Convicted killer Malcolm Webster has failed in a bid to take a council to court for removing the gravestone he erected for the wife he murdered.

Malcolm Webster has been jailed for life after he killed first wife Claire Morris in a deliberate car crash in Aberdeenshire in 1994.

Aberdeenshire Council agreed to remove the gravestone he erected for his first wife after discussions with her family.

Webster threatened to take the local authority to court over the the removal of the gravestone.

His legal bid appears to have been cut short after the Scottish Legal Aid Board rejected his request for funding.

A SLAB spokesman said: "We have refused to grant an application for civil legal aid by Malcolm Webster because it did not meet the statutory merits tests. Mr Webster can ask the board to review this decision."

Speaking when the council took action, the victim's brother Peter Morris said: "The headstone was a lie, it was a monstrosity. It was a distortion of the truth that was connected with my sister's grave.

"For the council to have removed it is wonderful news."

Webster, orginally from Surrey, was branded a "cold-blooded, brutal and callous murderer, when he was sentenced at the High Court in Edinburgh last July.

He was convicted of murdering his first wife in 1994 and fraudulently pocketing more than £200,000 in insurance policies after her death.

He was also convicted of trying to murder second wife Felicity Drumm in New Zealand five years later, in a copycat car crash in a bid to claim more than £750,000 of insurance money.

Webster was also found guilty of a range of crimes stretching from 1994 to 2008, including theft, fraud and attempted bigamy.

He has been granted leave to appeal both his conviction and sentence.

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