Imagine being four years old. One minute your dad is reading you a bedtime story. The next he is lying on the doorstep of your family home, drawing his final breaths.
Blood is seeping from bullet wounds to his face and body, pooling in the hallway, while the innocent eyes of a young boy gaze from the nearby staircase, unable to comprehend he was witnessing an event that would change his life forever.
“I still get that image of my dad in nightmares,” Andrew Wilson, now aged 24, says as he relives the childhood horror he experienced, two decades on from the gangland-style attack that killed his father, Alistair.
Warning: Contains descriptions some readers may find distressing
Andrew is quiet as he shows me a picture of him and his bank manager dad, taken hours before the fatal evening of 28 November 2004.
The beaming smiles of father and son, captured on a grainy film camera, resemble old photos that usually gather dust in well-thumbed family photo albums. The picture was taken during a relaxed walk in the woods, and shows them both wearing blue outdoor jackets, holding hands. Andrew comes up to his dad’s hip and is leaning his head on his arm.
But this is all Andrew has left. It is the last image of his father alive.
The gunman vanished into the night
The contrast between the family fun on a Sunday afternoon with the brutal violence that would follow the same day is eerie.
The murder of Alistair Wilson is one of Britain’s longest-running unsolved cases.
Even the brightest and most seasoned detectives have been baffled by the fact a gunman carried out such a brutal execution in a sleepy Highland town before vanishing into the night, never to be caught.
No motive has ever been established, although in recent years police have zoned in on a planning dispute across the road.
The absence of his father is something Andrew has been forced to come to terms with.
“A lot of my friends’ dads were very good. My uncles all tried to have their influence on me but it wasn’t the same. I remember my grandad teaching me how to kick a football properly… that’s something my dad would have taught me”, he says.
Speaking with a Highland lilt in his voice, he ponders the small but significant moments he missed out on like sharing his “first legal pint” with his dad on his 18th birthday.
“I blanked out a lot of my childhood memories,” he says.
The knock at the door
It all began on Crescent Road, a long side street in Nairn. Victorian three-storey houses sit near a church, while a nearby beach looks out across the Moray Firth. Crime was rare – there hadn’t been a murder in Nairn for almost 20 years.
Alistair was upstairs with his two young boys, getting them ready for bed when there was a knock at the door. His wife, Veronica, answered a stranger who asked for her husband by name.
Nothing about that interaction seemed to raise suspicion or cause alarm, and Alistair left the boys to come downstairs.
The stranger handed him an empty blue envelope with the word “Paul” written on it, and he closed the door. But bewildered, Alistair opened it again to ask questions. He was instantly shot in a gangland-style attack.
Andrew talks about the family’s plans to visit his dad’s grave, to commemorate the anniversary of his murder.
“He would have been 50 this year,” he says. His tone of voice is matter-of-fact, but his gaze wanders off.
“The whole family got together and marked it.”
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A planning dispute
Speculation has run rife over the years in Nairn as to the motives behind the murder. Could it have been connected to Alistair’s career at the bank? Could a hitman have carried it out? Andrew says the worst part was when his mum was rumoured to be a suspect.
“It was difficult when people would say it was mum,” he says, emotion audible in his voice for the first time. Sounding protective, Andrew edges forward in his seat.
“I got in trouble at school for fighting because someone would say it was my mum,” he says. “I’d already lost a parent, and my other one was being made out to be something I knew they weren’t. That was my biggest struggle.”
Andrew is full of praise for how his mother dealt with being the focus of such hurtful gossip, while being both mother and father to her two sons. “She has done an amazing job,” he says.
In more recent years, police thought a possible motive could be linked to a planning objection Alastair had to a large decking area being built at the pub across the road from his house. His opposition was made public three days before he was killed.
Could a planning grievance really trigger such violence?
Police have stressed the then owner of the venue, who now lives in Canada, is a key witness and not a suspect.
‘Murkier and murkier’
Relations between Alistair Wilson’s family and Police Scotland were typically strong. There was no reason to question the strategy and the abilities of officers to do their jobs properly. When detectives told them, 18 months ago, that they were going to make an arrest, they were elated – finally it seemed justice might be done. But it wasn’t to be – the police went silent, and after chasing them for an answer, they found out the arrest had been cancelled.
From there it got “murkier and murkier”, Andrew says, with no explanation given. He and his family feel “let down” by the police, he says, and have no confidence they will ever catch the killer.
They are now calling for Police Scotland Chief Constable Jo Farrell, who was appointed in October 2023, to resign and take responsibility for her “callous” approach, after she refused to meet the family on multiple occasions.
“If her force has let us down for 20 years and she can’t get a hold of it, how are they going to get us somewhere?” Andrew asks. Police Scotland did not address questions from Sky News about the future of the chief constable.
Sky News confronted Jo Farrell as she arrived at a meeting in Glasgow on 1 December.
“I won’t be resigning, she said, when asked if she would quit over “failing to get a grip” on this.
“I am committed to us getting answers and finding the people responsible for the murder.”
She walked away when questioned further about her competence, or lack thereof, as the Wilson family see it.
Waiting for answers
The new senior detective reinvestigating the murder from scratch has said she is determined to find the answers to crack the case.
Detective Chief Superintendent Suzanne Chow, who has met the family face to face, admitted she is currently “not in a position” to arrest anyone and conceded the various inquiries over the years have been “protracted”.
DCS Chow defended her boss’ decision to cancel the arrest.
“The chief’s not being callous,” she said.
While this row between the family and police continues there are questions about whether Andrew and his family will ever find closure.
“All we can do is wait,” Andrew says. “We are a tick box to police. Ever since the arrest was pulled it is clear we are just a number to them.”
Photos from the Wilson family
