A FORMER farmhouse which was the scene of one of Scotland’s most notorious murders is up for sale.
But prospective buyers of West Cairnbeg may be unaware of the bloody history hidden behind its walls.
The detached five-bedroom mansion near Fordoun, Kincardineshire – available for offers over £749,000 – has been extensively renovated and boosted by a large extension.
It is shielded by trees and protected by an electric gate leading on to the driveway.
Nearly five decades ago, it was the home of wealthy Maxwell Garvie, who was murdered by his wife Sheila and her lover Brian Tevendale. It is now owned by the couple’s son Lloyd.
In May 1968, Max was bludgeoned and shot in the head as he slept in the house. His body
was taken from the property and dumped in a disused quarry nearby.
Sheila reported her husband missing and for 94 days the millionaire’s decomposing corpse lay
undiscovered until her mother, who lived in nearby Stonehaven, tipped off the police.
Sheila and Tevendale were behind the grisly plot. Both were convicted of murder and were jailed for life after a 10-day trial at the High Court in Aberdeen.
During the trial, details emerged of Max’s appetite for swingers’ parties, which Sheila insisted he’d forced her to take part in.
They married when she was 18 and he was 21. To outsiders, the marriage appeared happy and
the couple had three children but Sheila increasingly felt trapped in a loveless union.
Max loved fast cars, boats and even had his own plane. He developed an interest in erotic photography and set up a naturists’ club at a cottage he owned near Alford, Aberdeenshire. It was dubbed “Kinky Cottage”.
Max became fixated with wife-swapping and orgies, and encouraged Tevendale to focus on Sheila while he wooed his sister Trudy, who was married to Alfred Birse – a police officer in Aberdeen.
But while Max had a fling with Trudy, he remained a possessive husband.
Pushing Sheila and Tevendale together backfired and the pair became lovers. Their affair led to the plot to murder Max.
On May 14, 1968, Sheila sat up late at West Cairnbeg drinking as her husband slept upstairs.
It was claimed in court she had opened the back door to Tevendale and an accomplice, Alan Peters, but Sheila always maintained she did not take part in what happened next.
Sheila had fatally confided in her mother, Edith Watson, that Max had died and not of natural causes.
Edith told the police and Tevendale led officers to the body, which was hidden in an underground culvert near the village of St Cyrus. Max was found with a gunshot wound to his neck and a fractured skull.
Tevendale blamed Sheila but didn’t mention Peters’ involvement. He claimed Sheila called him to the house, where he found her in a state – claiming Max had died accidentally. She said that during a struggle, the gun had gone off. Tevendale said he’d disposed of the body.
Peters blamed both Tevendale and Sheila, claiming his role was removing and hiding the corpse. He said Sheila let them into the house before Tevendale hit Max on the head with the butt of the gun then shot him.
Sheila’s version was that she was woken by the noise of Tevendale and another man in the house and ordered into the bathroom while the brutal slaying took place.
Sheila was released from prison in 1978 and remarried twice – to Rhodesian David McLellan and Aberdonian Bill Mitchell. Both men left her widowed.
She returned to Stonehaven, where she ran a B&B. Now 76, she still lives in Aberdeenshire.
Tevendale died, aged 58, in Scone, Perthshire, of a suspected heart attack.
Lloyd was only two when his mum hatched the plot to murder his father. Much of the land near West Cairnbeg was sold to housing developers.
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