Skye murderer who worked as Glasgow bouncer dubbed Robocop by ex-colleagues

Convicted murderer, Finlay MacDonald, was dubbed by ex colleagues as Robocop while working as a bouncer at a Glasgow nightclub.

A former workmate and friend of the crazed marine engineer said he was known as an awkward and introverted person who struggled with interpersonal relationships. MacDonald also developed right wing views and racism that was reflected in posts on social media.

According to the Daily Record, as a student in Glasgow, MacDonald, 41, was known as "Furious Finlay" due to his persona. He was also attracted to violent films, and friends joked he was the type who "might flip at any moment".

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MacDonald was jailed for life after being found guilty of murdering his brother-in-law and attempting to kill three other people during a shotgun rampage on the Isle of Skye in August 2022.

One friend said: "If I had to pick out one bouncer out of all the guys I worked with who’d snap and go on the rampage it would be Finlay MacDonald. There’s been a good bit of chat about that during the trial about it and everyone agrees on that point. We all knew there was something a bit odd about him and he didn’t seem to have any real empathy.

"He was awkward with people and just wasn’t tuned into the world like most people. He was a clever guy but he would be slow on the uptake with jokes and take things literally. One of the guys mocked up an image of him as Robocop, not because he was into ultra-violence but because he was like a robot. He was cold and robotic and just a bit odd."

According to the friend, his nickname that actually stuck was "Big Furious Finlay" as he was always serious. He added: "The nickname got shortened sometimes to "Big Furious" and he answered to that. He didn’t object, he just accepted it and didn’t bother getting into any banter about it, which was his way."

MacDonald worked at The Garage between 2003 and 2007 while studying at Glasgow Nautical College. After graduating he went onto work as an engineer with shipping giant Maersk Line, where he was promoted to First Mate. The friend said: "Finlay had a flat in the west end that I believe his gran bought for him, so the job was just paying for his living expenses while he was studying.

"He had a very distinct island accent and that set him apart from the outset but he was always a bit different and strange. He was friends with a few of the bouncers, as it was quite a close-knit bunch, but he was different to the rest of us." The friend said that when he first heard of the Sky rampage, his firs thought was for MacDonald.

He said: "I hadn’t heard from him for a bit, so I was thinking, ‘I hope Big Furious is ok’. And then I heard that it was him who was in the frame for it. I was gobsmacked but after a bit it didn’t seem that hard to believe, as he seemed like the kind who was set apart from everyone else.

"It’s that lack of empathy that might explain how he has the capacity to do something violent. What he did was horrific though and hard to square that anyone would do that without some kind of breakdown. I do find it a bit disturbing that he seems to have been given a gun licence, as he’d have been the last person I’d have allowed to have guns."

The friend claimed there were multiple examples of odd behaviours and obsessions - but that MacDonald was not excessively violent when working at The Garage. The killer was also hooked on bodybuilding, wrestling and strongman competitions.

He said: "He was a bit geeky in the way he was into that stuff. He had an interest in stuff that kids would be into." The friend of MacDonald also told how he believed MacDonald may have had a breakdown of some kind while working at sea. He said: "He turned into a real nasty racist.

"I believe he was working with some Filipino sailors and he took a dislike to them and started talking unguardedly, in horrible terms, about people from certain countries. I wondered if he maybe cracked under the pressure of being at sea, with people under his command, as he had quite a lot of responsibility as First Mate."

In 2009, the friend arranged to meet MacDonald in Glasgow for a catch-up, but realised he was expressing extreme views on race and his interest in right wing politics. He said: "At one point he started talking about Austrian right wing politician Jorg Haider, who was very anti-immigration annd anti-Islam.

"He said he hoped Haider would sort the country out and then started banging on about how Europe was being taken over by Muslims. I was taken aback because I was expecting to be gearing some tales of his time at sea and the places he’d visited. But instead I had this freaky right wing nonsense spilling out and he was oblivious to what I was thinking of him.

"I immediately thought I needed to get out of the conversation and I knew there and then that I wouldn’t be meeting Finlay MacDonald again in a hurry." The pal reflected on the meeting in recent weeks, and believes the rampage had shadows with Norwegian extremist Anders Breivik, who killed 77 people in 2011.

He said: "He wasn’t right and it’s fair to say now that he would have some parallels with Anders Breivik." In 2010, MacDonald reported that, while at sea, he took ill and required emergency surgery on his appendix. Instead of being grateful for the help he got at a Caribbean island, he posted on social media: "Worst of all I had to get this operation done on a tiny Caribbean island full of filthy savages in a third world hospital."

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In a separate occasion, he told a soldier friend that he hoped, when on tour in Afghanistan, that he'd kill a bunch of "ragheads" - a viciously racist term. The friend said: "We joked about the Robocop thing but the reality is that he never went over the score if he was ejecting someone.

"He was a big guy - around six foot two and 14 or 15 stone, and he knew how to look after himself. But he went about his job well,never afraid to get stuck in where necessary but not in an excessive way. That didn’t stop us wondering if he was on the edge and if he might snap."

The friend said he clocked a post on Instagram by MacDonald in January 2021, where he mocked up a picture of actor Sylvester Stallone from the Rambo movies. It showed a brooding Rambo - known for violence - being restrained by an official who was asking for a Covid mask.

The pal said: "Looking at the post now it does make me wonder if he was on the edge. The last thing Finlay MacDonald needed to focus on was Rambo, given the movie was all about a guy going on the rampage with guns, knives and other weapons."

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