Son accused of murder was ‘blue-eyed boy’

Ross Taggart ‘wasn’t that upset’ during search for his missing mother

A man accused of murdering his mother and hiding her body at a Fife caravan park was her “blue-eyed boy”, a trial heard.

Ross Taggart, 31, is accused of killing Carol-Anne Taggart and concealing her body before allegedly reporting her as a missing person.

Ms Taggart’s daughter, Lorraine Bristow, 27, told the trial at Edinburgh High Court that she had become estranged from her mother, whom she described as “a very stubborn lady”.

Mrs Bristow said she overheard a phone call from Taggart to her husband on December 23 last year and told advocate depute Iain McSporran: “He said mum was missing, they had an argument and she stormed out of the house at night.”

Mr McSporran asked: “Did you hear Ross say where she could be?”

Mrs Bristow replied: “No. He wasn’t that upset, either. He was asking if we had heard from her.”

Mrs Bristow said she “started to get worried” the following day when she was visited by police officers. “My mum wouldn’t storm out of her own house,” she said. “I have had my arguments and she would tell me to leave.”

Mrs Bristow said when her mother’s car was found on Christmas Day, she “started to know something was wrong”.

Asked if Ross Taggart had contacted her, she said: “I texted him every day to see if he had updates and I just got one-word answers back.”

Mrs Bristow described Taggart as her brother, explaining they had different fathers. Asked if her mother had a favourite child, she blue-eyed boy, Ross.”

Ms Taggart’s former partner of 21 years, Shaun Taggart, 52, said her two sons from a previous relationship, Ross and Daniel, had taken his name.

Mr Taggart said: “Ross was the golden boy from the get-go”.

Asked about the notion of Ms Taggart going missing, he replied: “No, impossible. If Carol didn’t agree with you, it was: ‘there’s the door’. She put Ross out for a wee while when he was 17.”

Taggart is alleged to have repeatedly struck his mother on the head “by means unknown”, seized hold of her neck and compressed her throat using his hands or “an unidentified item” between December 21 2014 and January this year.

Addresses listed in the murder charge include Carole-Anne Taggart’s home in Dunfermline and Pettycur Bay Caravan Park in Kinghorn.

Taggart is also accused of attempting to defeat the ends of justice by concealing his mother’s body within a void under a caravan at Pettycur and attempting to tidy, clean and remove blood staining and other forensic evidence from two addresses and the boot of a car.

He is also accused of reporting his mother as missing and telling others that she earlier left her home and he did not know where she was.

Taggart also faces a theft charge of using his mother’s bank card and stealing a bangle and ring and going to a pawnbroker, claiming he had inherited the jewellery.

The trial before Lord Uist continues.

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Carol-Anne Taggart and her daughter Lorraine Bristow.