November 25th 1935

Murder at Cuddies Strip

1930's bi-plane at Necessity Brae,
Cherrybank, near Cuddies Strip.
Picture from Donald Paton

They heard the Academy clock strike ten and got up to go home. As they did so a shot rang out but neither was hurt. Then a second shot was fired and Danny fell backwards to the ground with blood on his face. Panic stricken, Marjorie bent over the boy calling his name. Getting no reply she shouted for help and looked up to find a strange young man standing beside her. She asked him to stay with Danny while she went for help but he made no reply and as she ran down towards the style she found him running silently beside her.

As she started to mount the style he threw her to the ground and dragged her into the bushes. There he undressed her, tied her hands behind her back with a handkerchief, tied her suspender belt over her mouth and attempted to rape her. Later he left her, returning in the direction of Cuddies Strip. She succeeded in getting one of her hands free, and covering herself with her coat, with the handkerchief still on one hand and the suspender belt round her neck, she ran barefoot towards Cherrybank. On the way she met a young couple. She was, they testified sobbing and terribly upset. They phoned the police and after she was given shoes she went back to Danny Kerrigan, She found that, since the murder, someone had covered his face with his own green handkerchief tucked in carefully below the chin. Though this was not mentioned at a later trial it was a custom among the tinkers to cover the face of a dead person.

For over a week after the murder no clues were found and no arrests made. Then the Glasgow police were called in and were able to identify the handkerchief used to bind Marjory’s wrists. From the laundry mark they proved that it had come from Aberdalgie House which had been burgled a short time before. It was at this time that the police became interested in John McGuigan.

He was described as a squat, sallow, swarthy Irishman of 24 who was living in a small tent about a mile from the murder and a mile and a third from Aberdalgie House. He had five recent convictions for assault, robbery and housebreaking. He was of tinker extraction and visited his parents at ‘the berries’ in Blairgowrie most week-ends. He worked occasionally at Kirkton of Mailor farm and enjoyed an acquaintance with some of the younger workers there. He had a reputation as a peeping tom and possessed both a telescope and a pair of field glasses. When his tent was searched no articles of clothing belonging to Marjory Fenwick were found (most of her clothing and shoes were never found) but there were a number of articles stolen from Aberdalgie. Because of this he was arrested and later in an identity parade he was immediately picked out by Marjory.

Later he was formally charged with burglary, rape and murder and on November 25th he came to trial at the High Court in Edinburgh under the Lord Justice Clerk, Lord Aitchison with a jury of eight men and seven women. There seems little doubt that McGuigan was guilty of rape and robbery but was he guilty of murder? He had been seen in the vicinity on the night of the murder by two young boys. They had been going along the dike that runs from the style “Here’s the keeper coming,”  said one of them, “we had better get down and not let him see us.”  He passed them by at a distance of only four yards going in the direction of Cuddies Strip. Later one of the boys picked out McGuigan at an identity parade.

John Peddie, a ploughman at Kirkton of Mailor stated that McGuigan told him in July that he possessed a gun and later showed it to him. It was a double barrelled shotgun. On the night of the murder he had been out with a friend and passed McGuigan’s tent but he was not there. He saw him the next day and asked him if he had been out shooting “and accidentally shot the man.”  McGuigan made rather a strange reply. “I thought you would be thinking that.”  He said that he had hidden the gun because he had no license and was “frightened for the police getting it.” 

The same day Ronald Mackenzie was working with McGuigan in a cornfield when they saw a policeman cycling along the road. “They need not bother going up now” , said McGuigan, “I have my gun away.”  Evidence was also given by the grieve at the farm “What’s this you’ve been up to, John?”  McGuigan had looked disconcerted at the question but said that he had been out with his glasses but back in his tent by half past nine. Expert evidence was given that the wounds that killed Danny Kerrigan came from a double barrelled shotgun fired from eight yards (gun expert) or ten yards (police doctor). This would tie in with the gun being fired from some bushes close to where Danny was murdered.

It seems strange that no sustained attempt was made to find the double barrelled shotgun, which from McGuigan’s remarks must have been hidden on the night of the murder or the next day and would not be very far from his tent. Even so the evidence against him was very strong and the judge’s summing up reflected this. “Don’t forget when you are in the region of crime of this gravity you are definitely in the region of the abnormal. People who commit crimes of this sort are not to be measured by ordinary standards. Also remember the man who was capable of shooting Kerrigan dead in the presence of that young girl when they were sweethearting together was a man capable of any crime. There is no doubt that whoever committed this crime was a man of low and degraded mentality……The first three or four witnesses who saw her had not the least doubt the girl’s story was true……If the accused was the man who stole the handkerchief from Aberdalgie and tied it on her wrists, then the inference that he was the man who fired the shot became inevitable. It was circumstantial evidence; but they had the clearest evidence of Marjory Fenwick that though she did not see him pull the trigger, the accused was there at the time.” 

The jury were away two hours and ten minutes finding McGuigan guilty of rape and burglary but by a majority of nine to six finding the murder charge Not Proven. It was generally felt at the time that John McGuigan was a very fortunate young man. He received a sentence of ten years.

Marjory Fenwick endured a very considerable ordeal in seeing her sweetheart murdered beside her, almost immediately afterwards being brutally raped and later having to suffer in court from the hostile questioning and occasional innuendoes of the defence council. Though only seventeen she stood up to the pressures exceedingly well. Let her have the last word in the matter. From an interview in the People’s Journal of December 7th. “I spoke nothing but the truth. There was however much more I could have said, but somehow or other I never got the chance to say it. Indeed when Mr Burnett (Defence Council) was addressing the jury I felt like jumping up and requesting to be allowed to go into the witness box again. With another half hour there I believe I could have cleared up a number of hazy points.”