Revenge on the village path: The gamekeeper murderer who settled a score

By the time we arrive in Aberfeldy, the rural Scottish village is settling into its familiar pattern.

Through the mist, dog walkers trace the same routes they have for years, as cars crawl past. Just 1,800 live here, and strangers are noticed.

It was here on 16 February 2024 that Brian Low set out on a walk with his dog along a remote track beside a low stone wall.

Minutes later, at around 4.50pm, he was lying on the ground having been shot in the chest and neck.

The track is a narrow, straight corridor lined with tall trees.

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From behind the wall, anyone approaching can be seen long before they come into view. There are no overlooking houses and no passing traffic.

Walking the scene with me, former police officer Martin Gallagher describes it as "a perfect ambush location".

From here, he explains, you could wait unseen. In Perthshire, the crack of a shotgun would not cause major alarm because shooting is part of rural life.

The shooting was calculated, but in those first critical hours, that reality was missed.

The mistake that cost six days

When police arrived the next morning following a 999 call, Brian Low's death was treated as a medical emergency. They thought he had fallen and hurt himself.

Despite visible blood, despite the rural isolation, despite gunshot wounds and despite the absence of any obvious explanation for how he had come to be lying there.

The body was covered and then removed.

No cordon sealed off the ground, no forensic tent appeared and there was no sweep for footprints or tyre marks.

In a village unfamiliar with murder, the possibility of foul play was missed.

The truth emerged later in the mortuary. As the body bag was opened, shotgun pellets fell out.

The post-mortem revealed at least 30 wounds to Brian Low's face - a close-range shotgun blast.

By then, six days had passed.

Six days of walkers crossing the track, six days of shifting mud, six days of bicycle tracks or footprints and animals trampling through.

"Anything that might have spoken clearly of the killer's movements had been lost.

"I can't remember a murder scene being lost for six days like this," Martin Gallagher says.

"The public noticed something was wrong. Police didn't. That's fundamental."

Police held an excruciating news conference with journalists where they tried their best not to look embarrassed while insisting the initial officers believed Brian had injured himself.

The name everyone whispered

As detectives began knocking on doors, asking about bikes seen nearby and anyone behaving suspiciously, something else was happening quietly in Aberfeldy.

In a community that felt uneasy that a killer hadn't been caught, a name was already being spoken of.

When I visited the village in the days after the shooting, almost everyone I spoke to believed they knew who could be responsible.

The same name that kept surfacing was David Campbell.

Some residents even pointed us towards his home. When I knocked on his door, his wife answered from a window: "How do you think I feel?"

Then it was shut in my face.

In small communities like this, speaking out against Campbell was not something done lightly.

To understand why suspicion gravitated towards him, you have to leave the village and drive along the edge of the River Tay, passing JK Rowling's country mansion before arriving at the Edradynate Estate.

Spread wide across beautiful land, the estate has thousands of acres that were owned for generations by a wealthy city businessman.

For years, both Brian Low and David Campbell worked there as groundsman and chief gamekeeper, respectively.

Somewhere along those years, their relationship deteriorated.

Campbell was convinced Low had historically tried to frame him for wildlife crimes on the estate. Nothing was ever proved.

The saga hardened into resentment. Campbell's murder trial was told that he loathed Low.

Decades passed. The anger did not.

By 2024, Campbell was 75 years old. As one former officer put it, he was moving towards "the winter of his life".

And despite the pair having not spoken in years, it appears the grievance had hardened.

Ultimately, Campbell thought he was settling a score for what had happened at Edradynate.

A threat that lingered

Campbell was arrested on 24 May 2024 - more than three months after the shooting.

At the time officers raided his home, he was in the toilet with no clothes on.

He later claimed that being handcuffed to a female officer at his home affected his mood during a subsequent police interview.

Campbell's home CCTV system was also found to have been shut down at 10.09am on the morning of the murder.

During his trial, he described himself as a "dinosaur" with technology, adding: "I certainly didn't mean to switch it off".

For some, the shooting did not come as a shock.

Retired Tayside policeman Alan Stewart remembers an encounter with Campbell more than 30 years ago.

Back in 1995, during a confrontation, Campbell told him: "It's great to see what vermin you see when you haven't got a gun."

At the time, Stewart interpreted it as a veiled threat. More bluster and aggression.

But he says when he heard that a man connected to the Edradynate Estate had been shot dead, his mind went immediately to Campbell.

"I saw it building up," he tells Sky News. "I never thought it would come to actually shooting somebody."

Asked how he would describe Campbell now, Stewart did not hesitate.

"Evil."

And looking back, he says, he saw those traits decades earlier.

The threat, once hypothetical, had become reality.

Settling scores

Back at the scene, Martin Gallagher believes this was no spontaneous act.

The location was chosen, the timing calculated, and routine exploited.

From behind that wall, the killer would have had a clear view down the path, a perfect opportunity to wait until Brian Low was exactly where he wanted him.

The isolation ensured no interruption.

"It's not just a murder," Mr Gallagher says. "It's an execution."

A jury at the High Court in Glasgow agreed, finding David Campbell guilty of murder on Wednesday.

Aberfeldy appears unchanged since Brian Low's killing, but something fundamental has shifted.

Because in a village untouched by murder, the violence did not come from an unknown outsider passing through. It came from resentment carried quietly across decades.

The uncomfortable truth for the villagers here is that danger was never far away - it was living among them for decades.

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A Police Scotland spokesperson told Sky News: "We have reflected and learned from the initial stages of the investigation.

"All relevant policies and procedures were reviewed and immediate organisational changes, relating to attendance at scenes of crime and mortuary procedures, were implemented. This learning forms part of ongoing work to develop detective training."

(c) Sky News 2026: Revenge on the village path: The gamekeeper murderer who settled a score