Nurse Killed Wife In Staged Car Crash

A male nurse has been found guilty of murdering his first wife and attempting to kill his second as part of a plot to pocket almost £1m in insurance payouts.

The jury concluded that Malcolm Webster's "insatiable appetite for wealth" drove him to the crimes.

He was labelled "one of the most notorious criminals of modern times" by the prosecution at the High Court in Glasgow.

The 52-year-old from Guildford, Surrey, killed his first wife, Claire Morris, 15 years ago after staging a car crash on a rural road in Aberdeenshire.

Webster drugged her before driving their Jeep down an embankment and, while she lay unconscious in the passenger, he set fire to the vehicle.

He pocketed more than £200,000 in a life insurance pay-out and, within weeks of his wife's death, splashed out on a new yacht and 4x4 vehicle.

Five years later, he staged a repeat performance on the other side of the world with wife number two, Felicity Drumm, a New Zealand resident.

In Auckland, he packed a petrol can and lighter into their car and deliberately crashed into a tree.

He stood to gain more than £750,000 from her estate and life insurance had she died - but the plot failed when 50-year-old Miss Drumm survived.

Like his first wife, she experienced episodes of fatigue and suspected that Webster had been spiking her food and drink.

By 2008, Webster had returned to the UK and was back on the money trail. He struck up a relationship with 41-year-old nursing manager Simone Bannerjee in Oban, Argyll.

He lied to her, claiming that he was suffering from leukaemia and even shaved his hair and eyebrows to maintain the charade.

The pair became engaged and, in her will, she signed over her estate to him.

What he did not tell her was that he had not divorced his second wife or that he was juggling relationships with at least three other women at the time.

The blossoming romance was only brought to an abrupt halt by Grampian Police, who wrote to his new partner in order to detail Webster's past.

He duly ended up before the court, convicted of murder, attempted murder and of attempting to marry Ms Bannerjee bigamously to gain access to her estate.

Peter Morris, the brother of Ms Morris, told Sky News: "He not only killed my sister, but he violated her memory by taking future girlfriends to her graveside and trying to attract their sympathy for what supposedly happened to him. I don't think it gets any more vile than that."

Detectives found reports on Webster's computer relating to serial killer GP Harold Shipman.

The family of his first wife believe Webster would have killed again had he not been caught.

Mr Morris added: "There was a compulsion to do it again and that would lead you to a logical conclusion that there would be a further compulsion, even now, to do it to someone else and to fraudulently get more insurance."

Lindsey Miller, head of the serious and organised crime division at the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS), said: "Webster was a calculating criminal who wove a web of lies and deceit around people who entered his life in good faith."

He added: "He took careful steps to cover up his crimes, including using specialist medical knowledge gained through his career as a nurse."