Skye murder trial: ‘As he moved towards me I just pulled the trigger’

A man who has denied murdering his brother-in-law and trying to murder three others on a single day claimed that wrestling with his wife sparked off the events that occured.

Finlay MacDonald told police: "I just didn't know what was going to happen next. I just felt like the day was going to end badly.

"I just didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know what was going to happen. I thought about shooting myself," he told officers, adding he "completely messed up".

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MacDonald (41) said he felt like it was not him when he wrestled with his wife in the kitchen of their family home on the Isle of Skye.

He told detectives who interviewed him: "That's what started a really black sequence of events, just really total darkness."

MacDonald said he had been off work for a period and was suffering ill health and said he thought that started to put some strain on the relationship between him and his wife. He said: "I think she resented it."

He said he went back to work and someone suggested that he go and see an osteopath but claimed that he was injured "really badly" by treatment.

He told police: "I lost about 45 lbs in weight because I went off my food after he injured me."

He said he felt there was a change in his wife and added: "She told me several times that she was not there to be my carer.

"I didn't know how I would survive because my wife was the only person I had to rely on. I could see under the surface that something was wrong."

MacDonald said that after his wife "pretty much said she didn't want me any more" that he spent all night pleading and crying trying to convince her against that and telling her he would do anything that it took to save the marriage.

In the morning he said he showed her that he used his phone to take a photo of messages he saw on her phone between her and a man. He said his wife started wrestling with him to try to grab the phone from his hand.

He said: "We were wrestling and then the knife got picked up." He said there was "a moment of madness" and then he realised what he had done and broke down.

MacDonald was asked if he had stabbed his wife and replied: "I think so. I don't know, it is just a haze." He said he thought he stabbed her in the stomach

He said his wife started the fighting as she went for him to get his phone. He said: "I wish I could turn back the clock. I just feel still, if she had not started physically fighting with me it would never have happened."

He said "everything went totally dark" and he left after taking his shotgun and his ammo box. "I didn't know what I was going to do but I felt total darkness," he said.

"I thought to myself my life was over and I didn’t know what I was going to do…Then I started thinking about who had brought me to this point. That's when I started thinking about the osteopath who injured me and my brother-in-law who battered me years ago, who had always bullied me and been aggressive to me," he said.

MacDonald said he went to the home of his brother-in-law John MacKinnon. He said: "I went to his house and just confronted him and said he had always bullied me and been horrible to me. He moved towards me and I had taken the gun out of the car. As he moved towards me I just pulled the trigger."

MacDonald said that he had then taken the gun when he drove to the home of osteopath John MacKenzie. "I just wanted to basically know what he had done to me."

The interview of MacDonald, played to a jury at the High Court in Edinburgh, took place at a police station in Inverness after he was arrested.

MacDonald told officers that he had held a firearms licence for 15 months and possessed six shotguns.

MacDonald is accused of attempting to murder his wife Rowena (34) on 10 August 2022 at the family home in the village of Tarskavaig, on Skye, by repeatedly stabbing her with a knife.

He is also accused of murdering John MacKinnon at his home at Teangue on the Isle of Skye by firing a shotgun at him on the same day.

He is further charged with attempting to murder Mr MacKenzie and his wife Fay, both 65, at their home in the village of Dornie, in Ross-shire, on the same date, by discharging a shotgun at them.

MacDonald has pled not guilty to all the charges and lodged a special defence to the murder charge maintaining that at the time his ability to determine or control his conduct was substantially impaired by abnormality of mind.

The trial before Lady Drummond continues.