Tomb head 'was held like puppet'

A TEENAGER held the head of a corpse like a puppet after breaking into a tomb in a historic Edinburgh graveyard, a court has heard.

The High Court in Edinburgh was told how 17-year-old Sonny Devlin put his hand in the neck of the head and began "chucking" it around Greyfriars Kirkyard.

Devlin, from Edinburgh, and a 15-year-old who cannot be named for legal reasons, are on trial accused of disturbing a dead body "and violating a sepulchre".

It is thought to be the first case of its kind for more than a century.

Both are alleged to have forced open the Mackenzie Mausoleum, where Sir George "Bloody" Mackenzie, who was King’s Advocate for Charles II, was laid to rest after his death in 1691.

A 14-year-old schoolgirl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told the court yesterday that she had met up with Devlin and others at Bristo Square and Devlin told her "they had taken a head from someone that was dead in the graveyard and that it was still there".

"He said to me he had broken into a tomb and went down and cut it up or something," she said. "I didn’t believe him.

"We all went to Greyfriars so he could prove it. We were talking for a while and then I think it was Sonny went behind a gravestone and pulled out a head," she said.

"I didn’t believe it was real to start," the girl said, adding that at one point Devlin was "chucking it around" with another youth or youths.

Writer Andrew Henderson, 42, who runs City of the Dead Tours, which visits Greyfriars Kirkyard, told the court he saw two people running out of the mausoleum.

Mr Henderson, of Candlemaker Row, said they went round the other side of the Kirk. He told them he had seen them coming out of the tomb and was going to call the police.

Detective Constable Graeme Bowie, 43, described how the door to the mausoleum had been damaged, with a panel missing.

Four days later the detective photographed a head with a small gold earring still attached to the left ear.

It is alleged that the teenagers entered the burial chamber, lifted the gate to a lower level tomb and forced open a coffin.

The teenagers are alleged to have pulled out the unidentified body and cut off the head with a knife. They are charged with having taken the head out into the cemetery and played with it, simulated a sex act with it and discarded it.

Devlin, of East Claremont Street, is alleged to have committed the offence while on bail. Both have denied the charges. The trial before Lord Wheatley continues.