Wife killer linked to storage fire

Malcolm Webster. Photo / Supplied

Malcolm Webster, convicted of murdering his first wife and trying to kill his second in New Zealand, was in a warehouse minutes before it was gutted in a 5 million ($10 million) blaze, it has emerged.

Webster - who used fires to cover his tracks - arrived at the huge Shore Porters depot in Aberdeen the night it was destroyed, said the Sunday Mail.

The 1998 inferno burned through the night and many families lost everything. Police then ruled out arson.

Webster - awaiting sentence for murdering his first wife in a staged car crash and trying to kill his second bride, Kiwi Felicity Drumm, in a copycat smash - lodged an inflated insurance claim after the blaze.

A source close to Webster told the Sunday Mail: "He visited the warehouse that night and was allowed in because he had belongings in storage.

"I never thought he could be a suspect until the stuff came out in court about him starting other fires."

After the blaze, which destroyed parts of the harbour warehouse, Webster submitted a claim for 87,847 ($176,856) - knowing his lost property was worth only 50,000 ($100,675).

CGU Insurance eventually paid Webster 68,000 ($136,927) and at trial at the High Court in Glasgow last month, Webster was convicted of conning it out of 18,000 ($36,245).

Grampian police said: "The fire was treated as non-suspicious at the time but any fresh evidence would be re-investigated."

More than 80 firefighters tackled the fire in a former whisky bond store but were unable to save expensive furniture and antiques.

Webster was last month convicted of murdering first wife Claire Morris who was drugged then burned alive in a car crash outside Aberdeen in 1994.

Five years later he tried to kill Ms Drumm, 51, in a crash near their home in New Zealand.

Ms Drumm told the Sunday Mail the couple lost everything in the Shore Porters' blaze.