The Disappearance Of Margaret Fleming

[Carse]

BBC Alba did a really good Piper Alpha documentary in Gaelic (with subtitles) and English last year which is very interesting and emotionally charged.

 

[Spookdaddy]

...BBC Scotland has made some really quite engrossing crime documentaries - they always manage to get the tone just about right, which is a difficult thing with subjects like this. I'd recommend Crime Scenes Scotland: Forensics Squad, which was broadcast maybe six or seven years back - I think at least a couple of episodes are on YT. Last year's short series, Murder Case was also very good. And BBC Alba has also done an on and off series of crime documentaries - but semi-dramatised and more on the historical side – and in Gaelic, with subtitles. All recommended.

There's another, more recent, BBC Scotland documentary well worth watching: Appeal Court: The End of the Line.

All court based, but I find the legal stuff absolutely fascinating.

Cairney is going to be centre stage here at some point relatively soon, and watching again the Murder Trial documentary from earlier this year it strikes me how little there really was in the way of concrete evidence. But, as far as I'm aware, an appeal has to be based on specific individual lapses, rather than general dissatisfaction. I'm betting prejudicial press coverage will form at least part of any appeal - but he'll have to negotiate the utterly disastrous BBC interview, and any decent prosecutor is going to use it as evidence that the couple actively engaged with the media on a voluntary basis. And I've no idea how they negotiate their way around the hotel letter, and the circumstances surrounding it.

 

[Eponastill]

And I've no idea how they negotiate their way around the hotel letter, and the circumstances surrounding it.

I can't remember, were they fraudulently claiming money at that stage? Or had that been rumbled by then? Could they say it was just to back up their fraud. It might prove they're scheming idiots but again, does it prove murder? It might point to murder, but it's not exactly like being caught red-handed. Ghastly.
I'm not sure but would arguable grounds for appeal mean you had some more evidence? or you wanted to say the trial wasn't held properly?

 

[Spookdaddy]

I can't remember, were they fraudulently claiming money at that stage? Or had that been rumbled by then? Could they say it was just to back up their fraud...

The earliest letters were written in 2000, a decade and a half before anyone outside the walls of Seacroft realised that Margaret Fleming was missing.

The contents of the Regent Palace Hotel letter (January 13th, 2000) can be interpreted as inferring that the supposed author has run away, and does not intend to return to Inverkip - the others I've seen also indicate that the writer is not present in Scotland, but living a peripatetic life elsewhere; as such these letters would be of little use in fending off an accusation of benefit fraud - because it would still be benefit fraud, even if the letters were real.

The obvious inference from this would therefore be that if the letters were not written by Margaret Fleming - and everything seems to indicate that this is the case - and were not suitable evidence that fraud was not being committed, then they were written for another purpose, and the only other logical purpose would be to create a false narrative, which you would only really need to do if you knew that the person in question was not creating their own - because they no longer existed.

 

[Spookdaddy]

As is often the way, one big mystery is often made up of many little constituent mysteries - which, somewhat paradoxically, the larger one tends to obscure.

It may not be obvious from a cursory reading of the facts, but after the collapse of the first murder trial Avril Jones – unlike Cairney - did not apply for bail, meaning that she would remain in custody until, and throughout, the second trial. I'm not able to pin down an exact timeline, or precise details - but Jones must have been released at some point because she then reported herself to the police for breaching bail conditions - which would inevitably result in a return to prison. Cairney started the second trial a free man (with bail conditions), Jones came directly from lock up.

So – what on earth was going on there? Was it that she felt she simply had nowhere else to go, and preferred a prison cell to a bail hostel? Or, it may be – as one tabloid inferred – that she wished to continue a relationship with someone she had met and shared a cell with in Saughton (which reads just a little too optimum tabloid for me). Did she wish to guarantee that she was out of Cairney’s reach (he is reported to have been furious at her decision)?

I’m not sure it would have been a financial decision. It’s worth pointing out to US members that bail (at least in England - I’ll come to Scotland in a second) does not necessarily involve any monetary transaction by way of bond, at least not with the same ubiquity as it does in the US. I think I’m right in saying that even when a surety is a given element in the conditions it does not actually require any up-front payment. (A ‘security’ is, I think, a different matter – but I’m not sure how commonly they are imposed.)

The Scottish and English systems are different – but not so different. I’d be interested to know if financial conditions in regard to bail even exist in Scotland – I can’t seem to pin that one down by an albeit cursory look at the internet; if anyone can let me know, I'd be grateful.

Anyway, although the arrogant blowhard Cairney tends to take centre stage in all this, it seems to me to actually be Avril Jones who is the more interesting character; there’s something truly very odd about her behaviour throughout the entire story – and the above is maybe just another example.