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Murder Trial: Death Of A Dog Walker (BBC)
Rating: Four out of five stars
This was the courtroom footage police didn’t want us to see. True crime footage is usually edited to show officers in a good light, as part of the deal when video is released — but not this time.
‘Is it fair for me to say that this was all very embarrassing for Police Scotland?’ the defence barrister asked a detective constable, in the engrossing first episode of the two-part documentary, Murder Trial: Death Of A Dog Walker.
‘I can’t comment on that,’ came the reply.
The officer’s voice was disguised and we couldn’t see his whole face, only his chin and lips. But there was no hiding the facts.
In February 2024, he answered a 999 call in rural Perthshire to find the body of a 65-year-old man, lying on his side in a field.
His face was so bloodied that a photo taken by the DC had to be blurred out for broadcast.
The man’s brother later said the sight was, ‘so horrific, I barely kept my breakfast down’.
But the unlucky copper radioed it in as ‘a medical episode’.
Leafy lane, near Perthshire, Scotland - the location where dog walker Brian Low was found
The chief suspect was a retired gamekeeper named David Campbell (pictured)
Pictured: Brian Low's partner Pam Curran who was so confused by grief that she initially told police she had seen him after returning from a long shift at the care home where she worked
Coffee break of the week:
Spy Next Door: The Anna Chapman Story told how Russian agents, including
a woman with a British passport, met at Starbucks bars in New York. Much more cosy and discreet than the MI5 method of sitting at opposite ends of a park bench.
He told the court: ‘I suspected that the deceased had suffered injuries to his face as a result of a fall whilst he was out for a walk.’
This assessment was not revised for six days — even though, when the body was unzipped from a recovery bag in the mortuary, shotgun pellets rolled out.
In fact, the victim, Brian Low, had been killed with a double barrelled shotgun.
To add to the confusion, his partner Pam was so confused by grief that she initially told police she had seen him after returning from a long shift at the care home where she worked.
That suggested he must have been murdered the following morning, when he walked the dog.
It was weeks later that she realised her memory was playing tricks. Brian had been killed before she came home. This created two serious problems for investigators.
The remote spot where Brian died had not been preserved as a crime scene, and detectives had been checking alibis for the wrong day.
For the defence, this was a godsend.
The chief suspect was a retired gamekeeper named David Campbell, a man with scowling eyebrows and a five o’clock shadow whose behaviour in the dock was unlikely to do him any favours with the jury — rolling his eyes, smirking and, at one point, snapping at the prosecutor to ‘stop calling me a liar’.
Scottish law allows trials to be filmed, but the pictures are usually as flat and lifeless as CCTV.
This was different — real wizardry was done in the editing room, rendering the courtroom footage tense with drama.
At one moment, with the camera behind an expert witness as he gave evidence, we saw Campbell framed through the man’s spectacles.
That’s a shot any Hollywood cinematographer would be proud of.
English (US) ·