Earlier this year, retired Scottish gamekeeper David Campbell was found guilty of murdering his former colleague from the Edradynate Estate in Perthshire, Brian Low, in February 2024.
During a 13-day murder trial, the jury at Glasgow High Court heard that Campbell had held a ‘festering grudge’ against Mr Low and set out to ‘ambush’ and ‘execute’ him by lying in wait with a shotgun on a quiet country lane near Aberfeldy where Mr Low regularly walked his dog.
A couple of days ago I blogged about a forthcoming BBC documentary series, Murder Trial, which will feature the February 2026 trial of David Campbell (see here).
There’s also now a forthcoming book about the case, called Prelude to Murder: Revenge Killing on a Highland Sporting Estate, written by former Police Wildlife Crime Officer Alan Stewart and Lindsey Hamilton, Chief Reporter at The Courier.
The two authors are uniquely placed to provide first-hand accounts.
The book tracks the many police investigations into raptor persecution crimes at Edradynate Estate, in Perthshire, over a four-decade period that just happened to coincide with David Campbell’s employment as the Head Gamekeeper (1984-2018). Co-author Alan Stewart was involved in many of those investigations, as this notorious estate was on his patch as Police Wildlife Crime Officer for what was then Tayside Police.
Cleverly interspersed amongst Alan’s detailed, and frankly, chilling chronicle of events at Edradynate, is Lindsey Hamilton’s account of her involvement as a seasoned journalist, first sent to Aberfeldy to report on the police investigation into the murder of Brian Low, and then later attending Glasgow High Court to report on the trial of prime murder suspect, David Campbell.
Much has been written over the years about raptor persecution at Edradynate Estate and the failure to hold anyone to account, but this book contains more detail than I’ve seen published before. Similarly, the murder, the police investigation and the subsequent trial and conviction have also received extensive media coverage, but Lindsey’s first-hand experience brings insight and a real sense of the reaction within the local community.
If you want to know why sadistic gamekeeper David Campbell thought he could get away with murder, and why a local community had lived in fear of him for decades, this compelling account provides some answers. The warning signs were all there, in plain sight. It’s disturbing that a reign of terror was allowed to continue for so long, with such tragic consequences for Brian Low.
The book will be published in September 2026 and is available for pre-order, either directly from the publisher (ThirstyBooks) or if you want a signed copy, directly from Alan Stewart.
Note – the pre-publication flyer says the book is 284 pages, but it’s actually 184 pages.
Raptor Persecution UK 