Then Charlie Kelly When he first sent a message saying he wouldn't be home that night, his partner wasn't happy. It was September 6, 2023, a Wednesday, and the 56-year-old, a keen mountain walker, had left the house he shared with Emer Kennedy in Tillicoultry, near the Scottish city of Stirling, before going to work. His plan was to climb Creise, a 1,100-metre peak overlooking Glen Etive, the remote Highland valley made famous by the James Bond film. Skyfall.
The weather was unusually mild for the season, and Kelly thought he might even have time to 'pack' a second Munro, as the Scottish mountains above 900 meters are known. In his spare time as a forensic psychologist for the Scottish Prisons Service, he had steadily ticked off the peaks. “He had a book where he would write them down,” Kennedy remembers. 'But we were going on holiday in two and a half weeks, so this was the last Munro he was going to do before winter arrived.'
Walking was not something Kennedy himself was particularly enthusiastic about. When the pair first met four and a half years ago, they had bonded over a shared love of Celtic Football Club and their 'extremely quirky' sense of humour. She had fallen in love with Kelly's brain: his encyclopedic knowledge of all things football, Robert the Bruce and Doctor Who. He loved that she laughed at “his terrible jokes,” she says. But he also appreciated the fact that she encouraged him in passions they did not share. “One of the last things he said to me the night before was, 'Let me be myself,'” she says.
So when Kelly told her he wouldn't make it to the hill before nightfall, Kennedy was concerned, but she trusted he knew what he was doing. “Charlie was a very resourceful person,” she says. “At work he was a trained negotiator, for when prisoners took hostages or went onto the roof. In general, he didn't take risks.” Kelly assured her there was no need to call for help. He had packed extra food, plenty of water and plenty of warm clothes. He just waited until it got light and headed downstairs.
On Thursday, Kennedy checked her phone at work while on a break. Kelly had checked in before dawn and had sent more cheerful messages when he received them. Around 8 p.m., as the sun was setting, he wrote that his battery was low, but she didn't have to worry: he could see the lights of the Glencoe Ski Center, where he had parked his car. There was still enough daylight to reach it, he said. “It takes me about half an hour.” That was the last anyone alive heard of Charlie Kelly.
In the days following Kelly's disappearance, Glencoe Mountain Rescue launched what they later described as a 'Herculean' search operation, using sniffer dogs, quad bikes, multiple helicopters and drones equipped with infrared and conventional camera equipment. The search involved professionals 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. Often there were fifty people on the hill at the same time. On Saturday, September 9, they found his backpack. But nothing after that.
