Teacher found guilty of killing Scottish mother 20 years ago

A RETIRED schoolmaster has been found guilty of killing a Scots mother who was found buried in his garden 19 years later.

Cariad Anderson-Slater, from Elgin, disappeared from the home she shared with her English husband David Slater in Perth, Australia, on 12 July 1992.

Her skeletal remains were found by renovation workers last year in the former garden of Ronald Pennington, who was yesterday convicted of her manslaughter after being cleared of a charge of murder.

Pennington, 82, had tried to blame the death on Mrs Anderson-Slater’s husband, claiming Mr Slater had acted strangely after she disappeared.

In handing down their verdict, the jury said that while Pennington had unlawfully killed Mrs Anderson-Slater, who was a friend of his, he had not intended to do so.

He will be sentenced today.

Mrs Anderson-Slater’s daughter, Dr Melanie MacEachen, had travelled from Aberdeen to give evidence and thanked everyone involved in solving the case.

Following his conviction, she said: “Mr Pennington may have killed and buried my mum but the people of Perth have found her, convicted her killer and brought her home to her family where she belongs.”

Mrs Anderson-Slater had met her husband in the North-east of Scotland two years before moving to marry in Australia.

They had moved to the Perth suburb so Mr Slater could pursue his career marketing chemicals.

Pennington had been a volunteer at an art gallery when he met Mrs Anderson-Slater and her second husband Mr Slater, and the three became friends.

At one dinner, Mrs Anderson-Slater noticed a handbook for recovering alcoholics at Pennington’s house, and she regularly called him about her own alcohol problems.

State prosecutor Sean O’Sullivan said: “She came to regard him as a sympathetic ear for the problems she seemed to have within her marriage. A relationship seemed to develop between Cariad and Ron Pennington.”

On the night she disappeared, the married couple had gone to Pennington’s home, but he was drunk and angry.

The married couple went home, but had an argument. Mr Slater went for a drive, while Mrs Anderson-Slater went to a neighbour’s home before she took a taxi to Pennington’s house.

Mr O’Sullivan told the court: “Once she got in the vicinity of the door, he [the taxi driver] drove away and that’s the last time anyone saw Cariad alive.”

Mr Slater had said he believed his wife, who he described as a “beautiful person and good companion”, had gone on a drinking binge and would return.

He said that after her disappearance he had “feelings of frustration, loneliness and grief in case something had happened to her … but also anger”.

He said: “I made several rash decisions at the time. I cut up our wedding photographs. I was feeling dejected. I felt very abandoned and that the marriage was a sham.”

Pennington denied any involvement in Mrs Anderson-Slater’s death, and his lawyers argued Mr Slater was a much more likely killer.

But the prosecution said the notion that Mr Slater killed his wife and buried her in Pennington’s back garden without anyone’s knowledge was ridiculous and defied reason.

The jury convicted Pennington of the lesser charge after five and a half hours of deliberation.