DEATH RIDE My uncle was garroted with a cheese wire by a passenger in his taxi… now chilling picture may expose killer 40 years on
My uncle was garroted with a cheese wire by a passenger in his taxi… now chilling picture may expose killer 40 years on.
A snapshot taken in a pub and new DNA evidence could finally catch up with the violent killer of a taxi driver murdered in his cab.
When Alex McKay’s phone rang at quarter to ten p.m., he knew it wasn’t good news. “It was my mother, telling me my uncle Dod had been murdered,” Alex remembers.
On the evening of September 29, 1983, 57-year-old Dod, real name George Murdoch, was working in Aberdeen’s West End when he picked up a passenger who, little did he know, would be his last.
Down a quiet street in the tree-lined suburb of Cults on the outskirts of the city, two teenage cyclists noticed George and another man fighting outside the taxi and raised the alarm.
However, when the police arrived, it was too late. George was dead, surrounded by a pool of blood and garroted with a cheese wire. “My father went down with my other uncle, Dod’s brother, to identify the body,” recalls Alex, then 26.
“He never told us himself – but I heard it wasn’t a pretty sight.” Both his money and wallet had been stolen. Despite police launching a manhunt across the city, the killer, described by two witnesses as a man in his 20s-30s, appeared to have vanished into thin air.
George’s murderer has evaded justice for over four decades. But that could all change soon, thanks to recent breakthroughs in DNA technology, which could mean the case is closed at any time. Tens of thousands of pounds are on offer to anyone who can assist.
The hunt for the so-called “cheese wire killer” will now be featured in the brand new two-part Channel 5 documentary Forensics: Murder Case, which will air at 9 p.m. on Monday and Tuesday, July 21 and 22.
Alex McKay, now 68, told The Sun that finally identifying the killer would make him feel “euphoric”. He stated, “I’ve daydreamed a lot about it. “I believe that as I grow older, it will mean more to us.
Many of the people who were present at the time have passed away, including Dod’s siblings, my mother and father, and his wife Jessie. I’ll just be looking up at the sky thinking about them, thinking, ‘We’ve done it.'”
Alex remembers his uncle as a down-to-earth, kind man. “I loved them both to death,” he said of his Uncle and Auntie, who lived on the same estate in western Aberdeen and were only a ten-minute walk from him.
“He was always smiling and fun to be around – probably because he was a big kid himself.” “The pictures you see of my uncle with his carnation were from our wedding. “He was an usher. That’s how much I admired him as a man.
George’s murder on Pitfodels Station Road stunned his family and the rest of the community, but Jessie, George’s widow, was the most devastated. “She was haunted by the fact that this guy took George’s wallet, which had their address in it,” Alex told me.
“She was so sure he was going to come after her, so she had to live with it. “It definitely had a psychological effect, which harmed her health. But she was always fun to be around; she wasn’t all ‘Woe is me’; she was always up for a laugh.”
And an incredible act of kindness from her 12-year-old neighbour, David, could have spared her the worst of the grief. “He told his mum that he could hear Jessie crying through the walls, so he wanted to go and stay with her overnight to help her through it,” Alex tells me.
“I don’t know if I would have had the strength to do anything like that at that age, but he did, and he stayed with her for about two or three years, every night.”
Turning cold
Meanwhile, police and residents alike were determined to apprehend the murderer. Officers were stationed at the turnstiles during an Aberdeen vs Celtic match shortly after the murder to inspect every single person who entered the stadium for signs of involvement in the struggle.
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