Margaret could not have written letters, trial told
‘Literacy skills were not great’
A TEACHER yesterday claimed letters supposedly written to two carers by the woman they are accused of murdering could not have been penned by her.
Jacqueline Cahill taught Margaret Fleming at school and claimed she had a reading age of eight and struggled with writing.
The teacher was giving evidence at the High Court in Glasgow where Edward Cairney, 77, and Avril Jones, 59, are on trial accused of murdering Miss Fleming at their home in Inverkip, Renfrewshire, between December 18, 1999 and January 5, 2000.
Police launched a huge operation to trace Miss Fleming, who it is claimed has not been seen for 19 years, in November 2016.
Cairney and Jones claim she had left Inverkip in January 2000 with a member of the travelling community, but occasionally returned to collect her benefits.
Mrs Cahill, who now works for North Lanarkshire Council, told prosecutor Iain McSporran that in 2016 police showed her letters allegedly written by Miss Fleming to Cairney and Jones.
One was headed from Carlisle on January 9, 2000, and the other two from London’s Regent Palace Hotel on January 13, 2000.
Mrs Cahill said: ‘It is not letters Margaret would be capable of writing. She had literacy difficulties. She struggled to put pen to paper. She struggled to read and read around about the level of an eight-year-old.’
She said Miss Fleming needed a support teacher to help with her writing and added: ‘A number of difficult words in the letters are correctly spelt and there is a stream of consciousness in the writing. Margaret could have written 100 words with short sentences and one idea.
‘I would be doubtful about Margaret using a phrase like “stopped in your tracks”. Her literacy skills were not great. She would write in short sentences and she wasn’t particularly imaginative.’
The jury was shown the three letters, which were all typed. The first was signed Mags followed by six kisses and six hugs. In the other two the name Margaret was typed.
Cairney’s defence QC, Thomas Ross, asked Mrs Cahill, who last taught Miss Fleming in 1996, if she had been able to compare the letters to her school work. She replied: ‘I didn’t have to, I could remember Margaret’s school work.’
Retired teacher Elizabeth Brown, who was a learning support principal teacher at Port Glasgow High, described Miss Fleming as having ‘moderate learning difficulties’ in a 1995 school report.
Giving evidence yesterday the 79year-old said: ‘Her marks were all at the very bottom end of the school.’
Another retired teacher, Elaine Moore, 69, who taught at Port Glasgow High, said of Miss Fleming: ‘She was quite isolated. Her and her dad were a wee unit.’
The court has heard Miss Fleming, who would now be 38, was cared for by her mother for a time after her father Derek Fleming died in 1995.
Cairney and Jones took her in and became her carers when her mother could not cope.
They are also accused of defrauding £182,000 in benefits and attempting to defeat the ends of justice by claiming Miss Fleming was alive.
They deny all the charges against them and the trial, before judge Lord Matthews, continues.