On February 22, 2006 a 51-year-old out of work accountant named Andrew Ramsey and his partner, Beverley Sinclair, were returning home from an evening out in Glasgow, Scotland. When the couple reached their house they noticed a black Honda Accord. Two plainclothes police officers emerged from the vehicle, addressed the couple by name, and “arrested” Andrew Ramsey. Beverley watched as they handcuffed Andrew and put him in the back of their car and drove away.
It was the last time she would ever see him.
The officers told Beverley Andrew would be at the Stewart Street Police Station in Glasgow. Andrew had recently been questioned in a fraud investigation so the arrest may not have seemed out of place at first. However, when she called the police station they had no idea what she was talking about. Andrew Ramsey was not in their custody or in their system at all. They had not sent plainclothes police officers to her house, and their officers did not use black Honda Accords.
That’s where things really started to unravel.
Beverley soon learned that a few days before he disappeared Andrew had tried to mortgage her home behind her back. This information led police to believe he had possibly constructed the ruse of being arrested and had disappeared of his own volition. They were able to find a recent email Andrew had written to an ex-girlfriend that said he planned to go abroad for a few months and would be unreachable.
The investigation led to Andrew’s accounting work. He hadn’t been working in the months leading up to his disappearance, and was questioned in the fraud case five times. He had told friends he was worried about his safety because he “knew too much”. It’s also wondered whether Beverley Sinclair might be herself involved as there were no other witnesses to the black Honda Accord or Andrew’s arrest despite their home being in an area where people would have been passing by. Andrew never used his bank accounts and no one reported seeing or hearing from him after he was abducted.
Over a year later Andrew Ramsey’s skull was found on April 5, 2007 by a fishing boat 40 minutes from Andrew and Beverley’s home.
In February 2008, police said they believed Andrew’s murder was related to the fraud investigation he had been questioned about before he disappeared.
In November 2008, 44-year-old Ian Millar and 46-year-old Derek Menzies were arrested and charged with Andrew’s abduction and murder. Both men claimed they had never met Andrew Ramsey. They were both released and not questioned again. The police report of their arrests seems to have gone missing. Millar has said:
“I have been in limbo for the last three years. No one can tell me why I was a suspect in this man’s murder. I was arrested in the morning and then dumped back on the street in the evening without any money after being charged. I have heard nothing since then.”
The arrests were the last public developments in this case. In 2015 Beverley Sinclair passed away. When the BBC aired an episode of Crimewatch about the murder, they didn’t receive a single tip from the public despite offering a $5,000 reward. Andrew’s family says he was a popular member of the community who left two grown children behind.
