There was a pretty gruesome criminal case taking place at the High Court in Glasgow last week relating to the infamous Auch Estate at the Bridge of Orchy.
Long-term blog readers may well remember the Auch Estate – a deer-stalking and fishing sporting estate where a poisoned golden eagle was found in June 2009 along with a carbofuran-killed fox and a carbofuran-laced sheep carcass. The discovery led to a raid at the farm manager’s home where Carbofuran was discovered in a game bag and two illegal handguns were discovered in the loft.
Three years later after prolonged legal proceedings, farm manager Tom McKellar (then aged 50) was convicted for having possession of the banned pesticide Carbofuran, although he wasn’t charged with poisoning the golden eagle or placing the poisoned bait. He was given a pathetic £1,200 fine for possession of Carbofuran and a 300-hour community service order for possession of the two handguns, a crime which would normally have attracted a mandatory five year custodial sentence (see here and here for some background to that case).
The case heard last week at Glasgow High Court centred on twin brothers Alexander and Robert McKellar (now aged 31). In September 2017 after drinking with a German hunting party at a local hotel, Alexander McKellar’s vehicle hit a charity cyclist, Tony Parsons, who was cycling on the A82, causing him serious injury. Instead of helping him, the two brothers drove back to Auch Estate (where they were reportedly self employed farm workers living with their parents – Alexander McKellar was also reported to be a deer stalker), dumped their phones and changed vehicle and went back to pick up Tony Parson’s body, bike and possessions, and drove back to the estate and initially hid Mr Parsons in a wood.
They later removed him from the wood and took him to another location on the estate, reported in court as a location used for “the purposes of disposing dead animals”, in other words, a stink pit. There they dug a grave and buried Mr Parsons and burned his possessions.
Mr Parson’s remains were not discovered until January 2021 after a girlfriend of one of the McKellar brothers told police she’d been shown the grave site in 2020. Prior to her report, in 2018 the police had been tipped off to “pay attention” to the McKellar twins and had visited the estate in January 2019 but were apparently ‘asked to leave’.
Details of the case can be read here, here and here.
The McKellar brothers were due to stand trial for the murder of Mr Parsons but the court has accepted a not guilty plea from Robert McKellar and a guilty plea from Alexander McKellar to a lesser charge of culpable homicide. Both have pleaded guilty to attempting to defeat the ends of justice. They will be sentenced on 25th August at Glasgow High Court.
Let’s hope there’s some justice for Tony Parsons and his family.
UPDATE 4th August 2023: More detail emerges about McKellar twins who buried cyclist’s body in stink pit on Auch Estate (here)
UPDATE 25th August 2023: McKellar twins from Auch Estate sentenced for killing cyclist & burying his body in a stink pit (here)
Raptor Persecution UK 
Good grief! What can be said about this?! I really do think that there should be routine psychological profiling for people in the shooting and other ‘recreational killing’ cohorts. How they are allowed to work with guns is beyond me…
They remind me of that film Deliverance,
This is gruesome tbh.
Nothing to do with raptor persecution really is it?
Just so happens the criminals in this have jobs associated with the narrative.
I think the inference of including the story JB is these are the sort of people involved with the shooting ‘industry’.
Reread the second and third paragraphs of the blog, you can surely understand why people interested in raptor persecution / wildlife crime are automatically interested in the Auch Estate and in the surname McKellar (not to mention the choice of location the body was buried).
Illustrates the kind of person involved in the industry, I thought.
It has everything to do with raptor persecution. It profiles the narrative … it was the first thing I thought when I saw the story on the news. The police routinely use a person’s race to profile them. It’s just awful, terrible … everything about is just shocking, yet inevitable.
These kind of people are the most vicious heartless sort that fit right in with the hunting fraternity and will go to any lengths to cover each other’s tracks. What a sad world we live in.More community service ??
Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android
These types have seen how above the law there are in their day duties so no suprise really they can take things to another level
Having read the details of the case, I have to wonder what else these 2 brothers were capable of, and whether their actions demonstrate a wider disregard for the law, a propensity to commit crime and a complete lack of moral values?
I just can’t imagine decent, honest and law abiding persons behaving in the manner described.
It would be interesting to know if either of these brothers were licensed firearms holders, and if so what checks were carried out by the police when any firearms licences were issued?
I struggle to believe that the sort of behaviour described doesn’t have some telltale precursors?
Hopefully the judge will give lengthy prison sentences for what can only be described as totally despicable crimes.
There are previous convictions of drunk driving and a few other things. Many telltale precursors, unfortunately. And all of these very well-known in the area. Quite a few people knew about the hit and run too, but because this family’s involved, nobody told except the girlfriend. These guys are absolutely awful people and having been brought up with that “we’re invincible” thing doesn’t help either. It’s infuriating.
Once individuals begin to beleive that they are “a law unto themselves” they begin to beleive it and act accordingly. Those who facilitate that belief should take a share of the responsibility.
aghhh — too many “begin to believe’s” :)
How terrible for that man’s poor family. They must have been beyond grief. The 2 deserve lengthy sentences for inflicting such unspeakable cruelty
They must be pretty rich to afford a KC each… for “self-employed farm workers”?
They were facing a murder charge. They will, rightly, be in receipt of Legal Aid.
The girlfriend eliciting a confession from one of them is an interesting feature. Makes you wonder just how pro active the police have been in their investigation.
Another interesting feature is the extent to which the media have downplayed the connection between the accused and the estate. Perhaps that will change once they’ve been sentenced.
Apparently she was going to marry one of them and asked him if he had any secrets that she should know about, and he told her he’d killed Mr Parsons and had concealed his body. Thankfully she was a decent enough person that she went to police.
Bit of a red flag if you discover your intended has done something like that! Who knows what horrible future she has avoided as a result?
The issue here is when you are comfortable with law breaking and killing it isn’t that big a step to this. However the police should have been much more proactive when warned off the estate.
What can I say about this? You suspect, from this, that a lot of people were in the know about this. It seems years of covering up other unspeakable crimes, rotted their moral compasses.
Wow, what a forceful, eloquent way of describing that. Rotted their moral compasses. And very true. The documentary on this reveals quite a bit about them – they were well-known in the area (and not in a good way) and had previous convictions of drunk driving, etc. The documentary implies too, based on a few other things they’d heard, that quite a few people knew what happened, or at the very least suspected it when it was all over the new that it must’ve happened in their locality, but apparently, the estate owners/workers have such an influence that nobody said anything. I can understand that, but at the same time: if we all follow that example, nothing’s ever going to change.
I wonder what else will come to light in the future as there’s a keep quiet rule for some.
It seems to me that people who are addicted to killing have some sort of psychological flaws. I am not an expert in this field but the word psychopath comes to mind. This is a person who is devoid of feelings, manipulative, dishonest, narcissistic, unremorseful, non empathetic and exploitative. In this case killing animals and a human were undertaken with cold calculation. Criminality is a common trait associated with psychopathy. xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
Daily Record, today
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/dad-twins-who-killed-scots-30616182
Further, in reference to this case, this was reported last year by STV, where it mentions some truly appalling allegations about the incident, and identified the defendants’ legal team:
https://news.stv.tv/west-central/twin-brothers-accused-of-murdering-charity-cyclist-and-burying-body-to-stand-trial
Whereupon, I was able to come across this shocking revelation, also reported by STV in March of this year:
https://news.stv.tv/east-central/top-scots-lawyer-brian-mcconnachie-kc-fined-and-given-warning-for-messages-about-rape-charity-boss
How this man can continue in his job is beyond belief, and surely xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/homenews/23422281.brian-mcconnachie-kc-fined-8-000-sexually-explicit-messages/
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/rape-victim-who-blew-whistle-29584745
The McKellars and McConnachie… what can one say?