A grieving Perth mother has hit out after the latest bid to locate her son’s body was abandoned at the last moment.
Efforts to discover Adam Alexander’s final resting place have been filled with disappointment for Tricia Bremner, who has said her life will be “a living nightmare” until he can be given a proper burial.
Convicted killer Thomas Pryde is adamant he buried Mr Alexander in a field near Errol Brickworks in the Carse of Gowrie following a dispute in November 1999, but the exact location cannot be determined.
Numerous efforts have been made to discover Mr Alexander’s body, with the latest attempt seeing the latest radar equipment used to scan large areas of ground, without success.
Tayside Police were to return to Errol on Thursday to begin excavating a different site near the brickworks. However the search was called off, leaving Mrs Bremner disappointed again.
Detective Chief Superintendent Roddy Ross said there were “technical and staffing reasons” for the delay and stressed that it was vital that the job be done properly, not speedily.
He said, “We must deal with an excavation in the proper forensic manner because we do not want to damage any evidence.”
The search has already been rescheduled, and will now be carried out by specialist staff over two days rather than one, but Mrs Bremner said on Thursday that having her hopes raised time and gain, only for them to be dashed, was difficult to take.Cast asideShe said, “The search for Adam is something that should be important, not something that can just be cast aside when something better comes up.
“Each time a search is scheduled you start to hope that this time they might find him, but to have it cancelled time and again just feels wrong.”
She added, “I don’t want to have a go at the police officers involved but I feel that if it was one of their sons then the whole force would still be out looking. Now I face another week of waiting.”
Pryde was jailed for 10 years in April after admitting the culpable homicide of Mr Alexander.
Having initially been charged with murder, he pleaded guilty to the lesser charge and had his sentence reduced by four years as a result of not going to trial.
Mr Alexander’s disappearance prompted a prolonged inquiry before fresh evidence turned it into a murder probe.
Pryde’s crime came to light when he split from his wife and she went to police with details of his activities.
He later admitted killing Mr Alexander at his home during an argument, before stripping his body and burying him near Errol.
Earlier this year Mrs Bremner said she would sit down with Pryde and make a face-to-face appeal to him if it would help to end 11 years of heartbreak.