Ex-soldier guilty of killing spinster in shallow grave case

A FORMER French Foreign Legionnaire was yesterday found guilty of abducting and killing an elderly spinster whose body was found buried in a wood.

A jury took two hours to find John Lawson, 48, guilty of the culpable homicide of Dolina MacLean, 87, from Stanley in Perthshire, on 30 May last year.

The judge, Roger Craik, QC, had ruled there was insufficient evidence against Lawson for the jury to convict him of murder.

The prosecution maintained throughout his trial at the High Court in Edinburgh that the crime amounted to murder, and it could challenge Mr Craik's judgment, although an appeal would only clarify the law for future reference and would not lead to a retrial of Lawson.

Miss MacLean, a retired mental health nurse, was reported missing after failing to return from a trip to a Tesco store in Crieff Road, Perth.

Two weeks later, Lawson, from Perth, was discovered sleeping rough in her dark green Vauxhall Astra. He told detectives he had abducted Miss MacLean by jumping into her car at Tesco and forcing her to drive into the countryside.

He claimed his intention was to leave her in Saddlebrae Wood, near Moneydie, and steal the car, but as she walked towards a gate, she stumbled and fell and struck her head on the gate.

He said he lifted her up, but she fell again and hit her head a second time. He realised she was dead, and left the body concealed under leaves in a ditch. About a week later, he returned with a van and took the body to Knowehead Wood, near Dunning, and buried it in a shallow grave in a clearing.

Pathologists were hampered by the "pronounced decomposition" of the body and were unable to determine how Miss MacLean had died. They found tiny ulcers in her stomach, signs of extreme stress, and said it was possible she had been terrified to death. It was also possible she had struck a nerve in her neck, which can cause the heart to stop.

The defence counsel, Gordon Jackson, QC, argued to the judge that the murder charge should be withdrawn from the jury. He said the Crown had failed to prove the three essential elements of the crime of murder. Those were that Lawson had intended to kill Miss MacLean or had acted with such wicked recklessness that he had not cared whether she lived or died; that there had been an intention to cause a degree of physical injury; and that the death was foreseeable.

Mr Jackson said Lawson had behaved against an elderly woman in a way that any right-thinking person would condemn. However, it was not enough for a charge of murder that "a bad man did bad things".

He added: "Foreseeable does not mean possible; it means natural and probable."

The advocate-depute, Derek Ogg, QC, strenuously opposed the defence submission, but it was upheld by the judge.

Mr Craik said he took into account previous judgments in murder cases, including a ruling by three judges in the recent case of the Edinburgh schoolboy Jack Anderson, who was knocked down on a pedestrian crossing.

The motorist had been charged with murder but the judges said he could be found guilty only of culpable homicide because, for murder, there needed to be an intention to cause physical injury.

In this case, there had been no evidence of an intention by Lawson to cause physical injury to Miss MacLean, the judge said.

Lawson will be sentenced next month.