Sandy Drummond

Status:

Open

Jurisdiction:

Police Scotland Fife (POLICE)

Offense Location:

Boarhills, Fife

Summary:

Alexander "Sandy" Drummond was 33 when his body was discovered in an open field near his Borehills home in Fife in 1991. He was murdered with a jiu-jitsu stranglehold. More than three decades on, the case remains unsolved.

Vital Statistics

Circumstances of Offense:

The last time Effie would see her son was the evening before his murder, as he kissed her goodbye before riding off on his motorcycle. He had been visiting his parents, who lived just a mile away from his cottage in Boarhills, and had been due to return for dinner the following evening. Minutes after his brother James left for work on Monday June 24 1991, Sandy was seen running out of his house and across the road to the fields opposite carrying a blue sports bag, which was never found. At approximately 11 o'clock, Sandy went to the Dunfermline Building society in St Andrews, and withdrew almost all his savings from the account. At around 2.30pm that same afternoon a man was seen catching a bus from near Sandy's cottage. He caught onlookers' attention due to the blood-stained bandage around his hand however the injured passenger never came forward and police still do not know who he was. By 8pm an elderly walker made a devastating discovery. Sandy was found face down on a farm track leading to his cottage. He was just a few hundred yards away from his front door. Medical examinations found that Sandy had died of asphyxiation, with extensive damage to his neck muscles indicating strangulation. Despite the absence of any physical markings on Sandy's neck the pathologist had a more unique suggestion for his cause of death – a painful martial arts move. It is thought that Sandy was killed with the use of a jujitsu stranglehold – where key arteries and jugular veins are constricted, cutting off blood flow to the brain.

Additional Details:

In the spring of 1991 Sandy's relaxed demeanour suddenly altered and a cloud of sadness seemed to descend on him. A few months later Sandy abruptly resigned from his job and a few days later he was found dead. Sandy requested a position transfer at work and never revealed the reason behind his sudden shift in mood. About a week before his death, he unexpectedly quit his job without giving notice. The savings he had withdrawn in the days prior was also recovered from his home during the investigation, ruling out robbery as a motive. During the course of Fife Police's investigation it was said that on several occasions prior to the murder, an orange or red Morris Marina was seen parked outside Mr Drummond's cottage. Despite the findings of the post-mortem a week after the murder the police informed the media that they were not treating the death as a murder case. The Fife police did not reveal that Sandy's death was a homicide to the public or even the family for many months. 117 days passed before Sandy's mother Effie was finally told that her son had indeed been the victim of a murder. At a fatal accident inquiry in Cupar Sheriff Court in September 1992, a pathologist criticised officers for failing to recognise signs of murder. Sandy's body had been removed from the farm track before a full forensic examination of the area was carried out. Despite repeated appeals, along with two TV documentaries and BBC Crimewatch reconstructions, Sandy's killer was never found. Police later reopened the case in 2013 and again in 2016. Twenty-five years after Fife man Sandy Drummond was found murdered near his home in Boarhills, an investigative journalist claimed police identified his killer. Michael Mulford said that police had identified what they considered a prime suspect during a cold case review of Mr Drummond's murder. The suspect identified by police is also dead and the case is being kept open in case they can trace any accomplices. In February 1993, Effie Drummond wrote to a local newspaper as she pleaded for answers over the murder of her son Sandy. Sadly, she died in 1995, weeks before the fourth anniversary of Sandy's death. She never got the answer she had spent her final years searching for.

Case Last Updated:

Jul 26, 2026