Nat Fraser to challenge second conviction for murdering his wife

A man who was found guilty of murdering his wife for the second time is to challenge his conviction.

Nat Fraser was jailed for 17 years for the killing of his estranged wife Arlene in 1998.

Officials at the Justiciary Office in Edinburgh confirmed on Wednesday that Fraser's legal team lodged a notice of intention to appeal.

It could be months before a court hearing is fixed and Fraser does not have to detail his grounds of appeal at this time.

However, during his latest trial at the High Court in Edinburgh judge Lord Bracadale made two decisions which could be open to challenge.

A witness revealed that Fraser had been in prison before the disappearance of wife Arlene, 33, in April 1998.

An investigation was also ordered after complaints that a member of the jury had supposedly betrayed a bias against Fraser at an early stage.

In both cases Lord Bracadale ruled that the trial should continue. After more than five weeks of evidence and speeches a jury decided that fruit and veg wholesaler Fraser, 53, had paid a hit-man to murder his wife.

They rejected Fraser's alibi that he was on his delivery rounds that day and his claim that former friend, farmer Hector Dick, 56, of Mosstowie near Elgin was the real killer.

Fraser was jailed for life and cannot ask to be freed on parole for at least 17 years. Fraser was first convicted to murdering mother-of-two Arlene in January 2003 but maintained he was innocent.

The Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh confirmed his conviction, but Fraser successfully went over the heads of Scottish judges and the UK Supreme Court ruled that he had suffered a miscarriage of justice.

The successful appeal hinged on claims that key evidence relating to the mystery reappearance of Arlene's rings in the bathroom of her Smith Street home, nine days after she vanished, had been kept from his defence lawyers.

After the Supreme Court decision prosecutors demanded a new trial and a second jury reached the same conclusion as the first jury, nine years ago.

Both juries heard that Fraser was seething with jealousy because he suspected his vivacious, trendy wife might have a lover.

Lord Bracadale told him: "The evidence indicated that at some point before April 28, 1998 you arranged for someone to kill your wife, Arlene, and dispose of her body.

"Thus you instigated in cold blood the pre-meditated murder of your wife and mother of your children, then aged ten and five years."

Lord Bracadale continued: "The murder and disposal of the body must have been carried out with ruthless efficiency for there is not a trace of Arlene Fraser from that day to this and her bereft family continue to live with no satisfactory knowledge of what happened to her remains."

More About Arlene Fraser

Related articles

People who read this story also read