As what seemed like the entire world sat fixated on their TV screens watching the incredible scenes unfolding as police raided Nicola Sturgeon’s house, journalist Georgia Edkins’s mobile phone rang in the Mail on Sunday office...

The call, from one of her most trusted contacts, was to pass on a ‘very important’ piece of information’ about the large-scale police operation playing out before our eyes.

Now journalists get tip-off calls all the time. Some turn out to be 100 per cent accurate, but many, frustratingly, end up as time-consuming wild goose chases.

Yet little did we know that such a simple tip-off – a 30-second phone call taken by Georgia, our Political Editor – would end up lighting the fuse on one of the most explosive political scandals in Britain for decades, and eventually play a major part in the downfall of Peter Murrell, one of the SNP’s most powerful figures and Ms Sturgeon’s husband.

Just a few hours earlier on April 5, 2023, the shock news broke that former SNP chief executive Murrell had been dramatically arrested during a 9am police raid on the Glasgow home that he shared with Ms Sturgeon as part of an investigation into £600,000 of missing SNP party funds.

Ms Sturgeon had scurried from the house an hour before that fateful knock at the door – and before police famously erected a giant forensic tent in her front garden, effectively turning the middle-class suburban street into a crime scene.

As Georgia’s call ended, she said: ‘I’ve just been told there was a SECOND police house raid.

‘And guess what? It was at Peter Murrell’s mum’s house… She’s 92, for God’s sake!’

The very notion of this seemed incredible to say the least.

But the source was adamant. A quick check of the Electoral Roll – and good old Google Street View – revealed that Margaret Murrell lived on a pretty but unremarkable housing estate in Dunfermline, Fife.

Her husband Harry died in 2019 and she’d lived alone ever since.

But would police REALLY raid a 92-year-old widow’s house? Had she been arrested?

It seemed unlikely to say the least.

We agreed that we shouldn’t turn up at nonagenarian Mrs Murrell’s door unannounced and start firing sensitive and potentially upsetting questions at her.

I mean, we didn’t even know if the tip-off was true! As Georgia set off for Fife, we certainly had more questions than answers…

And to get to the truth or otherwise, we were going to have to do it the old-fashioned way.

‘Just go there and speak to locals…neighbours, anyone who might have seen something. Anything.

‘You’ll know soon enough if there’s any truth in this,’ I told Georgia with more hope in my heart than expectation.

Having identified Mrs Murrell’s home, Georgia began knocking on neighbours’ doors to try to glean any information about police being in the street.

Most were polite and said that they hadn’t seen anything. Some said they simply didn’t want to talk to the Press.

But one person was willing to talk – and, astonishingly he’d witnessed the entire drama. He’d tell us all about it if we kept his identity secret as he was ‘from the area’.

The man – a passer-by who knows the neighbourhood – told how two unmarked police cars, one silver SUV and one graphite-coloured estate, pulled up outside Margaret Murrell’s bungalow just after 9am.

He said a marked police car was stationed a little further up the road.

‘It happened at about 9am, which is about the same time they started raiding Peter Murrell’s house in Glasgow I think.

‘They did not go into the house as Margaret is quite old now and I guess they wouldn’t have wanted to disturb her.’

Then, out of the blue, he revealed the real reason the police had targeted Mrs Murrell’s property – the MOTORHOME that had been parked in her driveway for two years!

The man said: ‘They couldn’t get into the motorhome at first because it was locked and it had clamps on it so they had to get some keys from somewhere.

‘They went off but came back and managed to get it open.

‘By this time, a huge tow truck had turned up and everyone started trying to load it onto the back. After a bit of trouble securing it, they took it away. And that was it.’

So it turned out that our tip-off was wrong. There was no police raid at the house. The officers didn’t even knock on Mrs Murrell’s door. They’d just turned up to take away the ‘evidence’ – a £125,000 campervan.

There had been rumours circulating in newsrooms for weeks before that police probing SNP fraud were examining the purchase of several luxury items – including cars and a ‘larger vehicle’. And here was the ‘larger vehicle’ – ‘hidden’ right outside Peter Murrell’s mum’s house!

Luckily, the eye-witness thought the mini-drama was so significant that He took some pictures on his mobile phone – which he later copied and sent to the Mail on Sunday.

Back at the office, we managed to establish that the motorhome was made by luxury German manufacturer Niesmann + Bischoff and retailed for around £110,000 at the time.

Our eye-witness also told us: ‘It [the motorhome] has been there for two-and-a-quarter years and it’s not moved. Peter Murrell and another man brought it here. They came in early January 2021 and it’s been there ever since. It has never moved to my knowledge.’

Based on this information, we obtained Google Earth satellite images which indeed confirmed that the motorhome had been parked on Mrs Murrell’s driveway for over two years… and you couldn’t miss it. It was huge – you could identify it from space.

Our subsequent splash headline on Sunday, April 9, 2023 read: ‘Police probing SNP fraud seize £110,000 motorhome…

‘Officers confiscate luxury vehicle in early morning raid at house owned by 92-year-old mother of ex-party boss Peter Murrell.’

And after we published, the floodgates opened. News outlets around the world followed up ‘the SNP motorhome story.’

It captured everyone’s imagination – and instantly SNP ‘motorhome’ or ‘campervan’ became the public byword of the entire Police Scotland investigation.

Social media was full of it, and everyone wanted to have their say, whether their sympathies lay with the SNP or otherwise.

Hilarious memes flooded the internet, many depicting in cartoon form a saltire-waving Murrell and Ms Sturgeon hanging out of the windows of the motorhome as they set off on a road trip.

The couple were even parodied on the BBC’s primetime Hogmanay programme in 2024.

And today, after Murrell’s guilty plea, and the revelation that the £125,000 motorhome amounted to a quarter of the £400,000 he stole, the saga is still a major talking point in the theatre of public opinion. 

Last week, after her estranged husband was led off to prison, Nicola Sturgeon claimed that she never spotted the 24ft-long motorhome parked in her mother-in-law’s driveway… Surely that could only have been the case if she’d never visited Mrs Murrell?  

But of course, she did – as another eye-witness testified just a few days ago. Student Ryan Thomas Quinn says he spotted Ms Sturgeon in an Asda store near where Mar geret Murrell lived in 2022. She was buying frozen pizza and garlic bread. 

He says he overheard her saying she ‘has family in Dunfermline’. And he claimed that it was impossible to miss the camper van on Mrs Murrell’s drive – as he passed it every day on his way to college. 

As the Google Earth images show, you can see the thing from space. Not spotting it from your relative’s front door would have been nigh impossible. 

So the motorhome controversy rumbles on, three years after the fateful call to Georgia. 

It was just one important story among many as journalists played a vital role in exposing Murrell’s crimes despite SNP lies and denials. But it is a story which will haunt Nicola Sturgeon and her crooked husband for all time.