Crazed killer Finlay MacDonald “freaked out” girls after meeting them through his work as a bouncer in a Scottish nightclub.
The Daily Record can reveal that the murderer, convicted of going on a bloody rampage on Skye, was obsessed with Arnold Schwarzenegger and The Terminator movie.
And after taking a girl home to his flat in Glasgow during his time as a nautical student around 2005, the bodybuilder stripped off his top and flexed his muscles before ranting on about the musclebound Austrian movie star.
The girl later told friends of MacDonald that he his behaviour freaked her out and she left the flat.
A former friend of the killer said: “He was a very good looking guy and I guess he’d be as successful with women in the club as he wanted to be. He’d be approached all the time and he would actually turn a lot of girls down.
“One time he’d asked a girl to go back to his flat and she went with him.
“Apparently Finlay had started banging on about Arnold Schwarzenegger and he took his top off and started showing off his muscles.
“The next week the girl was in the club and she told some of the guys that she’d been a bit freaked out. She’d felt things weren’t normal and she went home.”
The pal added: “She had been up-front about it that she’d gone back for something else but she got worried about the way he behaved and she got out of there.”
The pal said that, despite the attention, MacDonald was always awkward with girls.
He said: “He would do weird stuff. I remember him saying to one girl to wait at the side while he was letting people in.
“She was wondering what major thing he had to say to her and she patiently waited until he got a break to speak to her.
“He eventually said to her that he would maybe have a chat with her later on, in a cold way.
“It wasn’t usually flirty stuff, more awkward and weird.
“He was on a different planet to the rest of the security team and he didn’t mix with us socially, which was unusual, as The garage was a great place to work and all the staff hung out there on our days off.
“We would get free entry and we would be part of a scene, because it was the place to go for young Glaswegians and students.
“But Finlay never turned up once and I never saw him hanging out with any friends to be honest. He was never drunk and he just seemed to be tuned in to the party scene at The Garage.”
MacDonald’s trial heard that he suffered from autism, which came as no surprise to the pal.
The pal said there were many examples of strange behaviour and obsessions – but MacDonald was never excessively violent during his time at The Garage, on Sauchiehall Street.
He said: “He was a very good looking guy and I guess he’d be as successful with women in the club as he wanted to be. He’d be approached all the time and he would actually turn a lot of girls down.
MacDonald repeatedly stabbed his wife, Rowena MacDonald, 34, during an attack at their home on the Isle of Skye and left her lying drenched in her own blood on the driveway in front of their young children.
MacDonald then drove to his sister’s home on the other side of the Sleat peninsula, where he fatally shot his brother-in-law John MacKinnon, 47.
MacDonald then set off for the mainland and the village of Dornie, Wester Ross, where he shot married couple Fay and John MacKenzie before being apprehended.
The events took place on 10 August 2022.
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