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David Campbell was sentenced to 19 years in jail after being found guilty of the murder at the High Court in Glasgow.
A gamekeeper gunman convicted of killing his arch enemy told cops probing the case their theories were “pish”.
David Campbell was sentenced to 19 years on Wednesday for gunning down ex-colleague Brian Low, 65, in a brutal execution.
The 77-year-old murdered Mr Low on Leafy Lane, Aberfeldy, on February 16, 2024, having previously disabled CCTV cameras at his home in Aberfeldy, Perth and Kinross, in an attempt to conceal his whereabouts.
The pair worked at Edradynate Estate, where Campbell was head gamekeeper between May 1984 and February 2018 and Mr Low was a groundsman between August 2000 and February 2023.
The court heard that during a number of terse exchanges with detectives, he accused them of being “desperate”.
It was put to him at one stage that he was annoyed at “good old Davie Campbell” losing his status as “King of the Estate”.
Campbell replied: “P**h”.
Campbell attacked Mr Low at Leafy Lane near Pitilie “having previously evinced malice and ill-will towards him”. Mr Low died from his injuries at the scene. His body was found by a local man the next morning.
The jury at the High Court in Glasgow found Campbell guilty of murder in a majority verdict, after more than two days of deliberations.
Campbell, who appeared in court dressed in a dark-coloured suit, showed no reaction as the verdict was read out.
During the near three-week trial at the High Court in Glasgow, the jury heard police initially treated Mr Low’s death as non-suspicious, and only began treating it as murder five days later.
This was despite the fact Mr Low had around 30 injuries from shotgun pellets, and that pellets fell from his body bag when it was brought to a mortuary.
During trial, the jury was told Campbell had harboured a “festering grievance” against Mr Low, believing him to have planted evidence on the estate to frame him for the illegal poisoning of birds of prey.
On the day of the murder, after disabling the CCTV cameras at his home, Campbell travelled to the scene of the killing on his wife’s e-bike, wearing a “hooded jacket” and armed with a shotgun carried in a bag slung on his back.
On Friday the court was shown CCTV footage showing a hooded cyclist riding down a road towards the track where the shooting occurred at 4.18pm, and then coming back the other way shortly after 5pm. It is alleged Mr Low was shot at about 4.52pm on February 16 – the time his phone is said to have stopped recording movement.
In his closing speech on Friday, prosecutor Greg Farrell told the jury once Campbell reached the scene, “using his shotgun he shot Brian Low, hitting him on the face, chest and neck, and left him for dead.”
He continued: “Brian Low was out with his dog Millie, going about his ordinary peaceful life. He was left to die on that track alone.
“That shotgun blast killed him within minutes or perhaps seconds. Brian Low had no chance. He was unarmed and unaware.
“This was a brazen, brutal and planned execution at a rural spot, a cowardly ambush motivated by nothing more than sheer malice.”
Campbell’s lawyer Tony Lenehan KC contested a number of points in the prosecution’s case, including the timing of the alleged killing, and the claim his client is the cyclist in the CCTV footage.
Delivering his closing speech on Friday, he said in February 2024 Campbell had a “nice life” and a “loving partner”, and that in the hours before the alleged killing he had been on the phone to the council’s planning department asking about changing his garage doors.
He questioned whether it was “remotely likely” his client would have harboured such an animus against Mr Low that he would “throw everything away” by killing him, so many years after the event that is said to have triggered it.
Campbell had originally faced eight charges, including murder, breaches of the peace and attempting to defeat the ends of justice. However on Friday all but the murder charge were dropped.
Campbell denied murder, saying he was at home in Aberfeldy at the time of the alleged crime.
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