Trial hears body of woman was in bath

Kimberley MacKenzie, 37, was allegedly murdered at a flat on Montrose’s Market Street on October 27 2015.

Steven Jackson, 40, and Michelle Higgins, 29, are accused of murdering Miss MacKenzie by striking her with a hammer, machete and knife.

At the High Court i n Glasgow, Jackson’s ex-wife Barbara Whyte, 43, said she met him in Blairgowrie on the night of November 3 when he told her how Higgins had brutally hit Miss MacKenzie over the head with a hammer and dismembered using a saw.

Whyte, of Rattray, near Blairgowrie, then said Jackson laughed about Miss MacKenzie’s body parts lying in his bath while officers came to his flat looking for the missing woman. She said: “He said quite a few people had come to the house but due to the fact Kim had started to smell he had to stop his clients coming to the house. “He said police officers had come to the house while she was still in there. “She had been reported missing and he started laughing because when they came to the house she was in the bath.” Ms Whyte also told the court that Jackson did once admit to her he thought he would be caught by police because Higgins had taken away one of Miss MacKenzie’s hands and one of her feet after she had been dismembered, but he would argue diminished responsibility to the authorities.

Prosecutors claim Miss MacKenzie was murdered by Jackson and Higgins and it is alleged that her body was dismembered using a saw, knives and a screwdriver or similar instruments.

It is further alleged that Miss MacKenzie’s head and other body parts were put inside a rucksack and case and concealed in a shower cubicle.

Jackson, of Market Street, is further charged with two separate drugs offences as well as having a machete in a public place at Fair o’ Blair pub and Balmoral Road, both in Blairgowrie, between November 3 and 4 last year.

Higgins, of Lower Craigo Street, also allegedly had a knife in Montrose High Street on October 27.

The pair deny all the charges and the trial continues.

POLICE visited a Tayside flat looking for a missing mum-ofthree while her dismembered body lay in the bath at the property, a court heard.

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