Who really killed Colin Campbell?

It is not simply Scotland’s most famous unsolved murder — it is also a painful symbol of Scottish repression and injustice set against the lost Jacobite cause.

Now it is claimed the 250-year-old mystery that inspired the opening to Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson’s epic novel, was cracked by an academic just before her death.

A posthumous book by Lee Holcombe, late professor of history at the University of South Carolina, says the wrong man was hanged for the 1752 murder and names the real culprit.

It was six years after the battle of Culloden, which signalled the end of the Jacobite uprising against the English crown, when Colin Campbell of Glenure, a government appointed factor, was shot in the back as he rode through Lettermore wood, south of Ballachulish, Argyll.

He had been on his way to Appin to evict members of the Stewart clan, who had fought on the side of Bonnie Prince Charlie at Culloden.

Posted by David on January 25, 2004 4:52 PM