New BBC podcast on attempted political assassination of Nikola Stedul in Kirkcaldy

The six-part series by the BBC looks back at the extraordinary case which saw Yugoslavian hit man, Vinko Sindic, sent to Scotland to murder a man living quietly in exile in the Lang Toun. Mr Stedul was a leading Croatian separatist who survived the shooting and returned to his home country where dedicated his life to campaigning for independence.

He died in 2022 at the age of 84, but the case continues to fascinate people. The new podcast, narrated by Kaye Adams, speaks to the police and eye witnesses at the centre of the case which sparked international headlines in 1988.

Few people in Kirkcaldy knew of Mr Stedul’s remarkable back story as an exiled world leader as he lived with his family in the town’s Glen Lyon Road. When Yugoslavia was a single united country under communist rule, he was a leading Croatian separatist. He fled and settled first in Australia and then, with his Kirkcaldy-born wife and two daughters, in Fife, where he became a powerful voice in exile, which made him a thorn in the side of the Yugoslavian government.

On the morning of October 20, 1988, Mr Stedul was walking his dog when he was gunned down on Glen Lyon Road. The would-be assassin – a former member of the Yugoslav spy school – drew up in a black Mini Metro and shot at him at point blank range.

Mr Stedul recalled: “ I turned towards the car to see what he wanted. At that moment his hand lifted. I saw a gun. There were two flashes from a silencer and very little sound. I didn’t realise I was hit until I fell to the ground.”

Sindicic fired four or five more shots. Despite having one bullet enter his mouth and smash his teeth, and with a second lodged in his chest, Mr Stedul survived, thanks to his alsatian, Pasha, which thwarted the hit by barking at the assassin, who sped away.

Sindicic, a notorious assassin linked with a number of killings across Europe, had come to Britain using a fake passport, hiding amongst ordinary Yugoslavian football fans gearing up for a World Cup Qualifier at Hampden. After the shooting, forensics combed the area, finding bloodstains in the street, fragments of teeth, and bullet holes through windows. A nearby house had two windows broken. A woman found a bullet embedded in her living room wall, and her son later found another bullet lying on the floor of her bedroom.

Mr Stedul spent weeks in hospital, and was left with a disabled foot. His voice had also changed because of the injuries.

Sindicic was caught soon afterwards at Heathrow Airport, as he waited to fly back home - thanks in part to a sharp-eyed Kirkcaldy resident. A postal worker living nearby had read a story in the Fife Free Press about a series of break-ins in the area, and so he took down the number plate of a suspicious man sat waiting in a black Mini Metro - he was later identified as Sindicic.

Sindicic was jailed for 15 years after trial at the High Court in Dunfermline, amid some of the tightest security measures ever seen in Scotland.

The new podcast can he heard at https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0hvvrrw