The Disappearance of Renee and Andrew Macrae

                                                            Photo by MJ Duford on Unsplash

At the time of writing - 12th November - it is the 49th anniversary of the disappearance of Renee and Andrew Macrae.

There is nothing more frustrating and tragic in the world of true crime than an unsolved disappearance, murder or injustice, especially when a child is involved. The continued anguish for the family and friends of those lost must be absolutely unbearable. This is exactly the scenario here.

Renee Macrae was a Scottish woman who disappeared on 12 November 1976, aged 36 along with her 3-year-old son Andrew, it became the United Kingdom’s longest-running missing persons case and is still unsolved. Recently, in September 2022, William (Bill) MacDowell was found guilty of the murder of Renee and her son. Their bodies have never been found.

Renee lived in Inverness, Scotland and was married to Gordon MacRae, although the couple had separated at the time of her disappearance. They had two sons, 9-year-old Gordon and 3-year-old Andrew. On Friday 12 November 1976, Renee left her home in her BMW car with her sons. She dropped Gordon at her estranged husband’s house and turned towards Perth, saying she was going to visit her sister in Kilmarnock. Neither Renee nor Andrew have ever been seen again. Later the same night, a train driver spotted a burning car in an isolated lay-by on the A9 which turned out to be Renee’s. When the police reached the vehicle, it was burned out and empty except for a rug, stained with blood matching Renee’s blood type.

Despite an extensive search, no further trace of Renee and Andrew MacRae was found, it was concluded that they had been murdered and their bodies hidden. Interestingly, witnesses who had been on the A9 that night reported seeing a man dragging something they thought was a dead sheep not far from the car. Renee was reported to have been wearing a sheepskin coat when she disappeared. Reports also told of a man with a pushchair near Dalmagarry quarry.

As police investigated, more details of Renee’s life emerged. In 1971, Renee began an affair with a man named William (Bill) MacDowell, who was married with two children and worked for Gordon MacRae as an accountant and company secretary. Nobody knew about the affair except Valerie Steventon, Renee’s best friend. Valerie revealed that Renee had not been planning to visit her sister that night, but had actually intended to visit MacDowell, who was Andrew’s biological father. Renee had told her friend about the affair in the spring of 1973, when she had been pregnant with Andrew. According to Steventon, “Renee was completely besotted by Bill”, and he had told her that he had a job in Shetland and had found a house where they could live, which turned out to be untrue. When questioned at the time, MacDowell admitted the affair but denied any involvement in their disappearance. A week after, he was interviewed by journalist Stuart Lindsay and claimed that Renee had called him twice since she went missing. 

During the investigation, DS John Cathcart coordinated the search and after eight months there was a breakthrough. While excavating Dalmagarry quarry he was hit by a strong odour after removing a layer of topsoil. Convinced it was the bodies, Cathcart continued digging, infuriatingly he was told by a superior officer to stop as the bulldozer they were using had to go back to the contractors due to short funds.

With no progress or new lines of inquiry, the case was wound down two years later. However, a 2004 Grampian Television documentary, Unsolved renewed an interest in the case and the investigation was reopened. That same year, Chief Constable Ian Latimer launched a cold case review, which led to £122,000 being spent on an excavation of Dalmagarry quarry in August. Over the course of three weeks, 20,000 tons of earth was excavated and 2,000 trees were removed, but no sign of Renee or Andrew were found. As of August 2006, £250,000 has been spent re-investigating the case.

In recent years, interest has focused on the bodies having been buried under the A9, which was in the middle of upgrading at the time of the disappearance. When retired Inverness motor mechanic Brian MacGregor commissioned a 2006 scan of the road, a geophysicist identified a possible trench with ‘anomalies’ consistent in size with human bodies and Andrew’s missing pushchair … without a hint of interest it seems, a spokeswoman for Northern Constabulary said that after studying aerial photographs taken by the Royal Air Force during the construction of the A9, they were satisfied the bodies were not buried under the road.

In October 2006 Northern Constabulary named a suspect in a report to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, but the Crown Office declared there was insufficient evidence to go to court. MacDowell had never wanted to speak to the media in the years since the disappearances, but broke his silence in a 2004 interview and insisted that he did not murder Renee.

In October 2018 it was reported that Leanach quarry, near to Culloden Battlefield, was being searched by Police Scotland in relation to the case.

During the investigation, police investigated 123 possible sightings of Renee or Andrew, including a similar woman and child seen with a man with a ‘handlebar moustache’. All of these were apparently followed up and eliminated.

Further details more recently emerged of a suspect who had fled to America the day after being interviewed by police. James Taylor claimed that his late friend Sandy Thompson, a senior officer who worked closely with Renee’s contacts and had carried out fieldwork investigating the case, had been sure she was murdered and buried on the A9 near a flyover. Taylor reported his concerns to Police following an appeal for information to mark the 40th anniversary of the case, claiming that Thompson spoke to a foreman in the roads department who had said someone had dug up a section of the A9 on the day Renee disappeared. Taylor recalled: “Sandy said he knew right away when the man looked at it that the woman was dead, that was where she was buried and this man knew far more about it than he was telling.” The man fled to the US the next day before returning to Scotland after the case had gone cold.

Eventually, in 2022, William MacDowell was convicted of the murders of Renee and Andrew MacRae and of attempting to pervert the course of justice following a trial at the High Court of Inverness. Statements were read from witnesses in the case who had since died, including a man named Dennis Tyronney, who had told police that MacDowell had offered him £500 to kill Renee and Andrew MacRae in an acid attack. The trial also heard that MacDowell had removed and burned the boot floor from his Volvo two days after the disappearance. In September 2022 he was found guilty of both murders and was sentenced to a minimum of 30 years in prison. He died on 15 February 2023, aged 81 less than six months into his sentence, without ever revealing where the bodies were disposed of.

An article dated 4th November 2025 in the Strathspey Herald stated that murder detectives have no plans to investigate the stretch of the A9 where experts say the bodies could be buried.

Enquiries are ongoing.

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References:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-64655571

https://www.scotland.police.uk/what-s-happening/news/2023/august/renewed-appeal-to-locate-the-bodies-of-renee-and-andrew-macrae/

https://www.strathspey-herald.co.uk/news/police-say-no-plans-to-search-for-renee-and-andrew-macrae-wh-418437/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy0yyx5v72xo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Renee_and_Andrew_MacRae

Back to Blogger!

Hi all, after a brief foray with Substack I have decided to bring Moonlit Myths back to Blogger where I feel it belongs. I was always happy here, it's simple and friendly so why stray you ask? Well, a lot of people I follow on the socials have Substack accounts where they write newsletters, it was the place to write for a while for both celebs and non-celebs, but it's shiny gleam has worn off a bit with public opinion. I will stay there to read stuff, and I have some lovely subscribers gained from my own promotions, so will be keeping the account open with occasional updates, but this will once again be 'where its at' as the kids used to say. 

Substack has some good points such as helping to build an audience through its app and social media type platform, but to be honest I have never found much engagement from it. I post regularly on my own socials - Bluesky, Threads and Mastodon (now I have remembered that I had an account there) with often healthy likes, shares and comments, but when I post the same content on Substack there is nothing ... tumbleweed ... deafening silence. Life has enough rejection so why put myself through it?! 

Blogger has been sitting quietly in a corner, carrying on doing it's thing for so many years - a bit like me, so here we are again. To all those who say "blimey, is Blogger still a thing?" I shout a hearty "YES".

Over the coming days / weeks I'll be bringing some articles over from there to here so get back on track then keep an eye out for new, exciting things!

Take care, folks.

The Howden Moor Incident

An incident that has the plot of a classic sci-fi film, but the events of March 24th 1997 are very real to those involved and it is well-documented. Was it simply a coincidence of unrelated happenings, or a wider cover-up by authorities? It looks like we will never know, but it is a fascinating tale from the Sheffield area of the U.K.

The first call came in to police at 10.15pm on the night in question, soon followed by many more - reports ranging from a triangular-shaped U.F.O being chased by jets, loud booming noises and a low-flying aircraft heading towards the hills, either way there followed a bright flash and loud explosion.

The police, kind of surprisingly, took these calls very seriously, and a major search of the area was quickly mounted involving the police helicopter, mountain rescue and the fire service ,with the local hospitals being put on standby to receive multiple casualties from a crashed airplane. They contacted the R.A.F and were told no aircraft were missing and there had been no military craft flying in the area and an exclusion zone was put in place by the R.A.F over the search area so there would be no interference from other aircraft. The search covered approximately 40 square miles … nothing was found.

The next morning the police set up a special phone line to take calls from the public, it was soon inundated by reports, again of low-flying aircraft and military jets chasing something. Theories included an aerial drugs drop gone bad and even a ghost plane that is said to haunt the moors. Following a T.V documentary called ‘Mysteries’ which aired in October 1997, the police issued a statement which read:

“No explanation was ever found and we remain open-minded about what was behind the sightings.”

On March 28th 1998 the incident was brought up in - of all places - the House of Commons. Edinburgh seismology department confirmed that two sonic booms had been recorded that night at 21.52pm and 22.06pm, the R.A.F denied any supersonic aircraft being in the area at the time stating it was illegal to break the sound barrier over land in the U.K.

The fruitless search and subsequent investigations cost the U.K taxpayers tens of thousands of pounds which some have speculated was the reason the military denied all knowledge. Some believe there was a cover up and that a triangular craft was indeed being pursued by Tornado jets, one of which crashed in a reservoir - the R.A.F did set up a 10 mile exclusion zone around the reservoir which seems odd. It has also been reported that there were secret, low-flying military operations in the area at the time, and that a jet may have gone supersonic creating the sonic booms. Logically speaking it is unlikely that the R.A.F would conduct such maneuvers so very near to a major built-up area, but who knows.

The mystery remains, questions go unanswered, but whatever happened that night, it was seared into the memories of the witnesses. Extraterrestrial activity, a simple accident that inexplicably left no wreckage or a military cover-up? We’ll never know.

Photo by Albert Antony on Unsplash

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The Staircase

 Hi folks, 

I am rewatching The Staircase after listening to the BBC Sounds podcast about it and I am getting a wider view...although am still undecided on Mike Peterson's guilt. The podcast is told more from the side of the prosecution, lots from those who thing he is absolutely guilty and the evidence to show it, whereas the Netflix documentary is more from the defense point of view - also with evidence to show it. It is an intriguing case, no doubt with lots of  "ah yes...but" moments...quite the brain workout!

Crime Scene: The Vanishing at The Cecil Hotel

The shear number of weird goings on and the strange guests that The Cecil Hotel in L.A has seen over the years is truly fascinating... murders, suicides and residents such as Richard Ramirez spark interest in me and so many others. One of the most famous features the strange behavior and subsequent disappearance of Elisa Lam - most of us with an interest in 'the strange' have seen the elevator video, and this documentary on Netflix goes into great depth and detail about her story and eventual discovery in one of the water tanks on the roof. Answers are given, and without handing out any spoilers, I would highly recommend this show - even with some conclusions, the number of synchronicities given in episode 3 cannot fail but grab one's attention. It is the story of a young woman, what happened to her and the impact it had on those staying at The Cecil...well worth a watch.