Mum I was duped into hosting my girl’s killer
A mother has revealed how she was duped into opening her home to her daughter’s killer ahead of the funeral.
Robert Trigg pretended to be grieving for his lover and Jean Devlin felt so sorry for him that she gave him a bed the night before the service and even washed and ironed his shirt.
Mum-of-four Caroline Devlin, 35, originally of Auchinleck, Ayrshire, was found dead in her bed on Mother’s Day 2006 by her young children.
It was thought she’d died from a brain aneurism – and it wasn’t until after the sudden death of another girlfriend of Trigg five years later that the truth emerged.
Earlier this month, Trigg, 52, was convicted of killing both women in Worthing, Sussex.
Jean, 73, told how the callous killer travelled to Scotland for Caroline’s funeral.
She said: “I watched as this man carried my precious daughter’s coffin out of the church, and as he took a cord which helped lower her into the ground.
“I opened up my home to him.
“I made my own son sleep on the couch so he had a bedroom to himself, and I washed and ironed his shirt for the funeral.
“He was very dishevelled and I wanted him to look respectable as we said our final farewell to Caroline.
“I assumed he was grieving but in fact he’d killed her. And he let me do this, knowing he was solely responsible for the devastation we were all feeling.”
Trigg was caught after Susan Nicholson’s parents refused to accept that he had accidentally suffocated the 52-year-old as they slept on a couch in 2011.
Peter and Elizabeth Skelton hired Hillsborough pathologist Nathaniel Carey, who concluded that their daughter had been deliberately killed.
He also found that Caroline had died from a blow to the back of her head.
His findings forced Sussex Police to reopen the inquiry into both deaths.
Trigg, who was arrested in November last year, was convicted of mum-of-two Susan’s murder and Caroline’s manslaughter after a two-week trial. The families of his two victims sat together in Lewes Crown Court throughout.
Trigg was sentenced to life in prison, with a minimum term of 25 years.
Sussex Police have launched a probe into why neither woman’s death was investigated properly.