On August 15, 1963, Henry John Burnett was hanged at Craiginches Prison in Aberdeen by executioner Harry Allen, becoming the last person executed in Scotland and the first in Aberdeen since 1891. His crime: the murder of merchant seaman Thomas Guyan, shot in the face at close range after Burnett broke into the Guyan family flat on May 31, 1963, furious that his lover Margaret May Guyan had chosen to return to her husband.
Burnett had become obsessively controlling of Margaret, locking her in his flat at Skene Terrace when he went out. On the day of the murder, after she announced she was returning to Thomas, Burnett stole a shotgun from his brother’s home in the Bridge of Don area of Aberdeen, boarded a bus to Jackson Terrace, and shot Guyan dead. He was tried at the High Court in Aberdeen between July 23 and 25, 1963, convicted, and executed three weeks later. A crowd of around 200 gathered outside the prison gates.
