Caroline Muirhead’s whole life crumbled when her fiancé Alexander “Sandy” McKellar confessed to a brutal killing. She agreed to help the police in getting justice – but at a huge cost
It’s hard to imagine hearing the man you love confess to a brutal killing, but those haunting words will be etched into Caroline Muirhead’s mind forever.
The Glasgow woman’s whole life crumbled when she asked her fiancé Alexander “Sandy” McKellar a simple question: “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” His response left her reeling. Sandy confessed to killing a man – and covering up the evidence.
After taking her phone off her and saying he loved and trusted her, Sandy admitted that he had “hit a cyclist” whilst driving over the limit close to the Scottish estate where he lived, explaining that the man had “flown over the car”.
When Caroline asked her fiancé if the man managed to survive, Sandy replied: “He was hit at high speed. There’s no way he was alive. Chillingly admitting he had buried him, he added: “He’s right beneath your feet when you shoot your clay pigeons.”
Caroline pictured following the McKellar brothers’ sentencing hearing(Image: PA)
The man Sandy had killed was cancer survivor Tony Parsons, 63, from Clackmannanshire in Scotland, who had vanished into thin air in 2017 after setting out on a 100-mile charity bike ride across the country in September 2017. Sandy and his twin brother Robert left Tony to die on the side of the road, before later returning to move his body and bury it on a nearby estate.
This chilling confession is at the heart of a new Netflix true crime series, where viewers are immediately placed in Caroline’s shoes. She faces an impossible dilemma – stay loyal to the man she loves – or risk everything by telling the truth. “I knew I had to hand in the man I loved,” she says on the show. But it came at a personal huge cost.
The story unfolds over the course of three episodes, during which forensic pathologist Caroline recalls her whirlwind romance with McKellar, who she met on Tinder in 2020. “[To have your fiancé] say to you, ‘I’ve done a horrible, horrible thing,’ [it’s] something so vile it flips your entire world upside down,” she recounts on the show.
Caroline didn’t immediately tell police and allowed Sandy to meet her parents. Soon after this, she did tell the police everything, and felt “like a rat” as she continued to speak to Sandy and inform the cops who then arrested him and Robert, who had been in the car too.
The brothers were released without charge, and amazingly did not suspect Caroline of being the informer, presuming someone on the Estate with suspicions had grassed them up. But rather than stay away, and without police protection 24/7, Caroline decided to continue to see Sandy.
McKellar confessed that he had killed Tony Parsons to his then-fiancée Caroline(Image: Reach plc)
Caroline struggled with her mental health during the op(Image: Victoria Stewart)
She recorded secret confessions on her phone and even went back to the burial site with McKellar, secretly dropping a Red Bull can as a marker for the spot, before later calling police to tell them where to search for the body on the remote estate.
Incredibly, even after the body of Mr Parsons was found in January 2021, and her boyfriend knew she was to blame for his arrest, Caroline and Sandy still continued to see each other. By this time, Sandy has also admitted Mr Parsons didn’t die at the scene, and they had waited for him to die, changing cars and their clothes before burying him a day later, after finishing work.
Justifying why she continued to see Sandy, she says: “I was so broken and feeling as if no one would ever want to be with me. Sandy would send little photos or little videos saying ‘oh my gosh, I miss you so much’.
“I had handed him in and ruined his life. He should hate me. It made me feel loved, made me feel wanted, and that feeling of being treated well when you’ve not been, you cling on to it so strongly. I still had that toxic draw when he would message me. As mad as it may sound, people can’t just turn your affection off for someone even though they’ve done a terrible thing.”
McKellar was sentenced to 12 years in prison(Image: Courtesy of Netflix)
For author Alex Perry, who spent years researching women who go undercover to expose their partners’ crimes, Caroline’s struggles sound all too familiar. He penned a book called The Good Mothers about three women from Mafia families who spied for the Italian authorities.
Giving insight into what undercover work in Caroline’s situation really looks like, he tells the Mirror: “It’s a very invidious position to be in as a kind of undercover whistleblower. You’re extremely isolated, nobody is your friend and and everybody around you is after something and is manipulating you.”
The women he investigated, who spied on their own families for the authorities just like Caroline, made “an extremely courageous choice, and it’s a very thankless one.”
“You are exposed and isolated. You’ve got no friends because you’re living this double life and you can’t tell anyone about it. If you do tell anybody, there’s a good chance you might die. It’s a terrifying position to be in,” he warns.
Caroline Muirhead says she felt ‘abandoned’ by the police(Image: Courtesy of Netflix)
During her nine-month stint undercover to help police gather more evidence, Caroline’s mental health suffered hugely and she turned to drink and drugs to cope.
She also felt ‘abandoned’ by Police Scotland – who declined to take part in the series – and made multiple complaints against them. After a five-year investigation, the majority were not upheld and the police maintain they offered Caroline appropriate support.
Perry claims that the police and investigators utilising undercover witnesses in this way are often “not equipped to counsel or help” their assets who are dealing with incredibly complicated situations emotionally and “all sorts of feelings of guilt”.
“You’re testifying against someone who you’ve had feelings for and it’s very easy for them to reignite those feelings and play on them, and overwhelm you with guilt,” he says. Instead the authorities are “after what they’re after, which is evidence.”
“You’re putting down roots,” Perry explains of the undercover missions. “The only way these lies become effective is if you live them and believe them. The reason that Caroline or the women I wrote about were able to be so effective was because they weren’t lying, because this was their life. They merely had to continue as they were before.
Caroline Muirhead left a can of Red Bull at the makeshift grave(Image: Netflix)
“But of course, they know they’ve now got a second secret mission. But to live that sort of schizophrenic life is almost impossible to hold in your head. Even with super training. But if you haven’t got that, if you have no experience of this before, it is a kind of trauma. It’s a dilemma that you never really recover from. And you begin to lose touch with what’s real and what’s not. You begin to distrust everybody. The isolation builds and builds. You can really go to a spiral.”
Finally In December 2021, the McKellar twins were rearrested. They attempted to plead guilty to causing death by dangerous driving but were instead charged with murder. Caroline was due to give evidence against her ex-fiance and broke down and failed to appear at the opening day of the trial. She instead went to the Scottish Highlands convinced she could find more evidence as she lost touch with reality and struggled to cope.
The next day when proceedings resumed, the Crown accepted a reduced plea of culpable homicide. Alexander “Sandy” McKellar was sentenced to 12 years in prison, brother Robert was jailed for five years and three months.
At the end of the Netflx series, she confirms she has finally been able to “move forward” in her life. She now lives by the coast, has managed to get herself clean and see a psychiatrist.
Caroline briefly appeared with her new partner at the end of the series(Image: Netflix)
She has also found love with someone “new, who is incredibly kind”. Appearing in a photo with her unnamed partner, she reflects: “When you love yourself you will attract healthy love. Onwards and upwards.”
The women that Perry wrote about in ‘The Good Mothers’ were not so lucky: only one of the three has survived, with the Mafia killing two who returned to their families – likely knowing what awaited them – due to the extreme isolation of the life post-testifying.
“All three women wanted to protect their children even at the cost of their own lives. They wanted a different life for their children away from these killers and they didn’t want their sons in particular to become killers, to be brought up by people like that. But the cost to themselves, well in the end, it was lethal for two of them,” Perry explains, adding, “The mafia do not forget.”
