The inside story of how the Mail found THAT motorhome (and yes, it was right in front of your eyes, Nicola)

While the world was glued to television screens watching the incredible scenes unfold as police raided Nicola Sturgeon’s home, journalist Georgia Edkins’ mobile phone rang in the Mail on Sunday office…

The call, coming from one of his most trusted contacts, was to convey ‘very important’ information about a large-scale police operation taking place before our eyes.

Nowadays, journalists constantly receive warning calls. Some turn out to be 100 percent accurate, but many result in frustratingly time-consuming wild goose chases.

But little did we know that such a simple tip – a 30-second phone call received by our Political Editor Georgia – would spark one of the most explosive political scandals in Britain for decades and eventually play a key role in the downfall of Peter Murrell, one of the SNP’s most powerful figures and Ms Sturgeon’s husband.

Just hours earlier, on April 5, 2023, the shock news broke that former SNP chief executive Murrell had been dramatically arrested during a 9am police raid on the Glasgow home he shared with Ms Sturgeon as part of an investigation into the disappearance of £600,000 of SNP party funds.

Ms Sturgeon had raced out of the house an hour before that fateful knock on the door – and before police set up a giant forensic tent in her front garden, turning the middle-class suburban street into a virtual crime scene.

When Georgia’s interview ended she said: ‘I’ve been told there has been a SECOND police house raid.

‘So guess what? It was at Peter Murrell’s mother’s house… She’s 92, for God’s sake!’

Caravan being towed away from Mrs Murrell’s house

The idea seemed incredible, to say the least.

But the source was adamant. A quick check of the electoral rolls and good old Google Street View revealed that Margaret Murrell lived in a nice but unremarkable housing estate in Dunfermline, Fife.

Her husband Harry died in 2019 and she had been living alone ever since.

So would the police REALLY raid the home of a 92-year-old widow? Was he arrested?

It didn’t seem possible to say the least.

We agreed that we should not show up at newborn Miss Murrell’s doorstep unannounced and ask her sensitive and potentially upsetting questions.

So we didn’t even know if the report was true or not! We definitely had more questions than answers as we headed to Fife, Georgia…

And to get to the truth, we would have to do it the old-fashioned way.

‘Just go out there and talk to locals, neighbors, anyone who might have seen something. Anything.

“You’ll soon find out if there’s any truth to this,” I said to Georgia, with more hope than expectation in my heart.

Having located Ms. Murrell’s home, Georgia began knocking on neighbors’ doors to gather any information that the police were on the street.

Most were polite and said they didn’t see anything. Some said they did not want to talk to the press.

But one person was willing to talk and surprisingly had witnessed the entire drama. He would have told us everything if we had kept his identity secret because he was ‘from the area’.

A passerby who knew the neighborhood said two unmarked police cars, a silver SUV and a graphite-colored SUV, pulled up in front of Margaret Murrell’s bungalow just after 9 a.m.

He said a marked police car was located further down the road.

‘It happened at around 9am, I think around the time they started raiding Peter Murrell’s home in Glasgow.

‘They didn’t come into the house as Margaret was quite old now and I guess they didn’t want to disturb her.’

Then he suddenly revealed the real reason the police were targeting Ms. Murrell’s property: the MOTORHOME that had been parked outside her garage for two years!

The man said: ‘At first they couldn’t get into the caravan because it was locked and had handcuffs on it so they had to get some keys from somewhere.

‘They left but managed to come back and open the door.

‘Meanwhile, a huge tow truck arrived and everyone started loading it into the back. After some effort, they took him away. And that’s it.”

So it turned out that our report was false. There was no police raid on the house. The officers did not even knock on Ms. Murrell’s door. They had just arrived to take away ‘the evidence’ – a £125,000 caravan.

Rumors have been circulating in newsrooms for weeks that police investigating the SNP scam were examining the purchase of various luxury items, including cars and a ‘bigger vehicle’. And here was the ‘larger vehicle’; ‘Hidden’ just outside Peter Murrell’s mother’s house!

Luckily, the eyewitness thought the mini-drama was so important that he took some photos on his mobile phone, which he later copied and sent to the Mail on Sunday.

Back at the office we managed to establish that the caravan was made by luxury German manufacturer Niesmann + Bischoff and was priced at around £110,000 at the time.

Former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon pictured with SNP then chief executive Peter Murrell

Our eyewitness also said: ‘This [the motorhome] It’s been there for two and a half years and hasn’t moved. Peter Murrell and another man brought him here. They arrived in early January 2021 and it has been there ever since. It was never brought to my knowledge.’

Based on this information, we obtained Google Earth satellite images that confirmed the trailer had been parked in Ms. Murrell’s driveway for over two years… and you couldn’t miss it. It was very big; you could recognize it from space.

Our next opening headline on Sunday 9 April 2023 was: ‘Police investigate SNP fraud, seize caravan worth £110,000…

‘Officers seized the luxury vehicle in an early morning raid on the home owned by former party boss Peter Murrell’s 92-year-old mother.’

And after we published it, the floodgates opened. News outlets around the world followed the ‘SNP caravan story’.

This captured everyone’s imagination and instantly the SNP’s ‘caravan’ or ‘caravan’ became the public byword for the entire Police Scotland investigation.

Social media was full of them and everyone wanted to have their say, whether they sympathized with the SNP or not.

Hilarious memes have flooded the internet; many depicted in cartoon form Murrell and Ms Sturgeon leaning out of caravan windows as they set out on a road trip.

The pair were even parodied on the BBC’s prime time Hogmanay program in 2024.

And today, after Murrell pleaded guilty and it was revealed that the £125,000 caravan was worth a quarter of the £400,000 he stole, the saga remains a major topic of discussion in the public theatre.

Last week, after her estranged husband was taken to prison, Nicola Sturgeon claimed she had never seen the 24ft caravan parked outside her mother-in-law’s garage… Surely this could only have been the case if she had never visited Mrs Murrell?

But of course it was; according to another eyewitness a few days ago. Student Ryan Thomas Quinn said he saw Ms Sturgeon in 2022 at an Asda store near where Mar Geret Murrell lived. He was buying frozen pizza and garlic bread.

He says he overheard her say: ‘He has family in Dunfermline.’ And he claimed it was impossible to miss the camper van on Miss Murrell’s drive, which he passed every day on his way to college.

As Google Earth images show, you can see this thing from space. It would be nearly impossible not to notice this from your relative’s front door.

So the trailer debate continues, three years after the inevitable call to Georgia.

This was an important story among many in which journalists played a vital role in exposing Murrell’s crimes, despite the SNP’s lies and denials. But it’s a story that will haunt Nicola Sturgeon and her crooked husband forever.