A 16-year-old boy has been found guilty of the abduction, rape and murder of Alesha MacPhail on the Isle of Bute last July.

The teenager remained impassive in the dock as the jury at Glasgow high court delivered its unanimous verdict after four hours of deliberation on Thursday afternoon, and following a two-week trial.

Addressing the killer, the judge, Lord Matthews, said he had committed “some of the wickedest, most evil crimes this court has ever heard in its long history of dealing with depravity”.



He added: “I have no idea why you did this. I do know that the evidence against you was overwhelming.”

The jury heard that the 16-year-old, who cannot be named because of his age, took Alesha from her bed in the seafront flat where she was staying with her father and grandparents, using a knife to silence her, and carried the child to the grounds of a disused hotel where he raped and smothered her.

Six-year-old Alesha, from Airdrie in North Lanarkshire, had arrived on the island a few days earlier for a three-week summer break. Her family last saw her at about 11pm on 1 July. Her grandmother Angela King reported her missing at 6.23am the next day and appealed for help on Facebook, prompting a frantic search by locals. A member of the public found Alesha’s body about half a mile away at about 9am.

The jury was told of overwhelming scientific evidence linking the killer to the murder, with a match for his DNA detected on 14 different parts of Alesha’s body, as well as a match for his semen indicating that he raped the child. Fibres believed to be from the accused’s trousers were also found on Alesha’s clothing.

The pathologist who examined Alesha’s body told the court the girl had sustained “catastrophic” injuries, some of which he concluded had been inflicted while she was still alive.

Jurors were shown CCTV of a figure on the shoreline who a number of witnesses said appeared to be carrying a heavy object. The timing matched other footage, which showed the killer leaving his family home on three occasions during that night.

The killer’s mother drew the police’s attention to this footage. Her family lived within walking distance of the McPhail family flat, and she told the court that she initially reviewed the cameras to see if they had captured footage of the missing girl. Instead, she saw evidence of her son leaving the property and called the police “to eliminate him from their inquiries”.

Throughout the trial, the killer blamed the murder on Toni McLachlan, the girlfriend of Alesha’s father, Robert. He maintained that he had had sex with McLachlan the night that Alesha went missing and that McLachlan had taken the used condom to plant evidence on Alesha’s body, a story that McLachlan vehemently denied.

The jury rejected this defence – described as “preposterous” by the prosecutor, Iain McSporran QC – choosing instead to conclude that the CCTV showed him leaving the house to abduct Alesha himself using a kitchen knife taken from his mother’s knife block.

The home CCTV footage then showed him returning and leaving to dispose of the knife and bloodstained clothes on the shoreline, which were later found by dog walkers.

Following the verdict McSporran said that he wanted to “repeat and emphasise” that McLachlan had “nothing whatsoever to do with this awful crime”.



He added that the loss of a child in such “bestial” circumstances was “unfathomable”.

In her victim impact statement, Alesha’s mother, Georgina Lochrane, said that her world had been ripped from her and that she continued to have nightmares about what happened to her daughter.

Outside the court, the senior investigating officer Det Supt Stuart Houston welcomed the verdict, saying that he hoped it would “bring some comfort to the family and friends of little Alesha MacPhail who have been through the most horrific ordeal”.

Praising her family’s bravery, he added: “Alesha’s senseless and barbaric murder shocked the small community on Bute and people across Scotland. The effects of her death are still being felt today.”



Thanking the people of Bute, he said: “From the moment Alesha was first reported missing – at the start of her summer holidays on Bute – the local community rallied together and did everything they possibly could do help.” The Rev Owain Jones, of the United Church of Bute, said: “In different ways, we have all, as individuals and as an island, had to live with these things, and there’s no question but that we will all be taken back now, by the trial, to events with which we haven’t begun to come to terms.”



He added: “There is an air of unreality to something that’s terribly real, and nothing feels the same after it. But this is a very resilient little island community, and we will cope.”

Matthews called for further background and psychological reports before sentencing.

On Friday, he will hear an application to lift the restriction on naming the convicted teenager.