Northern Constabulary named a suspect in a report to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service in October 2006, but the Crown Office declared there was insufficient evidence to go to court. MacDowell has always been reluctant to speak to the media in the decades since the disappearance, but broke his silence in a 2004 interview and insisted that he did not kill MacRae. A week after the disappearance, MacDowell walked into Inverness police headquarters to make a voluntary statement, but his wife dragged him out of the building and nothing was said ever again.
