A murder accused told a friend that he was going to “sort out” an osteopath and was then going to go out “in a blaze of glory”, a court heard today.
Shain Westerman was giving evidence at the High Court trial of Finlay MacDonald, who is accused of murdering his brother-in-law John MacKinnon with a pump action shotgun on Skye.
The 41-year-old is also accused of attempting to murder his wife Rowena on the same day – August 10 2022 – at the family home in the village of Tarskavaig by repeatedly stabbing her on the body.
He is further accused of attempting to murder retired osteopath John Donald MacKenzie and his wife Fay, both 65, at their home in Dornie, in Ross-shire, on the same day by repeatedly discharging a shotgun at them.
Mr Westerman, 58, told advocate depute Liam Ewing KC that MacDonald had sought back treatment from Mr MacKenzie but when he came back he seemed “a little bit worse than he had been”.
‘He was going to sort out John Don’
Mr Westerman, who moved to Skye from Yorkshire in 2020, added: “Whether that were acting or genuine I don’t know. He just seemed to get more and more irritated by his condition.”
Mr Ewing asked if MacDonald said anything about the osteopath that stuck in his mind and Mr Westerman said: “I can’t remember the exact time when it was.
“He said he was going to sort out John Don and when he did he was going to go out in a blaze of glory.”
The prosecutor asked him what his reaction to that was and he replied: “My first reaction was ‘he has been watching too many cowboy films’. I thought he was talking a lot of sh***.
“You hear people say things like that all the time and you just think it is talk.”
Mr Westerman also said that MacDonald showed him a YouTube video of a Mossberg shotgun being fired at a model of a human head created out of ballistic gel.
He told police: “I think the video he showed me is called ‘Mossberg 410 v ballistic gel human head’.
MacDonald, a marine engineer, has pleaded not guilty to the charges and lodged a special defence to the murder charge maintaining that at the time his ability to determine or control his conduct was substantially impaired by abnormality of mind.
The trial before judge Lady Drummond continues.