RENEE and Andrew MacRae disappeared on November 12, 1976. The mother of two was amicably separated from her husband, Gordon.
Her burnt-out BMW was found in a layby near Dalmagarry quarry, 12 miles south of Inverness, on the night that she vanished after travellers on a train from Glasgow to Inverness reported seeing flames flickering in the night sky. There was a spot of blood in the boot.
Friends told the police that she was having a secret affair with her husband’s accountant, Bill MacDowell, and on the day she vanished she was due to go away with him to Perthshire for the weekend.
According to Mr MacDowell, now in his 60s and living in London, the rendezvous never took place because he changed his mind.
In police interviews at the time he said that he believed that Mrs MacRae was still alive because he had received coded telephone messages from her. He has rarely broken his silence since except to deny any involvment in the disapperance of the mother and son.
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At the time of the original inquiry there was an extensive police search involving an RAF spy aircraft, underwater cameras, tracker dogs and even psychics. Dalmagarry Quarry was searched but never fully checked despite reports by one of the officers involved, Detective Sergeant John Cathcart, that he could smell decomposing flesh there.
Witnesses had also spoken of seeing a man dragging what looked like a sheep into the quarry. Mrs MacRae was wearing a sheepskin coat when she disappeared. There were also reports of a man walking along the A9 with a pushchair.
It took ten years for Northern Constabulary to officially upgrade the inquiry to murder, although foul play was suspected almost from the start.
The quarry was filled in years ago and a commercial forest planted on top. More than 1,700 conifers have been felled in the past two weeks in preparation for the forensic science excavation.