Family believes Yorston instrumental in death of ‘vulnerable’ Alexis

ON a bright summer’s day on the Mediterranean coast, a couple sat at a table on a charming piazza, drinking wine and whiling the afternoon away.

Then the phone rang.

The holiday of Morag Yorston and her toyboy lover Daniel Nenchev in September 2018 had been interrupted by a deeply disturbing call.

“It’s Alexis, she’s passed away, they think it’s some kind of overdose,” the grieving friend of Alexis Watson, 36, told Yorston.

The exact relationship between Yorston and Alexis, a mum of one, is disputed.

Members of Alexis’s family claim Yorston forced her to stash and sell heroin and cocaine in exchange for drugs and that Yorston’s actions indirectly contributed to her death.

But Yorston’s husband Daniel Nenchev claims Alexis was their friend, that his wife only ever tried to help her when she was down on her luck and they were both genuinely devastated after the call.

Daniel said: “Morag was crying so much. When a person is so hooked on drugs, you cannot help them.

“Alexis would call Morag every couple of weeks and say ‘I have a problem with this’ and Morag would help.”

Alexis had battled heroin addiction for many years.

In February 2018 she was jailed for 15 months at Dundee Sheriff Court after admitting being concerned in the supply of Class A drugs at her flat in Byron Street.

Her family told me Alexis was so scared of getting caught and having to answer to the drugs gang making her stash the drugs that she hid heroin worth £240 in her underwear.

Police also found heroin worth £6,965 in several bags hidden under a mattress and in a wardrobe.

According to detectives and prosecutors, there is no evidence on file of Yorston having a “business” association with Alexis at the time Alexis’s house was raided.

However police said it was not inconceivable, given Yorston’s tendency to offer drug users £1,000 to travel to Liverpool to collect drugs.

DCI Scott Fotheringham said: “Yorston was preying on the vulnerable and using others to prey on those vulnerable people.

“While we cannot be sure Yorston was forcing Watson to work for her, we do know that when Alexis left custody in September 2018 – after serving half her sentence in jail – Yorston was very keen to speak to her.”

Daniel said: “When Alexis got out of the prison, she didn’t have anything, so Morag helped buy her dresses and a phone. She would take her for dinner.

“Alexis was a nice person. I knew her for about two years. I met her through a friend. She was a very social, pretty woman. But she was taking tablets that made her seem like a zombie. I think it was Xanax. Alexis was always asking Morag for money.”

Daniel added: “Morag and Alexis were best friends. Alexis didn’t buy drugs from Morag. If that’s a claim, that’s not true. Alexis sold drugs and died because of tablets. Morag never sold tablets.

“I think if Morag had not have been on holiday when she got in trouble, she wouldn’t have died.”

But according to Alexis’s daughter Alana Gowans, her mother spent years trying to get off heroin and had sought help from health workers before moving on to methadone.

However, she found the habit hard to kick and went back on to drugs, which claimed her life.

Alexis was found dead at a house on Forebank Road on September 15 2018.

Alana, 19, told us: “My mum had been addicted to heroin since she was 16 and came off it for so long, but then she started to take Valium and sleeping tablets.

“My mum wanted to get better for me, but it was hard. Some days