‘Karen Pirie’ Ending, Explained: Who Killed Rosie in Karen Pirie?

Welcome to the Ending Explained for Karen Pirie, a new crime drama arriving on Britbox this week. The series is an adaptation of the novel “The Distant Echo” written by Val McDermid. The series stars Lauren Lyle, and Chris Jenks, in the roles of a team of detectives that have been forced to solve a cold case from the past. The case, in fact, was closed 25 years ago, but now it has regained popularity among the public thanks to a popular true-crime podcast. Now the police are forced to reopen the case and find a solution to the mystery.

Karen Pirie presents a very compelling mystery, and it brings very modern elements into the mix. For example, how social media can influence the investigation of a crime and how a mere podcast can push the police into reopening a case from decades in the past. It is quite interesting. After the success of Serial, one of the first true-crime podcasts to find success in the mainstream, it feels very realistic that something like that could find its way into more mainstream fiction as well.

The following paragraphs contain spoilers for Karen Pirie. Read at your own risk.

What Happened On The Night Of June 27th, 1996 In Karen Pirie?

Karen Pirie begins with an introduction to a crime. The event in question occurred on the night of June 27th, 1996. In Scotland. The setting is a peaceful but lively university town near the highlands, which means there are a lot of young people going around the place. Among these young people going around, we find three key figures that will become very prominent in the case. Their names are Alex, Ziggy, and Tom. The three friends spend their night drinking and going around.

However, when they walk through the town’s cemetery, they find something horrifying. There on the grass, among the tombs, there is a young woman. Her name is Rosemary Duff, and she is dead. The thing is that the trio knew Rosemary, and they spent time with her early in the night. Actually, Ziggy, one of the young men, was starting a relationship with Rosie. They find him, and Ziggy runs to call for help. He walks in front of a police car to make it stop, and then he and the officer go to help Rosie, but it is already too late.

Things get more complicated because Ziggy is studying to be a medic, and yet he didn’t stay to help Rosie but ran looking for help. This might be the result of an inexperienced young man finding himself in a very serious situation, but the police don’t see it that way. They actually think that Ziggy has something to hide. The trio of friends is arrested, and they agree to say that they don’t know Rosie, and that they just found her. Ziggy believes that by cutting ties with Rosie, the police will have one less motive to accuse them of murder or something else.

Ziggy plan works. The trio is interrogated in a very hostile way by the police. It is clear they want to pin Rosie’s death on them and call it a day, but Ziggy and his friends deny having killed Rosie, and affirm that they didn’t know her. Without strong evidence to charge them of anything, they are set free, their names concealed to not ruin their lives without reason. However, as time passes by, the guilt of having lied that night follows the young men until they reach adulthood.

Who Killed Rosie In Karen Pirie?

When the police reopen the case of Rosie 25 years later, the police are in a very different state. The chief of police is now Jimmy Lawson, who served as one of the detectives in the original investigation. He places the responsibility of the case in Karen’s hands, but there is more to it than just reopening the case to appease the masses. The fact is that Jimmy Lawson is the real killer of Rosie Duff, and right now he is in a catch-22, with only one real solution, to give the case to an inexperienced detective and call it a day.

When Karen is given the review of such a high-profile case, it comes as very surprising. She is also given very few resources. For example, she is given only one partner to complete such an investigation. This already confirms that Lawson expects Karen to fail, so they will have to close the case once again and just leave it to obscurity. However, Lawson underestimated Karen and his new partner Murray. The two go above and beyond to find the truth.

You see, Lawson was in a relationship with Rosie when she was a minor, only 15 years old. When that happened, he was already a policeman at 21 years of age. This is already grievous, and things get worse when you realize that Rosie is pregnant. She disappears for a while, and when she comes back, she tells Lawson that the baby is dead. This is a lie that Rosie says to protect her baby from Lawson. In fact, her baby, named Grace, is in good health, and she will grow up knowing someone killed her mother.

Lawson became a controlling individual and stalked Rosie wherever she went and prohibited her from going out with other men. He was making her life a living hell. The relationship finally implodes, and Lawson commits the ultimate crime, killing her by strangulation, which he did with his own hands. However, applying his police knowledge, he recreated another unsolved case he had seen before and pieced together a number of red herrings that would, in the end, leave the case in the state it was when Karen picked it up. In the end, Lawson is arrested for his crime, and Rosie finally finds justice.