had been shot at first, leapt to his feet, pushing his wife to the floor and then rushing out to release his collie and eight-month-old Scottish terrier pup from an outhouse in an effort to catch the murderer. However, he found nothing and only three sets of footprints and one or more used bullets were found as evidence of the act. The footprints did not match Alexander's boots. Aftermath Having no phone in the house Alex ran first to the farm of Alexander Murray at Portencross where he informed them of the attacks and then ran to the nearby mansion house of Auchenames at Portencross where the laird, William Adams, had a phone and the Police and a doctor were quickly on the scene, arriving by taxi, although oddly the Police had no phone and a friend of the laird in West Kilbride had to knock on the Police Station door and pass on the news. Mary was dead and Jessie had a bullet removed from her back by the doctor. Alexander was taken to West Kilbride Police Station where, suffering from shock, he did his best to recount the happenings of the incident. The gun was found through the calibre of the shell case to be a heavy army revolver of the Colt-type, however it was never located and may have been disposed of in the sea. Jessie MacLaren was treated at Kilmarnock Infirmary and was only released in January 1914. The Southern Necropolis in Glasgow is the final resting place of Mary Speir Gunn, interred wearing her favourite plaid. Plaster casts were made of the six footprints and enquiries revealed that an unidentified man had recently been to three farms in the locality seeking directions to Portencross, a fact corroborated by a group of local schoolchildren. It was odd that the dogs in their nearby outhouse had not barked as they usually would have at the occasional passing stranger and the revolver was fired at an acute angle through the window as if the perpetrator was afraid that he or she would be recognised as someone known to the victims. The police made extensive enquiries but to no avail, investigating links as far away as Saskatchewan in Canada where Mary Gunn had a boyfriend. One Police theory was that the murderer committed suicide by drowning, an unsuccessful watch was kept for a body and the Ardneil Woods were