their son on November 12, 1976, at a layby on the A9 near Dalmagarry, south of Inverness.
The court heard evidence that MacDowell had been having an unlawful relationship with Mrs. MacRae and that she had thought they would get together for a weekend getaway before moving to Shetland. The jury was informed about MacDowell’s position as corporate secretary at Gordon MacRae, the estranged husband of Mrs. MacRae.
Once the affair was uncovered, MacDowell lost his job. During his trial, it was revealed that he had paid to have the inside of the vehicle’s trunk rebuilt and had held onto his business car until he had thoroughly cleaned it.
He refused to acknowledge any connection to the victim during his first police interrogation, only disclosing this during a second interview conducted later that day.
The High Court in Inverness learned of a “blood-curdling scream” that occurred the night Mrs. MacRae and her small son were last seen, just a few hundred yards from the layby where her BMW would later be discovered burned out.
Advocate Depute Alex Prentice to the jury that it was “Renee MacRae’s final word while alive.”
Every day of the trial, MacDowell’s wife Rosemary wheeled him into court and described him as “a walking dead man.”
“His heart is working really hard to keep him alive,” she added. “He has a very poor liver and very ill kidneys.”
According to a Police Scotland spokeswoman, an 81-year-old man passed away in the Forth Valley Royal Hospital on February 15, 2023, at around 11:05 a.m.
The Procurator Fiscal will get a report, and the death is not being viewed as suspicious.
»Killer who buried his 3-year-old child and girlfriend commits suicide«
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