Suzanne Pilley search: a PR exercise?

Lothian and Borders Police trumpeted a massive search in Argyll this weekend for the body of Edinburgh woman, Suzanne Pilley,  missing, presumed dead, since 4th May 2010.

Last night, in the light of this weekend’s publicised search, Suzanne Pilley’s father appeared on television, talking briefly about the continuing distress of not knowing where she is. It is heartrending that the best a father can hope for is the discovery of his daughter’s body.

Today the search began.

Detective Chief Inspector Gary Flannigan, the SIO (Senior Investigating Officer) on the case, led a briefing for the Mountain Rescue teams, said in advance to number 100 people and around a healthy 70 on the day,  assisting the police in this search in the Three Villages Community Hall at Arrochar.

With the Arrochar Alps a major centre for walkers and climbers, The Arrochar Mountain Rescue Team is experienced and well equipped. Several other teams, like the Trossachs, Oban and Tweed Valley Mountain Rescue, joined the Arrochar team for the search.

Call us cynics but the exercise today felt more like a public relations exercise than a focused and serious search.

A couple of weeks ago Lothian and Borders Police came under media scrutiny, including ourselves, for having apparently set aside the search for Ms Pilley’s body. At that recent time, DCI Flannigan said rightly, that Glen Croe is a massive area, far too big to search systematically and that although the search had not been discontinued, it was proceeding on an ‘intelligence led’ basis.

Then, last week, not long after these media queries, the Lothian and Borders police force announced a major search of Glen Croe this weekend, with 100 Mountain Rescue personnel – costing nothing since this is a voluntary organisation.

In reporting on the announcement of this operation, we said that, although the police force suggested subliminally that the search was born from fresh information,  a search spread over so large an area rather contradicted this.

The briefing this morning, attended by a company of media people, largely photographers,  was over before 9.00am, a couth time. Information-based searches tend to start as early as light is workable and to shy away from the media.

A cavalcade then made its way to the Visitor Centre at Ardgartan, at the foot of Glen Croe. Mountain Rescue folk and photographers alike disgorged into the car park there but were then instructed to follow the lead vehicles from Arrochar Mountain Rescue.

The photographers, each in their own vehicles, were then led over the bridge and eastwards back toward Loch Long. They were taken on a fast batter down the rutted single track road curving uphill to the southeast near the foot of  Gen Croe.

The Mountain Rescue vehicles shot into a passing place and quickly became businesslike, while the photographers went on up the hill and squeezed their cars onto the verge.

Some of the Mountain Rescue personnel then took to a steepish hillside, not far from their jeeps between the road and the tress. They spread out down that stretch and occasionally smacked the bracken tops as the shoulder-held television cameras below whirred away. As the focus for the day, they were looking for any evidence of disturbed ground.

We left. This was not serious stuff. No one would haul a body from the boot of a car and climb the nearest steep bank with it. Only the most cursory search gets by with an occasional dilatory swipe at the bracken.

There was a second major search presence at the entrance to the old  General Wade road running the floor of Glen Croe, based downhill of the burn culverted under the A83; and there was another smaller unit to the north.

Each of these groups had two police officers attached to them – an indication of the cost management of the public-facing operation.

The sheer spread of the search centres, as we had anticipated, suggests that this has not, in any serious way, been an intelligence-led operation.

This does not mean either that they will  not find anything. They may. Equally it does not  suggest that the operation is not useful or is a waste of time. At the least, it will be good training for the Mountain rescue teams in what is involved in collaboration with the police on major area searches.

This has been a high-profile ‘performance’ event and, as such it may well also jog latent memories of people who were around this part of Argyll on 5th May – the day  before the 2010 General Election, possibly walking or picnicking in the lower wooded paths of Glen Croe, near the Ardgartan Caravan Park.

Anyone who has  not previously been aware that they  might have useful information and was in this area on 5th May, is advised both to think if they saw a silver saloon car parked anywhere, perhaps for some time – or saw anyone moving away from or returning to such a car.

If anyone was in the area and had taken photographs of their day out, it would be helpful to review these photographs and see if a silver car should appear anywhere in them. We all focus on what we intend to photographs and often do not even see what else we catch as well in the background.

Any relevant memories and photographs that may emerge should be passed at once to Lothian and Borders Police, for DCI Gary Flannigan who leads the Pilley investigation.

Ms Pilley’s married former lover, David Gilroy, is on bail, charged with her murder; and his wife, Andrea, has been charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice.

Police believe that Mr Gilroy, driving a silver family saloon in whose boot they have found ‘workable’ DNA from Ms Pilley, disposed of her body and the personal belongings she had when she vanished – in Argyll on 5th May.

Although they have highlighted other parts of Argyll as possible disposal  areas, the consistent focus of the officers concerned has been Glen Croe, running from Loch Long up to Rest and Be Thankful,  the historic mountain  pass between Loch Long and Loch Fyne.

Update 21.00 15th August 2010: We understand that no traces of Suzanne Pilley’s body have been found in this two day search. It has to be asked why such searches were not done much closer to Ms Pilley’s disappearance.