Netflix’s Should I Marry a Murderer is one of the most talked-about true crime documentaries of 2026. The three-part series follows forensic pathologist Dr Caroline Muirhead, who discovered that her fiancé had killed a man, and then spent nine months secretly gathering evidence against him. It is a gripping story about love, loyalty, and moral courage. But the man at the centre of it all, the one who was actually killed, barely gets more than a few minutes of screen time. His name was Tony Parsons.
A Man Who Refused to Slow Down
Tony Parsons was a 63-year-old retired Royal Navy petty officer and prostate cancer survivor from Tillicoultry, Clackmannanshire. He had spent years in the Navy, including submarine deployments, and carried that discipline into his retirement. When he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, he did not retreat. He came through treatment and immediately started looking for ways to give something back.
He had already walked the 96-mile West Highland Way and conquered Hadrian’s Wall before deciding to take on a charity cycle ride. These were not casual day trips. These were long, physically demanding challenges that a man in his sixties was choosing to take on alone, through some of Scotland’s most unforgiving terrain, because he wanted to raise money for the cause that had touched his own life.
His family described him as a devoted husband to Margaret, a loving father, and a grandfather who loved nothing more than spending time with his grandchildren, teaching his grandson to fish, and following sports including golf and rugby. He was, by every account, a good man living a full life.
The Night of September 29, 2017
On the evening of September 29, 2017, Tony boarded a train north into the Scottish Highlands. His plan was to cycle 104 miles overnight from Fort William back to his home in Tillicoultry, raising money for a prostate cancer charity. It was exactly the kind of thing Tony did. Disciplined, purposeful, generous.
He passed through Glencoe by around 6pm and made his final confirmed stop at the Bridge of Orchy Hotel just before midnight, where he stopped for a coffee before getting back on his bike and heading south into the dark. That was the last confirmed sighting of him alive.
Within hours of that moment, Alexander McKellar, drunk and speeding on the A82 with his twin brother Robert in the passenger seat, struck Tony with his pick-up truck. Tony’s injuries were catastrophic. He suffered severe rib, pelvic, and spinal fractures, as well as a probable collapsed lung. Pathologists later determined he would have survived for around 20 to 30 minutes without medical help, meaning he was alive after the impact, left on a dark roadside in the rain, while the brothers drove away.
The McKellars did not call for help. They went home, returned later in a second vehicle, took Tony’s body, his bicycle, and all of his belongings, and buried him in a peat bog on the Auch Estate used for disposing of dead animals. They stole £60 from his wallet, burned it along with his helmet, destroyed his phone and SIM card, and told the repair shop that fixed their truck that they had hit a deer.
Three Years of Not Knowing
What the Netflix documentary touches on but does not fully explore is what the next three years felt like for Tony’s family.
His wife Margaret, his son Mike, and his daughter Vicky held onto hope as police launched a major search across the Highlands involving mountain rescue teams, search dogs, and helicopters. Nothing was found. No bike. No clothing. No trace.
Both Mike and Vicky are police officers themselves, which gave the family a particularly painful understanding of what the absence of evidence usually means. They knew better than most what it looked like when someone did not want to be found, and what it looked like when someone could not be found. For three years, they lived inside that uncertainty.
Mike later said “I had spent three years coming to terms with the fact that my dad wasn’t coming home. I was at peace with myself that that was the way it was going to be. And then, all of a sudden, one phone call flipped everything upside down.”
That phone call came in December 2020, when Caroline Muirhead contacted police after McKellar’s confession. Tony’s remains were found in January 2021, buried in a remote peat bog on the Auch Estate, close to where Muirhead had quietly dropped a Red Bull can as a marker during a visit to the site weeks earlier.
What the Family Said After Sentencing
In 2023, Alexander McKellar pleaded guilty to culpable homicide and was sentenced to 12 years. His brother Robert received five years and three months for attempting to defeat the ends of justice.
For Tony’s family, the sentences brought no real closure. Margaret Parsons said there had been “no remorse, absolutely nothing” from the McKellar brothers. She said she hated them both and that the anger would not go away.
She added “When they get out of jail they’re going to go back to life as if nothing’s happened. They’re going to get on with it, they’re going to enjoy themselves. I can’t do that. Tony’s not here. They’re not the one that is left with a life sentence. I am. Because that’s what they’ve done.”
The Parsons family also pursued a civil case against McKellar’s car insurer. A six-figure settlement was reached the day before the civil trial was due to begin. Their solicitor Gordon Dalyell said “the manner of Tony’s death and what happened subsequently was appalling” and that while compensation could not heal the pain, it would help protect the futures of his relatives.
The Family Has Thanked Caroline Muirhead
Despite not appearing in the Netflix documentary, the Parsons family has thanked Caroline Muirhead publicly. Without her, they say, they likely would never have found out what happened to Tony, and his killer would never have faced justice.
Mike Parsons said during a BBC Crimewatch appeal years before the truth emerged “We are just looking to try and get him home, to find out what happened that night. We don’t have these answers and without them, we can’t move on. We can’t potentially grieve, say our final respects and final goodbyes.”
They eventually got those answers. But as Margaret made clear, getting answers and getting justice are not the same thing as getting your husband back.
Tony Parsons set off on that ride to give something back after surviving cancer. He was a man who, even in the face of his own illness, thought first about others. That is the person the documentary is really about, even when it is not showing you his face.
Courtesy: TIME
