Beyond the Tent: A Chilling Tale of Evidence Overlooked

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
In part one, we heard from former Scottish police officers
Bob and Rory, who told us about their involvement when
Nigel ran as remains were found after he had been
missing for three years. Episode one concluded with Rory being
on the hunt to find Piglet with the help of Bob,
after receiving a call from the family liaison officer saying
that Nigel always slip with this particular toy piciclet and

(00:50):
so should have also been with his remains and could
this toy be retrieved as Nigel's family would like to
bury Nigel with his favorite toy instead. And Bob made
shocking discoveries, but will anyone listen to their concerns? The
story continues now.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
I am in the same office that Bob's working from
at that point, by coincidence, because I was delivering paperwork
when I took the call, and he was upstairs, probably
googling Auto Trader and eating a bag of chips when
he should have been out in patrol. He was upstairs
in the traffic office looking at cars or more pikes

(01:28):
or some stupid and eBay, and I thought, well, I'm
not letting them off with this. This is going to
be a god awful job, so might as well get
might as well share the pain. So went upstairs and
said Bobby boy and told them what I've just told you.
He agreed to help me on if I gave him
Chinese food later that day. So that was it, and

(01:52):
this brings Bob into the story. From this point, he
decides to come with me and to explain this. The
office we were in had a separate production store, but
was it was basically an old garage, not quite attached
to the police office, but certainly within the same kind
of footprint of the police office almost, and everything would

(02:13):
go in there, like productions, bigger production stuff that couldn't
be held in the production store in the office. It
was also a dump and ground for traffic cones and
signs and everything else. And there was a secure area
of it, so it was like a store within a
store of the serious stuff. And we walked in there
with Bob. Did we have the production book with us?

Speaker 3 (02:32):
Yes, we did. You appeared in my office holding it,
clutching it, angry and clutching it.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
Before we go into it, Bob, tell me about when
Rory came to you, what your thoughts about at the time,
and you know how you got into the police and
such like.

Speaker 3 (02:48):
My background, so I didn't want to join the police.
Now this could be a whole separate podcast, but basically
i'd left university, as Rory will say, I joined the
tea all the time, I'd started off as an officer.
I then applied to do something called pea company, which
some of your listeners might be aware of his parachute selection.

(03:09):
And then from there I had applied to join the
SAS and basically had succeeded. And I wouldn't normally mention
that it's not anything I'm particularly proud of or anything,
but it's very relevant to this story. So I had
an accident parachuting and my mother basically was unhappy with
what I was doing, particularly post the First Golf War,

(03:30):
thought I was going to die, and it was suggested
that I joined the police.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
She put the application for him, and no, didn't she.

Speaker 3 (03:36):
Yeah, my mother basically filled out the form and my
grandmother's next door neighbor was deputy chief constable, so me
getting in was probably not an issue, and I didn't
know any of that stuff. I just found I was
in the police one day and was going to Tullilan.
So jump forward quite a bit. My career had basically
taken me very similar to Rory's urban area in Glasgow,

(03:57):
a lot of crime, a lot of drugs, a lot
of deprivation, and I I'd gone to what was then
the traffic became road policing and basically like driving fast.
I lived for a car chase and that was that
was fun, very different from TV. You know, they're not
they're not dangerous. They shouldn't be dangerous. If they're genuinely dangerous,
then the person driving the police cars and the idiot.
If they're dangerous to anyone, it's it's the public and

(04:17):
you should be standing them down. But they were still
driving fast. Was fun when it was on my own
and I got a kick out of it, and for
kind of family reasons, I had the chance to transfer
into a different area and I now covered a vast area,
so basically all the way from the border with Northern
Police all the way down the tip of Campbelltown. So

(04:38):
for me, even in a fast Volv or BMW blue lighting,
I could be two hours from one end to the other.
And the bit that Rory Police was was a fairly substantial,
big chunk of that. So I chose to work with
them a lot.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
I didn't choose to work with me, just attached himself
to me like a stray dog.

Speaker 3 (04:57):
I mentioned earlier of a degree of morbid curiosity following around. Yeah,
so I occasionally had a colleague. So the way our
shifts worked, I didn't do a night shift, and basically
I was phoned out in the middle of the night
if we had basically a fatal car crash. But quite
often I was on my own so because I was
in his area most of the time anyway, because that's

(05:18):
where the big fast roads were. If I could, we
would just go and share a car. And as I
got to know him better and better and realized he
was increasingly very entertaining, we worked a lot, and we
talked a lot, and we talked a lot about kind
of very deep, meaningful discussions, and basically we were each
other's counselors. I think that's fair to say. So jump

(05:38):
forward a bit and I was sitting in the police
office and I had found out about this incident going
on within Rory's area. Now I had come on on backshift,
so I started at two o'clock and I was aware
that he was already there. And I'm going to just
very quickly mention this because I think it's relevant to this,
to the story. But when Rory asked for the mobile

(06:01):
police office to be delivered, that was quite a big
deal because the mobile police office was probably an hour
south from him, an hour south from me, and we're
an hour apart, so basically in a sort of triangle.
I'd already popped up just to say hello. But it's
not like on TVs. He can't just wander into a
crime scene the very very closely controlled If someone does wondering,

(06:22):
that's a big deal. It's a big no no. But
I was asked basically to go back to my home office,
pick up another police officer, take them this hour journey
south to another police officer, pick up this mobile police
office that's like a big campra van, and basically then
follow them up to the scene and then shuffle people
around as necessary.

Speaker 1 (06:43):
So you were there quite early on as well.

Speaker 3 (06:45):
Then, yeah, But I didn't have any interest in it,
So I was there just basically. I mean, police documentaries
always give this impression that you know, it's dangerous and
it's exciting and people are really involved. The reality is
for people who've been in the police more than ten years,
it's mundane.

Speaker 4 (06:59):
It's routine. Did you do it every day?

Speaker 3 (07:01):
So I wasn't particularly thinking about what was in this
bit of forest or what was in the tent. I
was just up there to say, alone, bring bacon rolls.

Speaker 4 (07:10):
But I did this.

Speaker 3 (07:10):
I did this with the mobile police office. I took
the police officer up there, and then I went back
to go off duty near midnight. Now the reason I
kind of mentioned this and why I think it's relevant,
I'm sure Rory would agree. When I got back and
walked into the front by the police office, I had
fueled up my police car, washed it, put it to
bed for the night for the next shift coming on.

(07:32):
I walked into what's called the front bar within the
police office, so the radio operators there and the duty officer,
and there's quite a heated debate going on. So we're
less than twenty four hours into this. But the heated
debate was basically around the fact that the police officer
who I had run up there was a police owner
with about seven or eight year service. I think correct
me if I'm wrong there, Rory. It was basically refusing

(07:54):
to stay, so I dropped her off and she was
refusing to stay because it was too scary in a
very commas here. Now I'm not being cruel here to
the police officer. I think this is very very relevant.
So if you're trying to picture what this site is like,
I mean, it's Blair Witch Project on steroids.

Speaker 1 (08:15):
There's no lights, there's no street lights. It's just that
deathly dark.

Speaker 3 (08:19):
Yeah, yeah, it's and you're there potentially in your own
with this big police campra van thing and you know much.
Though there was some suggestions in the police office that
this was a bit wimpish, in reality, it probably wasn't.
I think she was probably just brave enough to actually
call it where a lot of people wouldn't have. I
think that's fair. It wasn't somewhere you wanted to be

(08:41):
in your own with a dead body.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
She was still having to go outside. It's not as
so she could lock herself in and she just had
to go out and check lings, didn't you.

Speaker 3 (08:48):
She's there to protect the crime scene, so she's there
to stop the press showing up, to stop anyone and
youre fearing it, so I mean, yeah, she can go
in and out of this mobile police office. But fundamentally,
you know, you can't go and lock yourself in the toilet.
You're there because you need to be there to protect
the crime scene. So that was kind of my first
dealings with this, but I didn't think too much more
of it, and basically it was solved that night. Somebody

(09:09):
else went up and basically took over. But it puts
it in context, and it's relevant in terms of what
we then find out about the missing person and why
they would choose to be there given their apparently don't
like being alone and they're quite gregarious.

Speaker 2 (09:23):
So they ended up. But I couldn't stay there the night.
I couldn't camp there and stay the night. And there
was I mean, let's be honest, there was a lot
of banter humor slagging off of this officer for being scared,
you know, but as you said, she had the courage
to call it out. Would I have been comfortable up
there alone at night? No. Not. And I'm sitting with
fifteen year service or whatever gives you the bgmis your

(09:45):
mind wanders that you're sitting in the woods in the
middle of nowhere with a dead body who's not going
to be disturbed by that but what Bob's saying as
well is who puts themselves in such a scary place,
you know? Because I couldn't. Yeah, I can, and we'll
talk about that later. Sorry, Bob, on't you go?

Speaker 3 (10:02):
So let's move forward away. But and I was very
vaguely aware of rumblings in the office and sort of
discontent about the fact that it's been called as a
suicide early on. But I think most people, probably Run included,
were if not entirely happy, not entirely unhappy with it either.
And then one night I am happily sitting there minding
my own business on eBay buying cars and motorbikes or whatever,

(10:25):
and with my my traffic head on, and a very
very angry Rory storms in with a production book, ranting
about how the CID haven't done things properly and things
have not been launched properly, and he's trying to find piglet.
So I put the kettalog, trying to cub him down away.

Speaker 4 (10:44):
Bit, lots of there there there, It will be okay
in the morning.

Speaker 3 (10:47):
And basically I was bribed by Chinese food, so he
said come with me. I was a fad Li laison
officer as well, so he'd kind of, I supposed, to
an extent, chosen the right person. Rory's right about return
of property. I mean, you do anything for a family
because it's the time they need you most, and that
you're not doing it for your personal sense of self satisfaction.

(11:10):
It's a big deal because it's a big deal for them.
I've dealt with fatalities where I would return clothing and think, oh,
who wants this back? You know it's it's covered in
blood's and the family would say I want it because
of the it smells of the person, for example, And
you would go out your way and do that. But
it was something like this. My expectation was we were
quickly going to find piglet, we would take him to

(11:31):
the hospital, get dry cleaned, and return to the family,
and that that would be the right thing to do.
It wasn't particularly a big deal. So we we go
down and we go into this outside production store.

Speaker 1 (11:44):
Okay, thanks Bob. Now, Rory, can you pick up from
there and tell us your memories have been in the store,
what you discovered and what you were thinking well searching
through Nige those things.

Speaker 2 (11:54):
Yeah, so I get Bob turn my away from me
sort of to that, and we go downstairs and I've
got the production book and I summarize it's been a while,
but he's, as he said, just there. He's got a
vague recollection of what's going on. You know, he knows
roughly the story, but it's just another suicide death of
beat twenty eight. So another one of Rory's cases. So

(12:15):
we crack on and I said, this is the story.
I want you to go and look for this piglet.
It's not going to be a nice job. There's a
sleeping bag that somebody's died in and been laid in
for three years. So we're going to get the suits
on and the gloves on and just let it tell
you not because we were trying to preserve the scene,
because we're trying to preserve ourselves. It was pretty It's

(12:37):
pretty dunty, you know, So gloves on, etc. And we
goes in. Now, as we walked in, it was what
I had alluded to before. The wrong way to do
things is throw everything in black bags and just cart
it off. That's probably the first time I've seen that.
So I go in and I'm like, oh, wait a minute,
I've only been dealing with the production book of which

(12:58):
is a page, one full page and two lines of
the next page. But this is ten black household bags
of stuff. And I'm right, okay, okay, like, where the
hell do we start with this? That give us a
step for a hint. And it's the first time Bob
had set eyes on it as well, and I think
he said to me, what is this? You know what

(13:22):
is this? And I'm like, this is this is Nigel's
stuff and he said, no, no, no, that what you're
talking about that this is far too much stuff for
one person to be carrying. And he went on to
kind of explain, says, now, if he was doing that walk,
he wouldn't be carrying all this, and I'm like, well,
it's all been split up, Bob, so it's been put

(13:43):
into different bags. And I was getting progressively angrier that
the CID had done this, but I think Bob was
a wee bit more angry. I was more resigned to
I'm not saying it's what I expected, but I wasn't surprised.
I'm that, yeah, they're just cut corners with this. This
is just the cut corners. And cause of them cutting corners,
I don't know if this poor fella was wearing gators

(14:05):
and I don't know where this piglet was. And if
they had just listed everything like they were meant to,
I wouldn't be standing here having to go through this stuff,
which was an extremely unpleasant job. So we start to
go through the bags. Now we start finding there's I'm
going to say, there's three bags. There's a rucksack type bag,
there's a hole all definitely three bags. I think they

(14:26):
were out with the black household bin bags. Bob's deeply
concerned about that, not just the amount of bags, but
the style of bag. If you think you're going to
the gym, you know, with a big gym bag, a
hold all. There was one of them, I believe, and
a rucksack and Bob starts questioning this and I kick
in to you, Bob, but we bit and says say

(14:46):
shut up. I'm probably swearing about the CID and I'm like,
let's just get this piglet job and done. Let's get
out your Chinese food's waiting for you. Crack on, you know.
You take one bag out to the next and we
start going through it. Things become apparent. I find a
toilet bag with a load of medication on it, and
and that point my anger is probably up now on

(15:07):
a level with Bob's because if you're telling me that
this is a suicidal death, and these are the two
bits of medicine that you've given me to prove this
suicidal death. And I opened a black bag and there's
a toilet bag with a excuse my friends shit turn
of medication in it that's not been listed on that.
What the hell is this? So I'm kind of getting
angrier and angrier in terms of that. We then move on.

(15:30):
We have the production book and Bob's asked me where's
the knife? Where's the knife? And at that point we
thought the knife wasn't there with the production so we
were quite annoyed. But I'll just close that bit just
now and say the knife quite rightly was in the
main office and then more secure place where you would
put weapons naturally, But we were just think, where's the knife.
They've listed a knife, but there's no knife. What have

(15:52):
they done with it? I was aware of photographs of
the knife, but I've never seen it since. But it
was where it was meant to be, I believe. Bob
then finds a noose. It's in one of the bags
and it's it's quite short, and it's still it's it's
climber's rope, you know that that rope that you use
for for climbing. Bob says it was blue. I say

(16:12):
it was red, and that's okay, that's okay, memories, memories,
what it is. I'm convinced it's red. He's convinced it blue.
It doesn't matter. But it was there, and it was
a noose. Now again, your anger levels increasing all the
time because you're thinking, this is a noose. It's not
in the production book, and put it in the production

(16:33):
book because it's relevant. Of course, it's relevant for a
suicidal death. Now, if this man is sitting alone in
a tent in the middle of the woods fashion and
a noose, then that's an indication of his mind collapsing
or or what else could it possibly be for, you know,
and and us being cops, we start talking. You could

(16:53):
have any sexual connotations, you know, like asphyxiation, that sort
of stuff. You know, we're we're looking a lot of
kit and we're thinking, right, well, it's either one or
two things. It's either used for that or he is
thinking about hanging himself. But it's a very short, stubby noose.
It's not there's no drop on it. It's just a
short piece of rope. But the fact the noose is

(17:16):
one thing, But the fact that it's not lodged and
the medication is making me angry. So we move on.
We still haven't found Piglet. We find other property and stuff,
and that's okay, the stuff you would expect to find,
the clothing, et cetera. And then we move on to
the sleeping bags. Now one is the one that Nigel
has died in and the other one is not. So

(17:38):
because it's my case, I give Bob the clean one,
for want of a better word, probably not suspecting that
Piglet's going to be there, but you know he can
do it. So it doesn't really unzip. We turn it inside.
There's nothing to it. It's worn, it's it's been out,
it's been exposed to the elements for three years. It's
not in a great condition. And then we turn ourselves

(18:00):
our attention to the main one and we have to
do this. I'm not going to describe what's in that.
You can use your own imagination in terms of that.
It's not pleasant, okay, So we turn it inside out,
and I am it's last chance saloon now for Piglet.
We haven't found them yet, and I am convinced, you know,
I would blame money on the fact that this cuddly

(18:21):
toy is going to be in here, because if Nigel
slept with them, where was he sleeping in the bag?
C losing the name. It's a bag, it's going to
be in it turns out and there's no piglet. But
what did fall out was a condom. So a condom
fell onto the floor in front of us. It was used,
I won't be too crude, but they're still seeming within
it and it was still liquid. Now in the police

(18:43):
there is I'm going to swear here forgive me. There
is routinely at most calls there's an oh shit moment, like,
oh shit, right, okay, this was a note. Oh fuck.
So I'm like, and we both stopped. I'm a la right, okay,
missing the medication, missing it now, so that's bad, but

(19:03):
missing this this is different level, you know. So we
have an issue here and and we did what cops do.
We stopped, We stepped back, and we discussed and we're
what are we going to do? And there is the
right thing to do and there's the wrong thing to do,
and we obviously do the right thing, you know, we

(19:25):
we can't ignore this. We contemplate what the condom means.
We go back through what we've already found. I go
back into the toilet bag and there's two other condoms
in there. I think, you know that had been lodged.
Bizarrely that there were or either a founderment ins production.
But there's a pack of three condoms and.

Speaker 1 (19:43):
That had been long the used one hadn't.

Speaker 2 (19:46):
Yeah, the two condoms had been lodged, but this one
obviously had been missed for obvious reasons because they've just
thrown everything in a black bag. And I was that, right, Okay,
we we have an issue here, you know, and I'm
going to be crude. But when we're discussing it with
that right that there is two reasons this condom is
in this sleeping bag. It was either on him or

(20:08):
in or close to him. Now, was he masturbating? That's possible,
that's possible. There's a couple issues with that. Why look
on it fine and afterwards, why sleep with it? That's
one thing. It's very crude. I appreciate that the other
thing is. Now, this is how we're talking, you know.

(20:29):
The other thing is at the point of your death,
where you're taking your own life, is a sexual act,
something a thing of pleasure? Is that something that the
mind takes on board, because by its very definition, you're
getting no pleasure out of life, so you're ending your life.
But we're having this kind of deep, meaningful conversation to
the point where we just end up saying, doesn't matter.

(20:51):
None of this matters. Who cares. What matters is what's
in it and what we do with it now. So
I got a production bag. It's a small self sealed
policine bag. I picked it up with a gloved hand
and put it in it, and I sealed it and
I signed it, and I said, the sudden death of
Nigel Ranach do not destroy. I signed it, and I

(21:12):
lodged it as a production. At that point, well, we'll
go back to Bob and see because member I said,
different opinions and different views, and he had a very
much more detailed intake of what he was looking at
in terms of hell walking and stuff, whereas I just
seen a bag full of stuff.

Speaker 3 (21:28):
Bob, are you there, hello, Yes, I am yes, yes
I am.

Speaker 2 (21:33):
So we're just talking about the garage there.

Speaker 3 (21:35):
So I'm looking through the production book myself as we're
kind of talking about this and thinking, well, if piglet's there,
he's in the production book. It has to be Production
books have to be done right.

Speaker 2 (21:46):
Now.

Speaker 3 (21:47):
There's an odd kind of hierarchy here because you would
think all productions are equal in an Orwellian type style,
but they're not. If a production is lodged in the
police office, then it's in a safe, or it's in
a room that's low, so you could put things like firearms,
drugs in there, and the world is a happy place.
But I was well used to dealing with fatalities on

(22:07):
the road, and you tended to have quite bulky productions
potentially even vehicles, bits of motorcycle clothing, moortcyclist leathers, that
sort of stuff, so they went into a different store
or potentially were even locked away in a third party garage.
So basically the police had a garage external to the
police office that you could put a production in, and

(22:29):
yet oddly it was not that secure, so it's not
as good as a safe. You could put a bit
of a motorbike in it. Or you could put in clothing,
and it was also used to store traffic cones and
road signs and all that sort of stuff. So basically,
Rory says, like, this is where everything is. I'm like, okay,
fair enough, it's just close. Surely it should be in
the little store. But we go out and this this

(22:53):
thing is just like a kind of big garage, you know,
kind of an old style thirties as best of type building,
and it's got the kind of roller shutter door, and
then it's got a small door, and we kind of
open the small door and you go, and then you
can imagine it's dark and dank, and we've got torches
to look around in it. And Rory says me, we'll

(23:13):
start over here, and I'm kind of looking at all
these productions for Piglet, and I'm thinking straight away, you've
got to be joking. You've told me this is someone
who's walking this long distance route. Well they didn't do
it with all this stuff. And there's literally like eight nine,
ten bags of big black bags full of stuff. And

(23:33):
as we're kind of going through this, we're kind of
putting that to the side of our minds and we
just start searching through it and looking. But at the
same time we're discus discussing the case, and I didn't
know much about it. So maybe because I didn't know
much about it apart from my exploits taking the mobile
police office up there, I was asking silly questions and

(23:54):
I was probably asking the same silly questions that Rory
asked himself when he first saw it. And I think
that was maybe quite good because it's refreshing his memory
of what he thought the very first time he walked
into the trees. And I'm saying things like, look, this
is wrong. Why have you got two sleeping bags here
when you're saying you've only got one person, And he

(24:15):
sort of saying, well, well, he bought a sleeping bag.
I was, well, okay, I might go on by a
new sleep bag. I don't carry the old one around
with me, just in case that doesn't make any sense.
And then as we're searching around earlier, Rory mentioned the
shoes and I had to kind of remind myself of
this and be certain and look back at the photos
years later. But I found two pairs of boots. Now
they're very different styles of boots. So one of the

(24:39):
pairs of boots is basically a really good brand. They're
broken and they're clearly used, and that's hard to tell
after they've been there for three years, but they're probably
pretty well looked after decent leather hill walking boots. And
then there's another pair of boots that I'm not going
to say they're cheap, but there may be more budget boots.
And I was kind of thinking, well, that doesn't you

(24:59):
know why why have two pairs of boots?

Speaker 1 (25:01):
Were they the same size of size of boots?

Speaker 2 (25:04):
No?

Speaker 4 (25:04):
And I wish I could prove that.

Speaker 3 (25:06):
Now I'm done progressing slightly because there is a photo
of the other pair of boots that was taken by
another police officer who was very uncomfortable destroying them at.

Speaker 4 (25:15):
A later date.

Speaker 2 (25:16):
The boots I recall a brown leather walking boots, and
then my memory is something black laying underneath the skeleton.
Now I never seen the boots again, I only ever
seen photographs. Do you remember the boots as brown walking?
But I can't tell you the sizes because I never

(25:37):
seen them, I never touched them.

Speaker 3 (25:39):
So the boots I remember, the good pair, are brown,
sort of leathery pill walking boots, your classic kind of
leather pill walking boots. And the other pair of boots, now,
there was a photo of them taken by someone who
will call homeless Horse, and he wasn't a stable so

(26:05):
here a later date was told to destroy these productions
and it will come on to them, but basically he
was uncomfortable doing that, so he took a photo. But
basically in the other pair I would have described as
as basically being cheaper, you know, and and I kind
of held them up. But in my head, I mean,
you have to. I know this is me trying to
justifind my own actions. But at this stage, I still

(26:26):
I wasn't looking out for a mystery here. I was
just I was just helping find piglet. But I did
kind of look at them and think, well, okay, it's
two sleep bugs. That's two people's boots and a pair
of shoes and two rucksacks and a black Nike holds all.
And we're going through all this stuff, and we're kind
of having the conversation as we do it, and again

(26:46):
it's it's dark and gloomy, and it smells and it's
not particularly pleasant. But I'm kind of asking questions about, well,
how's all this stuff? There if you're seeing the cars
part at the north end of this walking route, why
is all this stuff there? Now I'm going to slightly
jump away from the topic here, but this route that
he we think is that he's potentially walking so ninety

(27:10):
six point one miles. It goes from the south of
Scotland up to the north. It goes from a major
city basically up through some of the most beautiful scenery
I think the world, and ends up in quite a
small town in Scotland. I'll fiction, of course, but anyway,
that's that's it. So you might or some of your
listeners might say, well, why are you saying it south

(27:31):
to north? Almost everybody playing ninety nine percent of people
walk this from the south to north, and the reason
they do that is, well, first of all, that's the
way everybody does it. That if you buy a book
on this particular long distance walking route, that's the way
we'll probably describe it. If you go online and look
at it in a website, that's the way we'll describe it.
But probably more importantly, it's quite uplifting. Did you start

(27:53):
in the city and the scenery gets better and better
and better after each day? And also the prevailing wind
then is that you back. So if you try and
walk it southbound, it can be quite hard going. Now.
I knew it really, really well because I used to
go up a jog along it, or walk it regularly.
And there's another aside to this. If you try and
walk it or jog at southbound, and I did sometimes

(28:16):
because I would do a leg and turn and then
come back to where I dropped off the car, you
end up saying hello to everybody. I mean, it is
such a pain in the neck. If you're walking at northbound,
you walk in a little bubble of people walking alongside you.
You'll occasionally overtake someone or they'll overtake you, but generally speaking,
you see pretty much the same ten or twenty people
all day.

Speaker 4 (28:36):
If you try and walk it the.

Speaker 3 (28:37):
Other way, you're going to get seen by, I mean everybody, everybody.

Speaker 4 (28:41):
You know.

Speaker 3 (28:41):
You'll say hello to two three hundred people that day.
If the narrative was that this car is at the
north end of the way and he's walked south and
you're said to be roby, well hang on, this guy's
very distinctive. He's been the TV documentary. How's he not
being seen?

Speaker 2 (29:00):
He's got a rucksack, and he's got holdalls and he's
carrying ten bin bags worth of stuff with him. Yeah,
it's like going down there and mate the wrong way,
I mean, and we're looking for this guy and he's
wearing the distinctive jumper as you say, Bob, how did
he get from there to where he was found?

Speaker 4 (29:15):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (29:16):
So I've got all these questions going through my head now.
Earlier on and it wasn't just kind of boasting. There
is a rationale behind us. But I'd done essays selection
and the very last walk to get into that is
called endurance. It's about seventy five kilometers and it's done
and usually about twenty two hour period. I was well
used to walking a long distance and I knew what
you carry with you, because when you're doing that walk,

(29:37):
you basically you have to carry all your stuff with you.
But I'm looking through all this stuff, and for example,
there's a big shortbread tin in there, and I'm looking
at it thinking this is pointless. And between the two
rocks acts you have pointless duplications. You know, the sleeping
bags is a big one, but why have a pair
of decent hillwalking trousers? And then of another pair of

(29:58):
cheaper hillwalking trousers. Well, I have all these duplications in
terms of tops and t shirts and socks and all
this sort of stuff to the two Rocks acts. Now,
some of your listeners might well turn and say, whoa
wait a minute, wouldn't the sensible thing to be if
you're going to walk this route, you hide some stuff
halfway down it so that you can basically pick stuff
off on the way down, breast change of socks, etc.

(30:20):
I kind of buy that, but I've done that myself
when I'm out walking, I'll basically case stuff at the
side of a route. But the problem with this is
if you're going to do that, the stuff you hide
that you're going to pick up is going to be
the stuff you need. So you're probably going to hide
stuff like camping gas fuel, perhaps food, water, purre tabs, drinks,

(30:42):
you know that sort of stuff. Stuff you don't need
on day one. The problem with the way this stuff
was is the stuff that is then in the other
Rocks act is stuff you needed on day one. So
why would you have a second sleep bag? You need
the sleeping bag the first night. Unless you're saying you've
done this huge forty five mile yomp in one day. Now,

(31:04):
that's not impossible. You could probably do that in twenty
four hours. I think it's about one four hundred meter
toll ascent. And also you've get the sense in there too,
but it's just about doable in a day. But it
doesn't tie in again in a narrative because if you
were trying to storm down that you would be seen,
and I don't think there's many people who try to

(31:25):
do that in a day. So all of this again
is kind of coming round to the fact I'm really
not happy with the volume of stuff I'm seeing here
and the story that's going with it. So the more
logical one that's kind of going through my head is
when I've done this way, I will go and drop
a car off at the top of it. And there's
a couple of good reasons for that, because if you
then go back to the start and you start walking

(31:46):
north with your buddies, you've got a car to get home.
And what you do is you drop the car at
the top and your buddies come pick you up in
car B and you drive dou to start drop it off,
and then you walk up you pick up car EE
at the top and then you drive back and pick
up carb and the whole thing works fine.

Speaker 4 (32:02):
But that only works if it's to you.

Speaker 2 (32:04):
Yeah, and Bob, I mean that person that's going to
give him a lift from the car to the start
of the walk, that's someone who's going to know, who's
going to know who's missing. So why wouldn't they come
forward and say I gave him a lift if he
was in a bus or a train, why did nobody
see him?

Speaker 3 (32:21):
Yeah, So all these things are kind of stacking up,
and I'm just getting increasingly uncomfortable. And what I kept
saying to Rory throughout this was, as we're searching it,
I'm becoming quite anxious about the fact that I feel
we're damaging a crime scene because nobody's given me the
right answer for this, and I'm looking at it, and
every time we open a different bag, I'm sort of saying, sory, this,

(32:42):
if this turns out to not be a suicide, if
there's more to this, if there's a second person there,
we're damaging a crime scene because there's potentially the any
evidence as hairs as fibers, and we're trolling through it
and contaminating it. So should we be doing this, and
now I know you probably say, well, it was already
contaminating when it was taking the production st and that's true,
but we'll just make it worse and worse and worse.

(33:04):
And then we start talking about things that I maybe
hadn't realized that there are kind of at that stage.
But Rory's telling me about stuff he knew, like the
knife and going in with the IB photographer, and both
them and the IB photographer basically calling it as suspicious,
and I'm increasingly kind of thinking, well, this just doesn't
feel right, and there's other problems with the way the

(33:26):
property has been lodged. So if you want a land
and bother productions is a big one. But productions that
are money are drugs huge.

Speaker 4 (33:34):
You do that right.

Speaker 3 (33:35):
There's a kind of standing joke in the police if
you leave a torch and a police officer will get stolen.
If you put ten pounds down top of a radiator,
you can come out a week later, it'll.

Speaker 4 (33:43):
Still be there.

Speaker 3 (33:44):
Everyone is super cautious with money, and yet in this
production store there's a load of scrunched up, damp money
that's obviously been part of this production, and it's just
life lying there. It's not through a production book, it's
not registered, and it's just sitting scrunched up, and that's
a big no no. So that's that's flaggy alarm bells
for me too, are very uncomfortable about that. And then

(34:07):
we're looking through with there's other medicines that Rory finds
in the Rucks Act that he's looking through.

Speaker 2 (34:12):
I think you're you're nipping my ear with all this
information is coming into me, and I'm trying to make
it fit the suicide narrative. So I'm saying, basically, Bobby
gonna shut up and just find this piglet. Yeah, let's
just get this piglet. Let's go out here. Let's cut
to the chase. Gout here. Yeah there's too much stuff,
but yeah, yeah, we'll looking at that buryal soon. So
I'm towing the party line almost but still angry, whereas

(34:36):
you're nipping away. Yeah, quite rightly.

Speaker 4 (34:39):
I kind of feel a wee bit.

Speaker 3 (34:40):
I'm almost like his conscience sitting on his shoulder saying, look,
I'm uneasy about this. And then a couple of things
really start to fall into place for me. So there's
there's medicine, there's blister packs, but there's still pills in
a lot of them. Now, as I've rory, I've been
a lot of suicides. I can't think of one I've
ever been at where someone who's I need to commit

(35:00):
suicide has said, right, I've got I've got twenty pills.
I'll just take five and see how it goes. You know,
if they don't work, I'll come back later and get
the rest. That that didn't kind of fit the narrative
at all. I'm like, well, there's either empty blister packs
or there's full blister packs and they've not been used.
You don't have a halfway in between. And then the
kind of finals are nailing the coffin if you like,

(35:23):
that's really got my kind of the little alarm bells
going off as.

Speaker 4 (35:26):
We're looking through. There's a noose.

Speaker 3 (35:29):
Now, this noose is made out of what I would
have described this kind of army paracord, which is quite strong.
It's not quite as thick as climbing rope is nylon.
We have debates over what color it was, but memories
are kind of strange thing. You know, if we both agreed.

Speaker 2 (35:42):
Go for it. What color was it?

Speaker 4 (35:44):
Bob see in my head it's red.

Speaker 2 (35:46):
You're right, so I must have said blue. It is red.
And the reason it's red is because I've memorized that yeah,
fictional email that is sent to somebody describing it. You
were you were right, I was wrong, it was right.

Speaker 4 (35:58):
I might remembered that.

Speaker 2 (36:03):
It was a red noose. One other thing, while I'm talking, Bob,
was there any drink in there? No?

Speaker 3 (36:09):
And that sure, Yeah, I'm absolutely different. I mean you
would have seen if there'd been something that obvious, and
it should have been through the produce. But I mean
that's another kind of alarm bell. I suppose that there's
no alcohol and there's nothing to kind of wash these
pills down with, if you like, if it is a suicide.
But the noose was a strange one for me because
we're kind of looking at it and thinking, well, it's

(36:29):
the wrong size, you know, it's this is going to
sound my car, but it's it's the right size to
put around your neck. But the long bit coming off
it's really short, so you couldn't actually hang yourself with it.
But it's too small to be an ornament like a
key ring, so basically you could, well you could throttle
somebody with it. For lack of a better way putting it.
But you're never going to hang it around a branch.

(36:51):
It's just not long enough to have the kind of
drop to do that. So and we're kind of talking
away about that, and then we roll out one of
the sleeping bags and try turn it inside out to
find pigling. I remember it as being the newer of
the two sleeping bags. Again, memories a funny thing. Some
of your listeners might be saying, well, you too should
remember this and both of the same story. I remember

(37:11):
early doors in the police I'm going slightly off on
a tangent here, but there was a sheriff did a
presentation to two police officers post the Dumblane masker, and
he was talking about cognisive interview statements, and he basically said,
if you ever get two witnesses that say exactly the
same thing, they're lying. One of them's lying. They've talked
to each other. I think it's healthy that we disagree
and argue about some of this. But we roll out

(37:34):
the sleeping bag and inside it there's there's a used condom,
very obviously used condom.

Speaker 4 (37:39):
And I won't go into.

Speaker 3 (37:41):
Too much more detail, but that's quite a an unpleasant thing.
But then a conversation goes straight off into what the
hell you know? This really is a part of my language,
but what the fuck moment? How can that be there?
Not a very nice discussion, but but my logic is, well,
hang on a minute. If that is in there because
you want to keep the inside of a sleeping bag

(38:03):
that you've just bought nice and cleaning, well that doesn't
tally with the fact that you're about to knowingly leave
a dead body in it. No, so that doesn't make sense.
So if it's there for any other reason, well, surely
it's there because either you're wearing it or it's somebody
else's and it's been left in the sleeping bag. And
then if you come back to it being a suicide,

(38:24):
I'm kind of thinking, well, you know, if you're going
to commit suicide, there's probably something in the back of
your head saying at some point someone's going to find you,
and that's why people leave suicide notes. Do you really
want to be found with a used condom there? So
there's a lot of problems going on here, and I
think we both get to the point where we just
say whoa stop, we are contaminating whatever we want to

(38:46):
call it here. If it's if it's a suicide or
murder or crimesy, whatever, we're contaminating it.

Speaker 4 (38:52):
We have to stop.

Speaker 3 (38:53):
So the condom is putting a production bag. Rory labels
it all up. We go back into the police office
and we speak to someone who I have to say
I quite respected to'd been a uniform sergeant that had
also prior to that been been a detective and a
suspect of very good detective.

Speaker 4 (39:09):
I'd say I liked him. I didn't have any particular
beef with the mayor.

Speaker 3 (39:12):
Rory explained in depth the kind of issues that we had,
and then I was kind of in the background when
a phone call was made to the crimecy manager and
it was obvious there were some uncomfortable questions and sort
of home truths being explained to here, and it was
getting quite heated, and the line I kind of remember
at the back of it was sort of, you know,
don't rock the boat here. This is done. It's a suicide.

(39:35):
It's written off. The physical is happy with it. You
don't need to know anymore about it.

Speaker 1 (39:39):
Okay, Rory, can you tell us your recollection of what
happened after you left the store with Bob.

Speaker 2 (39:45):
Myself and Bob walked from the production store to the
main police office and found the duty sergeant. The duty
sergeant was the same sergeant that was up at the
scene who used to be in the CID. And he's like, okay,
let's deal with this. I'm probably in some sort of

(40:05):
mad rant about incompetence and the sea word is getting
bandied about everything that's at that level, you know. Bad
Bob's like, oh my god, what what's going on here?
None of this is right, you know, And he said, okay,
I'll phone the officer in charge. I wasn't privy to
that phone call. It was done at the charge bar,

(40:26):
and I heard one half of the conversation and it
was a telephone to the ear for the other between
the duty sergeant and that my understanding of that, and
I won't I won't repeat exact words and that because
I'm wary of getting them wrong. My understanding of that
was leave it alone, Rory, don't rock the boat. It's

(40:48):
a suicide. The funerals tomorrow. It was something like that,
you know, the funerals. In a couple of days. I
went away ranted that Bob. Bob got the brunt of it,
and he was more vogue. And I don't know what
to do at this point. I am doing well in
my job. I'm very successful in my job. I've been
asked in the past to do my promotion exams and

(41:10):
get promoted, and I chose not to because I didn't
want to leave my little office. But I had done them.
I felt I was coming towards the end of my
tenure and I thought, well, I can get possibly promoted.
Blue Eyed Boy could do no wrong was a praise
for doing stuff like this, and I thought, well, I
wasn't going to rock the boat, and okay, just move on.
I've got another one waiting for me. That's the wrong decision.

(41:32):
I totally acknowledge that, and off it went. Now, I
when I say I totally ignored that, I didn't, I
didn't completely. We made a couple of solid decisions myself
and Bob. The first one was to ensure that we
protected the condom as much as we could. We put
it in a freezer that was for the DNA phraser

(41:53):
in the office. We spoke to the production officer, who
was a civilian. I told that production officer. Under no
circumstances does embody come and get that without us knowing
about it. If somebody asks about this, or if somebody
asked it to destroyed or not that we thought it
would be destroyed. But if MB asks you, it's my production,
you tell me. I'm the reporting officer. And that stayed
up until the day we left the police that promised

(42:16):
that agreement, and to my knowledge, nothing had happened of it. However,
the next day, bizarrely it was April Fool's Day, by
happy coincidence, I emailed the officer in charge of the case,
the Crown team manager who would come up. I emailed
them and outlined what we had found and told them
about the noose in particular and the condom and asked

(42:36):
them for it. Basically, I think it wasn't that strongly wanted.
It was just to say, I think, I said the email,
this and the family are quite not needy, but they
certainly have a few questions and a few demands, and
just so that we're all speaking from the same impage,
as it were, just to let you know, we've found
this noose and this condom. Do you want me to
do anything with it? I've lodged them in the relevant

(42:58):
police office. That email went unreplied, and that that email
was sent to the officer who was on the phone
call from the duty sergeant. So although I had, although
I had been told secondhand from that duty sergeant to
don't rock the boat. And if I remember right, the
funeral had been I think what it said was that

(43:19):
the PF was aware and the remains had been buried yesterday.
I think it's what I said in an email. So, yeah,
the burial had taken place, but it wasn't too late
as far as I was concerned to highlight what we'd found.
And that takes us up to the end of it
for a long period of time for me.

Speaker 1 (43:37):
And is that the end of it for you too
for a while?

Speaker 3 (43:39):
Bob. Now this is going to sound very very callous
of me, but I think, like Rory, we both had
a lot of stuff going on at the time. You know,
this is TV documentaries aren't true in this respect. Nobody
gets all the time they want to, you know, work
away in something unless it's a really really big case
and things aren't particularly personal. So I just went away,

(44:03):
I guess, and started working on the next fatality was
that the cards dealt to me?

Speaker 2 (44:08):
Is it fair to say, Bob? Remember we talked right
to start about the gang, eight thousand strong gang. If
you're standing up and you're receiving an instruction, let's not
call it an order because it doesn't merit being called
an order, but you're receiving an instruction to ignore new evidence.
You've got a couple of options there, to be absolutely

(44:28):
bluntd you throw away your career and walk away, yeah,
or or you follow that instruction by throwing away your career.
What you're doing is throwing people under the bus. Yeah,
throwing senior officers and people that you may respect in
certain elements of the work under the bus. So you're
looking at through a personal point of view, your pension,

(44:48):
your livelihood, the job you love, or crack on to
the next one because this one's done. Yeah, and that's
what we did. Well, I'm not sitting here saying that's
the right thing to do. It's not the right thing
to you. But unless you're in that circumstances, you know,
dealing with the volume that we were dealing with, dealing
with policing as it was back in the day, Yeah,

(45:09):
it's a hard one. It's a hard one to sit
here and justify. It took a while. It took a while,
but it's the reason where maybe talking on podcasts and
stuff like that, just now and and that would you're
faced with a dilemma. It's a dilemma that that doesn't
go away.

Speaker 3 (45:26):
No, indeed, and it didn't go away. And we talked
about it, you know, over the years, there was all
sorts of other stuff happening. We'd meet the pub we'd
have a discussion, and this one kept coming up. You
know that. I think there was for both of us
a degree of unhappiness with it, and we're thinking it
just doesn't kind of sit well with either of us.

Speaker 1 (45:43):
Was there other situations where you've come across maybe people
other police officers not ton the line, and you saw
what maybe happened to them. Was that at the back
of your mind as well? Have you seen witnessed that.

Speaker 3 (45:54):
Well, that's that's a whole different podcast. The victim of it,
The victim of it is Rory.

Speaker 2 (46:01):
Yeah, I am the victim of that.

Speaker 1 (46:04):
Before you, Rory, before.

Speaker 2 (46:06):
You to see if you're making a collective decision about
something for the greater good, But about read into that
whatever you may want, that's okay as long as you
have an understanding of it, an agreement of it, and
are part of the decision process. When you're told crack
on rory Son it's a suicide right to put your
name in the bottom of this, that's a different thing.

(46:28):
That's you being asked to consider something that isn't entirely
within your decision making process. Yeah, and when the buckstops,
I can assure you the buckstops for the reporting officer.
You are the officer that's reporting the facts to the
properator fiscal And are all the facts all the time

(46:49):
correct in every police report. No, they can't be. You know,
it's human nature. But by and large, I'd never faced
this type of dilemma before where it was so personal
and I was flippantly talking about a lawnmower earlier on
and you know, and I'd done house to house inquiry
for a theft of a lawnmower out of shed before.
I don't think even house to house. There wasn't many

(47:10):
houses to but there was houses, there was properties close by.
It aren't this is somebody's life, you know. This isn't
a car stereo that was stolen this is a man,
and if we can't investigate the circumstance of his death properly,
then what exactly as it were doing?

Speaker 3 (47:27):
You know, I kind of feel to some extent I'm
the little angel or devil on his shoulder, the little
kind of nudge of conscience and was here because years
later I went to the Scottish Police College as an
instructor and there is the Scottich Police College. There's a
safe with a little with a block of drugs in it.
Now this might sound bizarre, but a lot of people
who joined the police have never seen drugs, and he

(47:49):
was one of them. You know, it was totally new
to me. I didn't know what cannabis smelled of. I
was fine, naive. I was brought up in the country
and you know, I had a fairly good upbringing. So
when I was there, what they basically did is passed
around the class and everyone had a look at cannabis
and various other drugs.

Speaker 4 (48:03):
Et cetera.

Speaker 3 (48:04):
When I went back there as an instructor kind of
eighteen years later, I'm pretty sure it was the same
block and I was looking at to thinking about it
doesn't smell of anything anymore.

Speaker 4 (48:13):
It's you know it's it's dead.

Speaker 3 (48:16):
So I got straight at the phone with I could
I just say the approval of some supervisors. I got
on to the production keeper at my former police office
and said, have you got any drugs? You know, promise
it's not for the Christmas party, it's for the safe
at the police college, and lo and behold. A little
while afterwards, I got phone call saying, yeah, come on up,
We've got some stuff that's interesting. And I went and

(48:38):
got lots of interesting stuff to show classes. I like
to make them quite fun from my students. So I
took a drive up and when I was back at
my old police office picking up these drugs, I thought,
do you know what I ran?

Speaker 4 (48:52):
Courses a lot to do with death.

Speaker 3 (48:54):
I had a reputation for dealing with death because it
was what done for years as a family's officer, also
as a crash investigate, and you know it was I'd
probably at that stage dealt with well over one hundred deaths.
So I was the go to guy to do classes,
even for other courses. And I thought, I've got a
lot of boxes up in the document storage room here
that I've got my old cases in it.

Speaker 2 (49:15):
Yeah, now you see now, you were very good at
reported death fatal road accents, right, So what he was
looking for was something a wee bit different, something you know,
maybe you say, maybe a drowning, something that didn't involved
wheeled vehicles colliding into each other. Because his stories were frankly,

(49:37):
very boring and his students were pronos sleep So she thought,
how can I spice this class up? The lion.

Speaker 4 (49:53):
I could go better places. So basically, yeah, I went.
I went up to the A store.

Speaker 3 (50:00):
And I took loads. Yeah, I took five or six
big box loads. And they're like the you know if
you watch TV, the big kind of paper boxes that
lawyers have when they go into court. So I took
loads of these away and I started to use them
at the police college. And then one day I thought,
I'm going to show people this one, and actually much
I hate complimenting you, the original crimecy management and it

(50:22):
was very very good, So I would show.

Speaker 2 (50:24):
Was that by me? By me? Is that what you say?
You probably asked the original crime scene management? Is that right?
You buy? The original attending officer? Was what very good?
Is that? What you just said?

Speaker 4 (50:33):
I think I think you probably asked.

Speaker 2 (50:35):
To clarify that on the record, I think.

Speaker 4 (50:37):
You probably asked a suitable adult for some selp.

Speaker 3 (50:39):
But I would show pictures of the original crime scene,
and you know, show that right, this is the route end,
that's the route, that's where everyone goes. This is how
it's marked, all this sort of stuff. That's the little
trees that go on the ground that you step on
so you don't disturb the ground underneath all that sort
of stuff. And I would show people pictures the inside
of the tent. And the very first time I did

(51:01):
this to a class, one of the students sticks hands up,
going to go, well, where's the other guy or girl?
Where's the other person? And I was like he had
kind of forgotten about that. And then I kept showing
it to other courses, and very quickly I thought, I'm
going to stop showing these because every course asked the
same question about where's the other person? So I went
away from that kind of quite troubled. And then, for

(51:24):
various reasons, now you do a podcast with very similar
story to this, where you say the police officer kind
of left the police under under a bit of a cloud.

Speaker 2 (51:32):
I didn't.

Speaker 3 (51:33):
I left the police as being a kind of go
to guy. You know it was, Yeah, everyone thought highlight
of me. It wasn't the.

Speaker 4 (51:41):
Reason I left.

Speaker 3 (51:42):
But before I left, I basically went back and had
a look at all this stuff and was quite troubled
by it. And okay, maybe I broke the roseway, but
I took photographs of the production book because I was
unhappy with what was in it. And then after I'd
left the police for a while, to cut a very
very long story shot, I wrote a book about some
of the stuf gone on in the police and this
was one of the chapters in it, and that elevated

(52:04):
it into.

Speaker 4 (52:05):
A degree of public attention from there on in.

Speaker 3 (52:08):
It's kind of despaired, I know from the police talk
of it being reopened, But the police to me never
gave an explanation for why things were the way they were,
and I don't think they ever will because to do
that they'd have to reinvestigate it and that would cost money.

Speaker 2 (52:21):
Well coming in there, Bobby boy, they did as a
really popular and trendy thing is he isn't it the
cold case that reopened it and all that? But they did,
they did, genuinely do that. They reopened them. By all accounts,
I had stayed quiet. I came out the police, which
is a completely different podcast, but it stayed quiet for
a long time. Bobby had Writteny's book, things had made

(52:44):
the press. I felt it was time in terms of
the family to speak out, and I believe the case
was mentioned at the Scottish Parliament by an MSP and
the parliam at that time was a lot of advocate
and he had asked for basically for the case to
be reopened. I reached out to him. I said, I
am the report officer. I am happy to speak to yourself,

(53:05):
your office or lawyer's representation in the family, or the
family themselves that mattered. I'd rather not speak to the police.
And I never got a reply. I've got a one
more reply saying thanks, We'll be in touch. In terms
of that, the case was reopened and closed again. I
let's bear in mind Rory was the reporting officer for
this fictional case. He was never spoken to by anybody

(53:26):
in this second investigation. Perhaps if he was spoken to,
he would have corroborated Bob's story in Bob's book, and
that would have been a right old pickle. It kind
of ended there. But in terms of the hotel, what
we have to look at is this hotel was ridiculously
close to the scene of the recovery of Nigel. Now
to walk past it made absolutely no sense. And that Okay,

(53:50):
you may not have the money to book a room
in the hotel, but you had a bunk house, a
bunk house for walkers. It's only tenor if that's what
you wanted to do. You had somewhere to use the toilet,
you had somewhere to get a pint and get a meal,
and more importantly that you had a very flat and
a very safe and a very picturesque, floodly almost campsite

(54:11):
as part of the hotel, right next to it, right
next to a very iconic bridge.

Speaker 1 (54:15):
How far are you talking? How like, just how far
away is that.

Speaker 2 (54:18):
From Peter Nigel was recovered. Yeah, less than a quarter
of a mile. They're really not far at all. Now,
it's within selling within sight. So the footpath, the walk
that Bob was talking about, goes right through it, if
you like. But to get to where Nigel was found,
you have to deviate by a couple of hundred yards
to the right from the footpath. Okay, so you're making

(54:41):
a conscious decision to come off the path walk a
couple of hundred yards along a single track road to
the right hand side. From there to a very sharp
left and walk directly into very dense Caledonian pine forest. Now,
the tents only in there for one reason, and that
is to conceal the tent. So what's the point of
concealment of the tent so you're not found, or to

(55:04):
conceal the tent so you're not seen. It just didn't
really make sense none. That's the thing that I kind
of struggled with. And if we go back to when
I was first talking about Nigel, this is a man
who's who's afraid, didn't like to be alone. And I
remember the police officer who didn't like being up there
alone in order for him to pitch his tent, and

(55:26):
there is taking a bit of courage, like you know,
So if we look at the sleeping bags, are you
taking two sleeping bags because you're expecting company or do
you have two sleep bags because you've had company? Are
you taking a three pack of condoms because you're expecting company?
Because do you take a three pack of condoms when
you're going walking? I know, you know, just in the

(55:50):
off chance that you get lucky you meet a fellow. Hell,
I don't know, maybe you do. And I know what
Bob was saying about carrying too much stuff and carry
the biscuit tins and stuff. It's funny. I'd forgotten about that.
But we have to play Devil's advocate there as well
and say, is this man's mind completely shutting down? So

(56:10):
what we think is rational or irrational? He thinks is rational. True,
he thinks it's normal to gather all this stuff together. Well,
that's taking your old life is far from normal. So
you know you have to see the behavior prior to
that is irrational.

Speaker 1 (56:26):
Well, I understand that, But then there's the how how
did he physically carry all this stuff? Regardless of whether
he's he left his carrent or Arthur work from the south,
how is he carrying all this stuff?

Speaker 2 (56:39):
I'm very cautious about what I was saying. You know,
when he did these Monros half the Monroe's, he did
it with a childhood trend. That childhood trend was interviewed
by the press and he had said he felt that
that Nigel just take that it had all been come
too much for him and he had just taken himself
off and didn't want to be a burdener on his family,
and he did say it as such a bit of you.

(57:01):
Reading between the lines of the document, it's clear that
he had thought he'd committed suicide. Well, well, my question
then is I'm the reporting officer. Why did I not
know this guy's name? What else was this guy privy
to in terms of Nigel's and their feelings and thoughts
And Okay, so the tabloid press are speaking to him,

(57:21):
but we the police are not speaking to His father
also said that his worst fear that his son was
lying in the woods unfound for three years, which is
it's dreadful. But the thing where they tell that that's important,
that that was a safe house, the tail and the
campsites there for a reason. It's a safe place, you know.

(57:42):
Did he go in there for a meal? Did he
go in there for a pee? That? You know? Why?
Why I can seal it. It's so close to that walkway,
you know, but it's so close to the walkway, but
so well hidden that it stayed hidden for three years. Now,
that's a single track road that I'd been driving once
twice a week. Maybe you couldn't see it, you physically

(58:03):
couldn't see it, and it's it's less than it's less
than a lorry's width away from the road. Whether he
was actually recovered, but what is for sure is that
the tent was concealed. Now, if it was concealed to
take its own life, or it was concealed for another reason,
I'm not sure.

Speaker 1 (58:20):
So are you saying that you mentioned there that you're
you're asking your did he take? Did he have a
meal there? Did he have a pint there? So you're
saying that that was never even looked into either, and
that nobody was.

Speaker 2 (58:30):
Ever in Well, what you've got to remembers, I'm the
reporting officer, so if that was the case, that should
surely come to me.

Speaker 1 (58:35):
And nothing that never came to you either, that nothing.

Speaker 2 (58:38):
Nothing, So did MB actually did Embry actually go to
the hotel? Now it's it's not far it it's a
two minute walk, you know, it's a hotel. I was
never out of you know, I was very you know,
but it was accepted that was you know, I'm told
by seeing the officers this is a suicide. I've got
no reason to disbelieve that. The actual question as to

(58:59):
whether it was I started this story by telling you
I think it's a suicide. But was somebody else with
him prior to the event or was he expecting someone?
Or is there an underling? There was obviously an underlying
factors why he felt he had to take his own life.
But I kind of ended with there's outstanding questions, for sure,

(59:22):
there's outstanding questions, right, And so why was there so
much kit at the campsite? Why buy a new sleeping
bag and still carry an old one? Did Nigel plan
to meet up with someone, hence the sleeping bags and
the condoms? Who owned the other pair of shoes or
were the Nigels? Why was the tent deliberately concealed by
a man afraid of being alone? How did Nigel get
there without being seen by one single person on this

(59:43):
busy Highland trail? Was his childhood friend spoken to the
police to shed light on his friend's camping habits? After all,
when Nigel went walk and he did so with his
childhood friend routinely. What was the extent of the second
police review? I don't know, And despite freedom of information
request by the press, that's steamed not in the public

(01:00:04):
interest to release that second review. And crucially, where is
the condom now whose seemen is inside it, which brings
us back full circle to where it's Piglet. So the
condom and the would we left the police in twenty thirteen,
I believe my understanding that was still there. I don't know,

(01:00:24):
so the answers remain unknown. But all that aside the
facts if we just stick to the facts, you know
that not the top and the chat and the rumors
and what Bob believes and what Rory believes and what
the press believe, and the facts are. It was a
two man tent with one body within it. There were
two sleeping bags. It was a significant amount of kit
for one man to carry. The car was fifty miles away,

(01:00:46):
he had the keys on him. The tent was deliberately
concealed from view. There was a used condom found inside
one of the sleeping bags. Piglet is missing from Nigel's
home and from the scene, and the police undoubtedly miss
crucial evidence at the time and chose to ignore it
when it was presented to them.

Speaker 3 (01:01:04):
The close off for me in terms of and I
don't have a huge involvement missed. You know, sometimes I
get kind of the blame for being the one if
you like who brought it to light. But just before
I left, I went and basically had a look at
the production book to see what happened to if the
condom still existed, etc. And I also had a look

(01:01:27):
through all the file before it was returned back to
that office because I had to return everything before I left.
And when I did that, the email that you sent
basically after we had left the garage was there basically
saying this is the problem, making you away of it, etcetera, etcetera.
All very polite and to the point I'm factually correct.

(01:01:50):
The production book when I looked at it afterwards. Now,
to put this in context, if you put something in
that production store, it would stay there ate or nine
years before the production keeper eventually would come and say,
you know, like Bob, get rid of that. It's been
there forever, contact fiscal, has the case been dealt with.
There was a lot of stuff there, All the productions
for this case, every single one of them was destroyed

(01:02:12):
after that email. So basically everything was taken and incinerated,
with two exceptions. One was the other pair of boots,
and the reason for that is the cop who was
asked to destroy them didn't do that, and the other
one is the condom. And the only reason it wasn't
destroyed I suspect because nobody knew it was find it
because it wasn't. It wasn't on the original page, so

(01:02:33):
if you looked at the page with all the productions,
it wouldn't have been there because it was found days afterwards.
So I don't express an opinion on this. I'm quite
happy to leave this for your listeners to say, oh, well, okay,
I think it's the sort of thing it's that, and
you know it's not suspicious or it is. I would
rather just leave people with the facts because when I

(01:02:53):
first raised this, it was kind of a thing put
to the family that I had an axe to grind here.
Either I wanted to make money of it, which I
don't because I'm you know, didn't need to make money
out of it, neither of us do, or that we
hated the police and I didn't, you know, I definitely didn't.
I left the police on good terms. I think they
were happy with me and I was okay with him.
That wasn't my rational believing. I left for totally different reasons,

(01:03:16):
which is another podcast, as is the same for Rory
but I would rather your listeners just decide based on
the fact what they think went on, because I don't know,
and I don't know where Big is and I'd love
to know.

Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
Yeah, to come in and that it's very personal for me.
I mean, it's like with most things. Bob's done it
too many times in his life. For your walk of
the family to the scene of some god awful road
crash and the lay flowers. You know, we do that
for you know, we go out away and we do
that to the best of our ability, and we'd get

(01:03:50):
people up hills, we'd move having on earth to get
families there. And this was no exception. And the Nigel's parents,
who were elderly came up and yeah, and we stood
there and it was a wee wick across and some daffodils,
as I remember, because it was the time of year,
and they were laid and I'm standing there saying that
this is where your son took his own life. Now

(01:04:14):
do I know that? Do I know that?

Speaker 3 (01:04:16):
No?

Speaker 2 (01:04:17):
Because if if you were to say to a parent,
this is where your child took his or her life,
You're going to question yourself as a parent. It's a
very hard thing to hear. Now, if you come along
years later and say, yeah, but maybe a big bad
man did it and ran away, well that's almost a straw.
It's almost something to clutch at. It's a completely different thing.
And it's why I never said it and I never

(01:04:38):
do and always start with this is a suicide. I
believe it's a suicide. But I believe what my side
of the story is. This Nigel's death was not investigated properly.
There's one very very simple thing that would have stopped
all of this and we wouldn't be talking here today
if it took place DNA the condom. You know, it

(01:04:58):
might not have answered all the question. It might not
have answered the trail, It might not have answered the kit,
the two sleeping bags, all that, but it would have
answered a question in my head for sure. There Yeah, yeah,
it was it his or was it somebody else's, because
because that's a big deal. Where it ends up, I
don't know, I don't know. It's it's it's interesting it
took another three years from me to walk away from

(01:05:21):
the police again healing me with something similar. At that
point I decided that was enough and you know, you
have to come you reach a level where you say
this is the end, this is the end, and you
have to walk away with you know, Bob's book, my
own notes jotted down with the podcast and everything we do,

(01:05:41):
we tried to install humor in it. And what I
always says, I loved my job. I loved the first
fifty years of my job. It's not a job that
exists anymore in terms of Scottis Community of policing. But
it was a fantastic job. But neither me or Bob
really Bob slate the police. You know, it wasn't that.
We're an inside understand of what was happening and why

(01:06:01):
we were doing it, and we knew why we were
doing it.

Speaker 3 (01:06:04):
I think that's true. Can I just say I do
slate the police by slate police culture, organization of management. Yeah,
I have a lot of respect for cops, you know,
individual cops in uniform, particularly in uniform. Yeah, going to jobs,
it's a tough, almost sometimes impossible job.

Speaker 2 (01:06:19):
It's extremely rewarding as well. But when it goes right,
you know, but when you have questions that you know,
you're like, what is this about money? Is this about
not want to say sorry? Is this about losing face? Then? Yeah,
you start questioning whether or not that that that is right?

(01:06:40):
I think, yeah, I.

Speaker 1 (01:06:43):
Just think, why being a job like that, which is
somebody's actual life, unless you're going to do a good
job with it.

Speaker 2 (01:06:49):
It's funny should say. I used to say, probationers that
had or whatever. You know, you can only do this
job if you enjoy it. You can only do it
well if you enjoy it, if you have an understanding
of it. You know. I used to be my answer that,
you know, I said, you know, we didn't know what
we were doing. You don't, you know, we're just people,
you know, and you don't have much to base it on.
You've got some training on legislation and stuff. But I

(01:07:11):
always stuck and it worked with me for at least
fifteen years, and it was always if you were in
this god awful situation, what would you want a police
officer to do? And I did it and it was
an act, you know, And Bob will say the same thing,
you know. I mean, there was a reason neither of
us probably didn't joice join CID or stuff like that,
because you had upon the uniform and become the part

(01:07:33):
almost you know, and people would have to recognize jenistenly
as there to help and be the police, you know,
And then if you just stuck with what would you
want a cop to do in this situation? Do it?
And it worked, It worked, And the problem then was
I wasn't doing what I thought if it was my
family member. Now, Bob used to say to me over

(01:07:53):
these pints and all this, it was the one thing
that kept nagging me is that, but always one of yours, Rory,
what was your family member? Would you not want to know?
You know, would you want to know that the police
could have done more? And yes? Was the answer to
that ultimately is yes, isn't it?

Speaker 1 (01:08:08):
It is? But the thing is you'd want them to
have done more at the time rather than it be
you know, a wound.

Speaker 3 (01:08:14):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And I don't think it's recoverable now. Unfortunately,
you know, we're both both because the police have changed
in its nature and all the productions have gone quite
perfect else But back to the police won't ever apologize.
That's it's not in their nature because the culture and
the polics you have to be seen to be right.
It's very very hard and the police to go back

(01:08:34):
and say you made a mistake. And when I joined.
I remember being told by a senior also becau, as
long as you're in your motivation for doing something was good,
we'll always back you up, you know what, We'll accept
a mistake. That changed it absolutely changed. It got to
the point you had to be seen to be perfect
and everything you did and you couldn't be a human being.

Speaker 2 (01:08:53):
Discretion was our was our gift really in uniform, you know,
and to be allowed that discretion, to be allowed to
use your common sense and act like a person, like
a human being and not just a ticket machine. You
know that that's what it was. And I think it's
no coincidence that if you look at the timeline as
to when both Bob and myself came out of the Police,

(01:09:16):
it was when it became Police Scotland. And my humble opinion,
I don't know Bob's the saying was it became a
business at that stage and I wasn't in the business
of making or saving money.

Speaker 3 (01:09:26):
Yeah, you know, there was no discretion. I mean again,
that'd be a separate podcast. And why we both left
a big part of why I left was the way
I saw professional standards having targets and basically targeting corps
who were good cops. But yeah, it became a business.
It became a bout issuing tickets. There was no discretion.
You stopped a good member of the public who'd made

(01:09:46):
a simple mistake, you know, speeding, having a pee behind
a tree after a night, and all that sort of stuff.
It didn't matter what it was. There was no discretion.
There was no ability to just tell them off and
letting them go. No, it was all about stop searches
and targets. Also, there was a lot in the press,
but it stopped searching kids, which absolutely went on. It
was a number, it was a KPI. You came back
in the office and you reported it on a spreadsheet,

(01:10:09):
and that was the way it was.

Speaker 2 (01:10:10):
Yeah, And you could live with all that, well, you
could live with it. There was a relative sort of understanding.
But when it came to the deaths of Nigel in
particular and four other men that followed them three years later,
that's enough. At that point, you know, that's way beyond
someone getting a ticket, because you don't have your discretion anymore.
It's way beyond you know, you're there to serve and

(01:10:33):
protect life, and if you if you're not doing that,
what on earth are you doing? And look at where
we are, just now that all that the office I
worked out of it no longer exists. Neither does my
neighboring district offices exist anymore. They're all policed remotely from
large city control rooms and the response times are horrific,
you know. And nobody knows the names of the people

(01:10:53):
in these hotels, or the forest workers or the school
or or anybody else, or or the layout of the land,
you know, And that's ad. That is sad that the
only positive there is the current chief, of course, we'll
believe is talking about the answer to policing being community policing,
and we'll like, yep, really.

Speaker 3 (01:11:10):
Yeah, it's going to be a struggle to get back though.
You can't go back to all the offices being sold.

Speaker 2 (01:11:15):
No, no, no, you can't. Anyway, that was the case
of Nigel and our fictional heads in our tiny little
fictional world at the Scottish Islands, and none of it happens.

Speaker 1 (01:11:26):
You have a hell of an imagination, is all I
can say.

Speaker 2 (01:11:29):
Yeah, it's pretty good.

Speaker 3 (01:11:31):
We're good.

Speaker 2 (01:11:32):
We're good with dates and that, you know, we just
picked dates up.

Speaker 3 (01:11:35):
We stick with them.

Speaker 1 (01:11:38):
So there you have it. What have you been left
thinking after listening to this two parter. If you have
any questions, comments, or thoughts about this case that you'd
like to put to Rory and Bob, or if you
have an opinion as to what could have happened to Piglet,
you can contact me on Instagram at Scottish Murders Podcast.
You can leave a comment on YouTube and Spotify, or
leave a review on Apple, or send me an email

(01:12:00):
at Hello at Scottish Murders dot com and I'll forward
to Rory and Bob and we may just do another
episode to answer your questions if you'd like to hear
more from Bob and Rory about this fictional case, as
well as hear the story behind Rory leaving the police,
which is a cracker of a story and as he mentioned,
it could be a whole other podcast. You can hear

(01:12:21):
all about this by listening to their podcast Code to
one and listening to their episodes Where's Piglet? Part One
and two and episodes The Truth, The Whole Truth and
Nothing Like the Truth. I've listened to every episode of
Code to one and like I said, I love their podcast.
There is a large amount of black humor and swearing,

(01:12:41):
but each episode is hugely eye opening and entertaining, and
I understand their podcasts their way of dealing with and
sharing all that they experienced if this weren't a fiction.
Being former Scottish police officers, I hope you'll give Code
to one a listen, and I'd love it if you
let me know what you think once you've heard the
story around Rory leaving the place. Thanks again for listening

(01:13:03):
to this two parts special with Bob and Rory from
Code two one. I've been your host, Don.

Speaker 2 (01:13:15):
Scottish Murders is a production of Chlorine Tone

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