Suspected poisoner Malcolm Webster goes on the run after police find drug in both his wives

Mar 30 2008 By Charles Lavery

Exclusive: Police probe husband after discovering both his wives were sedated before two car crashes

THE death of a newlywed bride in a fireball car crash 14 years ago will be reopened as a murder case by police after forensic tests found she was poisoned.

And the Sunday Mail can reveal that Claire Webster's husband Malcolm, 48, is wanted in New Zealand over a separate incident in which his SECOND wife was found after a crash to have been poisoned.

The sensational developments in the forgotten case can be revealed for the first time today.

A toxicology report obtained by Grampian Police confirmed that Claire was under the influence of a powerful sedative used to treat extreme epilepsy at the time of the crash in 1994.

Webster crawled from the wreckage and after mourning the tragic loss of his wife, left the country with a s200,000 insurance payout.

But incredibly, he was at the centre of a similar incident in New Zealand four years later.

In that crash, in Auckland, his second wife Felicity Drumm survived but was later found to have large amounts of a similar sedative in her system.

The results of the tests on stored samples of Claire's blood were revealed to police in Scotland.

Police in New Zealand had already issued four warrants for Webster's arrest over the alleged drugging of Felicity.

He fled New Zealand - where the warrants remain active - and returned to the UK.

A police insider said: "This is a remarkable development in the case.

"New tests on Claire's blood were ordered after the New Zealand case came to the attention of Scottish police forces.

"The fact that those tests found the sedative in her system mean that the case has to be reopened and will be investigated as a murder."

Claire, a doctor's daughter, died aged 32 in May 1994 when the car she was a passenger in left the road and hit a tree in Aberdeenshire.

Webster, who was driving, said she was asleep at the time and claimed he had swerved their 4x4 to avoid a motorbike.

Grampian Police investigators ruled the crash was a tragic accident.

Detectives believe Webster collected a s200,000 insurance policy pay-out and moved to Saudi Arabia, where he met New Zealander Felicity.

The couple returned to Takapuna in Auckland and married in 1997. Shortly after their wedding wealthy Felicity told doctors she was having blackouts.

In 1998 Webster - with Felicity in the passenger seat - crashed his car in a remote spot near Takapuna.

Felicity survived and when treated by doctors after the crash was found to have the strong sedative in her system.

Webster left New Zealand shortly after the Auckland accident but was also probed over a fire at the home of Felicity's parents.

A New Zealand Police spokesman said: "We can confirm that Malcolm John Webster is the subject of four warrants for his failure to appear in the North Shore District Court of New Zealand on July 13, 2000.

"He failed to appear at court and full warrants were issued. They are still live. Two of them are for arson, the third is for selling, giving, supplying or administering a drug and the fourth is for disabling or stupefying his victim, his then wife.

"The arson charges relate to a fire at the home of his then wife's parents."

On his return to the UK, Webster went underground for a years and foiled police efforts to trace him.

But he re-surfaced in Oban late last year, where he met NHS manageress Simone Banerjee. As recently as January this year he was using her Oban address as his own.

Webster worked as a manual handling advisor for Argyll & Bute Community Health Partnership in Oban.

Last autumn he was an advisor on the health board's panels before being dismissed. A spokesman for the Health Partnership declined to comment.

Late last year Strathclyde Police - by then aware of Webster's presence in Oban - asked their colleagues in Grampian to re-open the Aberdeen crash.

Post mortem samples are kept indefinitely and pathologists were asked to look for the same sedative that was administered to Webster's New Zealand wife. After months of painstaking research, medics in Aberdeen found Claire did have a sedative in her system.

Last week Grampian police asked for the public's help as they re-examined the crash.

They specifically want to speak to anyone who witnessed the death crash on May 28 1994, or a similar crash involving a 4x4 before the fatal accident.

An insider said: "Officers here believed the Oban woman's life was in such jeopardy she had to be warned. That's how seriously this is being taken."

Claire's parents are both dead, as are Webster's.

Last week, Grampian Police visited their old farmhouse in Aberdeenshire to question the family who bought their home two years after Claire's death.

A police inspector said: "We've nothing further to add."

At her detached home in Oban, Ms Banerjee said last night: "I don't know where he is. I've got nothing to say."

Over the past decades new drugs for epilepsy have become available which allow many people with epilepsy to live virtually seizure-free lives.

Many can cause drowsiness as an initial side-effect. There are dozens of different drugs prescribed but in severe cases patients are given Clobazam, Clonazepam, Gabapentin or Lamotrigine to name just a few.

The UK charity Epilepsy Action has warned: "Anyone who does not have epilepsy who takes the medication would be putting their lives at risk."

'He failed to appear at court and full warrants were issued. They are still live. Two of them are for arson, the third is for selling, giving, supplying or administering a drug and the fourth is for disabling or stupefying his victim, his then wife. The arson charges relate to a fire at the home of his then wife's parents.'

TIMELINE

1994 Malcolm Webster's New Wife Dies In Smash In Scotland

1998 His Second Wife Is Badly Hurt In Crash In Auckland

2000 New Zealand Cops Accuse Him Of Plot To Poison His Wife

2008 New Tests By Scots Cops Show His First Wife Was Poisoned

Do you know Malcolm Webster? Call us on 0141 309 3232

SUNDAY EMAIL

c.lavery@sundaymail.co.uk