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Two men found guilty of murder       3/6/13

Stefan Millar and Johnathan Mackinnon have both been convicted of murder at Glasgow High Court. The jury returned a verdict of guilty that the pair brutallykilled Lochboisdale teenager Liam Aitchison in November 2011.

Sentenced was deferred for background reports and the two men will be sentenced at the High Court In Edinburgh on 28 June.

Judge Lord Kinclaven said the “sentence is fixed by law” and remanded the two in custody for reports to assess the punishment element of the sentence.

The trial has been running for the past month at the High Court in Glasgow.

Stefan Millar, 22, of Carloway, Lewis, and Johnathan Mackinnon, 22, of Stornoway, had denied murdering Liam Aitchison from Lochboisdale, South Uist in a derelict house in Steinish outside Stornoway on November 23 2011.

It was alleged they repeatedly hit him on the head and body with a knife and bottle and repeatedly kicked and stamped on his head.

No hard evidence emerged and the whole case was circumstantial.

Much about the case was a “mystery” with many “curious aspects” said advocate depute Mr McSporran during the trial.

There was no sign of a murder weapon or the killer‘s blood stained clothing - they could have been dumped at sea - the prosecution put to fisherman Stefan Millar, whose prawn trawler fishes in the Minch.

A top, trousers and trainers Liam had borrowed from Mr Mackinnon were taken off his dead body and never found again. Stefan Millar said Liam’s socks and T-shirt also belonged to Johnathan.

Three or four drips of blood at the scene matched Mr Mackinnon but the court heard blood cannot be dated and Mr Mackinnon cut himself at the rundown house some years beforehand.

Liam was stabbed 20 times - three injuries were fatal - and Liam would have died within minutes, witness Dr Rosslyn Rankin, pathologist, previously told the trial.

Liam’s body was found about a week after he was last seen - when he was with the two accused and the prosecution case pivoted upon him being killed within a 90 minute window on 23 November 2011.

But forensic medicine specialist Prof Busuttil believed it was “highly unlikely” Liam died on that date.

He thought it could be days later because of the level of rigour mortis and decomposition in the teenager’s body.

The fate of both accused locked together said prosecutor Iain McSporran in his closing speech.

They would “stand and fell together” because the defence said the pair left the house together.

Thus they were “acting together” and “laying a false trail” in the 90 minutes since they left and returned to Mr Mackinnon’s house that night, he added.

He also said that: “If one was engaged in murder, so was the other - they have linked their fates together.”

He had said the murder must have happened during a “communication silence” when they did not use their mobiles for a period that early morning.

The prosecutor had said the pair had enough time inbetween leaving and returning to Mr Mackinnon’s Plasterfield home to go to Steinish and carry out the killing.

In evidence, Stefan Millar had indicated it was too wet to text as his phone would get soaked in the pouring rain that evening when he said the three of them headed from Plasterfield down Anderson Road. He said Liam said he had enough to drink and turned off to go to a friend’s house.

Liam Aitchsion’s family are suffering a “deep and painful loss” said Stefan Millar’s defence QC in her closing speech on Thursday.

Frances McMenamin said: “You would have to be made of stone not to feel anything when you saw the photographs of that room in Steinish especially when the battered and bloodied body of Liam Aitchison could still be seen.”

Ms McMenamin asked the jury to put aside any feelings of emotion, sympathy or any sense of duty to find “someone to blame.”

Mr Millar underwent three hours of police interviewing without a solicitor by his own choice, she stated.

The “soft, lilting accents” of Western Isles witnesses could make it more difficult for jury members to recognise if anyone was evasive or lying, she had said.

She had said Liam was a “free spirit” with a lifestyle such that he “stayed wherever the fancy took him” and could have gone off for more drink after he left the two accused.

The QC had said there was “no basis whatsoever in evidence” of the prosecution’s suggestion that Mr Millar stabbed Liam to “seal the pact” with Mr Mackinnon.