Malcolm Webster

Why the hell are they wasting time on a review? Webster has been found guilty in a court, and then Scotland’s three most senior judges confirmed the verdict at the appeal stage. What is wrong with the Scottish criminal justice system? How many opportunities do they give someone to appeal?

He claims he wrote to Webster, asking him to elaborate on his alleged innocence, but Webster declined to comment. In February 2016, Webster's review was rejected. A spokesperson stated: "The commission's review has concluded and this case has not been referred to the High Court."

Former firefighter Derek McDonald suspected foul play. He informed the BBC: "We all thought it was a bit hooky, there was no sign of violence to the vehicle. For a car to be stopped or parked and burst into flames does not occur — not unless it's in the movies."

Drumm was interviewed about her relationship with Webster in 2014.

Webster appealed again but dropped that appeal in March 2014.

On 9 September 2014, Webster asked the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission to review his conviction and sentence. His request was granted, and this decision was criticized by Peter Morris, who said,

In December 2013, the appeal court quashed his convictions on the two minor charges of fire raising, but upheld the rest of his convictions.

He was convicted at the High Court of Justiciary in Glasgow on 19 May 2011 after the longest ever criminal trial in Scotland with a single accused. He was found guilty by a jury of nine women and six men.

Some of the verdicts delivered by the jury were unanimous and some were by majority. Derek Ogg QC led the prosecution. Webster was sentenced to life imprisonment on 5 July 2011, with a minimum sentence of thirty years. He was consequently removed from the nursing register.

He reportedly told inmates that he expects to die in prison, and has been described by one inmate as being 'really boring'. It was reported in 2011, that Webster had been attacked by another inmate with a metal pole. Following further attacks, Webster reputedly refused to shower for months on end, and ultimately hired a convicted child sex offender to protect him.

He was consequently charged by the Sheriff of Aberdeen in 2009 for the murder of Claire Morris, the attempted murder of Felicity Drumm, and attempting to bigamously marry Simone Banarjee to gain access to her estate. The investigation into Webster took five years and involved 1000 people being interviewed.

In 2007, Simone Banarjee's house was searched by police after they received information that Webster had embezzled funds from an angling club. During the search, the police seized a stolen laptop and an unlicensed gun, which Webster claimed was an antique. An investigation into Webster, called Operation Field, was launched in 2008. The police subsequently announced they were re-examining Claire Morris' death. At the same time the New Zealand police began re-examining the second crash.

She described Webster as a man who would "turn on the water works" to avoid certain conversations. In 2005, he contacted her "out of the blue" to arrange a trip to Paris, and informed her he had leukemia. She had no idea that their relationship overlapped with that of Simone Banerjee, and the two women later became friends. During their trip to Paris, he informed Banerjee that he was having treatment in London.

Webster fled New Zealand in 2000, and in 2002 he began a relationship with Christina Willis. He habitually borrowed money from her, without reimbursing her, burnt a computer hard drive in her garden, and told her he had cancer.

Webster made excuses about his own financial situation and why his money had not yet been transferred from Scotland to New Zealand to pay for the home in Auckland. The final deadline to make the payment was 12 February 1999. That day they drove together to the bank when Webster, who was driving, claimed there was something wrong with the steering wheel on the car. The car swerved across two lanes of traffic and back, but when Drumm grabbed the steering wheel, she found it worked. The car ended up in a ditch.

Webster married oncology nurse Felicity Drumm in New Zealand in 1997, and she gave birth to a son. In 1999, he was accused of attempting to kill Drumm to fraudulently obtain £750,000 from nine insurance policies.

During their marriage, he caused three house fires, including one at her parents' house, perhaps in order to persuade Drumm to buy life insurance. In September 1997, he set fire to the living room furniture at their cottage in Lyne of Skene. In January 1999, he started a fire at a property they were intending to buy in Bayswater, Auckland. A month later, he set fire to an armchair in Drumm's parents' home in Takapuna. He also claimed he had had a heart attack and cancer.

In 1995, a year after Claire's death, Webster was living in Saudi Arabia, where he struck up a friendship with Brenda Grant via the phone. Eventually they met up and started a relationship. Grant later revealed that Webster repeatedly offered her drugs; she refused, and she considers herself "lucky to be alive".

Malcolm Webster married Claire Morris from Oldmeldrum, Aberdeenshire, on 3 September 1993. During the course of their marriage he drugged her with Temazepam. On 27 May 1994, he drugged Morris, 32, and deliberately crashed their car on the Auchenhuive to Tarves Road in Kingoodie, Aberdeenshire, and then set it on fire, with her in the passenger seat. He twice informed an off-duty policeman who stopped to help that there was no one else in the car before it exploded.

Prof Roderick Paisley argued that under the Forfeiture Act 1982 Webster should be disqualified from inheriting Claire's estate. He suggested that Webster should be declared bankrupt, which would result in the Lair certificate being transferred to her family.

Malcolm John Webster (born 18 April 1959) is an Englishman convicted of the murder of his first wife in Scotland in 1994 and the attempted murder of his second wife. Both cases involved staged car crashes and were carried out for the life insurance money. A police profiler labelled him a sociopath. His crimes were portrayed in the three-part ITV miniseries The Widower (2014).