Meet, Marry, Murder - Season 1, Episode 4 - Webster - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: It's the stuff of nightmares. The person you trust most has been planning your murder
from the day you met. DR. SARAH JARVIS: Malcolm Webster was a very calculating man.
He persuaded Claire, his first wife to write a last will and testament leaving all her money to him
before they even married. [MUSIC PLAYING] PETER MORRIS: He seemed a gentleman. He seemed the sort of person that Claire
would be interested in. And it didn't take long for her to fall for him. NARRATOR: But she had fallen for a killer
and was about to meet an appalling death. [MUSIC PLAYING] PETER MORRIS: Her skull was welded to the back
of the chair at the front. Her bones were welded to the seat. Some wonderful firemen had to do his best to get what was left
and wrap them into an ambulance. [MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: How had a picture perfect wedding
story ended in a grisly murder. [MUSIC PLAYING] A hardworking and dedicated nurse
Claire Morris had grown up admired by her friends, loved by her nearest and dearest.
PETER MORRIS: We've been a close family since we lost my dad when we were 7 and 9 respectively.
And we've been very close. Claire was more of a practical person. She'd help run the home a bit more.
She was gardener and that sort of thing. Actually was a good sister. We had the noble brotherly sisterly
things when we were kids. NARRATOR: Originally from Aberdeenshire in Scotland. Claire had moved to London to pursue her career
ambitions in nursing. PETER MORRIS: She'd put her career as an important thing and she put that in front of relationships.
She wanted to get qualified as a state registered nurse. She was sharing a house in Dallas with some friends.
And I believe that she met Malcolm at a party. After which the next day he came down
and was showering her with flowers and gifts what have you. And he seemed a gentleman.
He seemed the sort of person that Claire would be interested in. And it didn't take long for her to fall for him.
NARRATOR: Malcolm Webster had led a very different life. COLIN SUTTON: Malcolm Webster's father
was the head of Fraud Squad in the Met and was a bit of a tat master, and a bit of a hard man.
DR. SARAH JARVIS: Sounds as if his father was a very domineering character. [MUSIC PLAYING]
And Malcolm was very much at the bottom of the pecking order. DR. JANE MONCTON-SMITH: There were
some behavioral difficulties noted with Malcolm Webster. From when he was a child, he was known to be attention seeking.
COLIN SUTTON: There's a seven-year-old. He was known by his friends as Pyro because of his fascination
with fire and burning things. DR. JANE MONCTON-SMITH: That behavior is very unusual in a child and something
that we would certainly consider to be a red flag for the future. ALAN SMITH: Undoubtedly, Webster needed
to be the center of attention. So the fires what are your feature of Webster's life.
Another feature that was abundantly apparent was his seeming need to feign illness and seek sympathy.
DR. JANE MONCTON-SMITH: He would pretend to faint. And that probably got him the attention that he
was craving at the time. COLIN SUTTON: Series illnesses, epilepsy, asthma, brain tumor,
heart attack later on, he was somebody who used that as a tool to gain sympathy and to deflect and to change the situation if he needed it
I think. NARRATOR: Unhappy at home, Malcolm also struggled at school. DR. JANE MONCTON-SMITH: It certainly seemed that he
wasn't an academic child. He left school with no qualifications at all and didn't have much success looking for a job
after he left school. NARRATOR: Webster decided against following his father into the police force opting instead
for his mother's career. DR. JANE MONCTON-SMITH: Then he decided that he wanted to train to be a nurse.
His mother had been a nurse. And I suppose it's not that surprising given that he was always ill himself or feigning illness.
Malcolm Webster met Claire Morris as a result really of his job at the hospital.
And it was there that they started to form a relationship together. NARRATOR: She had fallen for a man on a mission.
He may have been marriage material to her but to Malcolm Webster, Claire was simply a meal ticket.
DR. JANE MONCTON-SMITH: About 2 years after they started dating, I think even at that point,
we can see that the there's an embryonic plan or maybe even a grand plan we don't know.
But he gets Claire to change her will and he is the sole beneficiary. He gets absolutely everything.
Probably didn't raise any red flags for her because that's not necessarily an unusual thing
for a committed couple to do. COLIN SUTTON: He seems very certain to have somebody
to whom you're not married or not engaged to get them to nominate you as their sole heir.
It's quite incredible. And again, proof of this charm and this kind of control he was able to wield.
NARRATOR: 2 years after meeting, Claire and Malcolm got engaged. And in 1993, . They were married.
Her brother remembers the wedding day well. PETER MORRIS: It was a very happy wedding.
Met some family members I hadn't seen for years as you do these things. But it was a traditional Scottish wedding.
It had a bit of close to it. Not so much a disco afterwards as a Kylie, which is good fun.
Or prancing about things and he dances and that's good fun. NARRATOR: But he also has other more
troubling memories suggesting Malcolm was a very controlling husband. MALCOLM WEBSTER: Pun, pun, she's got a microphone on.
Earthquake. PETER MORRIS: There were times when Malcolm told her to take her hands out of my pockets.
She did. It wasn't alot to Claire she should have told me to clear off. He'd managed to win the spell over her really.
But at the time, he won that spell over all of us. MALCOLM WEBSTER: Now we are going to eat the cake.
Made by my dear wife. [CHEERING] Whom I hope that Claire never finds out about. [LAUGHTER]
COLIN SUTTON: Not so very long after, he persuades Claire Morris to name him as the sole beneficiary of her will.
He starts taking out life insurance policies on her. And then he takes out another 2 policies.
So by the time we get to the end of 1993 when they've still only known each other
for less than 3 years, she just got all this insurance on her life. Mortgage protection, capital repayment, and an ordinary life
insurance policy. She dies. Malcolm Webster stands to become quite a wealthy man.
NARRATOR: Standing to benefit from the death of his wife, Webster also had the means to kill her.
He had access to lethal drugs. DR. SARAH JARVIS: During the course of his life, he had had a lot of medical conditions
which apparently miraculously disappeared and no question faked medical illnesses for his own ends.
But he also of course worked as a nurse. Now having those medical illnesses would have given him some knowledge of drugs
but being a nurse undoubtedly gave him much more knowledge. NARRATOR: Claire knew nothing of faked illnesses
of his childhood, arson habits of his ability to be one person but appear another.
ALAN SMITH: His whole adult life was nothing other than a performance. He was into amateur drama as a young man.
And I think he played that through for the rest of his days. I think he lived his life in a complete fantasy.
PETER MORRIS: They were very, very, cleverly spun lies. Very calculated and very clever.
And they were there to achieve your trust. They were there to achieve your confidence and they did that.
AUDIENCE: To Malcolm and Claire. To Malcolm and Claire. NARRATOR: Newly married and trusting her husband,
Claire was happy to have left her family and friends in London and moved with him to Scotland.
PETER MORRIS: It made no sense to me. I mean, she was in an environment she liked.
Going back to University was the natural progression for her, for her career. And also she was very fond of Scotland
and that sort of environment. So it was no surprise and the thought that she was being whisked away to a remote area
didn't occur to me at all. NARRATOR: It didn't occur to anybody that Malcolm was
anything but a loving husband. Nobody knew about his history of pyromania and hypochondria.
Nobody questioned the life insurance policies that he'd taken out on Claire or the will that she had signed.
And nobody suspected Malcolm win Claire's health. Began to deteriorate. COLIN SUTTON: During all of this time when he's taking out
these policies, which was also plying Claire Morris with drugs, with sedative drugs,
temazepam that sort of thing. NARRATOR: Would the consummate faker take everybody in, kill his wife, and get rich doing it?
[MUSIC PLAYING] After 2 years of marriage, Mrs. Claire Webster began experiencing blackouts.
Often, she was sleeping. She was being drugged. ALAN SMITH: On many occasions in the early months
of their marriage, friends, family of Claire noticed indeed Claire herself was concerned that she was undergoing periods
of blackouts, dizziness. Clearly, she knew herself that there was something wrong within her.
And Malcolm, he would sideline that and he would minimize it and trivialize the symptoms
that she was suffering from. DR. SARAH JARVIS: This is a classic case of gas-lighting.
Making people believe that they are going mad. Of course in the past, it would have been done by telling
them they'd imagine things. But here we're seeing somebody who believes that she's becoming iller and iller and iller
and is incapable. She's tired. She's confused. She's forgetting things. And she doesn't know what's going on.
That's terrifying for her. But there is her husband saying, don't worry. Rely on me and I will take care of it
all because you are clearly not capable. It would not have taken very long at all for her
to become completely dependent on Webster. NARRATOR: Webster was beginning the second phase of a plan.
He had met Claire, convinced her to make him sole beneficiary of her will, taken out life insurance on her
and then married her. It was time to up the stakes. DR. JANE MONCTON-SMITH: During that time,
Claire had 10 life insurance policies against her life and on a big mortgage protection policy.
He also selected his weapon of choice. COLIN SUTTON: But it is notable that he buys a car for the first time.
And within 3 or 4 months of that his murder plan comes to fruition. [MUSIC PLAYING]
NARRATOR: He was going to make murder appear as a car accident, in a remote area
of the Scottish Highlands. ALAN SMITH: We know from witnesses that he had visited the location in the days
leading up to the accident so he defectively record the location. And the circumstances on the night where that he
enticed his wife to join him on an unnecessary journey from their farmhouse to the city of Aberdeen some 15,
16 miles away to drop off some paperwork to do with a project. So that cleared the reason to have to be in the vehicle
at that particular time. [MUSIC PLAYING] DR. JANE MONCTON-SMITH: At the end of May 1994,
he gave her sedatives until she was unconscious. And then he carried her to the car,
put the seat down so that as he was driving nobody would be able to see that she was in the car.
DR. SARAH JARVIS: He deliberately put her into the car and took her to the site where he was going to drive that car slowly into a tree
and then pretend that it swerved and it had been a high speed. Out of control crash.
I have rarely heard anything more calculating in my life. He then proceeded to ensure that his new wife was burned alive.
ALAN SMITH: He simply emptied petrol fuel in the vehicle. Set on fire NARRATOR: Webster's plan had worked.
Even when passers by stopped to help, he made sure Claire couldn't be saved. PETER MORRIS: But subsequently at the trial,
I found out that there had been some people that stopped and on 2 occasions he was asked if there was anybody else
in the car and he denied it. And it was only when the thing actually exploded into flames
and he said that, Oh, my wife's in there. COLIN SUTTON: He's achieved what he wants in killing her.
It looks like it's an accident and a car's caught fire, it's very sad. But that's what it is.
It's a tragic accident. And that's how it's viewed by the authorities, put away and there's no real suspicion that he's committed a murder.
NARRATOR: Webster's lies didn't end there. Claire's brother remembers Malcolm at the funeral.
PETER MORRIS: I was afraid to admit it. I was the most messed at the time. It was already unusual for me.
Takes a lot for me to break down. But that was a point that yeah, the sky had collapsed for me.
And I do remember feeling quite sorry for myself and then looking up at Malcolm, he was on my right.
Thinking well I've lost my sister but he's lost his wife. And as they lower Claire to the grave,
I had a cord in this hand which was with several other cords lowering the coffin down.
And with his hand I was holding on to Malcolm. Squeezing his hand. And I looked up at him and he was in tears as well.
It took a long time afterwards to convince me that somebody could fight that. ALAN SMITH: He almost was able that
seemed to be able to justify what he was doing in pursuit of his own goal of course, wealth.
And he just compartmentalized what he was doing as part of his plan to make money.
NARRATOR: Webster wasted no time getting his hands on the insurance money. ALAN SMITH: Having accumulated significant wealth
and benefited from Claires' death to the sum of well over 200,000 pounds which in the 90s
was a significant this remains a significant amount of money. But he managed to squander that very, very quickly.
So within 6 months of Claires' death, he found himself in a situation where he was
pretty much empty in the bank. And so he was in this cycle of financial need and he had a lavish lifestyle.
He liked the good things in life. NARRATOR: Finding himself strapped for cash just 6 months after he had killed Claire Morris,
Malcolm Webster began planning his next moneymaking murder. [MUSIC PLAYING] In May 1996, Malcolm and Felicity Drumm a New Zealander,
met at a dinner party in the Middle East. PETER MORRIS: All I'd heard from mom was that he'd got married again.
He met somebody in Saudi Arabia and he got married again. That's literally all I knew.
I didn't know who it was, what nationality she was or anything like that. I only found out about Felicity from her evidence at the trial.
NARRATOR: Malcolm proposed in January of 1997. And the couple were married just a few months later, setting up
home in Auckland, New Zealand. DR. JANE MONCTON-SMITH: In the relationship with Felicity,
he starts to repeat the pattern almost exactly the relationship that he had with Claire.
He starts giving drugs to Felicity. She starts feeling again, vulnerable and tired
and fatigued. And after they got married, practically the first day after they got married, he gave her such
a huge dose of sedative that she slept for 36 hours. COLIN SUTTON: He's really going down exactly the same path
that he trod with Claire. DR. JANE MONCTON-SMITH: Not only was he drugging her, he also did the same with Felicity
and he got her to change her will in his favor. NARRATOR: Shortly after they were married,
Malcolm suggested that he and Felicity move home to Scotland. A world away from her family and friends.
It wasn't long before Felicity became pregnant. That fact, did not stop him. DR. JANE MONCTON-SMITH: He was still giving her the drugs.
He had no care at all for her or for his own unborn child. DR. SARAH JARVIS: Even the most calculated killers usually
care for their own children. He was a man who was prepared to feed drugs to his wife
knowing as a nurse the effects they might have while she was pregnant. NARRATOR: Indeed, Webster's pyromaniac ways
seen in childhood never truly left him. In the winter of 1998 and now with a young son,
the Websters house burned down in a catastrophic fire. They were lucky to escape the inferno
and were forced to move back to New Zealand and live with Felicity's parents. NARRATOR: There are so many incidents of fire
that Webster was involved in. 2 houses, one in New Zealand, one in Scotland went on fire that he was responsible for.
Yet again in need of somewhere to live, the Websters began looking for somewhere to buy with Felicity
providing the funds. But Malcolm was worried. Felicity would quickly discover that he had cleaned
out their joint bank accounts. He needed to act. ALAN SMITH: On the morning that he
attempted to murder Felicity, they were going to the bank. They were going to meet with their solicitors.
And that was going to unveil the fact that he had no money in the account. He had embezzled money from her account.
So he knew that that was not going to be a good meeting. So he was pretty much forced into that journey
being the journey where he had to do this. DR. JANE MONCTON-SMITH: In February 1999,
Felicity is in the car, they're driving home from somewhere and he starts to say that the steering is gone funny
and he can't control it and the car seems to veer off the motorway at high speed
towards a pole in the road. So it's the passenger side that's heading towards the pole.
But Felicity manages to grab the steering wheel and they do come to a halt and there is an accident.
And he gets out of the car but he's shouting at her to stay in the car. Stay in the car.
He doesn't want her to get out of the car. He's making his way to the booth where again,
he has put cans of petrol. And it seems that his intention was that he was going to set fire to the car.
But luckily, the police came upon them. COLIN SUTTON: And he falls back on his other great skill which
is feigning injury or illness. And he manages to convince them that he's having a heart attack.
So rather than going to solicitors to sort out their finances, Felicity goes with him
to the hospital where he's dealt with and treated for a suspected heart attack. DR. JANE MONCTON-SMITH: After the crash,
the car gets towed away. It's getting taken to a garage. And Felicity's sister goes to the garage and the mechanic
that tells her that there's nothing wrong with the steering at all. And they find the petrol in the boot
and they find a cigarette lighter and nobody in the whole family smoked. So they became very suspicious.
NARRATOR: Later that same month, Webster made another attempt on Felicity's life.
Yet again, causing a car crash. This time with Felicity heavily sedated. PETER MORRIS: He'd attempted to kill Felicity in the same way
that he did kill Claire. And from what I can tell, the evidence is that the difference was with Felicity that she
had a mobile telephone. And they weren't really around in 94 when Claire had died.
Or she didn't have one anyway. And it was her mobile telephone going off with a call from my father that
woke her up out of a stupor. That basically saved her life. DR. JANE MONCTON-SMITH: The family and Felicity
started looking at some of the financial transactions that had been going on. And it came to light that there were forged insurance
policies that had been money moving around that she knew nothing about. And such were their suspicions at that point
that Felicity decided to go to the police. [MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: His plan was falling to pieces
and with police taking an interest, Webster decided to flee New Zealand. He began a game to manipulate women.
ALAN SMITH: He on several occasions groomed woman through sympathy in relation to a pattern terminal illnesses such as leukemia.
[MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: Malcolm Webster's attempts to murder his second wife in New Zealand had failed
and he had returned to Scotland. ALAN SMITH: He got back to the UK pretty much undetected and untainted in many ways and began his life again.
And again, that pattern of behavior continued when he came back. So even having been very nearly caught,
he still had sufficient confidence in his ability to do this again. And of course the overriding motive
in all of Webster's actions will come back to his greed. His insatiable desire for wealth.
And he had an ability to squander funds quite incredible. NARRATOR: Webster met Simone Banerjee,
a nurse at a nearby hospital in Agile and began yet another charade. ALAN SMITH: And in fact, he went to the extent of apparently
going for chemotherapy. And on absence from the family home he was actually engaging with other women.
But he would return home with his head shaved, his eyebrows shaven, apparently as part of his chemotherapy.
DR. JANE MONCTON-SMITH: He made himself lose an awful lot of weight. And this was all a big manipulation
to get her to feel sympathy for him so that she would stay in this relationship with him.
He made promises to marry her, he wanted to be in this committed relationship with her,
but he failed to mention that he was still married to Felicity. He had not gone through divorce proceedings with her.
DR. SARAH JARVIS: In his third potential victim, we see a woman who was unaware that he was
not yet free to marry again. And he tried to persuade her to write her last will
and testament without having to go through the bother of marrying her. Leaving everything to him.
NARRATOR: As he allegedly battled cancer, Malcolm asked Simone to marry him, moving in with her,
and even persuading her to begin IVF treatment. Anything to accelerate their relationship.
And so his access to her money. But while Malcolm was planning his next murder, back in New Zealand, Felicity Drumm's family
were looking for answers. DR. JANE MONCTON-SMITH: At this point, Felicity started putting the pieces of the jigsaw together
and started to make sense of some of the things that had been happening to her that she
was now seeing in a new light. So she made a statement to the police about her suspicions
and she included in that that she hadn't been feeling well. So they tested her hair.
And as a result of those tests, they found out that she had been drugged for quite
a long period of time. ALAN SMITH: The New Zealand authorities had made an attempt
to at least notify Grampian police that they had a person of interest as they put
it, living in their community. But there wasn't sufficient evidence. There was nothing to actually allow the police to authorize
another phase of Investigation. NARRATOR: 12 years have passed since Claire's death.
And police in Scotland simply didn't have enough evidence to reopen the investigation.
They needed something more. They were about to get it with a chance meeting at a conference for police in England,
attended by the sister of Felicity Drumm. ALAN SMITH: Felicity's sister was in the UK on business.
She was at a conference. She was there for a reason that she was heavily involved in a trust to do with domestic abuse.
And her meeting with the police officers from England who was a Chief Superintendent, she similarly
was attending that event. So the coming together of the sister and the police officer
in England was fortuitous. It wasn't a planned coming together. So there was an element of fate that they came together.
Thankfully the police officer was sufficiently convinced about the account to contact
Grampian police in Scotland. DR. JANE MONCTON-SMITH: And I think at that point is when they decided that they were going
to do some digging, they were going to do some investigating, and they took a statement from Jane.
And that's really how everything unraveled. NARRATOR: Fate had stepped in. But the accounts of Felicity's experience wasn't enough.
Police wanted something more tangible to reopen the investigation. ALAN SMITH: They needed something more physical.
And that physical evidence came from another remarkable source and that was a small piece of liver tissue
that had been retained over many years from the original post-mortem of Claire back in 1994.
And so there was a tiny sliver of liver tissue. With the passage of time and the advance of science,
the toxicology around that was remarkable. And this tiny sliver of liver led to the remarkable outcome
that there was indeed scientific evidence that there was sedative in the liver tissue.
PETER MORRIS: They found a way of testing a sample of Claire's liver. We're talking about 1,000 of a gram.
Tiny piece. And they found a way of dividing that and testing it for unnatural substances.
And that with this new method they meant to try it, they found temazepam in that sample.
And that it was a 90 something percent chance that it was temazepam. And that is not something that could be naturally in there
from the body generating it. It would have to be planted there. ALAN SMITH: That was the catalyst
to ignite the second wave of police investigation. Because it. It needed that momentum.
It needed something to trigger that investigation. NARRATOR: Looking again into the crash involving Claire Morris,
investigators discovered that Webster's story didn't add up. PETER MORRIS: He said that he'd swerved to avoid a motorcycle.
Crash investigators specialize in investigating the mechanics of an accident. Down to the most minute detail.
MARK CROUCH: So if you're dealing with an evasive steer, a case where a driver is reacting
to a hazard in the road to an oncoming vehicle or an animal or something like that, you would expect
a significant amount of steering to be applied very quickly indeed. Exceeding the limit of grip for the vehicle.
And often, getting these curved tire marks present on the road. That happens at or about the speed
that the vehicle was traveling at in the first place. You would expect the vehicle to lose control at or about
the speed limit from the road. It doesn't lose a lot of speed in the time that it's leaving those curve marks as it's
traveling across the road and eventually into the thing that it hits. So it would be slightly unusual to end up
with quite a low speed impact at the end of a swerve or an evasive maneuver. NARRATOR: Investigators were beginning
to realize that Webster had in fact lied about the details of the car crash which led to Claire's death.
Meanwhile, Webster was moving forward with his plan with Simone. They were about to set sail on a glamorous yacht trip together.
Something detectives felt they could not allow. ALAN SMITH: When it became known that they were about to embark
on a fairly lengthy yacht trip around the Canadians, that's when the decision was taken that something had
to be done and there was an intervention through what we call an Osman warning prior.
If the police become aware of intelligence out of a depth of sincerity of knowledge that they believe that someone's
life is in danger, then you're obliged to advise and notify that individual. You don't have to reveal the source
but there is a duty of care in terms of advising. And of course, that's what was done.
Simone was warned that there was a genuine belief that she was in a relationship with a dangerous individual who
had a history that would suggest that she needed to think very carefully about continuing
that relationship. PETER MORRIS: And it turned out that he'd actually damaged her life jacket and was supposed to be taking her
on a boat for several weeks and I alone was thinking, this person was going to kill again.
NARRATOR: Initially in disbelief, Simon decided to confront Webster about the Osman Warning.
Realizing the net was closing in, he became frantic. ALAN SMITH: And I took a phone call
from Webster who had heard that there was investigations ongoing into the death of Claire.
And he was highly indignant. He was pseudo aggressive in terms of how could you possibly think that I could be involved in anything
to do with Claire's death. Very dramatic phone call. Definitely a determined phone call
to try and convince somebody on the other over phone that he wasn't involved. That struck me as being somewhat pathetic that somebody might
think that they could in a phone call just douch done the interest in a murder investigation.
NARRATOR: Webster was getting his defense in even before he'd been accused. Could the master faker get away with murder?
[MUSIC PLAYING] Webster's frantic phone call to police that simply made them more suspicious.
And more details were emerging of a car crash involving Claire. Details which simply didn't add up.
ALAN SMITH: The circumstances of the road traffic accident involving Claire, his first wife
were remarkable. DR. JANE MONCTON-SMITH: They found that there were inconsistencies between what the mechanics were
able to find from the report and what Webster had said had happened. And they were able to disprove his story.
PETER MORRIS: You naturally assume that he was doing a reasonable speed. That we must be doing 50 or 60 on a little road or something.
NARRATOR: Put simply, if Webster's claims of a high speed car crash into a tree were true,
there would be more damage to the car. MARK CROUCH: Collisions or transfer of energy between 2 things, the car and the thing that it hits.
The harder it hits it, the more energy is dispersed. So the faster it's going, the more energy there is
to get rid of in a collision. So the amount of damage that's present is proportional to the speed that it's traveling at.
The faster the vehicle, the more damage you expect. NARRATOR: But there was no evidence that it
was a high speed collision. And in fact, the officers on the scene were suspicious about the crash itself.
ALAN SMITH: What is interesting is that the 2 traffic officers who investigated the collision and certainly the senior fire
officer who was on the scene, they all had suspicions that there was something not quite right.
And they did try to raise this up, the chain of command at the time. But there wasn't an appetite to actually acknowledge that this
could potentially have been something more sinister than a simple road traffic collision.
NARRATOR: In his mind, Webster believed he had committed the perfect murder. ALAN SMITH: You have to see it in the context
of the night itself. And rural Aberdeenshire, no police officer attending a road
traffic collision on a countryside road is going to be thinking about murder or premeditated homicide.
It doesn't largely exist in the minds of the investigating officers. So basically what we had was a man who
had planned this quite well. He decided he was going to stage a road traffic collision
and effectively set the vehicle on fire with his wife in the passenger seat incapacitated
and effectively burnout to death. [MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: It wasn't just the collision
itself that presented questions but also the resulting fire. DR. JANE MONCTON-SMITH: They were
able to find that the fire didn't even start till about 15 minutes after the impact.
MARK CROUCH: The time that a fire takes to get hold in a vehicle can vary dramatically.
Not least on the amount of fuel that's available and the amount of air that there is that aids the combustion.
There were 2 key areas to look at here. Where the fire started itself. But also not just about the flames that
are coming out of the vehicle. Where the heat is. Where the smoke first started from.
But it would be unusual for a fire to start considerably later, when everything in the vehicle
was cooling. NARRATOR: With evidence mounting against him, Webster fled to Surrey in England.
But in February 2009, he was arrested and charged with the murder of his first wife Claire Morris
as well as the attempted murder of his second wife Felicity Drumm. ALAN SMITH: During the investigation,
we randomly got a phone call from a police Sergeant in England who had seen the publicity
and recognized Webster and recognized him as a fellow scout when they were 14, 15 years old.
And he was compelled to tell us that even in those days, young Webster had a reputation involving fires.
[MUSIC PLAYING] So on scout trips, things had gone on fire and Webster was never far away.
And that nickname he had was Pyro. NARRATOR: He was a hypochondriac. He was a pyromaniac.
And he was also a consummate liar. It transpired that he had lied to witnesses at the scene of the crash.
ALAN SMITH: He maintained at least one, possibly 2 of the first witnesses who arrived in the scene because the question was asked is there
anybody else in the vehicle? And he was adamant no. He actually had the confidence in his own actions
to prevent any potential rescue of Claire by the passersby, which again gives you a depth of insight
into callous this man is. NARRATOR: Callous and with no sense of remorse for his actions.
PETER MORRIS: As we all know, he had no feelings of guilt. He doesn't have any feelings guilt.
So despite the fact that he's done that despicable thing, he's got no guilt on it.
One of the things that I asked Derek Ogg, the QC at the time of the trial was that after the supposed accident,
Malcolm had been picked up by an ambulance and taken to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary.
They tested his pulse and that was normal. They tested his pupil dilation and that was normal.
And I said to Mr. Roarke, how can that be? Because if you've been in a genuine accident,
your pulse and everything would be all up anyway because of the shock of what's happened.
And if you committed a crime, surely you'd be excited as well. So how could they be normal?
And his replied to me was astonishing. He said, Malcolm is a psychopath. He can put himself into a bubble when he's committing a crime.
And he can completely detach himself from what he's doing whilst he's doing it. Which I didn't even know people like that
existed prior to this. That is something for me which is astonishingly scary. [MUSIC PLAYING]
NARRATOR: 17 years after Claire's death, the pieces of the puzzle finally came together.
ALAN SMITH: The whole pattern of behavior by Webster was well described by the judge who summed up in his trial
when he described as being like 1,000 piece jigsaw that was strewn across the floor.
And until such time as the jigsaw was put together, not just by the police, but by family, by friends, there was a whole network who helped
put this jigsaw together. But only then did it become clear that Webster's whole life
was predicated on lies, fantasy, wealth driven plans to take advantage of often vulnerable women
who fell for him. NARRATOR: On the 5th of July 2011, Malcolm Webster was sentenced to life in prison.
He will serve a minimum of 30 years. PETER MORRIS: I think the chances are Malcolm is a serial killer.
Not officially but I think the chances are that he is. And certainly if he'd been left out of prison much longer,
he definitely would have been because another one of his schemes would have come off.
How anybody can treat life with that much disregard is not natural. [MUSIC PLAYING]

Malcolm Webster was a charmer whose lovers mysteriously came to harm.

Though wedded couples vow to stay together until death do they part, this new true crime series looks at what happens when a groom or bride causes their beloved's death.

Brief Summary

Malcolm Webster murdered his wife Claire for insurance money, manipulating her and staging her death as an accident.

Key points

A Chilling Betrayal. The person you trust most may have sinister intentions. Malcolm Webster's charm hid a deadly plan.
Gaslighting and Manipulation. Malcolm Webster's psychological control over Claire leads to her tragic downfall.
The Perfect Murder Plan. Malcolm Webster's meticulous scheme to kill Claire and make it look like an accident unfolds.
The Turning Point. A chance meeting at a conference leads to a breakthrough in the investigation.
The Evidence. A tiny piece of liver tissue leads to scientific proof of foul play.
The Master Faker. Could Malcolm Webster get away with murder? His manipulative tactics raise suspicion.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

The person you trust most has been planning your murder.

NARRATOR's chilling statement about betrayal.

0:08WatchJun 8, 2022

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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