3 days ago
The Orkney Assassin unmasked: How schoolboy, 15, escaped justice for 14 years for racist point blank execution of Indian waiter - and whose parents STILL believe 'real' killer is out there
New details have been revealed about a schoolboy who swerved justice for 14 years after his racist murder of an restaurant waiter.
Michael Ross went on to be hailed for heroics in the first Gulf War as he served as a Black Watch sergeant.
He joined the famous Scottish regiment at the age of 17 and progressed through the ranks, eventually becoming the sergeant of a sniper platoon - and his service included a tour of duty in Iraq in which comrades were killed.
But he remained free for years before being jailed for the shooting to death at point blank range of Shamsuddin Mahmood at an Orkney Islands restaurant in Scotland.
Ross was finally brought to justice when jailed for life, aged 29, in June 2008 - found guilty of carrying out the killing as a 15-year-old teenager.
Now a new investigation has shed new light on Ross, as he and his family continue to say he was wrongly convicted.
He was ultimately found guilty of what was described as a 'savage, merciless and pointless' murder of Mr Mahmood.
Yet his parents are continuing to insist he is innocent and the 'real' killer remains on the loose, as suggested in a new Amazon Prime Video documentary about the case.
Ross is seen here as a 29-year-old defendant outside Glasgow High Court in June 2008
The killing of 26-year-old Mr Mahmood came on June 2 1994 when a masked man walked into the Orkney Islands' only Indian restaurant and 'executed' his victim before calmly walking away.
Ross's trial in 2008 heard that, as a youth, he harboured extreme racist views that drove him to hunt down and murder one of the island's few Asian residents.
he became the main suspect just months after the murder, but police did not have enough evidence to charge him.
The breakthrough came when a new witness walked into Kirkwall police station in 2006 with a note saying he had seen the killer in public toilets on the night of the murder brandishing a gun and identified him as Michael Ross.
Ross's lawyer Donald Findlay, defending, insisted it was unthinkable for a 15-year-old to have committed such a crime, suggesting the killing bore all the hallmarks of a 'professional hit'.
But at the end of a six-week trial, jurors took just four hours to find Ross guilty of murder by a majority verdict.
Ross was subsequently sentenced to life behind bars with a minimum of 25 years.
He insists he is innocent of the killing - and last month told the Orcadian newspaper that he was 'doing a 25-year life sentence for something I didn't do'.
His parents have also rallied to his defence in the new documentary called The Orkney Assassin that will be made available on Amazon Prime Video this Sunday.
Promotional material ahead of the broadcast suggests there is still 'a shadow of doubt still lingering and dividing opinion in the Orkney Islands to this day'.
Speaking to the programme-makers, Ross's mother Moira Ross recalls the moment she asked the then-teenager whether he was a killer after his initial arrest.
She says: 'I remember him coming home with the detective and he went up to his room and sat there, and I did go up and ask him.
'I said, "Did you shoot that man?" - and he said, "No". I just can't get over the look on his face when I asked him that.'
Mr Mahmood had been living on the Orkney Islands for just six weeks before his death and was planning to return home to Bangladesh to wed his fiancée.
His brother, barrister Abul Shafiuddin, paid tribute at Ross's 2007 trial, saying of Mr Mahmood: 'He was our baby brother and at least we know the person who killed him will be punished.'
Ross was also found guilty by majority of attempting to defeat the ends of justice by disposing of the murder weapon and changing his clothing.
During the trial, it emerged that his policeman father Edmund Ross had been jailed for hampering the investigation by withholding crucial evidence.
Advocate depute Brian McConnachie QC, told the court the prosecution's case against Ross was based on 'compelling, unanswerable' circumstantial evidence.
When the guilty verdict was announced, Ross leapt from the dock and tried to escape before being led to the cells - having been wrestled to the ground by a court official.
He had been one of 12 soldiers decorated for outstanding service in Iraq in 2005 and was even mentioned in dispatches for showing bravery following two improvised explosive attacks in north Babil.
Yet his downfall eventually came when a new witness walked into Kirkwall police station in 2006 with a note saying he had seen the killer in public toilets on the night of the murder, brandishing a gun - and identified him as Michael Ross.
Ross had been questioned as a 15-year-old in relation to Mr Mahmood's death, after two witnesses had suggested they saw him wearing the same balaclava and dark clothing as the murderer in woodland a fortnight earlier.
But he was only charged with lying to police and interfering with a witnesses, receiving a four-year jail term in 1997.
His eventual murder trial was told now the anonymous letter writer, later named as William Grant, told of seeing Ross in public toilets near the restaurant, clad in balaclava and dark clothes, on the night of Mr Mahmood's killing.
Jurors also heard that Ross had told a fellow army cadet as a schoolboy that 'blacks should be shot' and had textbooks scrawled with swastikas, SS symbols and slogans suggesting 'death to the English'.
His father Edmund Ross tells the new Amazon Prime Video documentary: 'I didn't believe it.
'I knew my son for all that years and he never showed any tendencies or anything like that that I would expect him to go out and shoot anyone.'
The Orkney Assassin: Murder in the Isles is being made available to Amazon Prime Video viewers in the UK and Ireland on Sunday 8 June.
