Ex-Foreign Legionnaire gets 15 years for killing spinster

Published on Monday 23 March 2009 21:05

A FORMER French Foreign Legionnaire who abducted and killed an elderly spinster, burying her body in a wood, was jailed for 15 years yesterday.

The family of Dolina MacLean, 87, welcomed the sentence handed down to John Lawson, 48, who killed her just so he could steal her car.

The cause of death has never been established, but doctors believe she might have died of fright after Lawson jumped into her car and made her drive into the countryside. "We feel justice has been done. Dolina was a very nice lady," said Joan MacLean, 41, her niece.

Reverend Duncan Macleod, of the Free Church of Scotland in Perth, added: "It was a tragic loss for her family, our community and the congregation of which she was a much-loved member for many years."

Miss MacLean, a retired mental health nurse, of Stanley, Perthshire, was reported missing after failing to return from a trip to Tesco in Perth, on 30 May last year.

Two weeks later, Lawson, who served as a legionnaire between 1985 and 1990 after being turned down by the army, was found sleeping rough in her dark-green Vauxhall Astra car.

Lawson confessed to abducting Miss MacLean. He claimed his intention had been to leave her at Saddlebrae Wood, near Moneydie, and steal the car, but she stumbled and fell and struck her head on a gate.

Lawson said he lifted Miss MacLean up, but she fell again and hit her head a second time.

He realised she was dead, and left the body concealed under leaves in a ditch. About a week later, he returned with a van and took the body to Knowehead Wood, near Dunning, and buried it in a shallow grave in a clearing.

Pathologists were hampered by the "pronounced decomposition" of the body.

They were unable to determine how Miss MacLean had died, but they found tiny ulcers in her stomach, signs of extreme stress, and said it was possible she had been terrified to death.

It was also possible that, in falling, she had struck a nerve in her neck, which can cause the heart to stop.

Lawson was charged with murder, but at his trial last month, the judge, Roger Craik, QC, ruled there was insufficient evidence for that offence, and the jury convicted him of the lesser crime of culpable homicide.

At the High Court in Edinburgh yesterday, the defence counsel, Gordon Jackson, QC, said there had been no intent to harm Miss MacLean, and Lawson was full of remorse and felt he deserved to be punished.

"Having moved the body to a place no-one would have found it, he kept driving about in her car, which made it inevitable he would be caught. He says, 'I don't think I could ever have lived with this'. He 'wanted it out' and wanted matters to come to light," said Mr Jackson.

The judge told Lawson he had been convicted of abducting, robbing and killing an elderly, blameless woman, crimes which must have caused shock and dismay to those who knew her.

Mr Craik continued: "The deliberate, callous and planned way in which you disposed of her body can only have added revulsion.

"The only thing that can really be said for you is that after your first attempted to lie your way out of the situation, an element of decency prevailed and you co-operated with the police in taking them to the scenes of your crimes and pointing out places involved."

The judge said Lawson would have been jailed for 15 years on the culpable homicide charge, but was entitled to a discount of three years for offering to plead guilty. A sentence of five years for attempting to defeat the ends of justice would be discounted to three years, and the two terms would be served consecutively.