Exclusive:Inside the mind of Peter Murrell: From psychological kicks to self-sabotage
Experts put forward theories as to the enigmatic figure at the heart of the SNP embezzlement scandal
It is the “why” of it that is the puzzle.
An affluent man, deeply passionate about a cause, yet who steals from that very cause to buy goods he could already afford.
Peter Murrell’s lavish list of high-end tchotchkes is now well rehearsed. Some 627 items spanning a staggering spectrum of luxury, opulence, fashion and trash.
Around £15,000 spent on pens, including several Mont Blancs. Designer bags, a onesie, Le Creuset kitchen pans. The £140 pencil sharpener.
READ MORE: A barely audible 'guilty' marks the pinnacle of the Peter Murrell drama that has dogged the SNP
This week the ex-SNP chief executive and estranged husband of former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon pleaded guilty to embezzling more than £400,000 from his party over 12 years.
He began stealing smaller amounts from the party in 2010, rising to a peak in 2020 and dwindling in 2021 and 2020.
But from where does such acquisitiveness stem?
"While embezzlement offences are clearly about financial gain, the person doing the offences has to be capable, and have the personal qualities, to deceive others,” says Dr Ruth Tully.
The consultant forensic psychologist has worked with people who have committed a range of serious offences, including high-value fraud and deception.
“In long-term fraud, it is often about much more than simply money and can link to the offender's personality traits and psychological make-up,” she adds.
Peter Murrell’s personality traits are not easy to discern. He is, despite decades in the party, somewhat an enigma with no obvious close social circle.
Another puzzle - who is Peter Murrell really?
Dozens of calls to SNP insiders - and political figures of other parties - drew a blank on any real measure of the man.
Ms Sturgeon was just 18 when she first met Murrell at an SNP youth camp in 1988. He was a party staffer in his early twenties and they both worked in the constituency office of Alex Salmond, then MP for Banff & Buchan.
He was, he later recounted, “impressed by her political skills, even at that early stage”.
She was taken by his belt with “all his gizmos on”. The one piece of colour about Murrell is his irony-laden nickname Mr Gadget Man.
He appears in plenty of newspaper cuttings but very rarely photographed.
One senior SNP insider, who knew him relatively well, said: “For me, he was always helpful, polite and completely devoted to the success of Nicola and the party.”
While “Alex Salmond didn’t hate him - in fact he had a soft spot for him”, this soft spot dissipated by what he saw as Murrell’s part in a perceived conspiracy to accuse Mr Salmond of sexual assault, for which the late First Minister was exonerated.
The source said he had never heard of anyone socialising with Murrell.
There was also frustration around his involvement in the NEC (National Executive Committee).
“He was very good at listening and then not acting on the wants of the NEC and very much ran the party as he saw fit with reporting to the NEC for authority after the event a common theme,” they said.
“Often the accounts would be presented to the NEC after they had been approved.”
Maybe the case is as banal and pathetic as this: he got away with embezzlement because no one paid close attention to him.
Another senior SNP said Murrell “created a grim atmosphere wherever he went” while one staffer who had come up from London to help out with the 2017 general election campaign described the atmosphere at SNP HQ as “very unfriendly and weird”.
Others agree with this.
“He used to sit opposite me at NEC meetings and stare at me in an effort to freak me out because he didn’t like the fact that I took a note of the proceedings,” a former politician added.
Dr Tully explains that embezzlers who steal from organisations often use the justification that they aren’t harming a person.
She gives the example of a person who defrauded a health service.
“They didn't actively want to stop people from getting healthcare, but they failed to consider the affected individuals; they just saw a large organisation that in their view was not paying them well enough,” the psychologist said.
“Their grievance and dehumanisation of the crime contributed to chronic offending over years until they were caught.”
Yet Murrell was defrauding an organisation of which he was a passionate champion and of which he surely must have recognised there would be severe reputational damage.
He was also clear on where the SNP’s money came from.
“Far from being reliant on the taxpayer, dodgy rich donors or indeed the trade unions, it is the rank-and-file members in the SNP who voluntarily fund our campaigns,” Murrell wrote in a letter to The Scotsman in 2002.
Professor Craig Jackson, of Birmingham City University, is a chartered member of the British Psychological Society.
Prof Jackson outlines a number of theories that psychologists and criminologists use to explain the white collar crime of embezzlement.
Embezzlers tend to have no previous criminal history, unlike those who carry out serious violent offences who usually escalate from more minor crimes.
“That's one of the reasons why we're taken aback when it suddenly comes out, because these people have clean records, and they're usually people who are quite upstanding and well regarded,” he said.
“They don’t look like criminals so when they are caught, those around them are absolutely banjaxed.”
Theories around this specific type of fraud range from behavioural economics, where humans made irrational choices when stressed or tempted; to the opportunity theory where someone spots a weakness in a process that can be exploited.
The neutralisation theory is a sort of Robin Hood position, where someone will steal but give part of the money to a good cause to justify their actions.
Some will rationalise what they are doing with a cost benefit analysis - yes, they may go to prison, but it will be worth it.
Others will be affected by Malvolio syndrome - named for the Twelfth Night protagonist - which sees powerful people self-sabotage.
Prof Jackson also points to “cumulative strain theory”. It posits that people turn to criminal activity when they become stifled by their straight and narrow lives.
“When this strain eventually builds up, you might reach your threshold for when you're willing to break the rules,” he said.
The behaviour starts small and accumulates.
“It's almost if you want to get caught, because you can hide the salt and pepper set, but you can't really hide a big camper van, even in your mother's driveway,” Prof Jackson added.
For Murrell, he suggests the most likely theory is “expressive transformative violence”.
Ordinarily it would apply to violent crime, carried out by a perpetrator who wants to show he’s going from being a nobody to a somebody.
Prof Jackson believes this theory extends to non-violent crime.
“If the embezzler feels that they're overlooked, that people think they're a nobody, that people think they are non-masculine, and indeed they may have been hen-pecked and feeling they're not potent, committing crimes like this can be great,” he says.
“It’s almost aphrodisiac. You're not a loser, you're not a nobody, you're actually a criminal genius.
“That behaviour can become very compulsive and you need to keep doing it for greater and greater amounts to get that psychological kick.”
Prof Jackson finds the fact the embezzlement started very shortly after Murrell’s wedding to Nicola Sturgeon meaningful.
“I'm a Jungian, and Jung would say we're all in pain, and when we get married, we take on the pain of our wives and our husbands as well, so there's more pain and maybe this was his way out.
“This was his way of dealing with the strain.
“It's interesting that they're things he didn't need - pepper mills and chopsticks - it's a cry for help.
“It's possibly then a combination of the strain and stress of marital life and the unusual strain and stresses of public life, particularly in an organisation that he may have perceived as being unjust and not giving him what he was due.”
The High Court in Edinburgh is this week expected to hear the narrative of the crimes read into record.
This may give mitigation and explain more as to what actually occurred.
Prof Jackson has one final theory.
“We want to see ourselves not as impotent middle-aged men, but as dangerous James Bond master criminal figures,” he said.
“In his own mind he might see himself as some kind of Bond villain when doing this.
“It explains an awful lot to me.”