CRIMES THAT SHOCKED SCOTLAND
Monster murdered for money
#4 WIFE KILLER
WIDOWER Malcolm Webster stood at the graveside of his dead wife and wept. Married for just eight months, her untimely death in a fireball car crash had broken her family’s heart.
Webster’s body shook and he appeared to be overcome with emotion as the coffin bearing 32-year-old Claire Morris was lowered into the ground.
Her mother and brother, despite their own loss and feelings of grief, comforted the young nurse. And so apparently grief-stricken was Webster that he left the funeral before other mourners could offer their sympathies.
Perhaps, some thought, he felt terrible guilt that he had been unable to save her life when the family car he was driving had crashed and burst into flames.
Wearing a neck collar for injuries he claimed to have suffered in the crash, Webster cut a pitiful figure whose newly married life had been cruelly cut short.
But all was not as it seemed and his charm, impeccable manners and affable way hid his true pathological nature and his “insatiable appetite for wealth” – no matter the cost. And for Webster that price meant murder.
Claire was besotted when she met the charming nurse in London in 1991. Almost right away she told her brother Peter and mum Betty she was in love. While Peter was happy for his sister, Betty was said to have had her suspicions.
Peter later said: “Our mum was always a bit suspicious of him – she thought he was too good to be true.”
The couple moved back to Claire’s native Aberdeen and got married in September 1993.
The day before her death, Claire told her mum about a crash a month earlier on a remote road in the Highlands where only a small bush had stopped them going over a ravine. It was a dry run for what was to come. Unknown to Claire, Webster had regularly been drugging her with epilepsy tablets and other medicines he was taking from the hospital where he worked.
She had told friends she hadn’t been feeling well for some time and planned to see her doctor for tests.
In May 1994, Webster took his wife for a drive on a remote Aberdeenshire road near Kingoodie. When she was unconscious from the drugs he had slipped her earlier, he deliberately crashed the 4x4 Daihatsu. He then set it on fire with Claire in the passenger seat.
Webster, from Guildford in Surrey, told investigators he had swerved to avoid a motorbike. He said he tried to get his wife out but couldn’t.
Despite the suspicions of a few, including a police officer, the crash was treated as a tragic accident.
Webster was the sole recipient of a £200,000 life insurance policy.
By 1997, he was re-married to Felicity Drumm after meeting her at a dinner party in Saudi Arabia. The pair relocated to her home in New Zealand and just two years later, in 1999, they were involved in a near-identical crash to the one that claimed Claire’s life when he deliberately drove down an embankment.
Felicity survived and traces of a sedative were found in her system. Webster had been repeatedly spiking her food and drink, even when she was pregnant with their son.
He’d also set fire to her parents’ home and claimed to have had a heart attack and cancer.
Felicity’s father, Brian, had discovered insurance policies taken out in his daughter’s name worth almost £950,000 and had given her a stark warning in the weeks before the crash. Webster was charged by police with numerous offences but failed to appear in court.
He fled to Scotland and started working at a hospital in Oban, where he lined up a new victim.
Simone Banarjee was independently wealthy, which was the attraction for greedy Webster, who spun a web of lies to hook her in.
He told Simone he was terminally ill with leukaemia and even shaved off his hair to carry on his ruse he was receiving chemotherapy.
He persuaded Simone to change her will in February 2006, leaving all her assets to him.
In September that year he proposed, despite the fact he was still married to Felicity.
Unknown to Webster, police were closing in after Felicity’s sister told a police officer she met in London of her fears that Webster had killed his first wife and tried to kill her sister.
The officer passed her concerns to Scottish police, who decided to re-open the crash investigation in Aberdeen.
Strathclyde Police officers issued Simone with an Osman letter – a warning they believed her life was in danger.
She had no idea Webster had a wife and son in New Zealand.
She discovered her life jacket she used for boating had been tampered with.
Simone later said: “I have pretty much no doubt that the boat was the way it was going to go.”
Webster was charged with Claire’s death in 2009. He was also charged with the attempted murder of Felicity and attempting to bigamously marry Simone in order to gain access to her estate.
In 2011, he was found guilty of all charges after the longest criminal trial in Scottish legal history.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment with the minimum tariff of 30 years.
Webster, now 61, has attempted to have his conviction quashed and vowed to appeal his sentence.
He dropped it and is languishing in Shotts prison, Lanarkshire.