Murder on Goatfell, Arran

In 1889 the body of Edwin Robert Rose was discovered on Arran's famous mountain Goatfell. The corpse had been hidden beside a boulder, behind a wall of rocks. His head had been smashed in.

Edwin Rose, a tourist from London who came to Arran for a weeks summer holiday, had been missing for nearly 2 months. A search party of around 200 had been scouring the mountain. It was only the smell of the decomposing corpse that ultimately led to the discovery of the body.

Rose had last been seen climbing the mountain with a young man called Annandale. A police investigation established that Annandale had absconded, not paying his rent. He had been witnessed carrying luggage and clothing as well as other items belonging to Rose. It was also discovered that John Annandale was in fact John Watson Laurie.

As they were carrying out their investigation, Laurie, possibly inspired by Jack the Ripper's police aimed taunts through the newspapers the previous year, wrote two letters to the press proclaiming his innocence. The first posted to the North British Daily Mail, said:
" I rather smile when I read that my arrest is hourly expected. If things go as I have designed them I will soon have arrived at that country from whose bourne no traveller returns, and since there has been so much said about me, it is only right that the public should know what are the real circumstances... As regards Mr Rose, poor fellow, no one who knows me will believe for a moment that I had any complicity in his death... We went to the top of Goatfell, where I left him in the company of two men who came from Loch Ranza and were going to Brodick."

However, despite his claims of innocence Laurie was eventually caught - after two months on the run - and convicted of the murder of Edwin Rose. He was sentenced to death, but later commuted to life in prison. Laurie admitted at the time to having robbed the man, but denied murder - and would do so till the end of his days, 40 years later, when he died in 1930, age 69, in the "lunatic division" of Perth Prison.