A jury has been urged to convict a man accused of bludgeoning a north-east mechanic to death in his rural cottage.
Brian McKandie was found dead in his Badenscoth property in March 2016.
Steven Sidebottom has been on trial over the last three weeks at the High Court in Aberdeen accused of being responsible for his death and of robbing him of a tin of money.
There has been no direct evidence to suggest his guilty but the prosecution have relied on a circumstantial case.
They contend that he sent messages to a friend offering him £500 to drop him off, drive to Huntly and be seen there and he would be “doing some in” who owed him money and that Sidebottom, who was taking home just £27 a month after paying child maintenance from his job as a farmer, came into money which could only have come from the property at Fairview Cottages.
In summing up the case for the prosecution, advocate depute Iain McSporran QC said the strands of evidence combined to show the 25-year-old was the guilty party.
He said Mr Mckandie was a well known mechanic who used to joke with customers he put money, always cash, in his “shoe box” and as Sidebottom was a customer it was a “reasonable inference” he would expect to find money there.
The court also heard he produced a “wad of cash” wrapped in an elastic band when he visited his girlfriend.
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Mr McSporran said “He had no way of having his hands on these sums of cash.
“He said to Graeme Gray I need £2000 in cash.”
He added that Sidebottom’s account to the police was that he had left the Vale Hotel in Fyvie on the Friday night and travelled on to Aberdeen was contradicted by the tracing of his phone which showed he had gone in the opposite direction.
The court had also been shown messages of him saying he was “in a hurry” to get to his girlfriend’s in Aberdeen.
Mr McSporran said: “What was stopping him from just going to Aberdeen?”
He added that were “two hours of inactivity” between 7.42pm and 9.42pm and said this was plenty of time for him to have carried out the killing and changed clothes.
Sidebottom, of Crannabog Farm in Rothienorman, denies the charge against him and has launched a special defence of alibi.
The trial, before Lord Uist, continues.
