Killer took mum and son’s final resting place to his grave, so is his 50-year-old secret finally about to be revealed?

It is Scotland’s most notorious murder mystery, which has terrified a nation for decades.

For nearly half a century there has been pain and heartbreak over the plight of a Highland mother and her innocent three-year-old son.

Renee MacRae and her toddler son Andrew disappeared from the face of the earth on a wet and foggy Friday night in November 1976 and have never been seen since.

Now, almost 50 years later, police may be tantalizingly close to finally finding their remains and bringing closure to a family torn apart by a love affair with tragic consequences in the 1970s.

The MacRae case is an extraordinary episode in Scotland’s criminal history; because this case finally unmasked a murderer… A murderer who was convicted while his victims could not be found.

Eighty-year-old William MacDowell was found guilty of the “wilful execution” of his one-time lover Renee and their son Andrew.

However, the Crown managed to reach a guilty verdict in the Inverness Supreme Court in 2022, despite not a single body being found.

Successive Highland police chiefs have tried to right this wrong for five decades, ordering labour-intensive searches of quarries and forests and removing a staggering 2,000 trees from the Highland area.

Until now, it was thought that the final resting place of the mother and son, where they died alongside the villainous Bill MacDowell in 2023, was known.

But these final calls may finally provide some solace to those tormented by the events of another time.

Only a small clique in the Highland capital was aware of the romantic affairs going on in the offices of a local construction company.

Renee had separated from her husband Gordon, who was happy to support her living alone in a luxury bungalow.

Meanwhile, he had met with his receptionist, but was unaware that his employee, Bill MacDowell, was romantically involved with his wife.

In 1976, the only concrete sign that something bad had happened was the charred wreckage of a car on a distant A9 passenger line.

We later discover that MacDowell persuaded the couple to meet in Shetland with the promise of a new life, but instead callously murdered them both after setting fire to the luxury car he arrived in.

The blue BMW 1602 was a shining symbol of the MacRae family’s middle-class identity.

The West German marque was rare on Scottish roads at the time, but could easily be met by the successful business of Hugh MacRae & Son, a local construction firm and major employer in Inverness.

Renee MacRae’s BMW was found burnt out next to the A9 south of Inverness

The car was driven by the boss’s wife, Christina Catherine MacRae, also known as Renee.

The blackened shell of the BMW held little in evidence, possibly as a result of firefighters called to the roadside blaze pouring heavy water on it.

A bloodstain said to be the size of ‘half a crown’ was found in the trunk and matched Renee’s blood type.

Another vehicle caught the detectives’ attention. While parked nose to nose with the BMW, it was spotted by a passing motorist, another foreign executive vehicle, the Volvo.

Bill MacDowell, one of the first suspects when his relationship with Renee became known to police, was driving a dark-coloured Volvo 145 Estate.

Another witness, teacher Jean Wallace, saw a man with ‘wide and staring eyes’ using his pram on the A9. Neither Andrew’s stroller nor the luggage they were carrying in the trunk were found.

It turned out that MacDowell then went to the local Volvo dealer and requested a new floor for the rear cargo area.

He said that he burned the original while throwing construction materials in the back, and when he couldn’t get a new one installed that day, he left the garage in anger.

When Renee’s husband learned of the affair, he dismissed MacDowell and demanded the return of the company car. An employee sent to retrieve him found MacDowell scrubbing the trunk of the Volvo.

The farmer’s wife, Eva MacQueen, said she heard a “blood-curdling scream” between 7.30pm and 8pm at Dalmagarry Farm, near where Renee’s car was found.

Despite growing suspicions, the killer had an alibi from his wife. Rosemary MacDowell told detectives that her husband came home between 8pm and 8:30pm on the night of the murder, after their daughter had watched a television show about cowboys.

If not for Renee’s decision to trust her best friend, Val Steventon, the case against MacDowell might have remained entirely circumstantial.

Miss Steventon knew all her friend’s secrets, including MacDowell’s paternity to Andrew and the lovers who arranged to meet on that fateful Friday night.

The secret lovers had a fractious relationship, he told detectives. His last words were “Have a nice weekend, Renee. No fighting.”

The search for missing mother and son has so far cost taxpayers £10,000 a day. It involved police divers, search dogs, helicopters and door-to-door searches.

RAF bombers with heat-seeking equipment flew over the Highlands in search of anything that might reveal a lonely burial site.

Dalmagarry Quarry was excavated. Leanach Quarry then became the new focus of searches. Still nothing.

Years later, Rosemary MacDowell was re-examined by police under caution about the alibi she had given to her husband.

An old TV listing magazine showed that The Quest program he mentioned started at least an hour and a half later than he said it did.

The couple lived a peripatetic life, leaving Inverness to avoid whispers; He lived variously in Saudi Arabia, London and in a remote cottage up a farm road near Penrith in Cumbria.

Anniversaries of Highland’s disappearance came and went, but it wasn’t until 2019 that William MacDowell was arrested and formally charged with the murders of his lover and their son.

Rosemary was still there at his trial in 2022, wheeling the terminally ill defendant into court.

His 30-year sentence for double murder reflected anger at his crimes, but no one truly believed that the sentence could be carried out.

Just five months later, MacDowall died from a combination of cancer and cirrhosis of the liver.

He took to his grave the secret of Renee and Andrew’s tragic final moments… a secret that can now be revealed after 50 difficult years.