Murder accused 'visited wife’s grave with another woman'

A man accused of murdering his first wife and attempting to murder his second took another woman to visit her grave when they spent the weekend in a hotel together.

Malcolm Webster, 51, and Catherine Brown, 45, shared a room at the hotel in Ballater in 2005, 11 years after his wife died.

Webster is accused of murdering Claire Morris in Aberdeenshire in May 1994 and pocketing more than £200,000 in insurance payouts after her death.

He denies drugging her, deliberately crashing a car she was a passenger in, and then setting fire to it.

Ms Brown, a nurse, told the High Court in Glasgow that Webster told her Claire Morris died after he swerved to avoid a drunk motorcyclist who was driving towards them on their side of the road, and their car hit a tree.

She told the court he had said: "I tried to get Claire out of the car but her legs were stuck. The last thing I remember before I was unconscious is the sound of her screaming."

He is also accused of trying to kill his second wife Felicity Drumm in New Zealand five years later to obtain £750,000 from separate insurance policies.

Webster, from Guildford in Surrey, also faces a further charge of attempting to marry Simone Banarjee bigamously and inducing her to make a will leaving everything to him, as well as lying about having leukaemia.

Ms Brown, a theatre nurse at Lorn and Islands Hospital in Oban, met Webster in June 2005 when she had just started her job at the hospital, where he also worked.

She joined him at the hotel in Ballater, Aberdeenshire, just after his father had died in December 2005. She told the court: "Malcolm was staying at Ballater and I went to see him at Ballater and I stayed in the same hotel in the same room."

They spent two nights there and toured the area. She said: "We went to an art gallery and he took me to places he had lived before, and to his wife's grave."

Derek Ogg QC asked whether they planted anything and she replied: "We had been at a garden centre and he had bought a plant and some gloves and a trowel."

He described Ms Morris's death to her in an email and said they were returning from a wedding when the accident happened. He said she was three months pregnant when she died.

Christian

Later, in an email discussion about theology and the Christian faith, he told her he was a Christian until May 27, 2004 when the crash happened.

He wrote: "I will remember what I heard for the rest of my life and it explains to you why I'm not a believer any more. I just knew I could not call myself a Christian again."

Ms Brown also told the court that during the course of their friendship Webster told her he had been diagnosed with leukaemia and that she believed him. Asked whether he appeared ill during the course of their friendship, she said: "He was losing weight quite dramatically. He said he felt sick and he looked as if he felt sick."

She told the court she was not in love with Webster and had told him early in what she called their "friendship/relationship" that she could never marry him because he was not a Christian.

The court also heard from Robert Mackie, a mental health nurse at Royal Cornhill Hospital in Aberdeen, who assessed Webster in February 2008 after he said he had been feeling suicidal. Mr Ogg referred to notes Mr Mackie made at the time, which said Webster told him he had recently split up with his girlfriend Simone after she found out he had an ex-wife and child in New Zealand.

The girlfriend was also angry because he had lied to her about having cancer. Mr Ogg asked whether he heard this "from Malcolm Webster's own lips" and he answered "yes".

The notes record that Webster told Mr Mackie he had taken an overdose of insulin with no ill effect, and had also bought some plastic pipe so he could gas himself in his car, but had not done anything more about it.

The trial before Lord Bannatyne continues.
 

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