TV favourite Crimewatch is to be dropped by the BBC after more than three decades on the air.
The show – which reconstructed unsolved crimes in a bid to gather information from the public – featured a number of prominent cases from across Tayside and Fife over its 33 year run.
In one of its most high-profile stories – the first from Scotland to be reported on the programme – police reached out following the disappearance of pregnant Carnoustie woman Lynda Hunter in August, 1987.
After being flooded with new information, officers charged her social worker husband Andrew with murder despite him staging an elaborate alibi that saw him drive Lynda’s car to Manchester in a blonde wig.
It was later revealed he had strangled his wife with a lead used to walk their dog Shep.
Hunter died of a heart attack in prison in 1993.
Another case – claimed to be Fife’s only unsolved homicide – featured Sandy Drummond, who was found strangled to death on a farm track near his home at Falside Farm, Boarhills, in June 1991.
The incident was recreated on Crimewatch in 1998 as police put out an appeal with previously unrevealed information including details of a parked car near Mr Drummond’s home on the day of the murder.
It also disclosed that police were seeking to speak to a man spotted boarding a bus near the farm with a bloodstained handkerchief.
More recent cases, such as missing Fifer Allan Bryant Jnr, have also featured on the programme.
Mr Bryant, who would now be 26, went missing after a night out with friends at Styx Nightclub in Glenrothes in November 2013.
CCTV footage showed him leaving the venue in the early hours of the morning but there has been no trace of him since, prompting the largest missing person investigation ever undertaken in Fife.
Other cases involved a break in at a jewellers on Dundee’s Union Street in 2015 and an appeal that led to the arrest of city drug dealer Dean Dickson in 2009.
Despite the main show being scrapped after more than three decades, the BBC has confirmed daytime spin-off Crimewatch Roadshow will continue to be screened.
A spokesman said:Â “We are incredibly proud of Crimewatch and the great work it has done over the years.”
He added: “This move will also allow us to create room for new innovative programmes in peak time on BBC One.”
