KEY POINTS:
Two smiling brides, both nurses, but from opposite sides of the planet were both in car crashes with the same man behind the wheel, and the same powerful sedatives in their systems.
One died; the other, Kiwi Felicity Ann Drumm, survived.
Eleven years later, her estranged husband, Briton
Malcolm John Webster, stands accused of murdering his first wife Claire Morris and attempting to kill Drumm in the same bizarre manner: by drugging them and causing a car crash.
The allegations bear a chilling resemblance to The Crow Road, a bestselling novel by Iain Banks set in rural Scotland in which a character kills his wife by doping her and crashing the car. He escapes while his wife burns to death, and almost gets away with the "perfect murder" - until he's discovered years later.
Webster's story contains other elements that sound like they could be straight out of a whodunit with suspicious fires and allegations of stupefying his wives with the same drug.
All of which Webster last week flatly denied to reporters.
It has emerged that a few weeks before Morris' alleged murder in Aberdeenshire, in 1994, an almost identical accident occurred in the same area involving a couple in the same kind of vehicle, a Daihatsu 4WD. The car swerved into a field and a passing farmer towed it back onto the road. Scottish police are currently trying to locate the farmer.
Drumm is now working as a specialist oncologist nurse at Auckland Hospital.
Last night Drumm, now in her late 40s, told the Herald on Sunday she was grateful for the support she and her family had received. She said she was unable to comment while the case was before the courts.
Drumm met her British husband in Saudi Arabia.
She was working as a nurse and he was selling computers to hospitals. The couple wed in a Milford Catholic church on Auckland's North Shore, reportedly on April 26, 1997.
Webster, the son of a retired English detective chief superintendent, impressed his new in-laws, former Tikipunga High School prinicipal Brian and wife Margaret, with his open, affable character and was welcomed with open arms. But not everyone was taken with his charms. "Something didn't sit right," recalls Drumm's uncle Denis, an Auckland accountant.
Another uncle, Peter Drumm says, "He was a real bloody conman, let's face it. Felicity's no mug. She's got her head screwed on the right way and as far as I could make out this was the real thing for her."
Not even the most cynical of new brides could have foreseen the nightmare that lay ahead.
The couple found their dream home, a six-bedroom heritage villa in Bayswater Pt, North Shore. But before they could complete the purchase, Drumm was badly injured in a car crash in 1999. The couple were on their way to sign some legal papers, Drumm in the passenger seat and Webster driving.
Afterwards Drumm complained to doctors of blackouts. Tests revealed she had Rivitrol, an anti-convulsant drug, in her system. Drumm made a formal complaint against her husband, accusing him of secretly drugging her. But the police investigation took three years, by which time Webster had left New Zealand.
Police subsequently charged him with attempted arson of the Bayswater house and of Drumm's parents' nearby Takapuna house. The fires were started two weeks apart, shortly before the car crash.
Webster's first wife, Morris, perished in a fiery car crash in 1994, eight months after they wed at King's College Chapel in Aberdeen. Webster was driving a 4WD Daihatsu when it swerved off the remote country road and ploughed into a tree. Webster crawled from the wreckage before it was engulfed by a fireball.
Scottish police initially classified her death as an accident and Webster received £200,000 ($506,000) in insurance payouts.
But when police last week became aware of outstanding charges against Webster from New Zealand, they reopened the case and found startling parallels.
Forensic tests showed when Morris died she had the same drug in her system as Drumm did.
New Zealand police would not extradite Webster to face the two arson charges and two charges of stupefying Drumm if their Scottish counterparts charged him with murder. Last week Webster told Scottish media he refuted all "allegations" about Claire and Felicity.