Arlene Fraser murder trial: Children ‘would soon forget their mother’ claim

THE estranged husband of Arlene Fraser said her children would “soon forget her,” a court has heard.

Mrs Fraser’s father, Hector McInnes, also told a jury that Nat Fraser had been in the bathroom of the family home in New Elgin, Moray, shortly before her engagement, wedding and eternity rings were found there.

A former forensic scientist who examined the house after Mrs Fraser’s disappearance testified that there was nothing untoward and no sign of any violence.

The High Court in Edinburgh has heard that mother-of-two Mrs Fraser, 33, vanished on 28 April, 1998 – the day she was to have seen a solicitor about a divorce – and that members of her family gathered at her home.

She and Fraser had been living apart, but he also attended the house.

Mr McInnes, 71, said he had previously regarded his son-in-law as a “Del Trotter type of character” but he had not been so kind towards him after Mrs Fraser’s disappearance.

Asked how Fraser had appeared, Mr McInnes said: “Just the usual… calm, collected, no fuss.”

Recalling an incident as they sat at the table in the kitchen, Mr McInnes said Fraser had commented about something going to cost him £5,000. He took it to mean the cost of solicitors’ fees in a divorce.

Then, he added, Fraser had remarked: “The bairns will soon forget their mother.”

Mr McInnes described another incident, which he believed had occurred the same day. He said he was about to go to collect Natalie, his grandchild, from school and came out of the bathroom, to find Fraser waiting to go in at the back of him. He left the house and returned with Natalie about 30 minutes later.

“There was a bit of a commotion going on. Cathy [his wife] had found the three rings,” he said.

Mr McInnes said the discovery had been the cornerstone of the prosecution’s case at a previous trial of Fraser in 2003, but at the time, it had not had such importance. He agreed that everyone in the house had been using the bathroom.

The defence solicitor-advocate, John Scott, QC, suggested that on the day the rings were found, Fraser had been to the house in the morning rather than the afternoon.

Mr McInnes said: “No.”

Neville Trower, a forensic scientist in 1998, said he had been asked to look for any signs of disturbance in the house. There was none, he reported: nothing untoward at all and nothing from which to conclude there had been any violence.

Mr Trower said he had searched for blood by the naked eye, and then the house had been plunged into total darkness and a chemical which reacts to blood was sprayed around, but again the results were negative. Equally, there were no signs of a “clean-up”. He agreed with the advocate-depute, Alex Prentice, QC, that it was possible for someone to be killed in a room without any trace being left.

Fraser, 53, denies acting with others to murder his wife. He pleads alibi and incrimination, saying that a former friend, Hector Dick, and another or others were responsible if she was killed. The trial continues.