A pensioner accused of murdering Renee MacRae told his handyman “I did and I didn’t” kill her when asked about the Inverness mum’s disappearance, a jury has heard.
The High Court in Inverness examined evidence from convicted Lanarkshire safecracker Mitchell Yuill, now deceased.
He had previously told police that when he asked William MacDowell if he had killed the 36-year-old housewife: “He replied I did and I didn’t”.
Yuill was employed by 80-year-old MacDowell in 1986 when the former Inverness man owned the Crook Inn in Tweedsmuir.
In October 1987, Mr Yuill travelled to Inverness to give police a statement about several conversations he had with the accused around the 10th anniversary of Renee and Andrew going missing.
Retired officer George Gough read out the statement that Mr Yuill had made during the police interview with him.
‘Was it you that done Renee MacRae?’
The handyman said he had got to know MacDowell well but fell out with him shortly before speaking to police, after being accused of stealing MacDowell’s car, which he denied.
Mr Yuill said he did not know of MacDowell being connected to the MacRae case until shortly before he was offered a job.
He told police that one morning, around the end of October/beginning of November 1986, he was asked by his boss to go to Biggar and get two copies of a newspaper because there was an article about the 10th anniversary.
He said he returned with them, MacDowell read the article “and he was not too chuffed about it.
“He told me if anyone came making an enquiry about me, don’t tell them anything.
“I was with him in the pool room and I said: ‘I am going to ask you straight, was it you that done Renee MacRae?
“He wasn’t surprised by the question but he just gave a big sigh or blow.
“A couple of weeks later we had had a few drinks. He was drinking brandy and I asked him if Andrew was his son?
“I looked him in the face and tears were coming down it. He said to me there are one or two things I have to get off my mind. You will get to know about them sometime.”
Yuill questioned the publican further about the relationship with Mrs MacRae.
MacDowell told him: “I had a wee cottage that I would take her (Renee) there nobody knows about and I would be in trouble”.
‘I did and I didn’t’
In a subsequent conversation, Mr Yuill said: “I asked him again if he did it – killed Renee MacRae. He said: ‘I did and I didn’t’.”
On a journey in his Mercedes horsebox to Inverness to get some furniture from his house, he drove three-quarters of the way.
“Then out of the blue, after we drove over a bridge, he asked me to drive. I said I had never driven anything like this.
“He moved on to the passenger seat and pretended to be asleep as if he was hiding from something.
“Then he directed me to stop and took over the driving again. There was something on that road he didn’t want to see.”
MacDowell, 80, denies murdering his secret lover and their three-year-old son Andrew at a lay-by on the A9 near Dalmagarry, or elsewhere, on November 12 1976.
He is also accused of disposing of their bodies, burning Renee’s BMW, destroying other evidence and disposing of items including a blue cross pushchair and a Volvo estate boot hatch.
MacDowell has lodged special defences of alibi – claiming he was elsewhere in Inverness on the night the pair vanished – and blames Mrs MacRae’s building company director husband Gordon for their disappearance.
The mum and son’s bodies have never been found.
Before evidence got underway on the ninth day of the trial, prosecutor Alex Prentice KC and defence counsel, Murray McAra KC agreed that blood was found in the boot of Mrs MacRae’s abandoned and burnt BMW.
It was assumed to be hers as DNA analysis showed only 1 in 1,000 million had the same profile, the court was told.
The trial, before Lord Armstrong, continues.
