Bill Walker was controlling and cruel, says ex-wife

A FORMER wife of Bill Walker MSP has told a trial how the politician was “physically” and “mentally” cruel to her.

Bill Walker MSP arrives at Edinburgh Sheriff Court for his trial yesterday. Picture: Neil Hanna

Maureen Traquair, 66, told Edinburgh Sheriff Court yesterday that she divorced the 71-year-old because of his abusive behaviour.

The self-employed artist and photographer was married to Walker for three years until June 1970.

The court heard the relationship ended because Walker physically assaulted her on two occasions – the first just two weeks before their wedding in January 1967.

She told Fiscal Depute Les Brown that they were driving to her parents’ home in Sighthill View, Edinburgh, when they started to argue in Walker’s car.

He punched her in the eye before throwing her engagement ring out of the window, she said.

Walker eventually got out of the vehicle and found it, she added, but she felt very “distressed” and did not feel that she could end their relationship.

Her mother noticed that she had a black eye and asked her how she got it, Ms Traquair said.

She told the court: “I didn’t want my parents to get upset.

“I managed to convince my mother that we were just play fighting but I don’t think my mother believed me because I couldn’t make eye contact with her.

“She did say to me, ‘Look, you don’t have to go through with this.’”

She told Mr Brown that she was struck for the second time during the festive holidays in December 1969.

The court heard this took place after she discovered a pink comb in Mr Walker’s car – causing her to fear he was having an affair with another woman behind her back.

The court heard that during their time together, Walker allegedly prevented Ms Traquair from working.

She told Mr Brown that her former husband believed her “place was in the kitchen”.

The court also heard that Walker “approved or disapproved” the clothes that Ms Traquair wore.

Ms Traquair said that, when the couple lived in Chicago, she went against Walker’s wishes and took a job as a nursery teacher.

She later used her wages to buy him a gold watch as a Christmas present, which he would later throw into a furnace.

When the couple moved to France, Walker fell out with Ms Traquair after she went to Paris with a friend to go window shopping.

The court heard that he was upset she was not home to make him dinner.

The court also heard that, despite the couple divorcing, they later got engaged again in the late 1980s.

However, they broke up following an argument which ended in Walker pulling a diamond ring, bought for £7,500 in the 1980s, off her finger.

When Walker’s defence solicitor, advocate Gordon Martin, asked Ms Traquair whether she was telling lies, she replied: “I’m not lying. I’m not lying. If you want to – bring a Bible here and I will put my hand on the Bible.

“I don’t fear putting my hand on the Bible – I don’t have a problem with that.”

The evidence came on the first day of the trial of Walker, who has pleaded not guilty to 23 charges which allege he physically abused four women at addresses in Scotland between January 1967 and January 1995.

Walker, who sits in the Scottish Parliament for the Dunfermline constituency, is a former member of the SNP.

The trial before Sheriff Katherine Mackie continues.