Man guilty of murdering secret lover and their son near Inverness in 1976

Circumstantial evidence enough to convict William MacDowell, now 80, of killing Renee and Andrew MacRae

An 80-year-old man has been found guilty of murdering his secret lover and their three-year-old son almost half a century after the pair vanished without trace from a layby on the A9 near Inverness, concluding one of Scotland's most extensive and longest-running missing persons investigations.

Although the bodies of Renee MacRae, who was 36 when she disappeared in 1976, and her younger son, Andrew, have never been found, William MacDowell, now 80, was convicted by a compelling and classic case of circumstantial evidence", as the prosecutor Alex Prentice KC described it in his closing speech to the jury.