A murder suspect brought his car into a garage and demanded they give him a replacement boot floor because he burned his old one soon after his secret lover Renee MacRae and her son Andrew went missing, a jury heard today.
Volvo salesman Ian Cattenach was giving evidence in the trial of 80-year-old William MacDowell, who denies murdering Renee and three-year-old Andrew in the Dalmagarry lay-by on November 12, 1976.
He has also pleaded not guilty to disposing of their bodies, a pushchair and destroying other evidence, including a Volvo boot hatch.
MacDowell has lodged special defences of alibi and incrimination of Renee’s estranged husband, building boss Gordon MacRae.
Mr Cattenach initially thought MacDowell came into the Inverness garage with his Volvo estate on the Wednesday before Renee and Andrew went missing however, after being referred by advocate depute Alex Prentice KC to a previous statement, he accepted it was after the disappearance.
He told the jury the vehicle was missing a boot floor and it was “an unusual request”.
“I asked where the floor was and he said he had burnt it,” Mr Cattenach said. “He said he was building a house and throwing building materials in the back had ruined it.”
‘He went off not very happy’
The salesman told the jury MacDowell’s mood turned when he was told it couldn’t be replaced that day.
He said: “He wanted it the same day. The parts department said it would be a month to get one. It would have to come from Sweden. He asked us to take one out of one of the sales cars. I said I couldn’t do that and he went off not very happy.”
Mr Cattenach recalled that MacDowell returned days later “in a better frame of mind”.
“We agreed to give him one. We fitted it. He was a good customer so we thought we would try and help his situation,” he said.
But a colleague of Mr Cattenach’s gave evidence that contradicted this account.
William Mackenzie, who carried out the work, thought it was done more than four months before Renee and Andrew’s disappearance, in June 1976.
He also agreed he had never encountered the floor being broken.
He added that one section of carpet had also been removed.
A former schoolmate of MacDowell, Christine Tuach, 81, told the jury that she was returning home to Daviot from visiting her parents and saw a driver of a Volvo turning at the Nairnside road junction on the A9 about 7.45-7.50pm on the night of the disappearance.
She said she thought it was MacDowell or someone who looked like him.
Earlier in today’s evidence, Detective Sergeant Peter Black told prosecutor Alex Prentice KC about taking a statement from MacDowell’s wife Rosemary, who had been detained on suspicion of providing her husband with a false alibi.
He said: “The interview was very agitated and volatile.”
Mr Black, now retired, said he pointed out the possible consequences of giving an alibi that was not correct and referred to discrepancies in her account, specifically about what was on television at the time her husband arrived home on November 12.
Mr Black said “she could not offer an explanation” for the discrepancies.
Questioned by defence counsel Murray McAra KC, Mrs MacDowell insisted her husband got home at 8.30pm.
She also spoke about her husband’s liver and kidney ailments and added: “It is his heart keeping him alive. He is a walking dead man. He has a ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ in place.”
The trial, before Lord Armstrong, continues tomorrow.