The Black Widower: The Life and Crimes of a Sociopathic Killer by Lavery Charles

Author:Lavery, Charles [Lavery, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Mainstream Publishing
Published: 2012-07-04T22:00:00+00:00

13

RETURN TO THE SCENE OF THE CRIME

SOME OF THE MOST VITAL EVIDENCE AT THE TRIAL OF Malcolm Webster came from the statements from the past. Statements that were believed lost forever, forgotten about, then rediscovered in a dusty old police headquarters drawer.

Bus driver Kevin Shearer’s evidence is remarkable for two reasons; he sadly died the week before he was due to take the witness stand, and, had it not been for an office clear-out at Grampian Police HQ in Aberdeen, his crucial statement to police, given at the time of the ‘accident’ which killed Claire Webster in 1994, would never have come to light.

Chief Inspector Phil Chapman, the man in charge of the massive cold-case police inquiry, had a problem. He could not find the original statements taken at the time of the crash in 1994. Junior officers had spent months searching the HQ for the paperwork but it was nowhere to be found.

They assumed the originals had been binned when computerisation was introduced to the force in the mid-’90s and thought nothing more of it. There was nothing anyone could do, but it was a huge blow to the prosecution team.

Then, shortly before the worldwide probe would be taken to court, prosecuting QC Derek Ogg, frustrated at not being able to get his hands on the original paperwork, received a telephone call from Chapman.

A junior staff member had been clearing an outer office, less than six feet from where Chapman sat throughout the probe, and walked into his office to ask if he needed ‘the Webster crash statements’.

Assuming the officer meant the updated, more recent paperwork, Chapman, busy co-ordinating efforts to snare Webster, replied he had all he needed without looking up.

Then, when he did glance up, he caught sight of a dusty old folder, saw the officer blow dust off the top of it, and punched the air in delight.

The folder contained the original statements. They had been sitting less than six feet away from Chapman, in a forgotten desk drawer, for all those years. That paperwork contained the truth of what happened the night Claire Morris died, and their eventual discovery was the fillip Chapman and the rest of his hard-working team needed. It was a huge and welcome break for the worldwide probe into Malcolm Webster. Contained within the crackly papers was the evidence of Webster’s actions and words on that night in 1994, which they used to devastating effect against him during the trial.

Within those typed-up reports of the evening in question was the truth. They now had a list of people who were on the scene, witnesses who had stopped and the position of the car as well as medical reports and all the usual forms that go along with a fatal road traffic accident.

More importantly, they also had reports of what Webster had said, how he had acted, what he had claimed had happened. They were a Godsend, and prosecutors believe without them they might have struggled to prove Webster had lied.

Police believed

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