Naman Shrestha
In 1999, when 46-year-old Adam Alexander disappeared from his house without any trace, his family and loved ones hoped that he would return safe and sound. But it was not to be as despite searching for him, no signs of him were found until years later when some of his remains were found by the authorities. The intricate details of Adam’s case are highlighted in Netflix’s ‘When Missing Turns to Murder’ season 2 episode 10, including how even his family did the best they could to assist the police in finding him and how a surprising confession finally brought the perpetrator to justice.
How Did Adam Alexander Die?
Born in the early 1950s to Patricia Bremner and her husband, Adam Alexander, she was also accompanied by a sister named Gillian Watson. Adam seemingly grew up in a loving household and went on to show extra interest in bikes from his early days, turning into a bike enthusiast in his adult days. Besides that, it appears that he was also fond of animals, especially dogs. Given Adam’s kindness towards his loved ones and people in general, it was shocking and unexpected when he went missing all of a sudden on November 14, 1999.
When there was no sign of Adam for years, the authorities declared it to be permanent and turned the missing person case into a murder case, as it was later found that he was beaten to death with a metal bar during a row. After the failed search of 2008, another thorough search was conducted in 2012 and on September 18, 2012, the police finally found human remains in Muiredge Farm near Errol in Perthshire and confirmed them to be of Adam Alexander following DNA analysis.
Despite the scientific proof, Adam’s mother, Patricia refused to accept that the remains the police found were those of her son and has yet to collect them from the morgue to hold a proper funeral service. In fact, to this day, she conducts her own search with the help of Adam’s sister, Gillian. In a statement, she said, “When they said to my mum it was my brother my mum knew straight away. The police kept trying to say ‘It’s Adam, it’s Adam’. It wasn’t Adam. My mum and I have become a lot closer through looking for Adam. You would be surprised how much digging we actually have done. My mum still takes her shovel and goes out there digging.”
Who Killed Adam Alexander?
As soon as the disappearance of Adam Alexander hit the radar of the police authorities, they began a large-scale search for him and interrogated his family members, friends, neighbors, and acquaintances to gather some pieces of the puzzle and start the investigation. Upon questioning around the neighborhood, the investigators found out that Adam was last seen in the afternoon of November 14, 1999, by a neighbor at his home in the Perthshire village of Errol.
Just when all hope was lost, and the case had been shelved for years, a surprising confession from Thomas Pryde, one of Adam’s best friends, changed the course of the case. Having kept the heavy secret buried deep inside of him, Pryde finally lifted the weight off his shoulders when he drunkenly confessed to his wife Angela about killing Adam with a metal bar and then burying the body in waste ground. When the couple split up, she went to the authorities to inform them of Pryde’s confession. Following the confession, Thomas Pryde was arrested under suspicion of Adam Alexander’s murder in 1999.
Aged 38 at the time of murdering Adam, Thomas Pryde met with the bike enthusiast in his Errol house and got into an unexpected row, which turned violent all of a sudden. Soon, Pryde ended up repeatedly striking him with a metal pole and beating him to death. In 2008, after his arrest, he confessed to the detectives that after committing the sinful deed, he put Adam in the back of his car and drove him along by the brickworks to bury him, letting them know the location of the burial site. Unfortunately, the authorities could not find a single remains of Adam’s body in the area.
Thomas Pryde Leads a Private Life Today
During the April 2010 trial for Adam Alexander’s murder case, Thomas Pryde was sentenced to 10 years in prison after admitting his direct involvement in the homicide of his friend Adam and disposing of the body. Had he not pleaded guilty at an early stage, he would have been sent to prison for at least 14 years.
Moreover, at the time, he was already serving a sentence for a drive-by shooting at his business rival’s home as he confessed to firing two shots at his plumbing boss Steve Stewart’s home in 2004. For that offense, he was jailed for four years and five months in January 2009. It is highly likely that after completing his 10-year sentence in 2020, Thomas Pryde possibly leads a private life.
