Find murderer who took away love of my life, pleads John McMurchie’s widow

By FRANK URQUHART
Published on 11/09/2012 00:00

A GRIEF-stricken widow broke down in tears yesterday as she made an emotional appeal for the public’s help in tracking down the killer responsible for murdering the “love of my life”.

In a poignant statement, read on her behalf by a police liaison officer, Donna McMurchie told how her world had been torn apart a month ago when her husband, 50-year-old John McMurchie, was found dying in a Dundee street from a single stab wound through the heart.

“John was my rock,” she said. “John was the love of my life – my world. To have lost him in this way is heartbreaking. We will miss his laugh, his smile and his voice.”

Mrs McMurchie, 39, faced the media in a bid to help detectives break the wall of silence surrounding her husband’s 
apparently motiveless murder on Sunday, 12 August.

She pleaded: “Nothing will bring John back into our lives but we hope that someone out there will look to their conscience and help to make sure that for John’s sake and for all of our sakes, justice can be done.

“John’s killer is still out there and I appeal to people out there to help detectives with their enquiries. Someone out there, in the community, knows what happened to John. I would ask them to do the decent thing, ease my family’s suffering and tell the police what they know.”

Mr McMurchie, a night watchman from Errol in Perthshire, was found fatally injured in the Whitfield area of Dundee, in the early hours. The father-of-five and grandfather-of-two was taken by ambulance to the city’s Ninewells Hospital where he died a short time later.

Police investigating the murder have still to establish a motive for the stabbing. But it is known that Mr McMurchie had been socialising with friends in Dundee pubs on the Saturday night before his death, before going to a house in the Whitfield area.

Mrs McMurchie, who wed her husband 22 years ago, said: “John always made me feel safe and protected. Now the whole family are struggling to come to terms with the cruel and untimely way that John was taken. If it had been natural causes, it might have been easier to accept.

“He was a loving husband and a brilliant father who was always there for his wife and children – through good times and bad. And he was a brilliant granddad, who was happy playing the fool for his grandchildren to make them laugh.”

Detective Inspector Bobby Dow, who is leading the murder hunt, said: “Establishing the 
motive is proving to be problematic.

“We are keeping an open mind as to what happened to John. Robbery certainly wouldn’t appear to be the motive.”

He added: “I don’t know how many people do know what happened to John. It may well be that there is only a small handful of people in the community who are aware - or maybe it’s into the dozens. The bottom line is I don’t know because the people who perhaps have the knowledge don’t appear to be coming forward to speak to the police.”