Man murdered first wife and tried to kill second to claim £1m insurance, court told

A MAN has gone on trial accused of murdering his first wife and trying to kill his second as part of a plot to pocket almost a million pounds in insurance pay-outs.

Malcolm Webster is charged with murdering Claire Morris in Aberdeenshire in May 1994 and attempting to murder Felicity Drumm in New Zealand five years later.

It is alleged he murdered Ms Morris, 32, by drugging her, putting her in a car, driving it off the road and setting fire to it while she was unconscious.

Webster, 51, from Guildford, Surrey, is accused of fraudulently obtaining more than 200,000 after allegedly cashing in a series of insurance policies following her death.

He is further charged with deliberately crashing his car in Auckland, New Zealand, in February 1999, in a bid to kill his second wife, Felicity, who was a passenger in the car.

He did so as part of an attempt to obtain fraudulently more than 750,000 in separate insurance pay-outs, prosecutors claim.

It is also alleged he intended to marry a third woman bigamously and told her he was terminally ill with leukaemia when he was actually in good health.

Webster, dressed in a green jumper and blue and yellow striped shirt, appeared at the High Court in Glasgow yesterday. He denies the seven charges against him, which run to 11 pages on the indictment.

The jury heard a joint minute of agreement, read by Crown junior Margaret Barron, which said Webster, a qualified nurse, had not received treatment for cancer at the Royal Marsden Hospital, the Beatson Clinic or the Nuffield Glasgow Hospital.

The charges state that Webster married Ms Morris in Aberdeen in September 1993. It is claimed he got her to leave him her entire estate in her will and take out a series of life assurance policies and a mortgage protection plan.

The murder charge accuses Webster of assaulting his wife on 27/28 May, 1994, and giving her Temazepam, rendering her unconscious. Prosecutors allege he put her into a car and drove it down an embankment of the Auchenhuive to Tarves road at Kingoodie, Aberdeenshire.

He is charged with setting fire to the vehicle, knowing that she was unconscious inside it and unable to escape.Webster is then accused of telling four people he was the only one in the car, preventing his wife from being rescued.

He is alleged to have fraudulently cashed in a series of insurance policies, amounting to 208,815.

Another charge accuses him of receiving widower pension payments of 10,439 when he was not eligible for them.

He is also accused of packing a container of petrol, newspapers and a lighter into a vehicle and deliberately crashing into a tree in Auckland on 12 February, 1999, in an attempt to kill Ms Drumm.

It is claimed the crash was an attempt to obtain 514,026 and NZ$500,000 (242,000) fraudulently in insurance payouts.

Webster is further accused of assaulting and drugging his second wife in an attempt to murder her at various locations, including Aberdeenshire, Saudi Arabia and New Zealand, between 1996 and 1999.

The final charge states he formed a relationship with Simone Banarjee between 2004 and 2008 in Scotland. It is claimed he planned to marry her and induced her to make a will leaving everything to him.

It is also alleged he falsely told Ms Banarjee that he was having chemotherapy for chronic lymphatic leukaemia.

After the six men and nine women of the jury were sworn in, trial judge Lord Bannatyne spoke to them about court procedures. He said their decisions on the charges must be made only on the evidence they heard and saw in court, and when they were sent to deliberate they should not be "detectives".

He said accessing information on the accused on the internet could amount to contempt of court.

The trial, which is expected to last four months, continues.