Split Thread David Gilroy: murder conviction goes to Scottish Review Commission

[anglolawyer]

I know the burden of proof is on the prosecution and the defendant doesn't have to account for his actions if he doesn't think that burden has been met, but Gilroy would have a much better case if he would just step up and say where he went on his long drive, how his suspension got broken, etc, etc. As far as I can tell (from the brief reading I've done this evening after looking at this thread) he has never done so. Am I wrong?

His problem is in coming up with a plausible explanation. The fact that he can make up anything he wants but has not made the attempt is in itself an indication of how snookered he is. Now, he also has to explain his delay in saying what happened.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Scott Peterson is thought to have shrink-wrapped his wife as well as weighing her down with concrete anchors he made. She (or what was left of her) still bobbed up months later as did her foetus a mile or so away.

We had an interesting discussion at Injustice Anywhere about that case in the course of which I devised a way of disposing of a weighted body from a small boat without capsizing. It was one of the defence arguments at his trial that this was not possible. They tried unsuccessfully to admit a film of someone attempting it (obviously not with a real body).

The guy I mentioned yesterday, Peter Hogg, managed it in the Lake District, although I don't know how. Anyone like to guess my method, or should I wait 'til my turn in the trivia quiz thread and post it as a question there? The body must be weighed down by about 5 concrete anchors and the boat must be small.

ETA I should say my method may well only work inside my head.

A roll of nylon fishnet, secured at both ends, would work better than plastic wrap. One should really use so much weight (500 pounds of rock or cement) as to require heavy tackle or a tow-able dinghy that can be capsized.

Peterson's other mistake was to dump his wife's body in shallow water where it was disturbed by a storm. My fishnet idea would not work in that location because of all the commercial vessels. It would only be a matter of time before the bundle was snagged in tackle and brought up.

I have President Channel at my disposal, 800 feet deep in places. Goodbye forever, darling. Don't think it wasn't nice...

But then I have avoided the problem of female persistence by remaining single. I don't need to call on Poseidon.

 

[Rolfe]

When I can figure out how to work the bleedin' Maps thing on the iPad I will get up to speed. This sounds interesting.

Pay Uncle OS for full access. He's worth it. The detail on Google Maps in these barely populated areas is hopeless. I don't imagine your iPad will be any better. OS is the way to go, every time. You can't get Streetview, but the aerial views are superb. If nothing else, once you're oriented with the OS map, you can then find the featureless line you want on Google.

 

[Guybrush Threepwood]

OK, you explain how you get both Tyndrum and Arrochar into the same route from Edinburgh to Lochgilphead.

Here, somebody gets it. Quite where do police want campers and walkers to look for Suzanne Pilley’s body?




There has also been mention of Glen Orchy, which is near Dalmally which I mentioned earlier and is on the road from Tyndrum to Inveraray. But hey guys, have you looked at Glen Aral? I mean, the only question is, why wouldn't you choose that?
http://forargyll.com/2012/03/quite-...and-walkers-to-look-for-suzanne-pilleys-body/

What if he was trying to confuse any hunt for the body? Assuming he was seen on CCTV in Tyndrum he could drive to Inveraray, dump the body on the way then go up the Rest and Be Thankful, turn on his phone so he would be traced there, turn it off again and go back to Inveraray where he was caught on CCTV again?

One thing that strikes me is it's not easy finding a place to hide a body. Did the police ever check if he knew any particular part of Argyll well?


In an odd coincidence I'll be staying with friends near Dumbarton this weekend. Maybe I should suggest we go body hunting

 

[anglolawyer]

A roll of nylon fishnet, secured at both ends, would work better than plastic wrap. One should really use so much weight (500 pounds of rock or cement) as to require heavy tackle or a tow-able dinghy that can be capsized.

Peterson's other mistake was to dump his wife's body in shallow water where it was disturbed by a storm. My fishnet idea would not work in that location because of all the commercial vessels. It would only be a matter of time before the bundle was snagged in tackle and brought up.

I have President Channel at my disposal, 800 feet deep in places. Goodbye forever, darling. Don't think it wasn't nice...

But then I have avoided the problem of female persistence by remaining single. I don't need to call on Poseidon.

The cure is worse than the disease.

 

[Rolfe]

What if he was trying to confuse any hunt for the body? Assuming he was seen on CCTV in Tyndrum he could drive to Inveraray, dump the body on the way then go up the Rest and Be Thankful, turn on his phone so he would be traced there, turn it off again and go back to Inveraray where he was caught on CCTV again?

One thing that strikes me is it's not easy finding a place to hide a body. Did the police ever check if he knew any particular part of Argyll well?

That's what I'm trying to figure out. I've found an article saying his car was seen on CCTV in both Tyndrum and Inveraray, 2 hours apart. That's interesting, because it shouldn't really take you more than three quarters of an hour to drive that, probably less. But we don't know the times of these two sightings.

There are other reports of his phone pinging a mast or masts near Rest And Be Thankful. But again we don't know what time this was supposed to be at.

I also note that they're not even clear whether he disposed of the body on the way to Lochgilphead or the way back. There are time periods both in the early afternoon and the evening when police are asking for sightings of the car.

I think he may have been playing silly buggers to draw police to the wrong area of countryside. And given their spectacular lack of success in finding a body, he may have succeeded. That's why I asked about the possibility he may have believed he couldn't be convicted without a body. If he was labouring under that misapprehension he might have thought it didn't matter if he was suspected and looked as suspicious as hell, so long as he succeeded in removing Miss Pilley from the face of Scotland.

So, virtual Mars Bar to the first person to find the times of the CCTV sightings, and the times of the phone mast pings.

 

[Rolfe]

It's "Callander" by the way. I never could spell that place.

 

[Rolfe]

The times the police were talking about when they were looking for sightings of the car were 1 pm to 3.30 pm, and 7 pm to 9 pm. The reasons for these particular times were not stated. I assumed the missing time between Tyndrum and Inveraray was on the way to Lochgilphead, as much because of the order of the names as anything else. Tyndrum comes first if you're travelling west.

However, Gilroy apparently blagged some plastic bin bags and cable ties from the cleaning staff at the school at Lochgilphead. I wonder if he tried to dispose of the body on the way out, but decided he needed the bags and then went back to the spot on the way back once he had them?

The 2-hour window between Tyndrum and Inveraray, if true, is surely crucial. Say 40 minutes to drive that, normally, without stopping. That would give him an hour and 20 minutes to dispose of the body if he did it on the route he should have taken. Which most definitely does not involve the Rest And Be Thankful, or Hell's Glen.

If he was playing silly buggers, and decided to detour round the Rest And Be Thankful, he would have had to turn right around at Tyndrum and go back the way he came to Crianlarich, then head to Ardlui. That would have taken him at least an hour, which is really eating into the time he needs to hide the body. If he detoured round the B road through Hell's Glen, it gets even worse. That's a single-track road and you can't go at any speed. He'd have ended up with about half an hour to pick a good spot and do the entire body-stashing. Hell's Glen is out, if he hid the body in the two hours between Tyndrum and Inveraray. And how could he have been sure he wasn't noticed at the point where he doubled back? A CCTV camera in Crianlarich catching him coming and going as it were would be very suspicious.

If he really did hide the body in the two hours between these two towns (I use the word "town" in its loosest possible sense here), I really can't imagine that he detoured far off the direct route.

The first half of that road, to just beyond Dalmally, is on the A85(T). This is a busy road. There are not many places where you can drive off it, at least in the earlier part. It follows Glen Lochy which is another of these constricting ravines, and the railway takes the same route. I'd be very wary of railways in this situation. You might think you're somewhere really deserted, and then along comes the Oban express....

Glenorchy has its points, but the road is frankly diabolical, and there's no obvious benefit to wasting time trailing up there. There's nothing up there you can't find, say, in Glen Aray. There's a big area of forest around Succoth Lodge. Maybe. Still a bit close to the main trunk road and railway. After that you're through Dalmally and heading for the A819.

There's forest round Blarchaorain farm, then again round a hill called Craig Bracha, with a circular forest track, then the area that really intrigues me, to the west of the road. NN 076 190. There's no farm or lodge in there, and there are a lot of branching forest tracks. Some lead off the A819, and some lead off the B840, but the latter wouldn't be a significant detour at all. Then there's more, both sides of the road, as you go through Glen Aray, before you get to Inveraray.

If I were Gilroy, I'd use a map to find the best spot. I wonder if he bought a Pathfinder of the area? I wonder if anyone asked any of the shops? This was 2010. I'd be worried about going off my direct route in a way that might be seen (and that includes driving up that Glenorchy road, which would attract the attention of anyone checking on their new lambs around these hills). I'd be trying to duck into one of the forest areas I'd have to pass anyway.

Some of them have gates across the tracks, but I don't know how hard they'd be to get open. Some don't. He's got to get some way from the road, and he only has about an hour and a quarter to find the right spot, unload the body, and conceal it. I really think this happened between Dalmally and Inveraray, if that alleged 2-hour window is the time it was done. None of the reports even mentions that area.

I'd dearly love to know where the phone mast pings fit into this. Surely to God in 2010 anyone who is trying to do something clandestine knows to switch their bloody phone off, or leave it at home switched on or something like that.

 

[William Parcher]

Why not hire somebody with trained cadaver dogs to find the body? Or, do you want to do it by foot searching old school style (leather, brass and wool) like we see on the BBC-produced series shown here on American cable TV?

 

[Matthew Best]

His problem is in coming up with a plausible explanation. The fact that he can make up anything he wants but has not made the attempt is in itself an indication of how snookered he is. Now, he also has to explain his delay in saying what happened.

Are we as jury members not supposed to attach any weight to his silence? Because that looks increasingly impossible for any normal person to do.

 

[Rolfe]

Hmmmmm.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-17358340

After analysing CCTV evidence, police had recreated a journey he made to Argyll and back three times.

They discovered Mr Gilroy had taken two hours longer than their average time each way.

And a comparison of fuel consumption suggested there were 124 miles unaccounted for. [....]

He had made a journey to Lochgilphead, to check on a school his firm was overseeing.

However, he did not take a direct route and instead headed much further north.

He was logged at Tyndrum at 13:22, then Inveraray at 15:51 before arriving at Lochgilphead at 16:26.

Gilroy's car suspension was found by investigators to be badly damaged and it had vegetation stuck underneath.

They were convinced he had driven off road.

Detectives were certain he had detoured along the A83 to somewhere near the beauty spot, Rest and Be Thankful, with enough time to dispose of Ms Pilley's body.

He took 2 hours too long, both ways. Which suggests he half-hid her on the way out, then went back with the bin bags and ties to make a better job of it. And at the same time there was an extra 124 miles estimated from fuel consumption. That sort of distance would account for a significant chunk of the additional four hours, if he'd actually driven it. You can't average a particularly fast speed on these roads, they're all single carriageway. You could easily take 3 hours to do that distance, if you were on anything but a trunk road. This seriously does not compute. He can't have driven all these extra miles and still had reasonable time to find a suitable place and stash the body.

I wonder if the cops are labouring under a misapprehension here. "They were convinced he had driven off-road." Right. I don't know what their fuel consumption does if they drive an ordinary road saloon off-road, but I think mine would get pretty damn bad. The suspension was so badly damaged the car was almost undrivable. How did that happen? Did he get stuck somewhere, and have to rev the engine a lot to get free? If they had seen extra miles on the clock that would have been one thing, but I seriously doubt the extra distance story based on fuel consumption, when you know the guy was doing stuff to that car that would put m.p.g. down to single figures maybe. I'm deeply unconvinced that he drove very far away from the direct road. He needed the time to hide the body, maybe to find a suitable place and hide her roughly on the way out, then to go back with the bin bags and stuff and finish the job on the way home.

The cops have a strange idea of what a direct route would be. Personally, starting from Edinburgh, I would go through Tyndrum to get to Lochgilphead, simply to avoid the urban M8 and that bloody Loch Lomondside road. So there's nothing weird about it, and it's not too far north. Distance-wise, there's nothing in it. It's a perfectly normal route to choose if you don't want to be stuck on the Kingston Bridge or something.

The time elapsed between Inveraray and Lochgilphead is normal. He didn't do anything on that section. He's taken 2.5 hours to do Tyndrum to Lochgilphead. That's about an hour and 50 minutes too long. Longer than I realised in the last post. If he only took two hours longer than he should have done for the whole journey, that's where it happened. Ten minutes is neither here nor there to get through Stirling or something.

So they really think he doubled back from Tyndrum, retraced his route to Crianlarich, then headed south to Ardlui, Tarbet, Arrochar and into Glen Croe. It's not impossible, it would only put about half an hour extra on the journey I suppose, and still gives him an hour and 20 minutes to do the deed. But why would he?

I could only imagine he got as far as Tyndrum, then remembered a place somewhere up Glen Croe or Hell's Glen (if the latter, kiss goodbye to another 20 minutes minimum) that would be the perfect body-hiding place, so he turned back to go to it. The problem with this is that seems to be what the cops thought he'd done, and they can't find any body despite looking pretty damn hard.

I want to know more about this phone mast ping, where and when. And whether they got any CCTV footage of him on the way back. The idea that he got to Tyndrum then turned back isn't really making a lot of sense to me. He had plenty time to figure out where he was going. If he'd been heading for the A83 and its environs, he'd either have gone through Glasgow in the first place, or he'd have turned sharp south at Crianlarich.

Which mast(s) pinged, and when, and are you sure?

 

[Rolfe]

Why not hire somebody with trained cadaver dogs to find the body? Or, do you want to do it by foot searching old school style (leather, brass and wool) like we see on the BBC-produced series shown here on American cable TV?

They used a trained cadaver dog to find the place the body had been hidden just after the murder, and to indicate that the body had been in the boot of Gilroy's car. The dog was a springer spaniel called Buster and his CV is in several of the newspaper articles.

They obviously had hundreds of people searching Glen Croe and round there. I doubt if there are more than two or three cadaver dogs in the country. And they're not used for ranging across wild country, they're used in urban environments. I don't think they could have got the coverage, in practical terms, with the dogs they would have had available.

Bear in mind that the search as it was carried out did find at least one body. Just not Suzanne Pilley's body.

 

[Rolfe]

Are we as jury members not supposed to attach any weight to his silence? Because that looks increasingly impossible for any normal person to do.

I rather think that inference is open to us. Like I said, I wonder if he was labouring under the misapprehension that he couldn't be convicted without a body. And then when he realised that wasn't the case, it was too late to regroup.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Hmm.

I'm looking at a map of Scotland in the area where he disposed of the body. After a casual survey of the terrain, I have reached a conclusion that will save you all a lot of trouble. Ye'll not find the lass.

Bones may eventually turn up, or not, completely by chance, at some indeterminate future date.

We had a similar case in the US some years back, involving a man named Hans Reiser, whose name is attached to a type of Linux file system.

He was tried for killing his wife even though her body could not be found. He actually took the stand and staunchly maintained his innocence, but he was convicted of murder in the first degree.

The victim's family, wanting to know for certain what had happened to their loved one, agreed to a deal in which the conviction would be lifted in exchange for a guilty plea to second-degree murder, with the possibility of release someday. The condition was that Reiser had to divulge the location of the body. He accepted the deal and promptly led police to a shallow grave, about half a mile from where the couple lived, in an area that had been searched extensively.

That's how to crack the Gilroy case IMO.

I have seen this again and again over the years. I remember when a semi-famous aviator named Steve Fossett crashed his plane in Nevada. Thousands of enthusiasts scoured the area for weeks, on the ground, by airplane, by poring over satellite photos. People seriously thought maybe he had disappeared himself intentionally, for some reason, because it seemed like they should have found him, but they could not.

Finally after a year or so the wreckage and some human bones were found by chance, right in the heart of the search area. He had crashed into a cliff.

It's just damned hard to find a body that could be anywhere in a large area.

 

[Rolfe]

Actually, I saw something in one of the articles about his route back. It may have suggested he went down to Alexandria, then across to Stirling. If that's correct, it would compute with him returning via the Rest and Be Thankful. If he did that, then realised it was quicker for him to turn south at Tarbet and go south of Loch Lomond than to trail all the way back up to Crianlarich again, it would make sense.

That would actually have been a rational route to take in the morning, IF he had intended to go across the Rest and Be Thankful all along, and didn't want to go through the city. (Hell, imagine driving along the M8 and across the Kingston Bridge with a dead body in the boot!)

Crianlarich, Tyndrum, Dalmally, Inveraray, is sensible if you're just going to Lochgilphead.

Stirling, Drymen, Alexandria, Tarbet, Arrochar, is the way to go if you're really heading for the Rest and Be Thankful.

If you do use the more northerly route to get to the Rest and Be Thankful, you turn south at Crianlarich and you don't go to Tyndrum.

If he went back by Alexandria and Drymen, that really does suggest Glen Croe, with the more direct route being taken when he was already committed to that location.

Why don't the journalists tell us the full detail after the trial at least, when it can't damage the case of alert the accused to some sort of lie he needs to tell?

Hmmm. I should have gone to bed long ago. I want to know more about the phone pings. If it hadn't been for these, nobody would even have imagined he'd gone near the A83. But surely nobody leaves their phone on when they're hiding a dead body, unless thay want to mislead deliberately? Not in 2010!

 

[Rolfe]

Hmm.

I'm looking at a map of Scotland in the area where he disposed of the body. After a casual survey of the terrain, I have reached a conclusion that will save you all a lot of trouble. Ye'll not find the lass.

I'm inclined to agree. Except by chance, as you said. They found a body on the east slopes of The Cobbler, while this search was underway, which is just insane. I have no idea how it got there. I'm just intrigued to figure out why they were concentrating on the area between Ardgartan and Loch Fyne, rather than the area to the north of Inveraray. It's all to do with the phone pings.

As you say, they could be in the right place and not find her. Or they could be in the wrong place.

The way they will find her is when Gilroy realises that his life may become considerably less unpleasant if he fesses up to where he put her. Which depends on when he might come up to get out on licence.

 

[Rolfe]

Maybe he dumped her in Glen Douglas. (Not!)

 

[Rolfe]

Why does anyone live in Lochgoilhead? You'd have to be off your freaking rocker.

If this was Norway, or if we had control of our own money, these places would at least be accessible.

Carrick Castle? Is that even real, or are the mapmakers winding us up?

My God it's real, Google Streetview has actually been there. Fabulous Victorian villas by the shore, at the end of the dirt track from Hades. The only answer is a boat, and hope you don't get stuck on the conning tower of a Trident submarine. This country has its priorities seriously upside down.

 

[anglolawyer]

Great work Rolfe. Catch some Zs. Charlie, what's with the negative waves, man? There is a telephone box on Mount Snowden and a climber one time heard the phone ring, answered it and found it was wrong number call made by a long lost friend. We just need a little luck.

So far, the main thing I've learned is there are two As in Inveraray. Now, if I knew how to pronounce Lochgilphead I really feel I would be getting somewhere.

I feel sure he went to a particular place he already knew. More info about childhood, hobbies etc required. I see the car as doing most of the work. I don't think one guy can get far lugging a body, especially over difficult ground or through foliage. He sure took a risk with the car. What if he broke down? Game over. Were there any witnesses from Lochgilphead? What did they say about his appearance and demeanour? Did he have any scratches? He might already have masked those I guess if they were from the assault or even if he picked them up lugging her around. I'm interested in the idea that it was a two-stage operation both on the way there and back again. What did he need to do the second time?

Could dogs still be of any use now? I don't see how but I know nothing about dogs.

 

[anglolawyer]

Are we as jury members not supposed to attach any weight to his silence? Because that looks increasingly impossible for any normal person to do.

In England and Wales, where the goalposts keep shifting against the defence, a suspect is warned that inferences may be drawn from silence where he later pipes up with an account in court. Silence at the trial itself is not something from which any inference may be drawn. It just means there is nothing (aside from logic) to disturb the inferences the prosecution invites the jury to infer from the facts they put in evidence.