A former head gamekeeper has been found guilty of murdering a man by shooting him with a shotgun on a country lane.
David Campbell, 77, shot his former colleague Brian Low, 65, having previously disabled CCTV cameras at his home in Aberfeldy, Perth and Kinross, in an attempt to conceal his whereabouts.
He then travelled to the scene of the killing on his wife’s e-bike, wearing a ‘hooded jacket’ and armed with a shotgun carried in a bag slung on his back.
Campbell attacked Mr Low at Leafy Lane near Pitilie, leaving him so severely injured that he died at the scene.
The court heard Campbell had previously showed ‘malice and ill-will’ towards Low, believing him to have planted evidence on the estate to frame him for the alleged illegal poisoning of birds of prey.
Both men had worked at Edradynate estate, where Campbell was head gamekeeper between May 1984 and February 2018, and Mr Low was a groundsman between August 2000 and February 2023.
Campbell was found guilty of the murder following a trial at the High Court in Glasgow.
The jury found him guilty by majority verdict today, having begun their deliberations on Monday.
Former gamekeeper David Campbell has been found guilty of murdering Brian Low by shooting him with a shotgun near Aberfeldy
Brian Low (pictured) was left so severely injured he died at the scene in Leafy Lane near Pitillie track
Campbell, who appeared in court dressed in a dark-coloured suit, showed no reaction as the verdict was read out.
During a nearly three-week trial, the court heard Campbell had harboured a ‘festering grievance’ against Mr Low.
Campbell disabled CCTV cameras at his home before leaving armed with a shotgun to carry out the ‘brutal’ killing of his former colleague.
CCTV footage from the afternoon of February 16, shown to the court during the trial, showed a hooded cyclist at 4.18pm heading down a road towards the track where the shooting occurred, and then coming back the other way shortly after 5pm.
Mr Low was shot at about 4.52pm, but his lifeless body was found by a local man at about 8.30am the following day.
In an attempt to cover his tracks, Campbell changed his bicycle tyres in the days after the killing.
However, soil samples taken from elsewhere on the bike showed it had been at the scene of the murder.
In his closing speech on Friday, prosecutor Greg Farrell told the jury: ‘There, using his shotgun, he shot Brian Low, hitting him on the face, chest and neck, and left him for dead.
‘Brian Low was out with his dog Millie, going about his ordinary peaceful life. He was left to die on that track alone.
‘That shotgun blast killed him within minutes, or perhaps seconds. Brian Low had no chance. He was unarmed and unaware.
‘This was a brazen, brutal and planned execution at a rural spot, a cowardly ambush motivated by nothing more than sheer malice.’
He added: ‘David Campbell was an expert shot. He hunted Brian Low down like he was quarry.’
Mr Low’s death was initially deemed non-suspicious – which one police witness accepted had been a ‘glaring mistake’ – and it was not until five days later that police began treating it as murder.
This was despite the fact Mr Low was found to have around 30 injuries from shotgun pellets and that pellets fell from his body bag when it was brought to a mortuary.
Campbell initially faced a total of eight charges but on Friday seven of these were withdrawn, leaving just the single charge of murder.
Campbell had denied murder, claiming he was at home in Aberfeldy at the time of the murder, but this was rejected by the jury.
Campbell is due to be sentenced later on Wednesday.