Arlene Fraser murder trial: Victim’s rings ‘appeared’ in her home

Mrs Fraser’s stepmother said she found the engagement, wedding and eternity rings in the bathroom, but they “definitely” had not been there on previous days.

A jury was also told that Mrs Fraser had feared she was being stalked by her estranged husband, Nat Fraser.

Her sister, Carol Gillies, said: “She told me he thought she was seeing someone else and he did not want her to have anyone else.”

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

The High Court in Edinburgh has heard that Mrs Fraser, 33, disappeared on 28 April, 1998, and in the following days family members gathered at her home in Smith Street, New Elgin, Moray.

Catherine McInnes, 75, who is married to Mrs Fraser’s father, said Fraser had seemed not to be upset but “just normal.”

Mrs Fraser’s mother, Isabelle Thompson, had confronted him and asked if he knew where she was, and he denied it and became agitated.

“He did not like being questioned. Isabelle was crying. He was not crying. He was jumpy and his eyes were rolling in his head. It was really strange, really odd. It is hard to explain,” said Mrs McInnes.

Mrs McInnes said she had assumed the housekeeping duties which included cleaning the bathroom. She explained there was a wooden dowel under a soap dish at the sink, where a woman might put jewellery.

Mrs McInnes insisted that anything on the dowel would have been obvious, but she had seen nothing. Then, on the afternoon of 7 May, she went to the toilet and washed her hands at the sink.

“I noticed jewellery on the dowel, three rings. I just could not understand where they had come from because they definitely were not there. I went into the living room...everybody was just shocked and surprised,” said Mrs McInnes.

She said Fraser had been in the house, but upstairs, when she made the discovery.

The defence QC, John Scott, suggested to Mrs McInnes that it had been considered important to maintain as much normality as possible for the sake of the two Fraser children, and she agreed that the adults were putting on a brave face and not being upset in front of the children.

The atmosphere had been terrible, said Mr Scott, because the family was increasingly unhappy about Fraser being about the house.

“That was one of the reasons. The main reason was because Arlene was not there,” said Mrs McInnes.

Mrs Gillies, 49, a finance director, said her sister had been unhappy in her marriage and was “absolutely serious” about a divorce which was going to cost Fraser “ a lot of money.”

“Arlene said he was stalking her,” she added.

After her sister’s disappearance, she saw Fraser at the house. He mentioned £500 was missing from a vent in the bedroom and suggested Mrs Fraser had taken it.

Another time, he had seen a hammer in the house and said: “If I was going to do it, I wouldn’t use a hammer.” He had also joked that a toy moustache in the house had been part of Mrs Fraser’s disguise, and that she had gone shopping to Aberdeen because Next in Elgin had shut.

Mrs Gillies agreed that Fraser had shown a poor taste in humour in earlier times, but at that stage it was wholly inappropriate.

“We had a whole sense of danger around us. My mum thought Arlene was still alive but being held somewhere,” she said.

Mrs Gillies recalled a helicopter with heat-seeking equipment was to be used in the search for her sister, and Fraser had wanted to know about the technicalities from the police.

“We were more concerned they were looking for a body...’Oh no, what does this mean?’ I remember him sitting there, saying, ‘Oh? How does that work?’ He said to me on the day of the search he could hardly stand in the shower because his legs were shaking so much,” said Mrs Gillies.

The trial will resume next week.