Taxi driver killed with cheese wire was ‘hard-working’ and ‘loved the outdoors’

Alex McKay, 67, is the nephew of George “Dod” Murdoch who was garroted with a cheese wire in Aberdeen in 1983 while working as a taxi driver.

The murderer has not been caught and his DNA was never added to the database.

Despite having taken 8,000 statements from the public, leads dried up and the case went cold.

However, thanks to new potential familial DNA matches, Police Scotland is a step closer to identifying the killer.

Mr McKay said he remembers his uncle “very fondly” and spent much of his time as a youngster with him and his aunt Jessie, Mr Murdoch’s wife.

She died in 2004, having never learned who her husband’s killer was.

Mr McKay said: “Growing up I saw a lot of them, they didn’t have kids so I saw a lot of him. They were back and forth to our house and vice versa.

“My uncle Dod was just a normal, hard-working man and I think that’s everything.”

He added: “He loved the outdoors, he had a small boat and he kept pigeons.

“There was always a back story to everything he did as there was always something that went wrong, which wasn’t funny to anybody else but it was funny to the family because we knew him.”

Mr Murdoch often walked Mr McKay’s family dog, and enjoyed spending time out in nature or enjoying his weekends with Mr McKay’s parents.

Mr McKay said: “He enjoyed a Friday and Saturday night like most working folks, who enjoyed a game of bingo and a drink. He went to the club with my mum and dad most Fridays and Saturdays – most wouldn’t be able to afford that but he could, and that was their relief.

“We used to have parties, round about new year or so, and my Aunt Jessie used to come in and say, ‘don’t give Dod any more than two drinks’.

“He wasn’t a drunk or anything like that but more than two drinks for him was too many, according to Jessie.

“He’d sit there and have a rum and the irony of the whole thing is, come the end of the night, he was absolutely perfect but my Aunt Jessie was four sheets to the wind, getting carried up the road.

He added: “It really is a great memory of them both because to me they were a brilliant married couple.”

Mr McKay is hopeful the DNA breakthrough can help unravel the mystery killer’s identity, and said it would “mean a lot” to the family and all affected.

He said: “It would mean a lot to us, but not just from our selfish perspective, but those who have gone unfortunately.

“I don’t know if they’re looking down on us but a lot of people would say that they are, and if they are, I’d be thinking the day that this gets solved, the day that this person, if he’s alive, goes to court and is convicted, or if he’s dead and the police say that without a shadow of a doubt it’s this person, I’ll be thinking about them more than anything.

“It had such a huge impact, obviously on my Uncle Dod who died but also his wife, Jessie, who I loved to death.

“It had a massive impact on her as her health deteriorated. She was in and out hospital a lot and she was a nervous person at the best of times, and poor Jess was really struck.

“And you would never know if you were to speak to her, she never spoke to us about the murder ever. But we knew it impacted her, just being on her own.”