A man appeared in court today accused of murdering his first wife and trying to kill his second as part of a fraudulent plot to make hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Malcolm Webster is charged with murdering Claire Morris in May 1994 in Aberdeenshire and attempting to murder Felicity Drumm around five years later in New Zealand.

It is alleged he murdered Ms Morris by drugging her, putting her in a car, driving it off the road and torching it while she was unconscious in the vehicle.

Webster, from Guildford in Surrey, stands accused of fraudulently obtaining £208,815 after allegedly cashing-in a series of insurance policies following her death.

The 50-year-old is further charged with deliberately crashing his car in Auckland, New Zealand, in February 1999, in a bid to kill second wife Felicity, a passenger in the car at the time.

He did so as part of an attempt to fraudulently obtain £514,026 and NZ$500,000 (£233,469) in insurance pay-outs, prosecutors allege.

It is also alleged he intended to marry a third woman bigamously and told her he was terminally ill with leukaemia when he was actually in good health.

Webster appeared before Judge Lord Uist at the High Court in Edinburgh today for the first pre-trial hearing in his case.

He denies the charges against him, which run to 11 pages on the indictment.

Webster's defence QC, Edgar Prais, told the court it was a case of "enormous proportions" and indicated it would be a number of months before the trial could get under way.