When Charlie Kelly the first time he texted to say he wouldn’t be home that night, his partner wasn’t happy. It was Wednesday September 6, 2023, and the 56-year-old, an avid hill climber, had left the house he shared with Emer Kennedy in Tillicoultry, near the Scottish city of Stirling, before she goes to work. His plan was to climb Creise, a 1,100 meter peak overlooking Glen Etive, the remote Highland valley made famous by the James Bond movie The sky collapsed.
The weather during the season was unusually mild, and Kelly thought he might even have time to “bag” a second Munro, as mountains in Scotland over 3,000 feet were known to rise. During his time off from working as a forensic psychologist for the Scottish Prison Service, he steadily peaked. “He had this book to mark them,” Kennedy recalls. “But we’re planning on going on vacation in two and a half weeks, so this is the last Munro he’ll do before winter comes.”
Hiking wasn’t something Kennedy was particularly fond of. When the couple first met four-and-a-half years ago, they bonded over their shared love of Celtic Football Club and their “incredibly quirky” sense of humour. She fell in love with Kelly’s brain – his encyclopedic knowledge of everything related to football, Robert the Bruce and Doctor Who. He liked that she laughed at “his terrible jokes,” she said. But he also appreciated her encouraging him in the passions they didn’t share. “One of the last things he said to me the night before was, ‘You just let me be me,’” she said.
So when Kelly told her he wouldn’t be able to get down the hill before nightfall, Kennedy was worried, but she believed he knew what he was doing. “Charlie is a very resourceful person,” she said. “At work, he was a highly trained negotiator when prisoners took hostages or climbed onto rooftops. He generally doesn’t take risks.” Kelly reassured her that there was no need to call for help. He had prepared extra food, had plenty of water and enough warm clothes. He just waited for dawn and then walked down.
At work on Thursday, Kennedy checks her phone whenever she has a break. Kelly checked in before dawn and sent extra cheerful texts whenever he had a reception. At about 8 p.m., as the sun began to set, he wrote to say that his battery was running low, but that she need not worry: He could see the lights of the Glencoe Ski Center, where he had been Parking. He said there was still plenty of daylight to get there. “It will take me about half an hour.” That was the last anyone heard of Charlie Kelly being alive.
In the days after Kelly went missing, Glencoe Mountain Rescue launched what they later described as a “Herculean” search effort, using sniffer dogs, quad bikes, multiple helicopters and drones equipped with conventional and infrared camera equipment. The search involved experts from the Coastguard, Police Scotland and the Royal Air Force, as well as dozens of highly trained volunteers from 10 Mountain Rescue teams ( MR) are different. Usually, there are up to 50 people on the hill at any one time. On Saturday, September 9, they found his backpack. But after that there was nothing.
