Corpse ghouls walk free

TWO teenagers who became the first people in more than 100 years to be found guilty of violating a grave and corpse walked free from court today.

Sonny Devlin, 17, and a 15-year-old were found guilty earlier this month of hacking off a corpse’s head.

Devlin was given three years’ probation and 200 hours of community service, and his young accomplice, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was given two years’ probation.

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They may have to clean up graveyards as part of their punishment.

As the verdict was read out there were gasps of shock in the crowded courtroom and the two teenagers flinched before walking out of court.

Under Scots law, the ancient crime of ‘violation of sepulchre’ - disturbing a dead person - can be punished by life imprisonment.

But as a relieved Devlin left court he said: "I am happy with the sentence. Now I just want to get on with the rest of my life."

The minister of Greyfriars Kirk, where the bizarre crime took place, Rev. Richard Fraser, welcomed the lenient sentence - and said he hoped the pair had learned their lesson.

He said: "A harsher sentence would have been a shame as I don’t think they were necessarily evil people.

"I think a lot of young people have a fascination with death and with the dark side of life, and that’s perfectly natural, but I hope this pair have learned their lesson and feel chastened.

"I’m glad the sentence is not too harsh. We are a merciful country."

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And he said he was glad there was no immediate family surviving to be upset by the attack. He said: "The whole affair was quite unpleasant really, and it would have been very distressing if there had been immediate family who may have felt extremely violated."

But Scots Tory leader David McLetchie MSP questioned the sentence. He said: "Many people will wonder whether probation is enough of a deterrent against carrying out such insensitive acts. I can only hope they have learned their lesson and that this incident is never again repeated."

An earlier trial heard the pair broke into the tomb of Sir George "Bloody" Mackenzie - one of Scotland’s most brutal historical figures - last June.

Both denied disturbing the unidentified corpse and blamed each other during a three-day trial at the High Court in Edinburgh.

Devlin, from Edinburgh, admitted kicking in the doors of the Mackenzie Mausoleum at Greyfriars Cemetery in the Capital.

But he said it was his co-accused who made off with the mummified head which he wrapped in a blanket.

The mausoleum was named after Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh, a former lord advocate, who died in 1691.

The pair were cleared of earlier charges of forcing open the coffin and simulating a sex act with the head.

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At an earlier hearing the jury took two and a half hours to find Devlin and his co-accused guilty by majority verdict.

Sentence was delayed after Judge Lord Wheatley ordered full background reports on the pair because of their ages.

He said: "What lies behind this offence, and always has done, is the notion that in any civilised society there should be respect for the dead.

"The essence is the dead should be treated with a proper degree of reverence.

"This is a charge used over the centuries to cover a variety of situations such as robbing graves to get bodies for medical research or emptying graves so they could be resold for burials."

Devlin earlier told the court it was his co-accused who took the mummified skull from the crypt.

He said ghost stories about the famous grave had left him too nervous to enter deep into the burial vault where there were four coffins.

He said: "We were talking about the tomb and for a joke I decided to take him up there and trap him in the tomb. I’d been interested in ghost stories about it.

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"I dared him to go downstairs. I was a bit nervous about going down."

"He came running back up with something in his hands. I ran after him.

"When I got over, the head was already out and the blanket was on the floor.

"It got thrown to me. I looked at it and got freaked a little bit and dropped it." But the 15-year-old accused Devlin of hacking off the head, saying he "went mental" with it.

He said: "He got the skull and I was standing at the door. The smell was horrendous.

"He came up with the head wrapped in a blanket. Sonny was then running about going mental with it."

Police found the skull hidden behind a gravestone 150 metres from Mackenzie’s tomb.

Consultant pathologist Dr Walter Stilg said the head had probably been cut clean off with a knife.

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Detective Constable Graeme Scott, who worked on the case, said it was unique.

He said outside court: "This is certainly the most unusual case I have ever worked on and I don’t expect to ever work on a more bizarre case ever again.

"We were quite shocked by it.

Professor in Scots law at Aberdeen University Christopher Gane said: "The last case recorded in our law reports was in 1899 when William Coutts had six charges of violation of sepulchre laid against him.

"He confessed to two of the six charges, admitting that he placed the remains of the bodies he had dug up in other graves, and he was jailed for six months."