It’s a Wednesday morning in March 1996, and the bell sounds at Dunblane Primary School near Stirling in Scotland. 

Students scramble to their classrooms, their minds are caught up in homework and friendships, and the game they were just playing in the yard. 

A class of twenty-eight Primary 1 pupils, aged between four and six, congregate in the gymnasium, preparing for their morning PE lesson. 

In a nearby classroom sits an eight-year-old boy whose name is Andy. He has blue eyes and sandy coloured hair and loves nothing more than tennis. On the weekends, he plays adults. Sometimes he even beats them. Today, he is known as Andy Murray, one of the greatest tennis players to have ever lived. 

It’s just after 9:30am when eight-year-old Andy hears something.

Two gunshots just outside his classroom. 

They sound like they’re coming from the gymnasium.

The man holding the gun has on him 743 cartridges of ammunition. He’s already cut cables at the bottom of a telegraph pole at the school’s entrance and he’s about to execute the deadliest mass shooting in British history.

25 years later the question remains: why?

Who was this man, armed with more weapons than anyone could ever need, marching into a local primary school?

And is there a world in which this massacre could have been prevented?

CREDITS

Guest: Christopher Berry-Dee

Host: Jessie Stephens

Producer: Gia Moylan

Audio Producer: Ian Camilleri

RESOURCES WE USED:

Andy Murray: The Man Behind the Racquet

Judy Murray | THE DUNBLANE MASSACRE | Driving Force

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Mamamia acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.