Black widower's Kiwi wife works on TV adaption

Malcom Webster was found guilty of murdering Briton Claire Morris in a staged car crash in 1994, and attempting to murder his second wife, Aucklander Felicity Drumm in New Zealand in 1999.

A New Zealand woman who survived an attempt on her life by wife-killer Malcolm Webster has acted as an adviser in a true crime television adaptation.

The rights for the three-part series, The Widower, have been snapped up by TVNZ and will be screened here later this year, a spokeswoman confirmed today.

The British-made drama will dramatise the calculating crimes of Webster, who was jailed for murdering his British first wife Claire Morris in 1994, before staging a similar attempt to kill his second wife, New Zealander Felicity Drumm.

Drumm is played by English actress Kate Fleetwood, with former League Of Gentlemen and Psychoville star Reece Shearsmith in the lead role.

Former Auckland nurse Drumm, and Simone Banarjee who was Webster's next target right up to when he was finally arrested, acted as advisers to the ITV show, the Daily Mail has reported.

Webster, 54, was jailed for a minimum of 30 years for murdering his first wife Claire Morris in a faked car accident in 1994.

He was also convicted of trying to kill his second wife, Drumm, in a similarly staged car crash in New Zealand five years later.

Webster, a former nurse from Surrey in England, stood to become a millionaire thanks to the life insurance payouts from his first wife's death.

A 2011 trial heard how Webster drugged his first wife Ms Morris, 32, just eight months after their marriage and drove his car off the road with the unconscious woman inside.

He then torched the vehicle and covered his tracks before collecting the life insurance payout and moving to New Zealand.

The jury then heard Webster married Ms Drumm before attempting a copy-cat murder in 1999 near Auckland by drugging her and planning to kill her in another staged smash.
He fled with her lifesavings and returned to Scotland.

There, he tried to con Banarjee into a bigamous marriage, and even getting her to change her will to leave him everything, including her house and a luxury yacht.