Nairn unsolved murder lies in Alistair Wilson business dealings says former top police officer

The key to solving the murder of former Nairn bank manager Alistair Wilson is more likely to be found in his business dealings than a row over planning permission a former leading police officer has argued.

Husband and father of two Mr Wilson was shot on his doorstep in Crescent Road, Nairn after his wife answered the door to a man who asked for her husband by name on November 28, 2004.

The man handed Mr Wilson an empty envelope with the name “Paul” on it.

After going inside and showing the empty envelope to his wife, Mr Wilson returned to the door, where he was shot. He died in hospital later that evening.

No-one has ever been charged with the crime and in 2022 it was revealed police were investigating the circumstances around Mr Wilson’s objection to a decking area at the neighbouring Havelock Hotel.

A complete reinvestigation of the case was ordered in September 2024.

Speaking on the Daily Record’s Criminal Record podcast this week, former Metropolitan Police Detective Chief Inspector Colin Sutton agreed that the murder was taregted rather than random, but was sceptical that the answer lies in the decking dispute.

“There is something around the way that he was conducting his business, he was conducting his affairs, he was conducting his marriage, or something, that will have led to somebody banging on his door and calling for him, giving him the envelope and everything we know,” he said.

He quoted a former boss’s maxim ‘Tell me how he lived and I’ll tell you how he died’ and added: “I think it (murder) seems quite an extreme reaction to someone objecting to your planning consent.”

Mr Sutton, who led the investigation that led to the conviction of serial killer Levi Bellfield, and became a presenter for Sky Crime's The Real Manhunter programme after retirement, also argued that Mr Wilson’s murder was more likely to have been a professional “assassination” of some sort than a neighbourhood disagreement, pointing to the weapon used.

“It’s a firearms murder,” he said. “They’re not very common, people don’t have guns, certainly not (that kind of gun)…As I understand it it was probably a Czechoslovakian handgun of some sort, a pistol of some sort, people don’t have those; they’re illegal and there aren’t that many, so someone who is using that to commit a murder is obviously connected with somebody who can get them that gun. It all seems a bit more, to use the phrase, ‘heavy’, than something as simple as having an argument with a neighbour.”

He said: “I’d want to look at it (the planning dispute) and it’s a possibility, of course it is - we have to keep all possibilities open until we know - but I think I’d be focusing on other aspects of his life.