Highland journalist recalls involvement in search for Inverness mum and son Renee and Andrew MacRae
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A journalist who covered the disappearance of the Inverness mother and son in 1976 looks back in a new documentary about the case.
When Renee and Andrew MacRae went missing in November 1976 David Love was one of a number of Highland journalists who followed the case through to what was initially a disappointing conclusion.
Speaking about events as part of a new BBC documentary on the case he reflects on how it gripped the region.
"It is a case which has got all the ingredients, sadly, to make a movie," he says in the first part of Murder Trial: The Disappearance of Renee and Andrew MacRae.
"A secret lover, a glamorous wife of a builder tycoon and a young boy who never had the chance to grow up."
While initial investigations failed to provide a resolution Mr Love would eventually be among those covering the trial of William MacDowell at the High Court in Inverness as a large scale reinvestigation saw him finally brought to justice last year.
He says: "It brings back memories and it's hard to believe I'm still covering the story more than four decades on."
He joined military and police personnel and volunteers who helped in the original search for Renee and Andrew and, like many, had very definite views of where they might be found.
"There are plenty places to hide in the Highlands, there's absolutely no doubt about that," he says. "But there's still the easiest, least traceable deposition sites were in water."
The documentary considers the examination of the two pools at Leanach Quarry which, in 1976, saw a team of foreign divers, who had been on a search for the Loch Ness Monster, offer their services.
At one point they found what, on an underwater camera, looked like it might be a body but turned out only to be garden rubbish.
Mr Love says he does not believe the original was thorough enough though the documentary also details the difficulties of draining the waters of the smaller pool as its contents seeped back in as quickly as it was removed.
The quarry was the subject of intense excavation once again in the reinvestigation that eventually led to MacDowell being charged and convicted of murder, with an estimated 13 million litres of water removed, though it is understood the only potential item of interest found was a set of wheels similar to those that may have been on Andrew MacRae's pram.
On the night she and Andrew disappeared Renee was on her way to spend the weekend with MacDowell, according to a statement from her friend Valerie Steventon in whom, she said, she had confided.
Her car was later discovered in a lay-by at Dalmagarry
Of course the bodies of Renee and Andrew MacRae have never been found and Renee's sister Morag Govans – who also speaks movingly about how she still misses her sister to this day – talks about how thoughts of what might have happened to them still haunt her.
"I tried to think how he killed them," she says. "He definitely had to kill Renee first before Andrew because she would have put up a fight...and I am sure he would have been marked.
"My thoughts are that Renee went into the boot of the car to maybe get out her luggage and I think he took the boot of the car down on her.
"He certainly had to knock Renee out first anyway before he did anything to Andrew...I don't know, he probably just suffocated him. I don't know."
The first part of Murder Trial: The Disappearance of Renee and Andrew MacRae is due to be broadcast on BBC Scotland at 10pm on Tuesday and will be repeated on BBC Two on Monday, August 28 at 9pm.
Both episodes will also be available on BBC iPlayer from this Tuesday.
