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Bbc Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. This episode contains strong language and references to suicide, which some listeners may find distressing. There's one person who you haven't heard directly from in this podcast, Kim. Just after his trial, I sent him a letter in prison. I wanted to know more about the events which had led him to Monastery Beach and what exactly happened when he was on the run in the US. I'd spent two years trying to find out everything I could about him, but there was still so much I didn't know. His ability to afford the big houses, the claims he skimmed money from his charity work, and the rumors he had links to drugs, too. I asked him about all of it, thinking he'd never get back to me. And to my surprise, he wrote back. On the 20th of July, 2021, just weeks after he'd been convicted, I received the first of many letters from Kim. He said he was innocent, and there were also other things he wanted me to know, loads of which didn't make sense. But Kim was happy to keep writing, and I thought maybe this way I could actually get to the bottom of some of those mysteries.

After Kim was convicted, Inverness now knew the truth about his crimes against women and girls. This local celebrity, charity fundraiser, and fixture of the city has been exposed as a serious sexual predator. But how was he able to do what he did for so long?

Well, he was seen as an eccentric celebrity doing charitable works, and people applaud that. And it's only when it comes out later that there was a totally different side to him that you think, wait a minute, everybody's just been taken for a ride here.

I think the charity work was part of the image knowledge building process. He wanted to be seen as the good guy doing good things for good people. He was hiding the darker side of him in plain sight, and people perceived him as being a good guy, but he was really an evil devil. It does feel like he hid under this guise of charity and goodwill and doing things for people. And then underneath everything, he was doing these horrific things. But what if there's more? Who were the people who really knew Kim? What else could they tell me? And were there other victims I didn't yet know about? I'm Miles Bonner, and this is Dead Man Running, episode 6, Inverness. It's 2001. A woman walks into the reception of the BBC Newsroom in Inverness. She wants to speak to a journalist. This woman, standing in the reception, seems confident, intelligent, articulate, but she is clearly distressed. She has long, strawberry blonde hair her. She's slim and well-dressed. She also has a young child. It's worth noting here, the journalist who spoke to her told me the following account 23 years after it happened. They can't remember the woman's full name, so I'll call her Laura.

Standing in the reception, Laura seems like a lost soul. She's not from Inverness, and she has an accent that's hard to place. Maybe she came to the Highlands in search of something, and maybe she found something else instead. Laura wants to tell her story about a man called Kim Avis, the local Buscar everyone knows. She says she has been harassed, badly treated by Kim, but she will only go into specifics if the journalist takes on her story. The journalist makes it clear that Laura needs to go to the authorities, particularly if any harm has come to her. Laura has given a number for the local police. She takes it and leaves. We don't know whether Laura did go to the police or not, and I can't ask her. Around six months after that meeting in the BBC, the journalist saw Laura once again, not in the flesh, but in the local newspaper. Laura had walked into the local woods and taken her own life. I went back to Inverness, to the archives, looking for a record of Laura's death. Hello. How are you? Good, how are you? Yeah, good, man. I had a description, a rough date of when she was in town, but not much more.

It was clear something had gone on between her and Kim, and it felt like something I had to pursue. The first step was to get her full name. After signing in at the Highland Archive Center, I started reading through years of female death certificates. After an hour or so, I landed on one that seemed to match. I wanted to read the full certificate, so I ordered a copy of the file. Thank you very much. Cheers for all your help. And I got the receipt as well. So thanks a lot. That's me just leaving the Halland Archive Center. I'm pretty sure I found this woman. I mean, I've got a feeling I've got the right person. Between the years of, I think I went from about '95 to 2007, of various tragic suicide deaths, but there was only two or three that were in that rough area that we were told. And then there was only one certificate which was the exact location, the woodlands. I've given her name to the journalist that gave me the tip off, and it's ringing a bell. And not only that, it's the right age and location and year of death, and all these things seem to be stacking up.

And I've got the envelope here. I went somewhere quiet and opened the certificate. Everything seemed to fit. And now I had what I believed was her real name. But for you, I'll keep calling her Laura. Right, extract of an entry in a register of deaths. Right, so here's the details. Female, Registered Death district, Inverness, on the year of 2001. So what's interesting about that is the journalist told me it was about 2000, 2001 that this woman came to the offices. And she was 31 years when she died. Again, that checks out. The journalist thought she was in her early 30s. Usual residence, flat. And where this is interesting thing is that address is directly across the road from the newsroom that she went to to report Kim Avis to a journalist. So that seems to make sense. Cause of death. It's all pretty sad, isn't it? 31 years old. The next thing to do is get a photo. With the details and the certificate, I was able to track down Laura's family. They were happy to talk about her and helpfully sent a photo from when she was younger. She resembled the woman described to me, so I asked for permission to share the picture, and I sent it on to the former journalist who started all of this.

It was the same person, but I still didn't know why this had happened. I suppose the last protocol will be writing back to Kim Avis and asking them outright about this woman. But we're not there yet. As I continued digging into Laura's story and whatever her relationship was to Kim, I kept hearing other unrelated stories about him. Stories that spanned decades, stories that weren't easy to stand up. And I was also hearing about a group of older guys who hung around Kim's stall as well.

A lot of the people that Kim interacted with were known to be drug dealers, and a lot of down and outs and shady characters.

Here's Jade again, the woman who first reported Kim to the police.

When I had heard stories about a lot of them, he had one acquaintance or friend, and I remember asking him, Why did you speak to that Oh, he's my mate. I thought, Well, he's in town, so people come and speak to him as well. Maybe it's just because he's in the middle of the street that this is why he speaks to these people. But there's a lot of people now you look back on and you think, Oh, there's maybe something more going on there because you do question why he would want to be involved or seen with somebody like that. So yeah, quite a few characters who've been in and out of jail.

I wanted to know more about who these people were, and I had a Head Start. In amongst the at times incoherent letters into the BBC, I was bizarrely sent copies of Kim's will. Lots of it didn't make sense, but there were names of people he was leaving his money and his worldly possessions to when he dies. Motorbikes, pickup trucks, guitars, vans. It showed the sum of £7,000 going to one of those men Jade was referring he's comparing to. A man of the same name in the Inverness area has convictions for domestic violence and racism. And these were the people Kim was surrounding himself with.

There wasn't anything to stop him sending somebody after me. He had all this cash, and some of the people that he knew back then could have probably been quite easily influenced by cash. Even now, there's still people that seem to be taken in by him, and I don't know if some of them just aren't right in the head.

Despite letters and calls, I never did hear back from this man in the well. He was keeping Stum. On to the other names. One guy was to be left all of Kim's mountain bikes. I found contact details for him and got in touch to ask about how he knew Kim. It's Miles Bonner here from the BBC. How are you? Hang up. He didn't want to talk. But he did email me back, telling me, Unless you want to choose the color of rope and the type of tree to hang from, we certainly don't have any business. We have never communicated. You and the rest of your colleagues have never heard of me. I do not exist. If there is any association of me to Mr. Avis, it will result in very severe and probably over-the-top consequences. So that wasn't going anywhere. Next, I called the recipient of Kim's trademark van, and I wanted to ask him about the various things-Oh, hello. I was wondering if I could speak to... You don't want to discuss it on the record. What about off the record? He told me that he thought the charges against Kim had no credibility.

This wasn't a guy I'd been told was up to anything shady, but who I remembered from the town center back when I lived in Inverness. And there were others who I remembered, too. Older guys used to always seem to be around Kim's stall, not necessarily up to anything he was up to, but always there. I was sent a series of photos of Kim in his heyday on Inverness High Street. Standing behind in several of them is one of those Guys. Hello, are you there? Oh, yeah, I'm there. Can you hear me okay, Cohen?

Sorry, I'm- Yeah, I can hear you now. I'm outside, but I can hear you. Are you happy with me recording this? Yeah, that's okay.

Cohen agreed to speak to us, although he didn't seem to know what had happened to Kim. The reason I'm getting in touch with him was just to find out what you remember of Kim Avis Gordon.

Is there something wrong with him?

Yeah. He's in prison, Co-on.

Is he dead?

No. He's not dead. He's in prison.

In prison? All right.

I asked Cohen to spul back and tell me how he first met Kim.

Around 2000, I was coming to InfoNest in the first time when I was going to the hostel. The backpacker hostel was in the high street, and his store was maybe only in We made up for it.

Coan and Kim became firm friends.

Yeah, we met each other every day. We're going from coffee to Costa many times. I was quite often there, and I met him always every day on the street in every situation where he was very helpful for a lot of people. He was quite a good person, really. Yeah, he was liking the woman. I know that was a bit too much, maybe.

Sorry, what was that last bit? He liked the woman a bit too much.

He had quite a lot of girlfriends. I mean, he changed them quite often.

I know he said he had quite a lot of girlfriends. Did that ever get him into a bit of trouble?

No, not really. But he took always girls, not on the age. He might have liked the young girls, I guess. But he had never any troubles with it. Of my knowledge, only took girls, not under eight anyway.

Oh, I see. So they were never under 18?

No, not at my knowledge.

Because the reason I ask, I've heard a few stories that he used to take, offer to give people a tour of the Loch Ness, young women. Remember I told you about the stories about Kim and his van and him offering to take various women up to Loch Ness? Well, they kept coming up. Is that true?

Yeah, that could be when he did those things, he was helping everybody at the time. I mean, he did a lot of things in life. But I can guess now, if you call me and it goes about that direction, then I can guess he must be in prison for something that has to do it under eight.

Yeah, he got 15 years.

Jesus.

The letters kept coming. Some signed from Kim, some signed from the friends and family of Kim Avis, but they weren't answering my questions. They were now accusing me. They said I was part of the conspiracy against him. Meanwhile, I kept digging in Inverness, looking for someone who knew more about how Kim used to operate there.

Going down Warren Road, and then there's a pedestrian bit, and then the road is closed along the river there. So that's probably...

Russell is a yoga instructor and personal trainer based in Inverness. He remembered me from back when he ran a youth cafe I went to as a teenager. It's been years since we've seen each other. He hasn't changed all that much from how I remember him. We met on the banks of the River Ness, which runs through the city.

He's a gregarious, interesting, eccentric.

Like many who knew him, Russell's first memory of Kim is seeing him at a stall on the high street.

We would stop and check out his stuff and we'd talk. And over the years, he'd say stuff about women and girls that were passing by. He'd refer to them, some of them as his wives. And I realized that he had a possessive, creepy way of relating to these people, referring to anyone that he'd slept with as one of his wives and claiming that he had many, many children, like 12 or 13 kids. But it got to the point where he was being so unpleasant that when I found a lady that I knew who was getting interested in him, I'd warn her off and say, Well, I don't think he's safe. He would take people to Loch Ness in his van and park up and then say that he wasn't going to drive back to Inverness until he got sex. And I think sometimes that ended up being consensual, and sometimes it wasn't. It was coercive. And a couple of girls that told me that, they didn't want to go to the police. They just wanted to move on from a pretty unpleasant experience. And there's a few of us we talked about what we could do to shut him down.

And you can't go to the police if a victim doesn't want to be identified. They don't want to go through what I imagine is a fairly unpleasant process of raking over those experiences.

Russell looked frustrated and sad. He says he'd been told firsthand about women who were coerced into sex with Kim, but had never been able to do anything about it. He said their stories weren't for him to tell. As we carried on walking, we cross-referenced stories, trying to see if between us, we could arrive at a bigger, more complete picture of Kim Avis. Do you know... So the reason why I asked was that there is a woman... At this point, I was describing Laura, the woman who had walked into the BBC newsroom 23 years ago. She had a kid. She died in 2001.

She committed suicide?

She did, yeah.

Yeah, I know.

Really? Yeah, yeah.

She was really good friends.

Oh, my God. I honestly didn't know that, Russell. Are you all right talking about this? Sorry. I honestly didn't know.

Yeah, go ahead. It's great.

Fucking hell. I actually I can't write. There's some stuff I need to tell you about this. So I got a tip off maybe in October or November time from a journalist. It's fair to say at this point, I was all over the place. I hadn't come here expecting to find out more about Laura.

I don't know why things went so wrong for her. When I met her, she was so sharp and so full of life, and her mental health really took a dive. And Looking back on that summer, she was building herself up to it, and I just didn't realize. I thought her behavior was odd. She never mentioned anything about Kim that I can remember. She said a whole bunch of other stuff about other people.

Russell told me that in her last few months, Laura was struggling mentally and that she had made a number of sexual allegations about other men.

Do you know Russell? He might know if she had a problem with him.

Okay, I don't know Russell. What's his second name? Russell was referring to Laura's boyfriend from the time.

I'll just see if he wants to talk to you.

Yeah, no worries. Honestly, I can't believe that. Russell tried to call this guy, but there was no answer. But Laura's old boyfriend did eventually text Russell back. All he was willing to say was that Laura had been, quote, involved with Kim. I tried to speak to the boyfriend, but he never got back to me. Then an email landed in my inbox. It was from Laura's dad. He wanted to share some documents with me, including one from April 2001 written by Laura eight months before she died. He said it was addressed to her lawyer and was about Kim.

There were laws against the types of behavior he was manifesting towards me. On a number of occasions, he tried to hug and kiss me against my expressed wishes. On other occasions, he would chase me with his tongue wagging about in an obscene and suggestive manner. Manner. At first, I used to avoid Kim, and then over time, I faced up to him and challenged him directly in quite a confrontational manner. On a number of occasions.

I wrote to the lawyer. They never responded. By this time, Kim and his friends and family had been writing to me for three years. Kim had even written to me after our TV documentary about him era. But we never talked about Laura and what his involvement with her was. So it was time to send him a list of questions about her. And then it all went quiet. I then found out Kim, who had been writing so frequently to complain about my reporting or to profess his innocence or to blame everyone else, requested I be banned from writing to him in prison. Who knows why he finally decided to cut me off. Regardless, my last The Port of call seemed to have closed down. I did manage to build up a bit more of a picture of Laura's life in Inverness, and I even got speak to some of her friends from the city. Although they had a lot to say about Kim Avis as a person, they couldn't shine any light on what might have happened between him and Laura. But they did remember how creative and talented their friend was. I have a copy of a letter that one of them sent to Laura's family.

It reads, I can't tell you how devastated I am losing Kim. She was such a bright light in our lives. The former journalist who had met Laura back in 2001 and had told her to go to the police, didn't want to do an interview, but sent me this statement.

After she left, I wondered if I should have taken her there myself because it struck me that she may be vulnerable. I decided against it, assuming it was probably a domestic and that I shouldn't get involved or cover as a story. Looking back now, I wasn't overly surprised by her allegations as I knew Kim to see him around the town. And he always struck me as someone who befriended lost souls, mainly women. A bit of a creep who always had young teenage women hanging around his stall. I wouldn't have wanted my young daughter anywhere near him. I felt saddened when I found Saddened that a beautiful young woman and mother with so much future ahead of her decided her life wasn't worth living. I kept thinking about how distressed she must have been I've often wondered if I could have done something to steer her down another route, and if I had taken her to the police, the outcome could have been different.

After all the calls and letters, there were still so many unknowns. That's often the case in this line of work. You don't always get the full picture. We still don't know exactly what happened between Laura and Kim, and we'll likely never know what led Laura to take her own life. I had the feeling that some of the people I spoke to knew more than they were letting on. But without them speaking about it, you only have theories as to what had happened. What we do know is Laura was in a bad place in the months leading up to her death. We know she went into the BBC to complain about Kim, and we also know she died that same year in 2001. Think again about the place you grew up. There's a good chance at some point there was someone like Kim. And when someone like that operates in a place like Inverness or any other town like it, you don't always get to know everything that happened. But the community bears the scars. Kim Rivas, having once been described as a credit to Inverness, an asset to the Highlands, he became an embarrassment to Inverness.

I think it's a bit of a shameful point for a lot of people.

It's terrible the stuff he did, and it's a shame he wasn't the person he was meant to be or he portrayed himself to be.

Somebody took the town, the hospitality the benevolence of the city, and abused it for their own ends. Everybody that he took money off must feel cheated. And I know I think Inverness feels cheated and embarrassed that they were taken in by somebody doing what he was doing.

Do you ever really know anybody? That's the thing. People can shock you all the time. I honestly feel I feel sad about him. I do because I felt let down by him as a friend. He's been a master of his own destiny. So whatever happens from here on in, he's brought it on himself. I've probably spent more time in Inverness in the last few years than I have in the previous 10. When I left here, Kim Stoll was very much part of the life of the high street. I still have that image, Kim, surrounded by all those young women and girls. It bothered me seeing it then, and it bothers me so much more now. And you do think, how did he hurt so many people for so long without anyone seemingly doing anything about it. But I look at the spot now where he applied his trade for all those years and built his status in the city. Now, there's nothing. There's nothing at all except the pavement and the people who walk across it. And you wonder, how many of them know about all of this? How many of them know what happened here?

I don't think that you can look at Inverness and say that that could only happen here. It's not changed my view of the people around here at all. And certainly since then, I've met a lot of really lovely people. But every time that I walk down in Burnet High Street and I see where his stall was, I always have a thought of him. Every time I walk down that street, you can't go past that and raise that. So that was the center of a lot of this, really. That's where everyone knew him from. So That's triggering even now. Every single time I go down there, that's always in my mind.

After being isolated from her family and friends and abused for years, Jade is living life free of Kim.

He never thought that I would ever report him to the police. I don't think that he thought that I had that in me. I'm certainly much happier in a much better place than I was seven, eight years ago. I had fun with the really simple things, and I do appreciate quite small moments.

Now, even little things, like shopping in a supermarket, feel liberating for her.

It sounds really silly, but I I remember how much fun I had just buying things that I wanted to get. And just that, to me, was a level of freedom that most people completely take for granted. It's not stuff that I'm glad that's happened, but in some ways, it's made me a lot stronger.

This is Dead Man Running. If you've been affected by sexual abuse, self-harm, or suicide, details of support can be found at bbc. Co. Uk/actionline. As a listener of this series, you will know that there are still many questions swirling around Kim Avis, elements of this story that are still unresolved. If you have any information you'd like to share, the email is disclosure@bbc. Co. Uk. So you don't miss future episodes, hit subscribe on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts. Also, please Please take the time to rate Dead Man Running and leave a review. That really helps us out. If you enjoyed this series, then you can watch the accompanying documentary of the same name on BBC iPlayer. You may also like our team's other podcasts. You can listen to shiny bob, the devil's advocate, and Who Killed Emma on BBC Sounds. Dead Man Running is produced by me, Miles Bonna, and Callum Macai. Audio editing, sound design, and mixing by Gav Murchie. The series producers are Mark Daley and Jack Kibblewhite. Original score composed by Callum Murchete. Research by Ricky Cooper, Katie McEvony, and Marisha Curry. Location recording by Miles Bonna, Callum McKai, and Steven Donnelly.

Additional recording is by Jenn Daley, Hannah McClintock, and Joanne Willet. Artwork by Matt Russell. Our production manager is Susan McClundey. Production management assistant, Ruth McKai. Our Series Editor is Shelle Geoffrey. The Commissioning Editors are Gareth Hydes and Heather Caine Darling. This is a BBC Scotland production for BBC Sounds.

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