When Caroline Muirhead’s boyfriend of just a few weeks suggested they get married, the then 29-year-old pathologist knew it was something of a whirlwind, but she was ready to seize the day.
‘I had this devil-may-care attitude of “What’s the worst that can happen?” ’ she recalls of the heady romance.
Now, more than five years on, she knows all too well what the worst looks like: within days of that proposal in November 2020, Alexander McKellar, the statuesque and handsome Scottish gamekeeper for whom Caroline had fallen head over heels, had unburdened himself of a deadly secret.
He confided that, three years earlier, while drunk at the wheel, he had fatally mown down a cyclist, 63-year-old Tony Parsons, a retired former Navy officer who was on a charity bike ride on a remote Highland roadside.
With the help of his twin brother Robert, he had then disposed of Parsons’ body in a desolate peat bog.
At Caroline’s request, Alexander had then taken her to the burial site, where she left an empty drinks can to mark the spot before calling the police.
The discovery of Tony’s body in January 2021 brought to a close one of Scotland’s most puzzling missing persons inquiries, as well as years of anguish for his devastated wife and two grown-up children – while the arrest and eventual imprisonment of the McKellar twins in August 2023 garnered headlines around the world.
Throughout it all, however, Caroline kept her silence. Many assumed she wanted to stay out of the public spotlight. Only now, via a compelling three-part Netflix documentary, has the full extraordinary truth emerged – including the price Caroline paid for sharing her terrible secret.
Within days of Alexander McKellar proposing to Caroline Muirhead he confided that, three years earlier, while drunk at the wheel, he had fatally mown down a cyclist
McKellar killed 63-year-old Tony Parsons, a retired former Navy officer who was on a charity bike ride on a remote Highland roadside
Left unsupported by the justice system despite being a key witness, she suffered a near breakdown and, at one point, even returned to live with the man she had betrayed.
By the time her former fiance’s case came to trial – nearly three years after she had first made her report to police – she had spiralled so far that she went missing and was arrested for contempt of court.
‘When I came forward in December 2020, I trusted that the system would stand by me and keep me safe when I was at my most vulnerable, but that wasn’t my experience,’ she says now.
It is one reason she has decided to tell her story in full for the first time in a documentary that lays bare the toll her decision took.
Her parents Margaret and Stephen are also interviewed, sharing the distress at watching their daughter carry such a heavy burden.
As so many romances do these days, Caroline’s story started with the click of a button on a phone in October 2020. Then 29, she was one of Scotland’s most promising young pathologists and had joined dating app Tinder in the wake of a ‘horrible’ break-up with her previous partner of eight years.
Gamekeeper Alexander McKellar’s profile caught her attention immediately. He was 6ft 4in and handsome, and said he was looking for someone to keep him warm during cold nights on the farm.
Within days, Caroline was making the 90-minute drive to his home on the 28,000-acre Auch estate in the Scottish Highlands.
Police officers search undergrowth in a valley on the outskirts of Tyndrum looking for Tony Parsons
McKellar’s twin brother Robert revealed to Caroline that, contrary to what Alexander had told her, Tony Parsons had been alive after he was hit
They hit it off immediately and soon they were spending every weekend together. ‘I was falling for him hook, line and sinker,’ she recalls in the documentary.
She got on well with his twin brother Robert too and embraced country life. Alexander – whom she called Sandy – was even teaching her clay pigeon shooting.
It was after one shoot, towards the end of November, that Alexander proposed. By that stage, they had only known each other a matter of weeks, but Caroline said yes.
‘In the moment, it just felt unstoppable,’ she says.
That is, until a few days later, when Caroline asked her fiance if there was anything that might affect their future together.
There was, Alexander said. He sobbed as he described how, after a hunting party at the estate three years previously, he’d hit a cyclist while driving over the limit on a country road with Robert.
‘Sandy insisted he couldn’t be alive, and when I asked why he didn’t call for help, he said, “I’d have lost everything… we’d have gone to jail… it was just an accident”. ‘They’d “panicked” ’, he told her and buried him on the estate ‘right by her feet’ where they were shooting clay pigeons.
In the bewildering aftermath, Caroline, barely able to take in what she had heard, returned home with Alexander and waited until he was asleep before turning to Google. ‘And there pops up his photo, his name,’ she says.
Caroline dropped a can of sugar-free Red Bull, one of her favourite drinks, as a marker before surreptitiously messaging the police
She learned the victim was Tony Parsons, a cancer survivor who had been crossing Scotland on a 100-mile charity cycle and who had last been seen on September 29, 2017, before apparently vanishing into thin air.
Agonising over a decision that she knew would turn her life upside down, it would take a few more days before Caroline plucked up the courage to go to the police.
‘People might say why you didn’t go immediately, but my brain was still not really accepting what I’d been told,’ she says. That changed when Alexander made a chilling request: the Auch estate, where he worked, had a new owner who planned to develop the land, and Alexander wanted Caroline’s help to exhume Tony Parsons’ body before it was discovered.
‘You’re thinking to yourself, “Am I being used for my skill set?” I had “pathologist” on my Tinder profile. Did he choose me specifically because he wanted someone to help him with this?’ she asks.
Whatever the answer, his request was the prompt she needed: on December 27 Caroline called the police. Little did she know that doing the right thing would signal the start of a nightmare lasting nearly three years, in which, she says, she was abandoned by the justice system.
With no body, police were unsure if they could make an arrest, and advised her to ‘lie low’ while they worked out their next move.
Caroline did not heed their advice. Instead, the next day, she returned to the estate and suggested that, if Alexander wanted her help, he needed to show her where the body was buried. ‘I was doing everything I could to act as normal as possible,’ she recalls.
Caroline met gamekeeper Alexander McKellar on the dating app Tinder. His profile caught her attention immediately: he was 6ft 4in and handsome
It was at that remote Highland spot that Caroline dropped a can of sugar-free Red Bull, one of her favourite drinks, as a marker before surreptitiously messaging the police. ‘I hated myself. I felt like a rat, felt like a liar,’ she says. ‘But I thought they would be arrested . . . and my family and I would be safe.’
That was not to be the case: while Alexander and Robert McKellar were initially arrested, without a body or other corroborating evidence, they were released on bail three days later, leaving Caroline terrified.
‘All I could think was would he harm me?’ she says.
She describes her panic when Alexander rang and asked to see her. ‘I had resigned myself to never hearing from him again . . . my brain was in these two conflicting worlds. I missed him.’
And with the search for Tony’s body unfolding agonisingly slowly, Caroline decided she was safer pretending everything was normal – while also giving herself the chance to obtain a confession.
That became more urgent when Robert revealed that, contrary to what Alexander had told her, Tony had been alive after he was hit. ‘In my head, this wasn’t then a hit and run, this was potentially a murder,’ she said.
Tony Parson’s wife, Margaret, and daughter, Victoria, arriving at the High Court in Glasgow in July 2023
Later that night, while playing an online chess game with Alexander, she secretly recorded him speaking about what had happened.
‘He said it’s my life or theirs . . . it was an admission,’ she says.
Caroline also took this recording to police – yet, if she hoped it would bring matters to a head, she was wrong. Instead, the stakes were raised. Tony Parsons’ body was finally exhumed on January 12, 2021.
But police had used a local farmer to help with the search, via whom word had got back to the McKellars about the presence of the Red Bull can at the site, which pointed directly at Caroline.
Alexander was soon on the phone, screaming abuse. But then his anger gave way to sorrow, as he professed his sadness that she had become involved. ‘One side of my brain is saying this is the loving man that I fell for,
the gentle Sandy . . . the other is saying, “Caroline, this guy’s dangerous.” My emotions were all over the place,’ she says.
The situation dragged on, with the wheels of justice turning agonisingly slowly. It was not until December 2021 – a year after Caroline’s first call – that the brothers were remanded in custody and charged with murder.
In the meantime, she was left in limbo: as a young, professional woman, she did not fit the profile of a vulnerable witness.
‘I’d done the right thing, and I thought the police would support me . . . and they didn’t,’ she says.
Moreover, when Tony Parsons’ remains were brought to the mortuary where Caroline worked, she was placed on leave because of a conflict of interest.
By the time her former fiance’s case came to trial, Caroline had spiralled so far that she went missing and was arrested for contempt of court
‘I was devastated,’ she recalls. ‘I loved my job and suddenly I was at home with no one to speak to – this was during lockdown – I had no purpose, nothing to wake up for.’
Against this backdrop, she embarked on what she acknowledges was one of the most surreal chapters of her life, rekindling her relationship with Alexander and returning to the Auch estate.
‘My grasp on reality was weakening,’ she says. ‘I was so broken. Sandy would send little photos or little videos, saying, “Oh my gosh, I miss you so much”.
‘I had handed him in and ruined his life, he should hate me, but he made me feel loved, made me feel wanted. I still had that toxic draw. You can’t just turn off your affection for someone, even if they’ve done a terrible thing.’
As the weeks turned into months, Caroline lived in a ‘bubble of false reality’, turning to alcohol and drugs.
That changed when Sandy began speaking again about the police investigation.
‘There was an arrogance, almost disdain in his voice, “Oh, we’ve got away with this”. There was no compassion, no remorse,’
she recalls. ‘It was a huge wake-up call. Who was this man? Whoever I loved didn’t exist. I was living a lie; I’d lost my sense of self and my sense of what was right and wrong.’
The following day, Caroline returned to her parents’ home, where, weeks later, she learned the brothers had been remanded in custody.
The relief was immense, accompanied by mounting anxiety about the impending trial, at which she would be the key witness.
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Aware that much depended on her, Caroline again turned to alcohol and cocaine to cope and, as her mental health deteriorated, pleaded not to appear in person.
Her pleas fell on deaf ears: she was told she would be arrested if she did not attend court.
On July 23, 2023 – day one of the McKellar trial – she panicked. Instead of going to Glasgow High Court, she drove once more to the Auch estate, convinced that she could find Tony Parsons’ missing bicycle – which, despite the police’s best efforts, had never been found – and which she had convinced herself would be vital evidence which could relieve her of her duty to testify.
Footage she recorded on the day, shown on the documentary, shows her clearly distressed and largely incoherent.
Police later found her at a local waterfall and arrested her for contempt. She was held overnight.
The incident did, however, prompt a change: with Caroline clearly unfit to testify, prosecutors accepted a guilty plea to culpable homicide – a lesser charge than murder – removing the need for her to give evidence.
The court heard that cyclist Tony Parsons would only have survived a maximum of half an hour without help – help that was denied him as they concealed his body at the side of the road before returning in another car to bury him.
Alexander was sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment for culpable homicide and attempting to defeat the ends of justice, while his twin, Robert, received five years and three months in jail for his assistance in covering up the crime. It was closure of sorts, although of course for the grieving Parsons family, it will never bring Tony back.
For Caroline too, it has taken time for the wounds to heal.
In recent years, she has moved to the coast, had extensive therapy and embarked on a new relationship. ‘Making the documentary with Netflix meant revisiting the darkest of times and none of that was easy,’ she says.
‘But it has also been a cathartic experience. For the first time in several years, I now have hope for the future and the freedom to begin the next chapter of my life.’
Should I Marry A Murderer? premieres globally on Netflix on April 29.
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