Ghost Adventures Star’s Wife’s Romantic Texts With Convicted Murderer Revealed
Caroline Muirhead couldn't help feeling flattered that her fiancé had trusted her with such a huge secret.
"That felt special," she admits in the new Netflix documentary Should I Marry a Murderer?, "even though I knew it was so poisonously wrong."
Because what Alexander "Sandy" McKellar told her in November 2020, after she agreed to marry him, was that he had hit a cyclist on a dark road in the Scottish Highlands a few years earlier. Fearing the consequences, the hunting agent and his twin brother Robert McKellar then buried the man's body.
"'He's on the estate,'" Caroline recalled Sandy telling her. "'You jog past him every day.'"
Admittedly "stunned in that moment," she reassured him that she loved him, that "good people make mistakes."
She then came up with a series of excuses for not going to police right away.
But when Sandy told her that a developer was going to be ripping up the grounds of the estate—and started quizzing her about how long it would take to burn a body—Caroline said she started questioning everything.
Netflix
She especially wondered if Sandy swiped right on her Tinder profile because it said right there that she was a pathologist and therefore knew a lot about dead bodies.
And, she recalled, "Little did I know that this wasn't just a hit and run. This was actually something much worse."
Sandy is currently serving a 12-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to culpable homicide. But Caroline didn't always know the answer to the question the three-part Netflix series proposes.
"As mad as it may sound to people," she said, "you can't just turn your affection off for someone even though they've done a terrible thing."
Here's what you need to know about the shocking story behind Should I Marry a Murderer?
Courtesy of Netflix
How Did Caroline Muirhead Meet Alexander "Sandy" McKellar?
Caroline Muirhead met Sandy McKellar in early October 2020 on the heels of a "horrible breakup," as she detailed in the Netflix docuseries Should I Marry a Murderer?
The Glasgow-based pathologist, then 29, joined Tinder and matched with Sandy, a 6-foot-4 gamekeeper and hunting agent who lived on the Auch Estate in Argyll, 80-plus miles away.
They hit it off and Caroline started spending weekends in the Highlands with Sandy. He updated his Facebook to "engaged" on Nov. 28, 2020.
Courtesy of Netflix
When Did Sandy McKellar Tell Caroline Muirhead He Killed a Man?
Hours after sharing the news with friends and family, Caroline said in the doc, "I thought to myself, 'This is probably the time to ask him if there's anything he isn't telling me that I need to know.'"
Sandy pulled over, she recalled, and proceeded to tell her that he and his twin brother Robert McKellar were driving back to the Auch Estate after a hunting party at the nearby Bridge of Orchy Hotel a few years back, when he was blinded by a truck's lights and hit a cyclist.
Sandy told her there was "'no way he was alive,'" Caroline recalled, and he and Robert buried the man's body on the estate.
Son Mike Parsons, widow Margaret, daughter-in-law Victoria (Andrew Milligan/PA Images via Getty Images)
Who Was Tony Parsons?
After Sandy was asleep, Caroline found reports about 63-year-old Anthony Parsons, a Royal Navy veteran and prostate cancer survivor who was in the midst of a 100-mile charity ride across Scotland when he went missing after last being seen alive Sept. 29, 2017, at the Bridge of Orchy.
"I actually texted him myself, with what is my dad and myself's sense of humor, a simple text: 'Are you still alive?'" Tony's son Mike Parsons told BBC Scotland News in August 2025. "Looking back now, it's not nice to know that was the very last thing I texted to him, knowing at this point he would have been passed away."
"For me," Mike quipped, "he was a grumpy old dad who you had your run-ins with every now and then. But, I'd like people to remember him as just the guy who wanted to help everybody."
Courtesy of Netflix
What Did Caroline Muirhead Do After Sandy McKellar Told Her About the Cyclist?
Caroline said she went to work the next morning, thinking, "I have to do my f--king job, I can't let everything just crumble."
"My brain wasn't in a position yet to go to the police," she explained. "My brain was still not really accepting what I'd been told."
She brought Sandy to meet her parents as planned, reasoning to herself, "Just get through Christmas, then we'll deal with it."
"He just fit into the family so easily," Caroline recalled. "It almost felt selfish if I had burst that bubble...You know, you can't help sometimes who you fall in love with."
Courtesy of Netflix
When Did Caroline Muirhead Report Sandy McKellar to Police?
After Christmas, Sandy told Caroline that a new owner was planning to build on the Auch Estate "right beside where that man was buried," she recalled, and he needed her help.
Caroline said he asked her how long it would take to burn a body, making her wonder, "Did he ever actually like me for me, or was he just doing everything he could to get me into a position where he knew then he'd be able to have control and influence over me?"
Caroline went back to her parents' house and called police.
Sandy and Robert were arrested Dec. 30, 2020, on suspicion of causing death by careless driving while under the influence of drink or drugs. In police interview footage, Sandy replied "no comment" when asked if he was involved in a 2017 accident with a cyclist.
Courtesy of Netflix
How Did Caroline Muirhead Help Police Find Tony Parson's Body?
Before he was arrested, Caroline got Sandy to show her the burial site. They hiked to a remote area with—as she put it—no "identifiable features."
So, she explained, she waited until Sandy wasn't looking and crushed an empty Red Bull can into the dirt as a marker.
Authorities later found the can and started digging in that area. But with no evidence other than Caroline's (then anonymous) statement at that time, the McKellar brothers were released from custody.
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How Did Sandy McKellar React to Caroline Muirhead Turning Him In?
Parsons' body was found on Jan. 12, 2021. When Sandy heard about the sugar-free Red Bull can that marked the spot, he immediately connected it to his fiancée.
He called her, Caroline said, and "starts screaming, 'You f--king little b---h, you f--king did this!'"
But when he came to her apartment, Sandy apologized for involving her and she remembered thinking, "This is the loving man I fell for."
Knowing he was going to be arrested again at some point, she returned to the estate, where "Sandy and I lived in a bubble of our own false reality."
Even Robert accepted her back, she said, though he called it "'the most f--ked-up, dysfunctional situation.'"
Courtesy of Netflix
Why Was Sandy McKellar Charged With Murder?
Parsons' cause of death was determined to be multiple blunt force trauma injuries consistent with being struck by a motor vehicle—and there was no indication he died instantly.
"In Scotland you can commit murder intentionally or by wicked recklessness, where you don't care if person lives or dies," former Scotland Head of Homicide and Major Crime David Green said in the documentary. The McKellars "didn't call for assistance…It's callous beyond anything that I could imagine, really."
Sandy was arrested Dec. 1, 2021, and charged with murder.
Andrew Milligan/PA Images via Getty Images
Did Caroline Muirhead Testify at Sandy McKellar's Murder Trial?
Sandy wanted to plead guilty to causing death by dangerous driving, according to his defense counsel Brian McConnachie. But the Crown rejected the offer, intent on proceeding with a murder charge, to which Sandy pleaded not guilty.
Caroline, meanwhile, had been put on leave from her job, moved back in with her parents and, as she put it in the doc, "started recording everything to keep a grasp on my own reality."
On the day she was to testify at trial in July 2023, instead she headed out to Sandy's estate, determined to find Parsons' still-missing bicycle.
At that moment, "I'm not sane," she recalled. She found a tractor in the barn and drove it to a nearby loch, thinking, "If that bike is still there, I am going to try to find it."
"The shock of the cold water actually made me very emotional," she continued. "I have just f--ked my whole life up, for what? For a man who actually killed somebody. And that grief and that loss, and that stress, culminated into that psychotic finale."
She was arrested for contempt of court and jailed.
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Where Is Sandy McKellar Now?
Prosecutors subsequently accepted Sandy's plea to culpable homicide.
On Aug. 25, 2023, the 31-year-old was sentenced to 12 years in prison. Robert pleaded guilty to trying to defeat the ends of justice and was given five years and three months, according to Scotland's Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service.
"These brothers failed in their attempts to obstruct and evade justice," prosecutor Ruth McQuaid said at the time. “These were heinous and calculating crimes which brought untold distress to Mr. Parsons’ wife, children, and grandchildren."
Robert's attorney said his client showed "misplaced loyalty" to his brother and regretted "his callous and cowardly actions."
McConnachie told the court on Sandy's behalf that his client "accepts that, while catastrophically injured, Mr. Parsons was alive at the time. The only explanation which he offers is simply fear and panic."
"Using his words," the attorney continued, "he says he was too much of a coward to come clean. When he met Caroline and she went to the police, he fully accepts that ultimately she made the right decision in doing so."
Parsons' son Mike told BBC News Scotland he had "nothing but massive amounts of gratitude" for Caroline's role in finding out what happened to his father.
Courtesy of Netflix
Where Is Caroline Muirhead Now?
Caroline shared in the doc that she moved to the Scottish coast to start over.
"I've managed to get myself clean. I now see a psychiatrist," she said. "And I tackle a lot of the insecurities that led me to be in the vulnerable relationship to begin with."
Her relationship with her family was "much better," she added, and she was seeing someone who was "incredibly kind."
"When you love yourself," Caroline observed, "you will attract healthy love."
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