The mysterious disappearance, and then the death of five-year-old Stephen McKeron, is still considered one of the strangest unsolved crimes in Scotland.
Investigators were unable to find an answer to a single question in Stephen's case. Neither how the child disappeared, nor how he ended up 6 miles from the place of loss, why no one found him earlier, although everyone around was carefully looking for him and even under what circumstances he died.
In the very hinterland of Scotland, off the rocky coast of Ayr in South Ayrshire, there was once a place called Butlin's Ayr.
Opened in 1946 on 110 acres of land, it was essentially a large amusement park with cafes, carousels, indoor and outdoor pools, boat stations, tennis courts, theaters, a small medical center and even its own miniature railway.
This park existed for almost half a century, surviving until the 2000s, but after 1988 it was forever associated with the tragedy of Stephen McKeron.
On September 19, 1988, 5-year-old Stephen came from Hamilton to the park with his aunt and uncle Lin and Ian Sneddon. The boy was looking forward to this trip and looked forward to fun and entertainment. At first everything was like that and he rode on different merry-go-rounds with his aunt and uncle, but then they went to the center, where there was an escalator and Stephen, who had never seen such a thing before, was very carried away by riding on a self-propelled staircase.
Aunt and uncle regularly looked in his direction and the boy was all right. But at some point, they did not see him on the escalator and started looking for him around. The child was nowhere to be found. Then my aunt and uncle began courting the rides near the center, but the boy was not there either and no one saw him.
A 5-year-old child would hardly have gone far in a matter of minutes, but in a strange way Stephen disappeared without a trace. It is now in such places where there are CCTV cameras everywhere, and then the Sneddons could rely only on the attentiveness of other visitors to the park.
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After only half an hour of searching, the Sneddons became really worried and turned to the park staff and then the police for help. Over the next hours, the entire territory of the park within a 5-mile radius will be thoroughly searched, involving hundreds of people, including canine handlers with dogs, volunteers, helicopters, people with infrared cameras and even divers who searched the bottom of ponds.
No trace of the child was found and the case quickly became very dark and full of mysteries. Leaflets with a photo of the boy and a description of what he was wearing were posted everywhere in the vicinity. The main version was abduction, after which the police began to collect all information about suspicious people with small children.
Evidence was obtained that Stephen was allegedly seen in a cafe with an unidentified middle-aged man, and then another that a similarly described boy was allegedly walking somewhere with another man, holding his hand. But all eyewitness testimonies were confusing.
Someone else said that he saw a missing child in the forest outside the park fence at the specified time of loss, while others allegedly saw him walking along the road in the park.
But even if we assume that the boy really went outside the park on his own, trying to find his aunt and uncle, what would lead him to the dark overgrown forest, and not back to the park to the people?
For 16 days, locals and the public were tormented by the secret disappearance of Stephen McKeron, and then a resident of Carrick Hills, which is 6 miles (almost 10 km) from the park, walking with her dog in a country wasteland, saw the lifeless body of a child in a ditch.
When the police arrived, the child was identified as Stephen McKerron. A version of his murder by a maniac or pedophile was immediately offered. However, the autopsy showed that the boy's body showed no signs of violence, trauma, traces of resistance and even scratches.
Moreover, he also died nonviolently, everything indicated only hypothermia, although September of that year was not at all so cold as to freeze to death. Also, for some reason the child was not wearing his jacket, he was wearing a T-shirt, and it also turned out that he had taken off his socks, neatly folded them up and put them in his pants pocket.
Why, if the boy was freezing, he took off his jacket and socks? Even stranger, Stephen's dad said he had problems tying his shoelaces and would never take off his shoes himself, pull off his socks, and then put his shoes back on by tying the laces.
Even more suspicious was the fact that despite a quick and extensive search, no one had seen the child in the woods outside the park. But the area was searched for 5 miles, as indicated above. And if a little boy got into such a dense forest, he would hardly have got out on his own to another village 10 km away, most likely he would have got lost in the very first bush.
And besides bushes, there were swamps and deep ravines and hills. This area was difficult to cross even for adults. In addition, there were no traces of his long wandering in the forest on the child's body.
Given these facts, a theory emerged that someone had brought the boy to the place where a local resident found him. But no fresh traces of the car were found in the indicated area. If someone had brought the body there, he would have done it on foot, carrying the boy some distance in his arms. And then he put him in a ditch, taking off his jacket and socks and letting him freeze to death.
Or was the boy already dead from the cold when he was carried there? The police were also unable to deal with this and it all seemed kind of nonsense.
By 1989, it was decided that the boy simply got lost himself, and then fled into the forest, where he wandered for 16 days, and then fell and died of weakness and froze. But there was little logic in this either. Why would an ordinary happy home child run away from an amusement park from an aunt and an uncle, and then run into the forest?
Also, not a single note about the case of Stephen McKeron for some reason indicates the date of the boy's death. He was found on the 16th day after the loss, but for some reason it is not said exactly when he died. Whether he was dead on the 16th day or on the 10th or already on the fifth is unknown and this is also a strangely silent detail.
