19 May 2011

Man murdered wife in crash and attempted to kill second wife

A man has been convicted of murdering his first wife and attempting to kill his second in staged car crashes as part of a scheme to win £1 million in insurance payouts.

Malcolm Webster, a qualified nurse, murdered his 32-year-old wife, Claire, in a staged car crash in 1994 and fraudulently claimed more than £200,000 from insurance policies following her death.

She died when the vehicle in which she was a passenger crashed and caught fire in Aberdeenshire. Webster, from Guildford in Surrey, drugged her with sedatives, driving the car off the road and starting a fire while she was unconscious in the vehicle.

He was also convicted at the High Court in Glasgow of attempting to murder Felicity Drumm in a deliberate car crash in New Zealand in February 1999, in a failed bid to claim more than £750,000 of insurance money.

Webster drugged Ms Drumm at locations in New Zealand and the UK between July 1996 and February 1999, “to the danger of her life and the wellbeing of her unborn child”. The jury took less than four hours to convict 52-year-old Webster following the longest criminal trial with a single accused in Scottish legal history.

Forensic tests

On the day he killed his first wife, Webster told police that he swerved to avoid a motorcyclist and crashed. But after the investigation into Ms Morris’s death was re-opened in 2008, forensic tests on a tissue sample from her liver revealed she had been given a sedative before the crash.

In his closing address to the jury, prosecutor Derek Ogg QC said Webster’s “reign of destruction is at an end”.

Chief Inspector Phil Chapman, the senior investigating officer in the case for Grampian Police, said: “The thing that struck me was he was an individual who has, and will continue to have, an insatiable appetite for wealth and the trappings of wealth which knew literally no bounds. He spent over £200,000 in a six-month period (after the death of Ms Morris). Seventeen years ago that amount of money was a huge, huge amount of money to spend in six months.”

Police started investigating Webster’s past when one of his second wife’s sisters, while on a business trip to England, contacted British police in June 2006 to report her suspicions about him. Webster tried to kill Ms Drumm, 50, to gain more than £750,000-worth of insurance money. Ms Drumm, a New Zealand citizen, told the court she and Webster, whom she married in 1997, travelled to New Zealand from Scotland towards the end of 1998 with a view to setting up a permanent home there.

Webster told the court he feigned a heart attack and deliberately drove the car off the road because they were on their way to their bank, and he knew there were no funds in a joint account.

Speaking outside court on Thursday, the brother of Ms Morris said he felt “elated” and that there was “justice for Claire”.

“For 17 years it was the perfect murder. He got away with it for 17 years, because he made it look like an accident.” Ch Insp Phil Chapman

Peter Morris said: “I now feel that Claire, who has waited 17 years for this, after her death, will now be able to rest in peace.

“The guilty verdict of murder has proven that Malcolm Webster is a wicked murderer.

“I feel today is a good day as the psychological sadism over me and my family, and many other people, is now broken.”

Chief Inspector Chapman praised Ms Drumm and her family for their determination to bring Webster to justice. He said: “Their lives have been blighted since 19 February 1999, when the web of lies spun by Malcolm Webster began to unravel. Indeed it was the family’s pursuit of Malcolm Webster which led us to reconsider the circumstances surrounding Claire’s death.

“Malcolm Webster’s actions display a complete contempt for human life, which were apparently fuelled by an insatiable appetite for wealth. For 17 years it was the perfect murder. He got away with it for 17 years, because he made it look like an accident.”