The woman who helped arrest a rapist who faked his own death to escape the police

Jade Skea was a teenager when she met charismatic street trader Kim Avis.

She didn’t know that this encounter would lead to a decade-long controlling and abusive relationship, as well as a story that involved a fake death, an international manhunt and a trial in a Scottish high court.

For the first time, Jade told the story of how she and others brought Kim Avis to justice.

It all started in the early 2000s, when Avis had a jewelry stall in the heart of Inverness, Scotland, which she often visited with friends.

Avis was well known in the city for his charity fundraising – including by undertaking ambitious swimming trips in Loch Ness – and appeared regularly in the Scottish press.

“It was almost like he was some kind of local celebrity,” she says.

At 18, Jade regularly saw Avis, who was in her 40s.

“He wasn’t like other adults,” Jade recalls. “We kind of felt like he was one of us.”

As their relationship became more serious, Jade Skea isolated herself from her family and friends and moved in with Avis in a house on the outskirts of Inverness.

“Looking back now, I know part of the plan was to just isolate myself from everything,” she says.

“He showed up one night and acted quite erratically. He was upset about something,” she says.

“He climbed onto a picnic table that was outside the house and started howling and making strange animal noises.”

Jade says that after that Avis hit her for the first time.

Avis went on to subject Jade to a life of physical violence and abuse. He raped her again in his home, which he called the “Lair of Wolves”.

“I remember feeling like this was just the end, that this would be my life forever,” says Jade.

In 2015, after years of violence, Jade decided to take action.

“He never thought I would report him to the police,” she says.

“I don’t think he thought I had it in me. He was probably quite shocked.”

And Jade wasn’t alone.

Three other women have come forward to tell their stories of how Avis raped and abused them over decades. Two of them were children at the time of the abuse.

“When other people came forward, at that point everything completely fell apart for him,” says Jade.

Avis was prosecuted for multiple rapes and sexual assaults against four women. He was released on bail and a trial date was set for March 2019.

The problem was that he was no longer in the country.

Kim Avis quickly sold her “Lair of Wolves” for 245 thousand pounds, bought a plane ticket and traveled to Monastery Beach in California.

The place is known for frequent accidental drownings. It was there that Avis would try to fake his own death.

“He had nothing to lose at that point. If he has nothing to lose, you just don’t know what he’s capable of, because he’s completely distraught,” says Jade.

Avis’ eldest son, who was with him in the US, reported him missing, but after three days of searching, it became clear that the drowning was a hoax and that the serial rapist was on the loose.

Police documents from the Monterey County Sheriff’s Department recorded reports from people who said they saw Avis up and down the California coast in the days following her disappearance.

One witness described Avis as a “crazy Scotsman”, another talked about how the missing man was heading to Montana, where he bought property.

Months later, a mysterious man with an unusual accent arrived at a stall selling precious stones in the mountains near Colorado Springs, about 1,300 miles from where Avis had “disappeared.”

The man, who said his name was Cameron MacGregor, spent about $3,000 at the stall, run by a woman named Angie.

“He was really elusive,” she says. “I knew something was wrong.”

The man claimed to be Scottish and sported an unfinished tattoo of a direwolf on his back.

Angie says he was a simple man, but he always had a lot of money.

“He was always throwing money around,” she says. “He bought food for everyone and he could have been buying food for friends.”

He told Angie he was an American citizen.

“I asked to see his passport and he got angry. He drove for about an hour. I thought, ‘this is weird, this is really peculiar, he’s talking about a witch hunt, something’s not right here.'”

Angie no longer believed that Cameron MacGregor was who he said he was.

“I took a photo of his car’s license plates. I had a police officer friend. I asked him to check the license plates,” he says.

Angie says she got a call from the US Marshals, a government agency that hunts fugitives across state lines.

“They said ‘stay away from him, he’s dangerous,'” she says.

They asked Angie for information on Avis’ whereabouts.

The U.S. Marshals gathered several tips, witness accounts and the Scotsman’s financial transactions in the area.

Later, they received another information that stated that Avis was in a hotel.

Officers searched every possible escape route for hours as they waited for Avis to appear.

His last moments of freedom were captured by body cameras worn by local police.

He was processed in Denver before being transferred to federal prison to await extradition to Scotland.

When he was arrested, Avis had more than $50,000 in cash, as well as gold coins. He also had a new van that he bought in the USA.

Angie says the money stayed with Avis, so she was given power of attorney. She ended up selling the van for $20,000 and returning most of the remaining money to Avis.

While he was in federal prison, Angie visited him three times. Avis had no idea that she was likely behind his arrest.

His last visit was after Avis returned to prison in Scotland. When she saw him in prison in Edinburgh, she decided to tell him a secret.

“I said, ‘You know what, I’m the one who turned you in,'” she recalls.

“He was upset. I said ‘you don’t understand. You lied to the wrong American girl’.”

More than two years after disappearing off the coast of California, Avis was convicted of rape and sexual crimes against four women in June 2021 in Scotland.

He was sentenced to 15 years in prison – 12 years for sexual offenses and three years for failing to appear in court.

He was taken to a prison in Edinburgh, where he remains to this day.

“I don’t think he should be released,” Jade says.

“He is a danger to anyone he comes into contact with in any way. He will absolutely ruin anyone he is around long enough. And I don’t think he should be released again.”