Malcolm Webster case: Convicted wife killer loses appeal

A man who was found guilty of murdering his wife in a car crash in Aberdeenshire has lost his appeal against conviction.

Malcolm Webster, 54, originally from Surrey, was jailed for a minimum of 30 years for murdering Claire Morris in Aberdeenshire in 1994.

He was also convicted of staging a similar attempt to murder his second wife in New Zealand.

Webster was found guilty in 2011 of murdering Ms Morris.

He had received a large insurance payout after her death.

Lawyers argued his trial was flawed but judges at the Court of Appeal in Edinburgh rejected the claims.

While Webster lost the main grounds of his appeal, two lesser convictions of fireraising were quashed.

A date will be set to hear an appeal against sentence.

Ms Morris was originally from Kent.

The death of the 32-year-old - married for just eight months - in the crash was investigated and treated as a tragic accident.

Chance meeting

Her husband survived, and went on to marry Felicity Drumm in 1997.

In 1999, the couple were involved in a car crash in New Zealand, with Webster again at the wheel.

It set in motion a police inquiry spanning the globe, as more questions were posed about what exactly had happened in both cases.

However it was a chance meeting in 2006 that would offer a pivotal breakthrough, when a relative of Webster's surviving wife mentioned details of the case to a police officer at a conference.

It ended with the husband of the two women facing a long-running trial and being convicted.