Killer who dumped girlfriend's head in a bag has his sentence cut

A NOTORIOUS killer who dumped his girlfriend's head in a bag after murdering her won a huge cut in his minimum jail sentence today.

• Alan Cameron

Alan Cameron (56) was originally ordered to serve at least 25 years in prison under a life sentence for the murder of mother-of-four Heather Stacey.

Judges at the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh have ruled that was excessive and replaced it with a punishment part of 14 years, which Cameron must serve before becoming eligible to apply for parole.

But they also rejected Cameron's appeal against his conviction for the murder.

The Lord Justice Clerk, Lord Gill, sitting with Lord Osborne and Lord Marnoch said: "In our uncertain state of knowledge of the circumstances in which he killed the deceased, we have no warrant for the imposition of a punishment part of such severity."

"The appropriate punishment part should be in the range that is normal in cases of murder in which there are no unusually aggravating circumstances," he said.

The senior judge said that the Lord Matthews, who imposed the original sentence on Cameron, appeared to have been influenced by his actions following the death of Ms Stacey (44).

Lord Matthews told Cameron at the High Court in Edinburgh last year: "For over a year you conducted a campaign of callous deceit in order to convince others that Heather Stacey was still alive."

"You left her corpse to rot where she lay in an insect infested flat and attempted to cut her limb from limb. Having failed in that enterprise you mutilated her remains by pulling them apart and then scattered them around in bin bags," he said.

Cameron also collected almost pounds 5000 in benefits from the dead woman's Post Office account.

He stuffed pieces of her body into bags and left them beside footpaths in the Granton area of Edinburgh. The victim's head was discovered in an IKEA carrier bag in bushes at Hawthornvale Path on December 31 in 2008.

The former child sex offender had denied murdering Ms Stacey at her home in Royston Mains Place, Granton, in Edinburgh, between November and December 2007 by assaulting her by means unknown.

He claimed she had died after he left the flat to buy food and panicked because there was an outstanding court warrant against him for breach of the peace.

But the appeal judges rejected his legal challenge against his conviction for the murder in the circumstantial case. The Lord Justice Clerk said: "I think that a reasonable and logical conclusion on the evidence was that the appellant murdered the deceased."