Missing woman ‘could not have written letters’
‘Letters are too sophisticated’
‘Needed support to put pen to paper’
A COUPLE accused of murdering a woman missing for 18 years were sent letters from the victim days after she is alleged to have died, a court heard yesterday.
Police seized three typewritten letters signed by Margaret Fleming and addressed to her alleged killers Edward Cairney and Avril Jones.
The letters were dated between January 9 and 13, 2000. Miss Fleming is alleged to have been killed in the house she shared with her carers at least four days before.
But the High Court in Glasgow heard from a former teacher of Miss Fleming who said it was ‘highly unlikely’ she had written the notes.
English teacher Jacqueline Cahill, 55, who taught Miss Fleming at Port Glasgow High School for two years, said the letters were ‘too sophisticated’ and that the pupil ‘was of low ability’.
Cairney, 77, and Jones, 58, deny murdering Miss Fleming by means unknown at the home they shared in Inverkip, Renfrewshire, between December 18, 1999, and January 5, 2000, when she was aged 19.
They also deny claiming £182,000 in benefits fraud by pretending for 17 years, from December 1999 to October 2016, that she was alive.
The court has heard Jones claim Miss Fleming had left with a traveller but returned from time to time over the years to collect her benefits money.
Mrs Cahill said police showed her three letters addressed to Cairney and Jones. The first was from Carlisle and the other two from the Regent Palace Hotel in London.
Prosecutor Iain McSporran, QC, asked Mrs Cahill: ‘What was Margaret’s level of writing?’
She replied: ‘She could write unaided or with support around about 100 words. There would be a number of errors in it, but you could get from it what she meant.’
Mrs Cahill said that in her opinion the letters contained words spelt correctly that she would have expected to be misspelled by someone of Miss Fleming’s ability. These words included probably, really and museum.
Mr McSporran asked: ‘Could Margaret have produced these letters?’
Mrs Cahill replied: ‘I think it is highly unlikely. She would have needed a lot of support to put pen to paper.’
Defence QC Thomas Ross, representing Cairney, said to Mrs Cahill: ‘You don’t have any of Margaret’s schoolwork to compare with these letters?’ Mrs Cahill agreed she had not.
Iain Duguid, QC, representing Jones, asked if the letters could have been written for Miss Fleming but signed by her.
Mrs Cahill replied: ‘The Margaret I knew would not have produced these letters.
There is no punctuation. Margaret knew how to punctuate.
‘The letters have quite a sophisticated stream of consciousness and use of imagery.’
In one letter sent from the hotel the author speaks of ‘going to Scotland to the mountains to make up my mind if I am a traveller or a mouse’.
The jury was shown the letters which were in the main rambling and confusing and with no punctuation.
Mr Duguid asked: ‘Did you know social workers assessed Margaret as aggressive towards her mother and attention-seeking?’
Mrs Cahill replied: ‘At school she was quiet and compliant.’
The trial continues.