I fear killer brother will come after me one day
A WOMAN whose half-brother strangled their mother to death six years ago fears he will come after her when he is released from jail.
Lorraine Bristow, 32, spoke about her “fears for her life” as she campaigned for a change in Scottish law to stop convicted killer Ross Taggart from controlling their mother’s estate from his prison cell.
The case is featured in a new TV show called Countdown To Murder.
Taggart, 37, will be eligible for parole in 12 years after murdering their mother Carol, 54, and hiding her body under a caravan in Fife. He received a life sentence in 2015 with an 18-year minimum tariff.
Brought up together as children with the same mother, Taggart’s release gives Lorraine, now married with two boys, nightmares. She said: “I was shocked with it [the sentence]. To think he will get out younger than she was at the time of her murder sticks in my throat.
“I feel petrified by what might happen. My husband [Stephen] and father reassure me, but he [Ross] was so calculating in what he did to Mum, why won’t he come after me?
“He will see I’ve taken everything away from him because that’s how he lives in his head. I still can’t sleep because of the nightmares. I fear for my life, 100 per cent.” After hiding his mother’s battered body, the court heard how Taggart went on a spending spree in Edinburgh, buying new trainers and dating a girl from a website before watching The Hunger Games at a cinema.
Before he murdered his mother he was made an executor of her estate.
But Lorraine says since his imprisonment he has taunted her by denying access to cherished mementos.
She said: “I did get some things from the house, but other stuff – a lot of the sentimental things that I wanted, photographs and things – are still missing. He got to keep everything that he said was his.
“He can run the whole show from his prison cell. It’s torture. I feel like I’m in prison doing a sentence.”
Countdown To Murder, Tuesday, 5STAR, 9pm