Month: December 2021

Pan Am Flight 103 – Wikipedia

Remembering Pan Am Flight 103 — FBI

BBC NEWS | Magazine | ‘I missed the Lockerbie flight by minutes’

Jaswant Basuta | View from the Mirror (blackcablondon.net)

PA103 Archives: Victim: David Scott Dornstein (syr.edu)

Orphan of Lockerbie’s son who lives as recluse near crash site is heir to £18m fortune – Mirror Online

Destroyed by the curse of Lockerbie | UK news | The Guardian

Lockerbie orphan is found dead in Thai hotel | The Independent

‘Orphan of Lockerbie’s’ son who inherited £18m fortune still haunted by the atrocity 30 years on | Daily Mail Online

The £18m heir of Lockerbie: The little boy who’d give up his fortune to have his dad back | Daily Mail Online

Pan Am Guilty of ‘Willful Misconduct’ – Los Angeles Times (latimes.com)

Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial – Wikipedia

Scottish Court in the Netherlands – Wikipedia

Lockerbie Trial, Verdict and Appeal – scotcourts.gov.uk

The Lockerbie Bombing: The Tragic True Story Of Pan Am Flight 103 (grunge.com)

Libya Admits Culpability In Crash of Pan Am Plane – The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Lockerbie bombing: How brother of one of the victims tracked down suspected bomb-maker | Daily Mail Online

Lockerbie: The Gaucis and compensation (timesofmalta.com)

Dawn:

A seemingly routine flight from London on the way to New York would forever change many lives as it passed over a small town in Scotland.

Dawn and Cole:

Hi Wee Ones!  I’m Cole and I’m Dawn, and this is Scottish Murders.

[THEME TUNE]

Promo for Into The Night Podcast

Dawn:

On the 21st of December 1988, Jaswant Basuta checked in with his luggage onto his flight to New York from Heathrow Airport in London with plenty of time to spare as he assumed it would be busy due to the Christmas rush. He had just attended a family wedding in Belfast and was heading home, where his wife would be waiting to pick him up from the airport. At the airport he had already been joined by some relatives from nearby Southall to see him off and they decided to take him to the upstairs bar for a drink. Jaswant wasn’t a heavy drinker, especially as being Sikh alcohol consumption is discouraged, however an exception was when there was a cause for celebration such as having his relatives around. So, when Jaswant did drink he liked a Carlsberg’s Special Brew, so he had one, then another and another, not realising his departure time was rapidly approaching, but he eventually insisted that he must be off for his flight only then noticing on the departure screens that the gate for his flight was closing. He quickly made it through security, passport control and finally made it to the gate, where he found it empty of fellow passengers. He saw some ground crew and a duty manager who he pleaded with to let him on board, however they refused. He then saw through the window that the aircraft he was supposed to be on had pushed back from the gate and was making its way towards the runway, he was too late. He wasn’t the only one to miss the flight that night, The Four Tops were recording a performance to be broadcast at Christmas and the New Year, however the tight schedule had not gone as planned and they were delayed. John Lyndon, also known as Johnny Rotten, former front man of the Sex Pistols, despite what you might assume was a stickler for being on time and had got into an argument with his wife who he said had packed too slowly and there was no chance to make the flight. Kim Cattrall was working on a film and was due to return home that night but changed her plans and was in Harrods instead purchasing a Wedgewood teapot as she had neglected to buy a gift for her mother so had decided to return on a later flight instead. Jaswant was feeling awful, not just for missing his flight but from drinking in the bar earlier, so resigned himself to spending the night in the departure lounge. He spent a while trying to doze off until he saw a couple of police officers walking towards him, who then asked if he was the passenger who had missed the flight. He said that he was, and they escorted him to the Heathrow Airport police station. Heathrow Airport police had discovered that when Jaswant hadn’t made it to the gate in time the ground crew had been anxious not to delay the flight and in doing so had admitted that his suitcase had been left on board the aircraft, in breach of security regulations. Jaswant then discovered that an hour after he had arrived at the gate, the aircraft he was supposed to be on, Pan Am Flight 103, had exploded over Lockerbie in Scotland, killing all 259 passengers and crew on board, plus 11 people on the ground. Not only had his suitcase been left unaccompanied on the flight, three years earlier it had been known that Sikh terrorists had been suspected of blowing up a 747, and since Jaswant was Sikh and had just come from Belfast it would be fair to assume the police had found their suspect within just a couple of hours. However, when police questioned him further it quickly became clear he was innocent. The police also contacted his wife who was initially inconsolable as she had assumed her husband had perished along with other victims, but was understandably relieved when she discovered he was still alive. Jaswant, although relieved to have been saved, felt terrible for all the other people on his flight, and that he should have been another victim. He later said his experience made him humbler, more spiritual and felt it was his duty to do something good with his life and help others. A few months after the crash he was shown a photograph of his partially burnt and battered luggage and was asked if he wanted it back, but he felt no need to have it as he had his life and family and that was enough for him.

Cole:

David Dornstein had been working in Israel on a project for Alternatives in Jewish Education and was returning home early to surprise his family on the 21st of December 1988. He boarded the flight for the last part of his journey home, joining fellow passengers on Pan Am Flight 103. Also on board with the passengers was their luggage and unaccompanied luggage from feeder flights that had been transferred onto the aircraft, including within a baggage container in the forward cargo bay a light brown suitcase containing a Toshiba radio cassette player and within this, unknown to all those on board, was 450 grams of Semtex plastic explosives connected to a timer. The flight with 243 passengers and 16 crew on board left the gates around 6pm and took off from London’s Heathrow Airport heading to New York at 6:25pm. David, along with his fellow passengers and crew, were flying at 31,000 feet over Scotland when around 7pm Air Traffic Control tried to make a routine contact with Pan Am Flight 103, however instead of receiving a response moments later Air Traffic Control observed multiple radar echoes instead of one. The Semtex plastic explosive contained in the light brown suitcase had exploded. Due to the huge difference in pressure between the inside and the outside of the aircraft, a 50 centimetre hole had been punched in the fuselage. Within seconds of this explosion, the nose separated from the rest of the aircraft, striking off one of the engines and the tail assembly. The rest of the fuselage continued onward until it reached 19,000 feet and began to dive vertically, when the forward fuselage began to disintegrate tearing off both horizontal stabilisers. The rear fuselage and remaining three engines also separated and, along with the winged box structure, crashed onto the small town of Lockerbie. creating a large crater starting fires from the 90,000 kilograms or 200,000 pounds of fuel, killing 11 people on the ground. Wreckage from the nose section of the aircraft, including the flight deck, was found mostly in one piece about 2.5 miles or 4 kilometres east of Lockerbie, on the side of which read part of the name of the aircraft ‘Clipper Maid of the Seas’.

Dawn:

The  Flannigan family of Tom Flannigan, his wife Kathleen and their three children, David, Steven and Joanne, were from Lockerbie, Scotland, which is a small town about 75 miles or 120 kilometres south of Glasgow in Dumfries and Galloway. David Flannigan no longer lived at the family home in Sherwood Crescent, Lockerbie, but had moved to Blackpool when he was 17 following an argument, but he was intending to spend Christmas with his family. With just a few days before Christmas it’s not hard to imagine the rest of the Flannigan family were in good spirits, despite David not being there, and maybe they also hoped that he would return for the festive period too, however, the night of the 21st of December 1988 would change everything for the Flannigan family. Steven Flannigan, who was 14, had taken a bicycle he was working on for his 10 year old sister Joanne as a Christmas present to be checked by his neighbour David Edwards in his garage, however, within minutes the wet and windy night turned into something far louder and stranger when they witnessed a fireball engulf the Flannigan family home, which had been obliterated by the wreckage of the main wingbox structure of an aircraft that had only minutes earlier been passing over the small town of Lockerbie on its way to New York, leaving a 10 metre or 30 foot crater. Tom, Kathleen and Joanne Flannigan, along with eight other residents, many of whom would also have been getting ready for Christmas, were also killed as wreckage from the aircraft crashed down onto their homes, adding to the deaths of the 259 passengers and crew who had been on board Pan Am Flight 103. David Flannigan understandably took the loss of his parents and younger sister hard in the years after that fateful night in 1988 and he tragically died of a heart attack having sadly drank himself to death in a hotel in Thailand in 1993. Unfortunately, this would not be the last tragedy to hit the Flannigan family when in 2000 Steven Flannigan died after being struck by a train in the early hours of the morning. Sadly, it’s not known whether he slipped and fell unconscious or perhaps was wracked by the nightmares of what he witnessed that terrible night in Lockerbie. On the 3rd of May 2000, almost 11 and a half years after Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie in Scotland, the trial began of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah.  They had been indicted in 1991, but due to the lack of treaties between Libya and the United Kingdom or the United States, it was delayed until a compromise was reached to hold the trial at Camp Zeist in a special Scottish Court in the Netherlands. During the trial it was stated shortly after the disaster in 1988, an operation was launched to retrieve as much wreckage as possible, these items were taken to be examined and relevant parts were reconstructed, where, although most of the fractures were found to be consistent with the airborne breakup of an aircraft, there was an area on the port side of the lower fuselage in the forward cargo bay, which would be loaded with luggage containers, where these fractures were not typical and had been shattered. Around this area were signs of pitting and carbon deposits along with some panels that been bent and torn outwards in a starburst pattern. Also recovered were pieces of a luggage container which included pitting and carbon deposits, which were further analysed and showed traces of chemicals consistent with those used in the manufacture of Semtex plastic explosives, strongly indicating an explosion of a device within the baggage contained on board the aircraft. Further evidence collected including 56 fragments of a light brown suitcase which showed signs of explosive damage, including a small piece of circuit board and what seemed to be shattered pieces of a Toshiba radio cassette player, indicating that this had contained the explosive. It was known at the time in 1988 that West German police had recovered the same model of Toshiba radio cassette player which had been modified to contain an explosive device, but the same piece of circuit board was not part of the same model of radio cassette player. A light brown suitcase was also determined to have contained other items including branded clothing, pieces of which have been recovered including a label with ‘Made in Malta” written on it. In August 1989, police officers went to Malta to track down the origin of the clothing that had been contained in the light brown suitcase and visited Mary’s House, a shop which sold the same clothing brands, and spoke to the owner Tony Gauci who remembered a sale he had made two weeks before Christmas in 1988 to a Libyan man, which included many of the items the pieces of clothing had been determined to have come from. He recalled this sale in particular as he noted that the person didn’t seem that interested in the items he was purchasing, and stated during the trial that the man he had sold the clothes to was al-Megrahi. The small piece of circuit board was not tracked down until June 1990 when police officers were shown details of a timing device known as an MST-13 timer where part of its circuit board was identical to the fragment that had been found. Edwin Bollier worked for a firm that made circuit boards used in these MST-13 timers, and during the trial he stated that his principal customer was the Libyan Government, in particular Libyan Military Security, and had made frequent trips to Libya. He also stated that in December 1988, he had been asked to supply some MST-13 timer components to the Libyan Army, although he made other statements about his activities which conflicted with each other so was deemed to be an unreliable witness. The trial also stated that the light brown suitcase had been packed with the clothes bought from Mary’s House and the Toshiba radio cassette player, which contained the Semtex explosive device and MST-13 timer. It then had been carried on a flight from Malta to Frankfurt in Germany, then on to another flight to London Heathrow Airport, where it was finally transferred onto a flight for New York, Pan Am Flight 103. On the 31st of January 2001, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was found guilty, mostly due to the evidence of Tony Gauci, the owner of the Mary’s House clothes shop in Malta, identifying him as the man he had sold the clothes to, the pieces of which were later found with a fragment of the light brown suitcase. However, Lamen Khalifa Fhimah was found not guilty as he had been in Sweden on the day of the bombing so could not have been involved. An appeal was lodged in 2002, however this was denied as being without merit. al-Megrahi continued to maintain his innocence throughout the trial and his time in prison, and he said most of the evidence against him was circumstantial. It was also found out that the owner of the clothes shop, Tony Gauci, had received a $2 million dollar reward from the CIA for his testimony, which cast some doubt on the outcome of the trial. Although in 2003, Libya did formally accept responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing in a letter that pledged to compensate survivors and renounce terrorism, and represented the first official acknowledgement that Colonel Gaddafi’s Libyan government was involved. In 2009, a second appeal was due to be heard for al-Megrahi, but he applied to have this dropped due to his terminal prostate cancer prognosis, which also led to him being released on compassionate grounds a few months later. Abdelbaset al-Megrahi died in Tripoli, Libya in 2012.

Cole:

In 1988, Ken Dornstein was in his parents kitchen in New York when he heard about the Lockerbie bombing, but he did not know at that moment that his older brother, David Dornstein, had been on the plane, having changed his plans to return early to surprise his family. In the years after his brother’s death, Ken wrote a memoir about his brother called ‘The Boy That Fell Out of the Sky’ which was published in 2006. This would have been Ken’s way of honouring his brother. That is until 2009 when he heard about the only man convicted of the attack. Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, had been released early on compassionate grounds due to a terminal cancer prognosis, and decided to find out more of what had happened to his brother and the other victims of the Lockerbie bombing. He examined documents from the trial and even travelled to Libya to interview many of those suspected but not charged. It was during an interview when the name Abu Agila Mas’ud was mentioned, including in a declassified CIA cable, which is an early form of text messaging between countries, along with his passport number, however, it wasn’t clear if this person existed or if it was a pseudonym. The declassified CIA cable had explained that Mas’ud had travelled with al-Megrahi to Malta in December 1988, where the trial had stated the bomb had been packed into the light brown suitcase and ended up on Pan Am Flight 103. Ken went on further trips to Libya in 2011, after the fall of Colonel Gaddafi, with a list of people he suspected of being involved, but found many of them had died or weren’t accessible. However, the wife of one of the suspects mentioned Edwin Bollier from Switzerland who had confessed to making components for bombs for the Libyans to be used in Europe, although he later recanted this. Ken travelled to Switzerland and tracked down Bollier who admitted not only that he knew al-Megrahi but may have met Mas’ud. Ken started to examine the files related to Bollier and found details of an East Berlin club bombing in 1986 where investigators mentioned a bomb technician called Mas’ud who had built the device, and mentioned the same passport number from the declassified CIA cable. Ken travelled to East Berlin and tracked down a Libyan operative called Musbah Eter who mentioned they knew Mas’ud. Later, in 2015, show trials were held of former Gaddafi regime members, who were paraded in front of the cameras. Behind one of the people photographed was a person that Eter confirmed was Mas’ud, who Ken decided to go to Libya and track down as part of a TV documentary ‘My brother’s bomber’, although this was unsuccessful. He then handed over his investigation to the FBI. It would not be until 2020, thanks largely to the investigation work carried out by Ken Dornstein, that on the 32nd anniversary of the Lockerbie bombing charges would finally be filed against Abu Agila Mas’ud, with his trial yet to be held.

Dawn:

The surviving members of the Flannigan family, Steven and David, were awarded £2 million or $3.5 million each in compensation by Pan Am, which David referred to as dirty money, and what remained of this after his death passed to his brother Steven. When Steven also died, his son Luke, inherited the money, later receiving another £6 million or $10 million from the Libyan Government as the only direct descendant of the Flannigan family, which was placed into a trust fund. He was given access to the money in 2018 when it was worth £18 million or $25 million, but he said that he would rather have had his dad back than have the money. In 1992, Pan Am were found guilty of wilful negligence as they had failed to implement security procedures that required unaccompanied luggage to be searched by hand, which may have detected the bomb within the light brown suitcase, and when someone fails to make the departure gate, like Jaswant Basuta, their baggage must be removed. It is sad to see how easily what happened could have been prevented had these procedures been properly followed. However, since Pan Am were bankrupt by then, their insurers paid out £2 million or $3.5 million for each victim in compensation. What happened to all those people on board Pan Am Flight 103 and those on the ground that night on the 21st of December 1988 will never be forgotten by those in Lockerbie, and is marked with a memorial in Dryfesdale Cemetery to all those who died, and a stained-glass window in Lockerbie Town Hall representing the countries where the victims of Pan Am Flight 103 came from.

And that’s the end. If you’ve enjoyed this episode and know just the person who’d also like it, please share it with them, don’t keep it to yourself.

Cole: Please also get in touch on social media if you have any questions, comments or suggestions, and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can. All social media and contact details are on our website scottishmurders.com, as well as all the source material and photos related to this episode.

Dawn: So, that’s it for this week, come back next time for another episode of Scottish Murders.

Dawn and Cole: Join us there! Bye!

Granny Robertson: Scottish Murders is a production of Cluarantonn.

Scottish Murders is a production of Cluarantonn

Hosted by Dawn and Cole

Researched and Written by Peter Bull

Produced and Edited by Dawn Young and Peter Bull

Production Company Name by Granny Robertson

Music:

Dawn of the Fairies by Derek & Brandon Fiechter

Gothic Wedding by Derek & Brandon Fiechter

BBC News | UK | Teenager appeals for help in finding missing parents

Mystery of couple who never came back from the shops | The Independent

Double life that ended in twin shallow graves. Behind the extraordinary disappearance of a couple lay an ordinary tale of drug dealing gone wrong | HeraldScotland

Shot, Burned And Buried – Daily Record

Executed on all fours as she tried to help dying husband. – Free Online Library

BBC News | SCOTLAND | Anger over killer’s painting display

Refuge – 24-hour National Domestic Abuse Helpline 0808 2000 247 (UK) or nationaldahelpline.org.uk

Cole:

It was seven days before Christmas 1997 and Roddy and Anne Marie Aitken had gone shopping for their last minute Christmas presents, but then disappeared. What had happened to the couple and their Christmas presents?

Cole and Dawn:

Hi Wee Ones, I’m Cole and I’m Dawn, and this is Scottish Murders.

[THEME TUNE]

Film History The History of Film Podcast Promotion

Cole:

On the 18th of December 1997, seven days before Christmas, Roddy and Anne Marie were shopping for the last of their Christmas presents. It was getting late so the couple called their daughter to say that they would be home in about an hour, but they never made it. Roddy and Anne Marie grew up on the same council estate in Drumchapel, which is about seven and a half miles or 12 kilometres north west of Glasgow. Roddy and Anne Marie went to the same school and hung around in the same groups, so it wasn’t surprising when they started dating. The young couple got married when they were both 18, and a year later they became parents when their first child was born. They named her Anne Marie after her mother. The young family continued to live in the Drumchapel area, having been given their own council house. Six years later their family was complete when the second child, Jamie, was born. It was around this time that the couple made the decision to move away from the Drumchapel area looking for a better life, and when a council flat exchange came up in the Fulham area in London they saw this as a great opportunity. The couple lived in the London area, firstly in Fulham and eventually moving to Sutton. Roddy had started his own roofing business and the couple appeared to be doing quite well for themselves. However, after about three years of living in London the couple’s luck changed when Roddy, who would have been about 28 years old, was involved in a car accident. The accident unfortunately was so bad and injured Roddy’s legs so severely that he was unable to work again, and subsequently had to collect disability allowance. This was a major blow for the young couple who had been doing so well for themselves and had such a young family to look after. Roddy and Anne Marie, who were both now on benefits, continued as best they could for another three years, until an opportunity to swap the London flat for a council house on the quiet rural street of Manse Road in Aberfoyle came up, which they jumped at. Aberfoyle is approximately 27 miles or 43 kilometres north west of Glasgow. It has beautiful countryside and is known as the Gateway to the Trossachs, and also where the infamous Scottish outlaw and folk hero Rob Roy MacGregor once roamed. So the couple relocated to Aberfoyle and started a new life there. They continued to live there up until their disappearance seven years later. According to the neighbours the family kept themselves to themselves and never caused any bother. Roddy and Anne Marie never felt as if they fit into the quiet rural community of Aberfoyle and were constantly lured back into their old haunts in Drumchapel, with Roddy regularly spending time drinking with his friends from his childhood and Anne Marie visiting her friends from school. So it appeared that Roddy and Anne Marie were just a normal couple living a quiet life. They did their best for the kids and made sure they never went without. Despite Roddy and Anne Marie both being on benefit, they made the decision that for Christmas 1997 they weren’t going to spend another Christmas in the cold, wet, dark, snowy Scotland but instead had booked a two-week holiday to Cyprus, for the couple and their son Jamie, who was 13, and they would be flying out on Christmas Eve. The three of them were delighted to be going abroad to a hot country, where they could drink, eat, sunbathe and be merry. The couple had saved up £1,000, which is about £1,800 and $2,300 in today’s money, for the holiday so they were going to damn well enjoy it. The only thing that perhaps had put a bit of a dampener on the holiday abroad was that their 19 year old daughter, Anne Marie, wasn’t going to be coming. She was going to be staying at home along with her boyfriend. Roddy and Anne Marie probably weren’t overjoyed about this but what could they do, she was 19. So, on the 18th of December 1997, Anne Marie persuaded Roddy to go with her to see his parents to give them their Christmas cards, as well as going Christmas shopping for a few presents she still had to get for the children. Roddy and Anne Marie drove to Drumchapel in their blue Vauxhall Astra to see Roddy’s parents. After seeing Roddy’s parents the couple went shopping in the area to buy last minute Christmas presents. The couple then drove to a supermarket on Milngavie Road in Bearsden, which is about an eight minute drive from Drumchapel, and this is where they were last seen at about 6.45pm. Before leaving the supermarket car park, they called their daughter to say that they would be home in about an hour as they still had bits and bobs to do. It was getting late and it was cold, dark, wet and snowy, but the drive home to Aberfoyle would take approximately 37 minutes. Back at home Anne Marie and Jamie waited for their parents to arrive, but they never did. Christmas Day came and went, with Jamie spending the Christmas period not in sunny Cyprus as expected but at a neighbour’s house. Anne Marie continued to stay at the property in Manse Road along with her boyfriend, waiting for her parents to turn up or for them to call. It wasn’t until Boxing Day, after Anne Marie’s grandparents finally pressured her to call the police, that Roddy and Anne Marie were even reported missing, eight days after their last phone call with their daughter.

Dawn:

So nobody called the police to report them missing for eight days? Why?

Cole:

Well all I could come up with is that their daughter, Anne Marie, was young and maybe just naïve. But why the grandparents didn’t call the police straight away I’ve got no idea.

Dawn:

That’s a bit strange.

Cole:

Yeah, definitely. So, anyway, on Boxing Day, once the couple had eventually been reported missing, the police instantly treated this as suspicious and they set up an operation which was called operation Bermuda, for obvious reasons.

Dawn:

Because they went missing. That’s clever.

Cole:

Initially the police organised and carried out massive searches, which included frog men searching lochs and rivers near the couple’s home, helicopters sweeping the area, as well as searches being carried out 200 metres, or 656 feet, from every major road, secondary roads and forest tracks on the way from Drumchapel to Aberfoyle. This was a huge undertaken as the area goes through forests and the minor roads are winding and isolated. Definitely not the place you’d like to find yourself stranded. The police hoped that they would find the couple’s blue Vauxhall Astra, thinking that maybe there had been some kind of accident, but after six weeks there was absolutely nothing to be found. They just completely vanished. It was established early on in the investigation that the couple’s bank accounts hadn’t been touched, and there was very little money in their accounts anyway. It’s never a good sign when the bank accounts haven’t been touched.

Dawn:

No, that’s a worry.

Cole:

Yeah. Their passports were also with the police, but Interpol had been notified to be on the lookout just in case. A reconstruction of the couple attending the supermarket in Bearsden was carried out to try and jog anyone’s memory about seeing the couple on the 18th of December. There was no information forthcoming and it appeared that the couple had just disappeared into thin air. Now at the same time as the search is being carried out, Detective Superintendent John Ogg, who was leading the investigation, had also ordered a thorough investigation into the Aitkens’ life to try and gain a better picture of them, and what he found when delving in a little bit deeper would turn the investigation on its head. It turned out that Roddy was known to the police.

Dawnn:

Oh.

Cole:

Oh indeed. It appeared that Roddy liked a good drink and had received a handful of convictions for minor drink related offences  over the years. Also when drinking with his friends in Drumchapel, he would regularly drive home, avoiding main roads in case he got caught by the police for drink driving. It also appeared that Roddy drank profusely in all and any pubs in Aberfoyle that would have him, although he had been banned from all but one pub there due to drink related offences. The police also found out something even more worrying about the Aitkens. Apparently Roddy had beaten Anne Marie for years. he’d beaten her so badly once that she had to have a metal plate put in her jaw.

Dawn:

Oh my God, that’s pretty bad.

Cole:

That’s real bad. So at this point the police were starting to think of other theories.  Had Roddy finally beaten Anne Marie so badly that he’d killed her and went on the run? Or had Anne Marie finally snapped and killed Roddy? Could Roddy have been drinking heavily on the night of the 18th of December and had an accident on one of the back roads home? But surely their car would have been found if there had have been an accident. Just to be sure though, the police had circulated the couple’s information and their car details further afield for any accidents involving their car, but again nothing had been reported.  If either of them had killed the other one then, due to Aberfoyle and the surrounding areas being so rural, a body could be hidden out there and never be found. The final theory was that a third party was involved in their disappearance. But why? And who? The couple’s daughter, Anne Marie who was then 20, made an appeal on Friday the 18th of January 1998 asking for any information about her parents disappearance. As the police began to put together a picture of Roddy and Anne Marie’s life, they also acquired their itemised mobile phone records, and one name appeared to come up regularly. It was Iain Meikleham. Iain, who was a 30 year old farmer who lived in Little Blairlusk in Gartocharn, about 17 miles or 27 kilometres south west of Roddy’s house in Aberfoyle. Now it’s not known how the two men became friends, they could have been friends since school or they could have met in one of the many pubs Roddy frequented. The two men became quite close, and looking at the itemised telephone records, it appeared that they talked regularly. Until that is about three weeks before the couple’s disappearance. So what had happened? Had the two men had a falling out, and why?  So, the police requested Iain’s telephone records to try and see if any of his records corresponded with Roddy’s telephone records, so they could start compiling a database of acquaintances of both men. Through this process the police noticed a name that kept coming up regularly on Iain’s phone, a John Parker. John was 27 and worked on his dad’s farm at Crosbie Mains, West Kilbride, which is approximately 40 miles and 64 kilometres away from Iain’s farm. Before long, the police had quite a comprehensive database of contacts stemming from Roddy and Iain’s telephone records, now they just had to figure out what, if anything, it had to do with the disappearance of Roddy and Anne Marie. Eight weeks into the investigation a drunk driver was stopped by the police in the Balfron area, which is about 18 miles or 28 kilometres north of Glasgow, and he had a controlled drug on him. This man’s name was given to the Operation Bermuda team for them to check against their database, and his name came up as an associate of Roddy Aiken. Two detectives from Operation Bermuda interviewed this man and they finally had a breakthrough. He told detectives that he had been paid by Roddy to take a parcel of money to Malaga. He informed the detectives exactly how the money was wrapped and how it got through customs. The detectives took a punt and decided to run Iain’s name through the customs and excise database to see if there was any information on him, and lo and behold they found that Iain had been stopped at Glasgow Airport in March 1997 on his way to Malaga, and had been in possession of £15,000, or $21,000, which had been contaminated with drugs. Iain had been let go but the police had kept the money. The way the money was wrapped exactly matched how the witness said his money had been wrapped by Roddy. There was finally a connection. The police subsequently compared customs and excise database with their own growing database of contacts all stemming from Roddy and Iain, and there were a number of contacts that had been associated with drugs. Slowly a pattern was building of a drug importation ring, with Roddy and Iain being slap bang in the centre of it all. By the middle of March 1998, the police had discovered that Roddy and Iain had made frequent trips to Malaga over the years each time with large sums of cash, with reasons such as they were planning to buy a car when they got to their destination. They also had received information from informants confirming that both Roddy and Iain were involved in major cannabis smuggling. So they knew how the money was getting out of the country, but they as yet didn’t know or have any evidence of how exactly the drugs were coming into the UK. Until that is a man came forward to state that he had been a drug courier for Iain. Iain had asked him to travel to Malaga and bring back a parcel for him. He said that he had swallowed 70 wraps of cannabis before heading home.

Dawn:

Oh that’s quite a lot.

Cole:

However, there was one piece of the puzzle missing. What had happened to Roddy and Anne Marie? So, the police painstakingly went back over the phone records again, something had bothered them from the beginning that they wanted an answer to. At 7.05pm on the 18th of December an unknown number had called Roddy’s mobile and spoke to Roddy for six minutes. This was a burner phone, but the police eventually found out that this phone was in fact Iain’s. Discovering this fact, the police then believed that they knew exactly what had happened to Roddy and Anne Marie on the 18th of December 1997, they just didn’t know why. On the 23rd of March 1998 at 6am, 14 people involved in the drug smuggling ring, including Iain and John, were arrested, their homes were searched and they were questioned at different locations. Later that day John Parker finally admitted the truth of what had happened to Roddy and Anne Marie Aiken, even going as far as taking the police to where the remains of the couple were.

Dawn:

Oh my God. What happened to them?

Cole:

Well let me tell you.

Dawn:

Go on then.

Cole:

John went on to describe in great detail what had happened the night Roddy and Anne Marie went missing. Apparently the lead-up to Roddy and Anne Marie’s murder all started a year before in November 1996, when Roddy had given John Parker £30,000, or $41,000, worth of drugs to sell, with his friend Iain vouching for him. John was supposed to sell the drugs and give Roddy the money, however, John decided to keep the money. Roddy was furious about this and obviously pestered his friend, Iain, constantly to get him the money from John, but this never happened. Roddy was annoyed with Iain for allowing John to get away with this and so started going to Spain and smuggling his own drugs into the UK, cutting Iain out. Iain wasn’t at all happy about this and decided the best solution would be to get rid of Roddy permanently.

Dawn:

Ah yes, that’s the best plan.

Cole:

Yeah. And I don’t really think he’s got a leg to stand on because his friend just stole £30,000 worth of drugs from him.

Dawn:

Well exactly. Just get the money for your friend and jobs a good un.

Cole:

I know. But the plan to get rid of Roddy was set in motion by Iain and his friend John Parker, and it culminated on the evening of the 18th of December 1997. Iain had indeed rang Roddy from his burner phone at 7.05pm, and after six minutes finally managed to persuade him to go to his farm that evening, which was 17 miles or 27 kilometres from where the couple were in Bearsden.  And to be fair it was only a small detour on their way home, and of course the promise of £30,000 or $41,000 being paid in full would have sealed the deal for Roddy. So the couple set off on the 27 minute journey and would arrive at the farm about 7.40pm, where they were greeted by the waiting Iain. Iain however had not banked on Anne Marie being present too, and so immediately made the decision that they would have to get rid of her as well. Iain approached the driver side where Roddy was and said to him to come into the house for the money, smiling all the while at the couple he’d known for quite some time and who they saw as a close family friend. Roddy obliged while Anne Marie waited in the car, he’d just be a minute after all. However, unbeknownst to Anne Marie, once inside the house her husband was taken out the back of the farmhouse at gunpoint, made to get on his knees and shot twice by Iain, once in the head killing him outright. Anne Marie would have heard the gunshots and probably would have been a little uneasy, but as it was a farm she maybe thought there was a reasonable explanation. She then saw Iain approaching and again smiling he asked her to come around the back of the house as he had something to show her, to which she trustingly obliged. As the pair rounded the corner of the house what she would have seen would have terrified her, her husband was laying still on the ground with blood all around him. She immediately ran to his side in the hope that she could do something for him, however,  as she knelt crying and terrified at her husband’s side, family friend, Iain, shot her twice in the head.

Dawn:

Oh my God, that’s awful.

Cole:

It really is. When the deed was done, John was responsible for driving the couple’s bodies back to his father’s farm in the horse box attached to the Range Rover. Iain had spent time chopping up the bodies and putting the parts into black bags, before loading the black bags onto the horse box, and John driving the hour long journey south back to his dad’s farm, with Iain following behind driving Roddy and Anne Marie’s blue Vauxhall Astra. When they reached John’s dad’s farm, they proceeded to burn the bodies of Roddy and Anne Marie. Now even though Iain had just cold bloodedly killed his friend and his wife and dismembered the bodies, apparently as the bodies were burning an arm and a hand moved in the flames and for one awful moment Iain thought that it was alive. Apparently this had caused Iain to have nightly nightmares. Iain and John then disposed of the couple’s car. The car has never been found. However, before doing so, John apparently helped himself to the Christmas presents in the couple’s car that they had bought for their two children, and proceeded to sell them on.

Dawn:

Oh lovely.

Cole:

Yes, what a nice man.

Dawn:

He sounds it.

Cole:

When John took the police to where the bodies were, they had to pick through sheep remains until they eventually found the badly burned bodies of the couple. It had taken three months and an extensive investigation, but finally they had the couple’s bodies and their murderers, as well as having taken down a vast drug smuggling ring. The trial of Iain and John started in August 1998 in Glasgow and lasted for three weeks. The couple’s daughter, Anne Marie, attended every single day of the three weeks while witness after witness testified against Iain and John. She cried uncontrollably as the evidence was presented describing just what had happened to her parents at the hands of a family friend. But after three gruelling weeks for the family, finally the verdict was announced. Guilty. When the sentence was read there was a clear relief displayed amongst the family. Iain was sentenced to a minimum of 20 years and John was sentenced to life. After the uncovering of the world that Roddy had actually been involved in, residents in Aberfoyle, who drank alongside Roddy for years, admitted that Roddy never appeared short of money and that they were never quite sure where it all came from, but he wasn’t the sort of man you asked that question to, being a big burly man who could clearly take care of himself. It was also speculated that perhaps Anne Marie put off calling the police for as long as she did due to the fact that Roddy was known to the police and he had made it clear he did not like them, but it could equally have been to do with the fact that her boyfriend had been a drug courier for her dad and she didn’t want anything like that coming out. Whatever the reason, at last Anne Marie and Jamie knew what had become of their parents on that fateful night.

Dawn:

And that’s the end. If you’ve enjoyed this episode and know just the person who’d also like it, please share it with them, don’t keep it to yourself.

Cole:

Please also get in touch on social media if you have any questions, comments or suggestions and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can. All social media and contact details are on our website scottishmurders.com, as well as all the source material and photos related to this episode.

Dawn:

So that’s it for this week, come back next time for another episode of Scottish Murders.

Dawn and Cole:

Join us there. Bye.

Granny Robertson:

Scottish Murders is a production of Cluarantonn.

Scottish Murders is a production of Cluarantonn

Hosted by Dawn and Cole

Researched and Written by Dawn Young

Produced and Edited by Dawn Young and Peter Bull

Production Company Name by Granny Robertson

Music:

Dawn of the Fairies by Derek & Brandon Fiechter

Gothic Wedding by Derek & Brandon Fiechter