Murdering David Gilroy ‘will be another Luke Mitchell’

THE former husband of murder victim Suzanne Pilley fears convicted killer David Gilroy will never ease her family’s suffering by revealing where he buried her body.

Peter Durrand, 49, said he hopes the former Royal Navy sailor is never released and grows old and dies in prison.

Gilroy, also 49, always denied murdering the Edinburgh book-keeper on 4 May, 2010, in the basement car park of Infrastructure Managers Limited, in Thistle Street, where they both worked.

He was found guilty on Thursday by a majority verdict and will be sentenced next month.

Mr Durrand, who was with Ms Pilley for seven years, predicted Gilroy would become “another Luke Mitchell”, who would never confess, and lodge an “endless” stream of appeals.

Mitchell was sentenced to at least 20 years for the murder of his 14-year-old girlfriend Jodie Jones, in Dalkeith, in 2003.

Mr Durrand said: “If Gilroy was to die in prison as an old man then I would be more than happy. A lot of people have asked me whether they think he will say where Suzanne is buried but I don’t think he will.

“That would be the decent thing to do but he’s not a decent man. I don’t think he’ll give Suzanne’s parents that.

“I could see him being another Luke Mitchell who never admits his guilt and just files endless appeals to try and get out.”

Mr Durrand, a service engineer who lives in Inverkeithing, said he and Suzanne had been friends before getting married in 2004.

Although they divorced in 2008 they remained on good terms and Ms Pilley had told him about a new relationship with another man. That man turned out to be Gilroy.

He said: “I last saw Suzanne about a year before she went missing. She mentioned that she had started seeing someone but she never said who it was.

“I was a bit surprised she got involved with someone who was married because that wasn’t the kind of thing she would do.

“But I can see how Suzanne might have been involved in quite an intense relationship. She tended to buy right into things.

“When something came up which she wanted, she would be committed to it.

“I think she wanted someone to have children with. We had discussed it when we were together. We had been friends for a number of years before we became involved.

“We were married in Las Vegas in 2004 after five years together. It wasn’t a spur of the moment thing.

“We had looked into getting married abroad, perhaps somewhere in the Mediterranean, but we ended up going for Vegas.

“When we broke up, I think we had just let our relationship get stale. We were both disappointed but we just drifted apart.”

Ms Pilley’s parents, Rob and Sylvia, and her older sister Gail, said in a statement that they were pleased she has finally received the “justice she deserved”.

They said their ordeal will go on until her body is found and she can finally be laid to rest.

It took almost two years for police and prosecutors to finally bring Gilroy to justice following Ms Pilley’s disappearance.

Recalling the day he learned she had gone missing, Mr Durrand said: “I knew it was totally out of character for Suzanne to disappear like that. She would always call if she was going to be late or anything.”