In September 1997, the quiet outskirts of Milngavie in East Dunbartonshire, Scotland, became the scene of a shocking crime that shattered a young family and highlighted the violent undercurrents of Glasgow’s criminal underworld.
Christopher McGrory, a twenty-five-year-old unemployed man from Lennoxtown, had just returned from his honeymoon. He married his bride, Anne-Marie, in Dublin earlier that month, with a romantic trip to Paris following the ceremony. Friends described him as handsome, funny, and carefree. Christopher owned three horses and had previously run a milk delivery route in Milngavie, which he sold for a substantial sum. Rumors swirled about his involvement in drug dealing, though his widow vehemently denied this, insisting his lifestyle was funded legitimately.
On September 23rd, 1997, Christopher was last seen at stables in Lambhill, Glasgow. Prosecutors later alleged he was abducted from there, forced into his own white Transit van, and driven to a remote spot. His body was discovered days later on September 30th (or around that time, as reports vary slightly) in the back of his van, parked on Dowan Road near Dougalston Golf Course, between Baldernock and Torrance on the northern edge of Greater Glasgow. He had been strangled.
The discovery prompted a major murder investigation by Strathclyde Police. Two men were quickly arrested: Frank McPhee (also spelled McPhie), a fifty-year-old notorious Glasgow gangster from Maryhill, and Colin McKay, twenty-nine, Christopher’s former close friend who had served as best man at the wedding. Shockingly, McPhee had acted as an usher at Christopher’s Dublin wedding just weeks earlier.
McPhee was no stranger to serious crime. Recently released after serving an eight-year sentence for drugs, he had prior convictions for assault, robbery, and firearms offenses dating back to the 1970s and 1980s. In 1997, he had already faced (and been cleared via “not proven” verdicts) charges of stabbing a fellow inmate to death in Perth Prison.
The prosecution case claimed McPhee and McKay frog-marched Christopher into his van and strangled him near the golf course, possibly over a soured drug deal. Police believed the motive tied to organized crime, with suggestions that Christopher’s flashy lifestyle and Dublin connections pointed to drug involvement.
The trial took place at the High Court in Glasgow in 1998. After deliberations, the jury returned “not proven” verdicts for both men on the murder charges—Scotland’s unique third option, meaning “not enough evidence to convict” rather than outright innocence. McPhee was cheered by a crowd of supporters as he walked free. McKay was also cleared.
Anne-Marie McGrory, devastated, spoke out after the verdict: “If it wasn’t them, then who was it? Somebody killed him.” She had to identify her husband’s body shortly after their honeymoon and moved back in with her mother, struggling with grief and rumors.
The case remains officially unsolved. No one has ever been convicted of Christopher McGrory’s murder.
Frank McPhee’s story ended violently two years later. In May 2000, he was assassinated outside his home in Maryhill, shot in the head with a sniper rifle in a suspected contract killing. Some speculated it was revenge for Christopher’s death or tied to rival drug gangs, but his murder also went unsolved.
Crime Immemorial 