Court told of murder accused’s shocking phone call to ex-boss
BY VIC RODRICK A MAN confessed to murdering a woman with a hammer in a phone call to his former employer, a jury heard yesterday.
Panel beater Paul Smith, 36, was giving evidence in a trial at the High Court in Livingston over the murder of Claire Turnbull, 36, last October.
Paul took the call from Aaron Donald and at first couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
He said: “He told me he’d killed a woman. I said, ‘Are you sure she’s dead?’
“He said, ‘Oh aye. She’s dead. I hit her a number of times with a hammer and there’s brain matter everywhere.’”
At this point, Claire’s mum Heather shouted from the public benches: “Oh, you b ***** d.”
Continuing his evidence, Paul added: “He said (he hit her) seven, eight, nine times, round about that.”
Paul said he’d seen Donald in Dunfermline with a girl with blonde hair who wasn’t his girlfriend. He asked him what colour of hair the dead woman had.
He said: “He shouted, ‘Laura, what colour of hair did this lassie have before I done this to her?’ It was Laura who said, ‘I think she was blonde.’
“But I take it she (Claire) was in that much of a mess he didn’t even know what colour the lassie’s hair was. I’m sure I asked, ‘Why did this happen?’ He said she disrespected him.”
Paul said in his police statement: “Aaron told me the girl had tried it on with Laura and said, ‘I lost it and battered her to death.’”
He confirmed he told police Donald used the phrase, “I murdered her”.
Donald, 28, and his co-accused Laura McMurdo, 30, both from Blairhall in Fife, are accused of murdering Claire at a flat in the village.
They are also accused of attempting to defeat the ends of justice by hiding a hammer, believed to be the murder weapon, and giving police false information.
They deny the charges and Donald has lodged special defences, claiming he was suffering from a mental disorder and diminished responsibility at the time of the killing.
The trial continues.