The killers of oil worker Steven Donaldson have been jailed for a combined 57 years.
At the High Court in Edinburgh, murderers Steven Dickie and Callum Davidson were given life sentences with minimum terms of 23 and 24 years respectively for the “savage and depraved” brutality which ended the life of the 27-year-old oil worker.
Judge Lord Pentland told the pair: “You cut him down without mercy…he had done harm to neither of you.”
Mr Donaldson’s former girlfriend Tasmin Glass – who was convicted of culpable homicide after luring him to a Kirriemuir playpark on a warm night a year ago next week – was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
The judge said: “It is clear you instigated the attack on Mr Donaldson.”
He added: “You knew Dickie and Davidson had obtained weapons… Your plan was for your two co-accused to set upon him so you could get him out of your life… Through your duplicity Dickie and Davidson were able to take Mr Donaldson by surprise.”
The discovery of Mr Donaldson’s battered and burned body beside the charred shell of his BMW at Kirriemuir’s Loch of Kinnordy nature reserve just before 5am on June 7 last year sparked one of the largest police investigations ever seen in Angus, with a two-mile cordon and no-fly zone set up around the wildlife attraction.