The neighbours corroborated the latter part of his story, telling how he had arrived at the door shortly before 1 a.m. and had then spent some time with them, drinking and singing and playing his guitar. There had been nothing unusual about his behaviour or anything in his demeanour to suggest he had undergone some kind of terrible experience, they said. He had spoken about sex, which was a usual part of his conversation when in their company, and had, equally typically, taunted his wife about his supposed sexual conquests.
At 3.30 on the morning of 14 December, less than twelve hours after the body of Leah Bramley was so dramatically found sprawled and bloodstained in the flat she had been so thrilled to move into, Alexander Stuart, the singing hairdresser was charged with her murder. He replied simply, ‘I dropped her off in Mid Craigie.’
Several weeks later, while the accused man was held in Perth Prison awaiting trial, his solicitor, John Clarke, received a remarkable handwritten letter at his office in Victoria Chambers in Dundee. It read:
I gather you are Stuart’s lawyer. I want to confess the Whitfield murder to clear my mind and free an innocent man. On Saturday, 12/12/70, I picked up a woman at the bottom of Pitkerro Road at about 11.35–11.40 p.m. She asked me to take her to Ormiston Crescent.
In the car she was at my privates. We went to her house and we had intercourse. After it she laughed at me and said she was on her ‘periods’. I went berserk and I choked her. I then took her tights and strangled her. I cut her on the neck with a can-opener and a knife.
The confessor then described how he had further sexually assaulted his female companion with a broom-handle, beer can and a tumbler.
The letter went on:
I robbed her of £1 18 shillings and 3 pence. I am guilty of this murder and getting away with it. No fingerprints. I know Stuart was in her house because he dropped something with his name on it. I tried to start a fire but her blood put it out. The CID will confirm everything I have told you.
I don’t think I will have any bother sleeping now I have got this off my conscience. I am going to write to the papers and let them know.
Signed, Taxi Man.
The letter, apparently written on the torn-out fly-page of a book, was a bombshell. Police and the Crown prosecutors knew that if the jury in the forthcoming trial took it at face value Stuart would be exonerated and would walk free. The letter contained information which at that stage had never been made public and the writer had either killed her himself, or was closely connected to the person who had.
Detectives went at once to Perth Prison and launched rigorous investigations, interviewing prison officers and inmates in an effort to trace the source of the letter. They made a series of startling discoveries. A mutilated copy of The Sunday Post had been found in Stuart’s cell and a series of words had been cut from it. Checks revealed that many of the missing words were identical to some of those contained in the letter of confession and it seemed that whoever had so painstakingly extracted them from the paper may have initially intended to use them to form a letter. They thought this plan might have been abandoned because some of the words in the confession were not the sort usually to be found in a newspaper like The Sunday Post.
The police team examined every one of the four hundred or so books in the library of ‘C’ Hall in the prison, the wing where Stuart was held. They found one, The Kingdom of Melchior, with a ripped-out fly-page which apparently corresponded to the tears on the letter of confession.
Most crucially of all, however, was a third discovery. When forensic experts subjected an untried prisoner’s letter form pad, which had been issued to Stuart, to special lighting, a series of indentations were found, apparently pressed there by someone who had used the pad as a rest to write on. The indentations formed the words ‘Taxi Man’, ‘12 Victoria’ and ‘Dundee’. A more detailed examination revealed phrases and sentences which matched exactly most of those in the letter of confession.
When he stood trial at the High Court in Dundee the following February, Stuart gave the jury a different story to the one he had told police. Instead of continuing to deny that he had gone to Leah Bramley’s home in Ormiston Crescent, he admitted he had accompanied her to the flat but had become disgusted when she exposed herself.
‘I would not wear it,’ he told the jurors. ‘I lifted my beer and walked out of the house. When I got to the door she shouted she was sorry and said, ‘Will you take me back to my sister’s?’ ‘He went on to recount that he had driven her around for some time while she kept changing her desired destination and that he had finally become frustrated by her and had dropped her off in the Mid Craigie area.
Questioned closely about the supposed letter of confession, Stuart declared that he had been angry when it had turned up because it had a detrimental effect. ‘I had a good case until this letter came,’ he protested. ‘It was done to do me down and is making my case worse.’ He said he believed that someone ‘had it in’ for him.
He then proceeded to give a detailed account of how the cut-up Sunday Post finished up in his cell and how he believed the indentations had come to appear on his writing pad. The newspaper had been his, he admitted, but he had passed it on to other prisoners after he had finished reading it. Later, when he was throwing out old newspapers, he saw two papers in a dustbin in ‘C’ Hall and had removed them to read, unaware that one of them was actually the Sunday Post which he had disposed of.
He had a similar tale to tell about the writing pad. Because he had been bored sitting in his cell for practically twenty-four hours a day, he had asked for the pad so that he could make up crosswords. After drawing about half a dozen lines on the back of the pad, it had ripped and the next morning he threw it out with a pile of other rubbish when cleaning out the cell. The next time he saw it, it came through the observation hatch in his door, folded up and accompanied by a note repeating much of what was in the letter of confession that had been sent to his solicitor.
Stuart went on to relate how he had also received two other notes through the door of his cell. He read one of them out to the jury. It stated:
Don’t think I’m a nut. I know you are innocent. It’s me who done that bitch in. I thought you would get lifted for it. I’ll explain how later. But I’ll do what I can to clear you. But if you tell the screws I’ll clam up.
Pressed by the prosecution, he denied writing the notes himself.
The jury could hardly be blamed for being sceptical about the ‘evidence’ which had been intended to absolve the accused, but any lingering doubts they might have entertained about his innocence completely evaporated in the face of scientific revelations which the Crown admitted formed the linchpin of their case
Police had recovered each of the twelve cans of McEwen’s Export that Stuart had taken away with him when he and Leah Bramley had gone off together from the Heather Bell. One can, bloodstained, had been removed from her home and the eleven others, empty and bearing the identical batch number to the one taken from the murder scene, had been gathered from the refuse bin of Stuart’s neighbour where he had gone for a drink and sing-song later the same night.
On one of these tins was a minute trace of blood. Tests revealed that the blood grouping was OMN – the same as Leah’s, but also the same as the accused and all of those who had been in the neighbour’s house that evening.
The bloodstain initially appeared, therefore, to prove nothing. However, realising the vital significance of the trace of blood, Dr Donald Rushton – the senior Dundee police surgeon, who had been the principal forensic witness for the prosecution – was determined to establish if the OMN grouping could be further refined, perhaps eliminating some of those in that broad category of people whose blood was of that type. He knew of a sophisticated test, developed in England and never previously used in a Scottish criminal case, and instructed that the sample from the beer can, and others from all the people involved in the case, be sent to London for detailed examination at the Metropolitan Police Forensic Science Laborator
y. He went south himself and stood by as the meticulous analysis was carried out.
The results were better than anyone could have hoped for. The blood on the Export can was found to be of the rare OMN AK2/1 group, found in less than 2 per cent of the population. Vitally, it was identical to Mrs Bramley’s grouping and was the only sample from those of the others tested which matched.
It meant with near certainty that the brutally murdered Leah Bramley had come by her terrible injuries before Stuart had left the house taking his unopened eleven cans of export with him.
The 25-year-old father of two sat nervously in the dock biting his lip after the jury retired. But it did not take long for him to learn his fate. Half an hour later, the jurors returned with a unanimous verdict of guilty.
The man of many parts, who thought he could outwit the police by wiping every fingerprint from the murder scene and then penning a letter of confession from a bogus killer, had been too clever by half. Instead of deflecting his guilt, the letter merely served to implicate him and he had not been as thorough with the cleaning cloth as he had believed. In his bid to remove clues, he had taken away the carry-out cans of beer but had failed to wipe them first. It was just his bad luck that the woman who had admired his singing had also belonged to a rare blood group.
Lord Emslie told Stuart:
You have been found by the jury to be guilty of the crime of murder. I shall waste no time attempting to explain to you the horror of the crime of which you have been convicted. I content myself in passing sentence against you as prescribed by law. You will go to prison for life.
14
TO LOVE, HONOUR
AND … KILL
Margaret Maich classically represented women who reach a particular age and find themselves at one of life’s crossroads. She was in her early forties, divorced, with her family grown up and living away from home. The future was depressingly predictable – the gradual onset of old age, probably accompanied by increasing infirmity and, worst of all, loneliness. Although she enjoyed her job in the bakery department of the Tesco supermarket in Dundee’s bustling Wellgate Centre, it didn’t provide the kind of income ever likely to offer the comfortable financial security she wanted during the twilight years that beckoned. Though she may not have been actively searching for a companion, there was the smouldering hope, never publicly expressed, that her path might one day cross with that of some suitable man.
When it happened, it wasn’t quite what she had so keenly anticipated in her quiet moments alone. On a warm day in July 1975 she encountered Peter Robertson, three years older than herself and a presentable figure approaching six feet in height, slim and with a fashionable black moustache. He wasn’t the tall, dark stranger of her dreams, however. In fact, she had known him since their teenage days and he had gone on to marry her best friend, Sandra. He had also gone on to kill her and serve nine years of a life sentence for the homicide.
Margaret had never entirely approved of her lifelong chum’s association with Robertson. He was something of a ne’er-do-well who had drifted in and out of prison, usually for offences associated with violence, and it was after yet another term in jail that he and Sandra moved to Lincoln to begin a new life. Little changed for the Robertsons in England. He continued to drink heavily and the worst sessions usually culminated in acts of violence against Sandra. After fifteen years of marriage, and with five children, the pair divorced in 1964. One or other of them might have been expected to find their way back to Dundee, but both remained in Lincoln. And unaccountably, given the circumstances of their assault-ridden relationship, they continued to meet – and continued to row noisily.
Almost two years after their divorce, on the evening of 1 July 1966, Robertson paid his ex-wife yet another drunken visit and there was the inevitable argument. It degenerated, as always, into an attack on Sandra. To defend herself, she picked up a poker and struck out at him. He reacted, just as predictably, by meeting violence with even greater violence, grabbing her wrist with one hand and her throat with the other. She attempted to ward him off by kneeing him in the groin; he lashed out at her again, then twisted her arm up her back. Then Sandra suddenly gave up the struggle, dropping the poker and sinking limp to the floor. Her ex-husband gazed down at her motionless body and in an alcoholic stupor lifted her and carried her with difficulty to an upstairs bedroom where he laid her on a bed. She did not sleep then – or ever again – for the drunken bully had finally killed the woman who had borne his five children.
Four months later, at Lincolnshire Assizes, Robertson was found guilty of murder – later reduced to manslaughter – and jailed for life. Before being sent down, he was asked by Mr Justice Moccatta if he had anything to say.
‘I didn’t mean to kill my wife,’ was the short response.
These were virtually the identical words he used to Margaret on bumping into her in Dundee nine years later when he returned to the city immediately after his release from prison on licence. He described the killing as a ‘once-in-a-lifetime, terrible mistake’ and the gentle, thoughtful – but lonely – woman believed him. Five months later they married.
For three years it seemed as though Margaret’s confidence in her new husband’s frank admissions were justified. Their relationship was stable and apparently untroubled – ‘almost perfect’ was how a relative described it – and Robertson, who had found work as a labourer in a jute mill, was attentive and considerate, rarely drinking to excess. Friends and relatives, who, unsurprisingly, had been anxious for Margaret, were relieved that their fears appeared to be groundless. Then the couple changed houses – moving from the outskirts of the city to a ground-floor flat much closer to the centre of town, at 3 Moncur Crescent – and Robertson, almost overnight, changed too. He resumed his old drinking habits and began dividing his time between the local pubs and betting shops. His prolonged absences from their new flat, which Margaret proudly kept immaculate, led to quarrels – as did the accompanying shortage of money. Neighbours became aware of the frequent rows, but none could speak of any acts of violence going on in the spotless ground floor-flat on the busy bus route into town.
At 10.45 a.m. on 2 July 1981, a neighbour and Margaret exchanged the time of day. Then the well-liked woman, who never drank and who asked little from life except a comfortable home and secure future, suddenly vanished. The same neighbour heard noises coming from the Robertsons’ prim flat around ten o’clock the following morning – not the rowing they had become accustomed to, but banging sounds. It was not something the woman thought much about and life went on as normal in the peaceful block of flats beside Dens Park, home of Dundee Football Club.
The humdrum routine of the close only altered when Peter Robertson explained Margaret’s absence from the neighbourhood by saying she had decided without warning to go off with an unidentified workmate on a short holiday to England. He gave no additional details and the surprised other occupants of the flats discussed how they found their friend’s sudden departure curious, the kind of impulsive act they would not have expected of her. Margaret hadn’t made mention of the surprise trip south to anybody – not even to a particularly close neighbour, a lady with a heart condition, whom Margaret, in her kindly way, visited on a regular basis to keep a concerned eye on.
The unease shared by many of the Moncur Crescent residents deepened when one neighbour spread the news that Margaret had discussed travelling to Bristol in the weeks ahead to visit a married daughter there. It seemed ‘unlikely’, she suggested, that Margaret would make two trips to England so close together. Apart from the expense, getting the time off from the Tesco bakery department would have been difficult.
A few days after the disappearance of the well-liked woman in their midst, one of the neighbours received an unexpected Saturday-morning visit from Peter Robertson. He broke the startling news that after Margaret returned from her holiday they would be moving to a new house away from Moncur Crescent. When the neighbour expressed surprise at this turn of events, Robertson s
oothingly reassured her that his wife would not forget her fellow residents in the block and would make regular visits to them.
Much of the disquiet that was being felt evaporated eleven days after Margaret had last been seen: postcards, signed ‘Margaret’, arrived through the letterboxes of two friends in the area. They were postmarked ‘Lincoln’ and told how she was enjoying her short break. No one seemed aware that in the lead-up to the delivery of the cards, Peter Robertson, by now unemployed, had also mysteriously vanished from the scene, or that he had formerly lived in the Lincoln area. No one appreciated, either, that a few days after his wife had last been seen he had called at the Tesco store to explain that Margaret had suddenly taken ill with shingles and was unlikely to return to work for two or three weeks. He produced a note signed in her name authorising him to collect her outstanding wages of £37, which was readily given to him.
It wasn’t the only money that was to come his way during the strange absence of the home-loving woman he had wed so soon after release from his life sentence in prison. On 18 July – sixteen days after Margaret had apparently departed for her unannounced holiday in England, Robertson arrived at the offices of Leeds Permanent Building Society in Reform Street, Dundee. He was accompanied by an unidentified woman whom he introduced to staff as his wife Margaret, explaining that they had come to close her account and withdraw the £2,913 it contained. In fact, the nervous female by his side who barely spoke was the girlfriend of an acquaintance whose assistance Robertson had sought. Robertson had told him that Margaret was in England and they had urgent need of her life-savings, but to save her from returning north, and because he knew the building society rules would prevent them from paying the cash to anyone but the pass-book holder, it would be of great assistance if the man’s woman friend would briefly pose as Margaret to enable him to collect the cash. As an inducement, Robertson promised each of them 10 per cent of what he received, adding that Margaret herself knew of the arrangement and agreed to the payment.
The Lawkillers Page 16
