when charlie kelly My partner wasn’t happy when I first messaged him and said he wouldn’t be home that night. It was Wednesday, September 6, 2023, and the 56-year-old avid mountain walker left the house she shared with Emer Kennedy in Tillicoultry, near the Scottish city of Stirling, before going to work. His plan was to climb the Crees, a 1,100m peak overlooking Glen Etive, a remote Highland valley made famous by the James Bond films. Skyfall.
The weather was unusually calm for this time of year, and with Scotland’s mountains known to rise above 3,000 feet, Kelly thought he might even have time to “bag up” a second Munro. In between jobs as a forensic psychologist for the Scottish Prison Service, he was steadily chipping away at his peak. “He had this book and he was marking them,” Kennedy recalls. “But we were going on vacation in two and a half weeks, so this was Munro’s last appointment before winter started.”
Kennedy himself was not particularly keen on hiking. When the pair first met four-and-a-half years ago, they bonded over a shared love of Celtic Football Club and a “very quirky” sense of humour. She was hooked on Kelly’s brain, his encyclopedic knowledge of football, Robert the Bruce and Doctor Who. He loved the fact that she laughed at “his terrible jokes,” she says. But he also appreciated the fact that she encouraged him with passions they didn’t share. “One of the last things he said to me the night before was, ‘You let me be me,'” she says.
So when Kelly said he couldn’t get down the hill before nightfall, Kennedy was worried, but Kennedy believed he knew what he was doing. “Charlie was a very resourceful person,” she says. “At work, he was a trained negotiator in case prisoners were to take hostages or go up to the roof. He basically took no risks.” Kelly said there was no need to call for help. reassured her. He packed extra food, had plenty of water and enough warm clothing. He just waited until it got light and started walking.
At work Thursday, Kennedy checked her phone every time she had a break. Kelly checked in before dawn and sent even more encouraging messages each time she checked in. Around 8 p.m., as the sun was starting to set, he wrote to say the battery was dead, but she didn’t need to worry. He could see the lights of Glencoe Ski Center where he had parked his car. There’s still plenty of daylight left to get there, he said. “It will take about 30 minutes.” That was the last time anyone heard Charlie Kelly alive.
In the days after Kelly’s disappearance, Glencoe Mountain Rescue Team conducted what was later described as a “grueling” search operation, using sniffer dogs, quad bikes, multiple helicopters, and drones equipped with infrared and conventional camera equipment. We have started our activities. The search involved experts from the Coastguard, Police Scotland and the Royal Air Force, as well as dozens of highly trained volunteers from 10 different mountain rescue (MR) teams. At peak times, as many as 50 people were on the hill at one time. On Saturday, Sept. 9, they found his backpack. But then nothing.
