'Jekyll and Hyde' killer guilty of shooting man on remote country path

A former gamekeeper has been found guilty of shooting an ex-colleague to death on a remote country path in Highland Perthshire before trying to cover his tracks.

David Campbell, 77, murdered Brian Low on Leafy Lane, Aberfeldy, in February 2024 after disabling a CCTV camera at his nearby home.

Police treated Low's death as "non-suspicious" until a forensic examination days later revealed the 65-year-old retired groundsman had been shot.

Campbell, who was described by people who knew him as a Jekyll and Hyde character, was convicted at the High Court in Glasgow following a 15-day trial.

The verdict closes a dark chapter that brought fear and suspicion to the close-knit town.

Low's body was discovered, with his dog Millie by his side, on the morning of 17 February 2024.

One of the first officers on the scene, Det Con Mark Chance, told the trial he saw blood on Low's face and hands and believed the injuries were consistent with him falling while out for a walk.

The first paramedic at the scene also thought he had died after a "sudden medical event".

Consultant histopathologist Dr Tamara McNamee also noticed facial injuries sustained by Low.

The case was escalated and a fuller, two-doctor post-mortem was ordered for the following day.

This revealed Low suffered injuries to his chest, right upper arm, left upper arm, neck and face.

Pellets were found in his lung and his clothes were peppered with holes.

The trial heard Low had been shot "face-on" from a distance of 19m to 45m (62ft to 147ft), sustaining about 30 pellet injuries.

Shots of a similar size were later discovered in shotgun cartridges in Campbell's home, although the murder weapon has never been found.

Pamela Curran, Low's partner of 22 years, told the trial she "couldn't believe it" when she was told five days after his death that he had been shot.

Ten days after Low's body was discovered, detectives announced that a murder investigation had been launched.

In the days that followed, it was common to hear people in the town wondering: "How can you not tell that someone was shot?"

It wasn't long before Campbell's name began to circulate locally, although most people I spoke to stopped short of casting solid accusations of murder - possibly due to the former head gamekeeper's reputation.

Awkward police press conferences and "days of action" in Aberfeldy followed, with hundreds questioned but seemingly few answers.

Over the next three months police spoke to 800 witnesses and trawled through 2,400 hours of CCTV footage from 56 cameras.

Then on 24 May, police officers swarmed the area around Campbell's home in Aberfeldy, a short distance from the murder scene.

Campbell was arrested while on the toilet, naked.

After the arrest, lips loosened locally... but not by much.

"I wouldn't want to be left alone in a room with him, put it that way" was the verdict of one local woman who knew Campbell.

Low and Campbell had worked together for nearly 20 years at the nearby Edradynate Estate, where Campbell was employed as head gamekeeper and Low worked as a groundsman.

The trial was told of bad blood between the two men.

Campbell once suspected Low of "planting" items allegedly found during a raid on his then-home on the estate after alleged bird poisonings.

The killer told the trial that "he didn't like me and I didn't like him," but said he did not "hate" Low.

Campbell's temper had also been evident almost 30 years earlier during an encounter with retired police inspector and wildlife crime co-ordinator Alan Stewart.

He previously encountered Campbell while investigating alleged bird poisoning on the Edradynate Estate.

Stewart said they met again by chance at a game fair in the summer of 1995, when they passed each other in an aisle.

Stewart told the trial: "He looked across and said: 'It is great what vermin you see when you have not got a gun'."

The trial heard that Campbell took a number of steps to try and evade justice both before and after the murder.

He covered a doorbell camera at his home with duct tape at about 07:35 on the day of the shooting.

Other footage showed him looking up towards the CCTV camera minutes later. Nothing more was recorded until 19:30 that evening.

No movement data was recorded on Brian Low's phone after 16:52 that day.

CCTV footage showed a cyclist near Campbell's home less than an hour before the shooting.

He denied being the cyclist – and also denied that he attempted to defeat the ends of justice by having the tyres changed on a bike which was used in the killing.

Campbell later claimed in court that he had the tyres changed on his wife's bike as a "romantic gesture".

In the dock, Campbell claimed that on the day of the shooting he had been in his house all afternoon, after visiting a property he owned nearby in the morning.

He said he had not had any contact with Brian Low since 2017 and did not know he had left Edradynate Estate until he saw it on television.

But after the two-week trial, a jury at the High Court in Glasgow found Campbell guilty of murder.

A picture of the married grandfather who became a murderer at the age of 75 has now finally emerged.

"David could be a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde character," said John Duff, a local councillor and former police superintendent, who was born and grew up in Aberfeldy.

"At times he could be quite charming, and other times you could see another, tougher side to his character."

He said previous incidents that were "well known in the community" may have drawn suspicion to Campbell.

However, he added: "I don't think there were many people who knew exactly what happened in relation to the murder."

Duff said fears were initially raised in the area after the shooting, but started to ease when there were no further incidents.

"It was assumed this was a one-off incident, it wasn't a random shooting," he said.

He thought police would acknowledge there had been "lapses in their normal procedures" by assessing the death as non-suspicious - but understood why it could have happened.

Duff said there was no visual evidence about the nature of the crime, and several people had seen the body without realising that Low had been shot.

"You don't expect somebody out walking their dog in the middle of nowhere to be shot," he added.

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