All language subtitles for Murder Case The Vanishing Cyclist S01E01

It was just over a hundred miles, he was adamant that he was going to get this done.

The last text message I sent him would have been asking him if he was still alive.

Everything you could think of was extensively searched and there was not a single trace of Tony Parsons or the

bike, any of his possessions, nothing.

Initially, you've got that emotion, it's like, well, surely he was going to come back.

Then you turn to anger, because it's like, where the hell are you? Why are you not home? What has

happened?

There was an image that I'll never forget, an image of him on his bike, and it was the last

sighting of him, just near to a petrol station, and then he was never seen again.

It was as if Tony Parsons had just disappeared off the face of the earth.

You want to give the family answers, you want to give them peace of mind, but you can't.

I'd spent three years coming to terms with the fact that my dad wasn't coming home.

So I was at peace in myself that that was the way that it was going to be.

And then, all of a sudden, one phone call...

We've scrapped them, can I help you?

...flipped everything upside down.

It was quite a moment.

We're actually going to get this family some answers here.

Lord!

My Lord, this case commenced as a missing person inquiry before evolving into an investigation.

It seemed to me that an argument could be made out for murder.

We played rugby together.

He also coached kids rugby.

He refereed.

He was quite a stubborn fellow, but generally just a nice guy.

I knew he'd had the cancer.

He decided he was going to do this ride from Fort William to Sturring,

get the train up to Fort William, and then cycle back to Sturring.

So, we're all getting some cash to go towards this chatty thing.

He asked me if I was interested.

And I said, I've not ridden a push bike since I was about 15 years old, you know.

So, I bribed my way out of it.

I said, if you do that ride, I'll give you some money towards your charity.

I was nervous about him going out.

As a family, we'd all voiced our concerns.

But he had raised money, so that's why he stuck by it.

That was just his sort of stubborn nature that when he set his mind to do something, he was going

to do it.

Once he'd started it, he was going to finish it.

He got up to Fort William where he got off the train.

And then started the bike ride.

When my dad left on the Friday, I didn't have any contact with him.

But that's not unusual.

On the Saturday, he hadn't phoned in or checked in with anybody.

The phone went straight to answer the machine.

I got a message from my sister telling me that he hadn't been in contact.

My sister and my mum and I had the conversation as to what my dad's exact plans were.

It might have taken a bit longer than he anticipated.

On the Sunday, I decided, right, I'm going to take a drive up, see how he's getting on.

He'll either continue or I'd bring him home.

I saw absolutely no sign of my dad at that point.

It got to the Sunday evening and we were really starting to get concerned about it.

On the Monday morning, I reported him as a missing person.

I heard the front door go.

First, I thought it was Tony, but it wasn't, it was Vicky.

She just went, Mum, I've reported my dad missing.

And I went, this must be bad.

For her to do it, it must be bad.

Tony was deemed as a high-risk missing person right from the word go.

We had no idea where he was.

So my advice at that point was to start searching the roads network from Fort William South.

He's 63, so it's a big cycle to take on for anyone, really.

Could have taken on well and either sought shelter or pulled in inside the road somewhere

and not been able to seek assistance or help.

The terrain that we were looking at was very mixed.

It's mountainous, rivers, moorland.

Could have been hit by a car or a lorry.

If he'd been involved in a collision with a car or he'd come off his bike,

he'd expect to find some damaged parts of the bike or some clothing.

We weren't getting anything.

It was absolutely no trace of Tony, his bike or his property.

We're all frustrated because we knew time was ticking

and if Tony was lying there injured, he wouldn't have survived indefinitely.

The pressure was on, where is he?

The search was brought to a halt on the evening of the Monday night

and the intention was to reconvene at first light the next morning with extra resources.

Margaret phoned me to say Tony had gone on the bike ride and he's not come home.

I kind of said, well, hey, he's out there somewhere.

Maybe his bike's broke down or something and he'll be a bit late getting back.

But you know Tony, he all turns up.

I never said nothing to Margaret because I didn't want to upset her in any way whatsoever.

But my personal thoughts were something's not right here.

To have somebody go missing is a strange feeling because you don't know anything.

You have 101 different questions that are going on in your head

and you've got no answers to answer any of them.

We understood from Tony's family that he had got the train with his bike up to Fort William.

His intention was to cycle down the A82 back towards Stirling direction.

When he was first reported missing, it was crucial to try and understand that timeline

and get some evidence as to his movements.

For a missing person in an urban area, we've got good opportunities around the CCTV.

If you move into the Highland area, you've got much less foot traffic, you've got less CCTV opportunities.

Because we knew to start the cycle in Fort William, we went up there first and got CCTV from the

train station.

So that confirmed for us that he got to Fort William to start the cycle.

His route would be down through here towards Balahulish and down into Glencoe village.

We're really looking for checkpoints then along that route to try and confirm that that was where he went.

And it's quite an exposed and uninhabited area, this.

So in terms of trying to get some evidence of his route from CCTV, etc., it's very difficult.

The next piece of CCTV that we established was at this petrol station.

That was able to confirm for us that he had actually continued on his intended route.

But there's no further CCTV for probably another 20 miles or so.

That was the last CCTV sign we had of him before witnesses that speak to him being at the Bridge

of Orca Hotel.

He had reached the Bridge of Orca Hotel by which time it was quite late at night.

The weather was adverse and he had stopped in there for a refreshment and a break.

We got statements from them confirming that this guy had been in.

That matters Tony's description.

So we're pretty confident it was Tony that he'd been in.

The staff in there actually had suggested he maybe should stay given the weather conditions.

But Tony was determined to continue the journey.

The next place we would expect to see him was at Tyndrum Village.

CCTV they had didn't show Tony arriving.

So that immediately gets us concerned because naturally he would come through Tyndrum coming down to 82.

The fact he didn't appear on CCTV in Tyndrum made us start to look at that journey between Bridge of

Orca and Tyndrum.

What's happened to him between those two points and what could have happened to him.

Somewhere on that stretch of road.

Tony passes and vanished off the face of the earth.

There's different stages to this story.

The first part is a missing person and that is not unusual.

People go missing in the Highlands a lot for many different reasons.

Usually people are found pretty soon but the longer that Tony Parsons stays missing the questions begin to grow and

change.

From where is he what happened to him to why isn't he found.

Between the Bridge of Orca Hotel where he was last seen and Tyndrum where he was heading towards.

It's only a distance of about seven miles.

Imagine a low wide valley flanked by bare mountain sides that are scoured by rivulets.

And in the middle you've got a road and you've got a railway line going through that pass.

It's a busy route.

Why has no one seen him?

Isn't it strange that they haven't found a body?

They haven't found a bike.

They haven't found any trace of him.

At the end of that week we'd pretty much exhausted all the physical searching we could do.

There was nothing found at all that pertained to Tony or his property.

It was a bizarre feeling, you know, at the end not finding him after all the search activity.

He had literally vanished.

Mountain rescue teams are searching for a man who's been missing for more than a week after setting out on

a cycling trip from Fort William to Tillacoutree.

63-year-old Tony Parsons was seen at the Bridge of Orchie Hotel.

He left that area and headed south.

It came up in the news that a cyclist had disappeared and then we realised it was Tony.

It was a hell of a shock.

I got messages from other friends and former colleagues of Tony saying,

Is this our Tony? Is this Tony Parsons?

This doesn't happen to somebody you know.

Somebody disappears.

It's just, it's unimaginable.

One of the hardest things going through all of this was the fact that we are from a policing background.

Being in the police, you know what comes next.

I spent round about 13 years as a member of the police search team.

So when it came to a week, there was a definite change in mindset.

Because of the length of time that he would have been without water or without food.

That became really difficult.

My sister is obviously, she's a serving officer as well.

So she was aware of where my mind was going.

The main focus was, how is mum going to deal with this?

How are we going to get her through?

I kept thinking he would just walk in.

He would just walk in.

I didn't want to think about it being bad.

He could come round that corner.

I tried not to think about him not coming up.

The resources were committed to that as long as he possibly could.

You can't continue to commit resources endlessly to it because there's a new missing person every day.

There's no evidence that he had been a victim of criminality.

There wasn't any evidence that he'd been struck by a car or a lorry or anything on the side of

the road either because there was no debris.

You do have to have that conversation with my family to say the realistic chance is that we're not going

to have the outcome that we all want to find that person still alive.

There was no sign of my dad, therefore he would be treated as a long-term missing person.

We now know that he'll either walk through the door one day with a miraculous reason as to why he's

not been in contact or he potentially could be found by a dog walker.

These are the ones I like.

Nice photos.

I met Tony when I was working on Saturday Job on the Market.

I got married at 17.

Tony was in the Navy.

I loved him in uniform.

Honestly, you'd see him in uniform and you'd just light up.

He was on submarines, so we moved up to Scotland because that's where he was based.

I was very proud of Tony.

Very proud of what he did.

Powering through a Scottish lock, warming up for another patrol, dwarfing the men who run it, this is HMS Resolution,

the oldest of Britain's four Pilaris missile submarines.

Tony and I, we were on two submarines together.

This is the beach in Helmsborough.

Up to the north is Fas Lane, the submarine base.

The submarine, as they leave, will sail down here.

Families would wave goodbye to the departing submarine.

The submarine can go round the corner and head out down the cloud to the open sea where he'll dive

and head off on his patrol.

We disappeared.

We were both on the same submarine for quite a while.

Tony was a great guy for me.

He is single-minded at times.

If he sets his mind to do something, he's going to do it by hook or by crook.

But he's such a generous bloke.

You'll get to see for anything from probably four to 16 weeks is the longest I did.

And you've got to be able to get on with people.

Action stations, action stations.

He was a good guy. If Tony could do you a favour, he would do you a favour.

Tony was away quite a bit.

That was difficult.

Because you were at home with children, you had to be mum and dad.

Seeing him coming back from a tour with the submarine coming up the Clyde with the people on top of

the Conning Tower waving.

It was always something that I looked forward to.

Then we'd have to come back to reality of knowing that the dad was going to go away again.

When we'd go on patrol, your wife knew that you were gone and you'd be gone for two or three

months or whatever.

They knew you were probably in the Atlantic somewhere, but they knew we were coming home.

But when Tony then disappeared on the bike ride, that was a completely different kettle of fish.

Margaret would have no clue what was going on.

He was due home the next day and he didn't come home.

On the 29th of September 2017, father of two, Tony Parsons, set off from his home near Alloa in Scotland

to take part in a charity bike ride.

But he went missing and hasn't been seen since.

This morning his family and police are appealing for your help to find him.

Duke and Sinclair, Chief Inspector, you're leading this investigation.

Tell us about what we last know about Tony's movements.

Yes, on Friday the 29th of September 2017, Tony boarded a train in Alloa to Fort William.

We then know that he was seen on CCTV passing a garage in Glencoe just after six o'clock the

same evening.

It was then about 20 past 11 that night that he entered a hotel on the bridge of Orkey where

he stopped for a coffee before carrying on again southbound on the 82 on his journey towards Tindrum.

That's the last confirmed sighting we have of Tony and we're appealing for anyone who may have seen Tony, his

clothing or his bright yellow bike after the bridge of Orkey to come forward.

You have people that go missing short term, medium term and long term.

Initially, you've got that emotion that, yeah, you want to find them.

It then turns into disbelief. It's like, well, surely they're going to come back. They're not going to be away

for so long.

Then you turn to anger because it's like, where the hell are you? Why are you not home? What has

happened?

It is unusual. It's pretty unique. There aren't that many long term missing persons that we have going on.

We're intrigued. We want to know what happened to people.

So to have an unanswered mystery like this, we just want to know, we want to know for the family,

we want to know ourselves what happened to them.

Once we've done everything we can in terms of the usual inquiries, it moves into an annual review phase.

I did the annual review in 2020. By this point, he's been missing for three years.

And we looked at everything. Because it's so remote, there was very few people that were there that might have

seen him.

It became a hope that one day, as part of the clearing of the woods on the sides of the

road, that maybe we would get some answer for Tony's family.

But as those woods were being cleared, we still weren't getting anything.

I was more and more concerned that maybe he had been the victim of crime.

One possible explanation was he's been struck by a vehicle travelling on the road on his bike between the Bridge

of Oracle Hotel and Tyne Drum.

It's because we haven't recovered the bike, because there's no obvious debris on the road between those points.

We had to look at, could somebody have taken him into a vehicle?

It's been taken into a car, a van, a lorry that's hit him and moved from that point.

One of the things we looked at was the CCTV from Glencoe.

As cars were going through Glencoe, the next thing we picked up would be at Tyne Drum.

We looked at every car that came through Glencoe to Tyne Drum, through that period that we knew Tony was

cycling that area, to see the time scale of them travelling between the two points.

What we were looking for was any cars or lorries that were taking longer than they should have taken.

Have they stopped? Have they hit him? Have they picked him up from the side of the road and then

continued their journey?

They didn't give us anything.

We could see that the vehicles that did travel along that road were all travelling in the timeframe we'd expect.

Without any other information that we had that was going to come forward, there was nothing else really for us

to do.

For three years we had a void, Tony Parsons disappears without a trace.

Nothing.

Loads of questions, unanswered.

When he went missing there was a feeling of strangeness.

It's that mysterious thing about, where did he go?

Where on earth could he have gone?

People never give up hope of finding people in this part of the world.

So it becomes part of local knowledge.

You're aware that Tony Parsons is missing.

So when you go a walk, or even if you are just stopping by the side of the road for

five minutes, you're always thinking, is he here?

There were lots of rumours from people in this part of the world about what had happened to him.

One of the key parts of the investigation is the witnesses that have been spoken to initially, and what they

told us at that time, and what they know now, has there been any change in that?

So we review all the witness statements.

One of the things we picked up on was a letter that had been received by the police shortly after

the missing person report was received.

It was anonymous.

It was about twins from Tyne Drum that were repeatedly driving under the influence of alcohol.

Tens to the Bridge of Orchie Hotel the night that Tony went missing.

We identified the twins, looked at had they been spoken to at the time, and yes they have.

They were known to be involved in deer stalking on that estate.

There's a suggestion of taking clients back and forth between the Orch Estate and the Bridge of Orchie Hotel,

which would involve driving up and down that only road that connected those two locations,

which also happens to be the road that Tony Parsons has been cycling on.

I wanted to know more from them about where they were in the hotel.

Did they see Tony that night?

I took a decision to go and see them, and they were able to confirm that yes,

they were in the Bridge of Orchie Hotel that night.

Having dinner with one of the stalking parties, and they were going out the next morning to take them out

stalking deer.

So they recalled it, remember that night, they'd left the hotel, and they were away early,

because they were up early the next day.

I didn't get a flavour from them at that point that they were holding something back.

The letters are anonymous, so we can't go back to the source to say,

well, how do you know this information, and how can we build on that?

It doesn't put any light of suspicion on them.

There was a lot of people in the hotel, so we can't say they had any direct involvement.

And also, they had no clarity about whether Tony had been the victim of a crime or not,

so nobody was being approached as a suspect at that point.

It comes back to people. People are critical.

So witnesses, an eyewitness, or somebody that can give you information you didn't know before.

What the review does often do is prompt people to start coming forward.

People have maybe not spoken to us for their own reasons.

They decide they want to come in and tell us the truth.

Good morning. If there's police scope on time, can I help you?

I used to report information about a crime that happened three years ago in Bridge of Oakley.

Right, and is there any reason why you've left it three years, ma'am?

Well, I've only just had a relationship with this man. I'm only for about a week, two days ago.

And do you believe that this man's genuine in what he was telling you?

Absolutely.

What's his name, please?

What's your name, please, ma'am?

What's your name, please, ma'am?

What's your name, ma'am?

Hello?

There's a lot of Mysteries Unsolved Deaths

where people phone up and provide information to the police

to suggest that they hold the key to solving it.

And you know when you listen to it in the first instance

that the person's not credible.

But there's a lot of detail in that initial call

that starts to make you think

this one could actually be genuine.

It's a brief call to make.

That gives you an indication

of what the person is potentially like as well

because there's compassion there

and that you need to recover this body

and the family need to be reunited with her loved one.

From the moment Caroline first spoke to us

and all the checks we did in relation to the information

she was providing, the background of her,

the background of Sandy and Robert, the location,

all the information tends to tie up.

We really need to speak to this person face to face very soon.

I have worked on a lot of enquiries.

This case sticks out because from start to finish

there were so many twists and turns and so many complexities to it.

It was a missing person enquiry that had ran for three years.

We had this information from a credible source

but from one source and it was how we go about that,

how do we do this, is there a body up in the state in Orkey?

And if there is, how did it happen?

What was the cause of death? Was it a murder?

I got told I was going to speak to Caroline Muirhead

and I was going to go take a statement from her.

We got an agreement that she would come meet us

at Dunbarton Police Office.

I think I knew how important that statement would be

because it was probably one of the most interesting

and complex statements I've ever taken in my life.

She was in leggings and big winter boots.

Really, really pretty, athletic-looking girl.

She actually looked like something out of a winter catalogue

and she just came up and she just started crying

and then it was like, right, let's get you in

and let's talk to you.

Caroline's a pathologist and when I speak to her,

she's upset but she is articulate, she speaks really well.

Her ex-partner, Sandy McKellar, had told her

that he and his brother Robert had been involved

with a serious crime.

Sandy and Robert were gamekeepers, deerstalkers.

It's an estate working farm.

Sandy and Robert live there.

It just gives an idea of the kind of life they had.

They're just a couple of hard-working,

kind of jack-o-lad type guys, aren't they?

Shearing sheep.

Somewhere up in the mountains,

they were both into hunting.

Totally different to the type of person, routinely,

that, you know, we would encounter.

Caroline and Sandy, I would never put the two of them together.

You have Caroline, who's from the city, from Glasgow,

been to university.

And then you had Sandy,

who was from a working farm environment,

lived in an estate.

It was a whirlwind relationship.

I actually think that Caroline didn't just fall in love with Sandy,

she fell in love with the Bridge of Worky.

She loved the outdoors, who would take her shooting.

Caroline had said, I had a bit of a realisation that I don't really know this guy too well.

I would quite like to know if there's any skeletons in the closet,

was how she described it, that are going to impact on our future together.

They both have this discussion, well, if we're going to get engaged after such a short period of time,

we need to know everything about each other,

so let's tell each other our deepest, darkest secrets.

Sandy tells her everything.

He drives her onto the estate.

She says he actually asked her for her phone.

Drives her to somewhere really, really remote,

where nobody else can overhear them.

She says she was a bit scared and she thought,

what is he going to tell me here?

She was thinking, well, there might be some child I don't know about,

or some kind of addiction or financial issue.

And then he says, the biggest secret I have

is that I've killed somebody.

I mean, my brother and Robert were drunk.

We were on the Bridge of Warkie Hotel.

We left in the car, I was driving.

We had a cyclist.

We didn't even see him.

We stopped, we got out of the car.

He was in the lay-by at the side of the road.

We panicked, we drove our truck back to the farm because it was accident damaged.

We then got the other truck and drove it back up.

We put him in the back of the truck.

And then we put him at the back of the house wrapped in the tarpaulin.

We left him there till it was clear the next night,

and then we decided to go bury him.

Sandy confesses everything to her.

He leaves nothing out.

He also implicates his brother.

By telling Caroline everything and confessing that secret that probably him and his brother

have agreed to take to the grave with them,

he's putting his future and his brother's future in jeopardy.

And his parents as well, because they live in that state, that's all they know.

Their jobs are there.

He jeopardises his whole family to confess this secret to a girl he's known for four months.

Caroline asked Sandy to show the exact spot he did.

He pointed it out.

And she left a red bull can.

She said she deliberately dropped a red bull can at the point where Sandy said

Tony was buried.

And then she says,

these are going to have to move quick with us.

And I said, well, why?

The mood in the room changes.

What came out of that conversation when he was showing her where the body was,

was telling her about the potential plans to remove the body from its location and dispose of it forever.

What she says is, Sandy says that he's really, really worried about where he's buried the body.

The area where Tony Parsons is buried is peaty.

Bodies preserved better in peat.

This potential work's going to be getting done close to that viaduct.

Water company's been coming in and looking at it.

We're on the 27th of December and what she's telling us is that Sandy's planning to dig the body up

and burn it on the 31st.

It's dark and she's scared and she's just trying to remain calm and trying to make him think that

she's okay with what he's telling her.

As Caroline's telling me this and I'm not in this statement,

I believe every word she's telling me.

I know Anthony Parsons is buried in that estate and that we need to get moving and we need to

go get him.

We need to act on this and we need to move it now.

I got a phone call early in the morning just after Christmas

saying that the police wanted to come out again.

I was panicking and that's when they said that they were going to restart.

Case because they'd hurt information.

I'd spent three years coming to terms with the fact that my dad wasn't coming home.

We weren't ever going to find him.

We weren't going to get the answers.

So I was at peace in myself that that was the way that it was going to be.

And then all of a sudden one phone call flipped everything upside down.

It was just after New Year and there was a buzz going around about the office that there was

a potential for a missing person to be recovered in a remote area.

We've got a spot, an actual spot up in the Highlands now.

And it was basically under everybody's nose throughout the whole three years that he'd been a missing person.

We're police officers so rightly or wrongly when these type of inquiries come in

we will get quite excited about them because we like puzzles, we like solving cases.

We all knew this is going to be a big inquiry for us.

We've got a warrant to go and take control of the Orca estate.

Search that for the remains of Tony Parsons.

And arrest Sandy and Robert to bring them in for initial questioning.

There was obviously a whole host of work to be done within the Orca estate in terms of how

the dig for that body would look and would progress.

But on that day one when we executed the warrant we just had to get control.

We found the twins and they were arrested and taken into custody

and taken to Helen Street Police Office in Glasgow.

They were suspects here.

We had been given specific information that these two individuals had put the body there

because they had unlawfully killed him on the A82 by running him over

and deciding to dispose of the body.

They need to be asked some questions to account for that.

And that's what we did simultaneously to taking control of the estate where they stayed.

I think when I first encountered them they would have been 28, 29.

They weren't identical twins but they looked very, very, very similar to each other.

Big strong strapping farmers I suppose to be honest with you is how they looked.

We hadn't really had much previous experience with police.

We had this, you know, suspicion might they just unburdened themselves, might they just talk to each.

They're two boys from a small community, you know, they're not criminal masterminds.

We were thinking they're twins which is a really strange dynamic as well.

So, you know, part of that plan was let's interview them at the same time and let's see what they're

saying

and then let's see, you know, if we can use that in each interview.

Caroline had given us the initial information that Robert and Sandy had collided with Tony

and they had disposed of his body.

We didn't have any further evidence at that point.

We haven't yet started to try and locate the body.

We've only got the story that Caroline's told us and we can't give information at that stage

is going to put her in danger.

So the questions they were asked were fairly limited.

They were simply asked, we have information that you are involved in the death of Tony Parsons

and then seek a response in relation to that.

The time is 13.45 hours on Wednesday the 30th of December 2020.

When you're bringing someone in for an interview, they don't have a clue about what information you hold,

who's told you, where it's came from, how much you know.

You must be sitting in that interview thinking, how did that end up here and how do they know so

much?

I was monitoring those interviews in Helen Street Police Office in Glasgow when they were taking place.

They're both quite different in their demeanour.

You've been arrested on suspicion of Section 3 RTA 1988 and attempt to pervert the course of justice.

Do you understand that, Robert?

OK, you're nodding your head, does that mean that you do understand that, yeah?

What's your name?

Alexander Gardner McCarran.

What's your age?

29.

Your current occupation?

Well, self-employed.

Sandy, actually, I'd say personality-wise, he's a bit of charm about him.

That's a proper alpha.

We've always thought that Sandy was the sort of one who was more in control,

who would call the shots, who would influence what they were doing.

What is it you do?

Self-employed?

A farmer.

I don't have to do with a farmer, really.

OK.

You can see here on the screen from the way Sandy is that his body language is quite open.

You can see that open arms, open shoulders, there's a confidence and arrogance to him.

He's telling us what he does.

He's answering questions about his cell.

You're going to be asked questions about your involvement in offences under Section 3A of

the Road Traffic Act 1988.

That is causing the death of another using a vehicle whilst unfit through drink or drugs

under an attempt to pervert the course of justice.

You're not bound to answer, but if you do, your answers will be recorded,

maybe noted, and maybe used in evidence.

Do you understand that?

Yep.

What does that mean to you?

Well, I've given a statement to the CID already regarding this,

so all of my further answers will be no comments.

OK.

Just so you know.

Right, I understand that.

OK, Sandy, would you be able to tell me what your hobbies are?

No comment.

Hunt time.

What do you do to relax?

No comment.

Do you have time to relax?

No comment.

Do you find yourself quite a busy person?

No comment.

What kind of person would you describe yourself as?

No comment.

Would you describe yourself as an honest person?

No comment.

Would you consider yourself as a reliable person?

No comment.

It's only when his interview progresses and the questions start getting a lot more

difficult and a lot more into detail but you see he starts to get a bit more closed off.

What can you tell me about your involvement, if any, in the disappearance of Anthony Parsons

who went missing on the 29th of September 2017?

So, no comment, yeah.

Have you ever been involved in a road accident involving a cyclist?

No comment.

Have you ever been involved in a crime and tried to cover it up?

No comment.

Can you tell me what you were doing on Friday the 29th of September 2017?

No comment.

He's definitely getting more uncomfortable as the interview moves on.

The interviewer is actually starting to ask him really specific questions about what happened to

Tony on the night.

Did you see Anthony Parsons at all?

No comment.

Were you the last person to see in my life?

No comment.

Did you strike Anthony Parsons with your motor vehicle?

No comment, yeah.

And he's presented with the image of Tony here.

That.

And then you can see that change in his full attitude and his demeanour.

This is Anthony Parsons.

It's not nice.

That's him.

That was him when he was alive.

What happened to him?

Where is he?

Was it an accident?

He's a lot more closed off.

His arms are hauled in and he's getting really, really uncomfortable there about what he's been asked.

It's a very serious matter of investigating.

Parsons was a good man with a family who went missing in a charity cycle.

His family don't know where he is.

His family have never seen him again, never heard from him again.

His family still await answers.

What's your relationship like with your brother Sandy?

We always thought Robert was a wee bit more submissive.

Would you describe it as a good relationship?

And we actually did think initially going into the interviews that

Robert might be the easier one to crack or the easier one to get the truth out of.

As you can see, he didn't really say anything at all.

Have you ever been involved in a crime and tried to cover it up?

He's picked a fixed spot elsewhere in the room and focuses solely on that throughout the whole

of that interview.

Do you know where Anthony Parsons is?

He's not even sitting square to the interview, he sits side on and it's just a total feeling of

I'm not engaging with you at all.

I just think it's marks of arrogance in terms of what's been asked of him,

the magnitude of what's about to potentially happen in their life here.

Robert, I'm bringing this interview to a conclusion but the investigation is far from over.

We knew from the get-go that we weren't going to charge them that day

and we knew that they were going to be released pending further inquiry.

I think we were a little disappointed that we didn't get a bit more out the interviews,

to be honest with you, because we did think that they would at least give us a bit more.

Are you happy with that?

All time, I'm going to stop the interview.

Okay.

They would be advised that a police investigation is ongoing,

you still remain under suspicion.

The end of this interview is 14.37 hours.

I think they'll be walking out of that police station where a lot of things going through their mind.

The two of them must clearly be thinking that this is not the end for us.

But at this point, we don't have a body. We don't have a cause of death.

We weren't allowed to return to the farm until we had finished the work we were going to do.

You've just got to follow the facts. You follow the facts and get the evidence.

She said, I've been up here. This is the location. This is the estate.

I dropped a can of Red Bull. This is what's happened three years previously.

We were able to check. Yeah, there's a missing persons report.

That missing person's never been recovered. Yeah, there's an estate there.

Yeah, there's actually two people now being named who have been part of the inquiry,

part of the missing person inquiry.

So, yeah, the credibility was all there.

The majority of our work is city-based.

It's based in Glasgow.

So you're working in the high-rises, you're working in the estates.

This was an alien environment to work in, an alien environment for most of the inquiry team.

You don't expect a crime like this to occur up in Highlands.

But we're talking something here that's pretty unique.

In most circumstances, when investigating a murder in a private place,

it's a house. Getting a warrant to then seize and search a house is fairly simple.

Getting a warrant to seize and search an estate in the Highlands.

We've got to secure a vast, vast area.

How do you get control of something that big?

What does that look like? Where do we even start?

We're heading up to Tyndrum and then the road that takes you up into the gateway to the Highlands.

It's a stunning day just now. When we came up here, this was snow and ice,

sub-zero temperatures. We were sent up in the 4x4s some mornings beforehand to make sure

the rest of the crews could get through because of the snow on this road.

To make sure the snow gates were open.

This next bit of the journey, as you continue up the 82 towards Fort William,

I'm up around the corner up here and it just opens up, up around the front of you.

Still gets me to this day as well, how small you feel here. This area is huge.

You stand down at the bottom of these glens down here and you're doing nothing but craning your head to

look up.

You're just surrounded on either side by mountains.

Personally, for myself, it's tainted but the beauty of it and the fact that this is where Tony

spent his final journey cycling down here is quite a surreal place to be.

This is the state, just as we come round the corner here. What you're seeing ahead of is in there.

That's all part of the Occy state. This is all part of what we basically had as part of our

warrant for the state.

There's a lot of memories coming back just standing here looking at it.

When we got here, we had the warrant in place and the only people that were allowed in the entrance

to that estate were estate workers with permission and police.

We're talking a rural Lower Highland estate with massive glens, lochs, valleys, fields.

There was a massive mountain behind the main estate.

There was only one main access road into the estate, so it was easy enough to control

entry from the A82 into the estate but also within the estate itself.

There were a number of dwellings, so you've got to control all of them.

There was just so many different elements to consider and challenges that,

you know, it's unlike anything I've ever heard of in my service.

It was just as you would expect of a general farm.

It was the initial farmhouse.

You went by the estate gardens, estate buildings.

And then you continued out by the river, by some old Derlick cottages.

You had to drive through a river.

Up the other side of the banking.

And that led you up to the viaduct.

When I say breath taken, it was just silenced and beautiful.

This is open ground.

It would be almost impossible to find a body here unless you knew exactly where it was.

Caroline had said Sandy gave her quite specific detail as to where the body was buried.

And she dropped a can of Red Bull that she'd been drinking from and stamped it into the ground.

And that was effectively her marking the spot so that she could give the police a direction as to exactly

where the body would be found.

Without that information, it came to us.

This is searching in a needle in a haystack.

You very rarely get somebody coming forward with as much direct information as that and say,

I know that something's gone wrong here and I'm here to report it.

We actually went up to the spot.

And yeah, there was a can of Red Bull lying there marking that spot.

It was quite a moment.

It's a once in a career to be involved in something like that.

We're actually going to get this family some answers here.

If you were to tell this story to anybody who doesn't work in our field of work,

you would probably think, well, he's told his girlfriend that this is where the body is.

That's enough.

We can't just jump to the conclusion.

That must be true.

We've got a story, but we don't have a case.

It's difficult to imagine the agony that the family went through in not knowing where Mr. Parsons was

and what happened to him that just compounded as time went on.

You're looking for somebody's loved one and they are relying on you for answers.

It's a very heavy burden to carry.

The location was remote.

If someone was trying to dispose of a body, you could be there and no one would see you.

Everything has seemed so surreal.

It's like a story that's going on. You're just part of a story.

Suddenly you get that bad telephone call.

You're now going to be asked questions about your involvement with the murder of Anthony

Parsons and attempting to defeat the course of justice. Do you understand?

I do, yes.

Do you genuinely have no remorse that you killed a man in Biden, leaving his family without any

idea it really was for three years?

No comment.

This case has been different in every single hour of every single day I've worked on it,

right to the end.

Caroline was the key to this in terms of she was the one who uncovered all of this story

through the course of her relationship with Sandy.

Caroline had been cited to attend and she hadn't turned up.

She had been cried out.

She was made on the call.

She said,

she was killed.

I was wanted to write cover.

She was killed.

She was killed.

She was killed for her, she killed her.

She was killed.