Margaret Fleming | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1980 |
| Died | December 1999–January 2000 Inverkip, Inverclyde, Scotland |
| Cause of death | Homicide (manner undetermined) |
| Known for | Murder victim |
Margaret Fleming (1980 - c. December 1999/January 2000) was a Scottish woman who was murdered by her nominated carers Edward Cairney and Avril Jones in the village of Inverkip, Inverclyde, Scotland.
 |
Margaret Fleming was born in 1980. She had learning difficulties which had been identified at a young age. After her father died in 1995, Fleming began to live with a couple he had been close friends with and who he had named as her guardians in his will - Edward Cairney and Avril Jones. Living with them at their house "Seacroft" in Inverkip, they became her full-time carers, with Jones managing Fleming's disability benefits.
In 2016, changes to the social security system meant Fleming was required to reapply for disability benefits. Jones completed an application form for new benefits on Fleming's behalf which raised concern. It was then discovered that no one from social services had been in contact with Fleming for 17 years. When neither Department for Work and Pensions or social work were able to contact Fleming, Police Scotland visited the couple's home. When police were also unable to locate Fleming, a missing person's investigation was launched.
Upon investigation, it was discovered the last independent sighting of Margaret Fleming was on 17 December 1999, when she had visited the brother of Jones with the couple at his house. The following week she was not present with Cairney and Jones at a family Christmas dinner. On 5 January 2000, Jones claimed to her mother that Fleming had left with a member of the travelling community.
In 2017, while still under investigation, Cairney and Jones agreed to be interviewed by reporters from BBC and STV. In these interviews they claimed that Fleming was still alive and had been in contact with them recently. Jones claimed that she had been going to attend the benefits assessment with Fleming, who she said had refused to go, pushed her over and run away. Cairney also said that she had been travelling around Europe with members of the travelling community, using a fake passport and going by several aliases. He said she had been in Poland and was working as a gang master, hiring agricultural workers in the south of England and was involved in the illegal drugs trade. Cairney and Jones also claimed Fleming would come back occasionally to receive her disability benefit money from them.
In 2018 they appeared at the High Court in Glasgow, charged with murder. The prosecution case alleged that Fleming was killed by the couple between 18 December 1999 and 5 January 2000, with the murder being concealed and Jones continuing to receive Fleming’s benefits.
Following trial, in 2019 Cairney and Jones were both convicted of Margaret Fleming's murder and of perverting the course of justice on majority jury verdicts. They were each given a life sentence to serve a minimum of 14 years before being able to apply for parole. Jones was also unanimously convicted of fraud and ordered to pay back £182,000 of benefits which had been claimed in Margaret's name. [1] Despite a painstaking search of their dilapidated property and its junk-filled garden, no trace of Fleming's body has ever been found.
The police investigation and subsequent murder trial were the subject of the BBC two-part documentary Murder Trial: The Disappearance of Margaret Fleming, broadcast in January 2020. [2] [3]
Cairney died in HMP Edinburgh on 15 October 2023.
"Seacroft", the bungalow where Fleming, Cairney and Jones lived, stood on the coast, beside the A78 road about 500 metres (550 yd) to the south of the village. [4] [5] In 2017 the property was sold. [6] In January 2020, planning permission was given to build two new houses on the site, with the house being demolished in early March the same year. [6] [7]
Inverclyde is one of 32 council areas used for local government in Scotland. Together with the East Renfrewshire and Renfrewshire council areas, Inverclyde forms part of the historic county of Renfrewshire, which currently exists as a registration county and lieutenancy area. Inverclyde is located in the west central Lowlands. It borders the North Ayrshire and Renfrewshire council areas, and is otherwise surrounded by the Firth of Clyde.
The Moors murders were carried out by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley between July 1963 and October 1965, in and around Manchester, England. The victims were five children—Pauline Reade, John Kilbride, Keith Bennett, Lesley Ann Downey, and Edward Evans—aged between 10 and 17, at least four of whom were sexually assaulted. The bodies of two of the victims were discovered in 1965, in graves dug on Saddleworth Moor; a third grave was discovered there in 1987, more than twenty years after Brady and Hindley's trial. Bennett's body is also thought to be buried there, but despite repeated searches it remains undiscovered.
Frederick Walter Stephen West was an English serial killer, who committed at least twelve murders between 1967 and 1987 in Gloucestershire, the majority with his second wife, Rose West.
The murder of Jodi Jones is a Scottish murder case from June 2003 in which a 14-year-old schoolgirl was murdered in woodland in Dalkeith, Scotland by her 14-year-old boyfriend Luke Mitchell. She was found murdered with a knife behind a wall on a path where she would invariably meet her boyfriend, having set out to meet him that afternoon.
Inverkip is a village and parish in the Inverclyde council area and historic county of Renfrewshire in the west central Lowlands of Scotland, 5 miles (8 km) southwest of Greenock and 8.1 miles (13 km) north of Largs on the A78 trunk road. The village takes its name from the River Kip and is served by Inverkip railway station.
Inverkip power station was an oil-fired power station in Inverclyde, on the west coast of Scotland. It was closer to Wemyss Bay than Inverkip, and dominated the local area with its 236 m (774 ft) chimney, the third tallest chimney in the UK and Scotland's tallest free-standing structure. In common with other power stations in Scotland it lacked cooling towers; instead, sea water was used as a coolant. The station consisted of three generating units with a combined total rating of 2028 megawatts (MW).
Renee MacRae was a Scottish woman who disappeared on 12 November 1976, together with her 3-year-old son Andrew. Their case was the United Kingdom's longest-running missing persons case, and within Scotland is as notorious as Glasgow's Bible John murders. In September 2022, William (Bill) MacDowell was found guilty of the murder of MacRae and her son. Their bodies have never been found.
HMP & YOI Cornton Vale was a women's prison and young offenders institution in Stirling, Scotland operated by the Scottish Prison Service. The facility comprised a total of 217 cells in its 5 houses. It accepted solely convicted women and girls from 1975 until 1978. In 1978 Parliament passed the necessary legislation to allow females to be held there on remand. Cornton Vale houses female adults and young offenders in Scotland, alongside HMP Grampian, HMP Edinburgh and HMP Polmont. In April 1999, the separation of adults and young offenders was attained. Lady Martha Bruce was the first Governor. The current Governor at Cornton Vale is Paula Arnold.
The murder of Danielle Jones was an English child murder case involving a 15-year-old schoolgirl who disappeared from East Tilbury, Essex, England. There was a large and exhaustive search to find Jones' body and it was considered one of the biggest cases Essex Police had to deal with at the time. Despite the police's best efforts, her body was never found.
HMP Greenock is a prison located in Greenock, Scotland, serving designated courts in western Scotland by holding male prisoners on remand, and short-term convicted prisoners. It also provides a national facility for selected prisoners serving 12 years or over, affording them the opportunity for progression towards release. It also accommodates a small number of female prisoners ranging from remand to long-term. Although officially labelled as HMP Greenock, it continues to be known by its original name Gateside Prison.
It is possible to convict someone of murder without the purported victim's body in evidence. However, cases of this type have historically been hard to prove, often forcing the prosecution to rely on circumstantial evidence, and in England there was for centuries a mistaken view that in the absence of a body a killer could not be tried for murder. Developments in forensic science in recent decades have made it more likely that a murder conviction can be obtained even if a body has not been found.
Arlene Fraser was a 33-year-old woman from Elgin in Moray, Scotland, who vanished from her home on 28 April 1998 after her two children went to school. No trace of her was ever found, but her husband was convicted of her murder, upheld on appeal.
On 19 February 2008, nine-year-old Shannon Louise Matthews was reported missing in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, England. The search for her became a major missing person police operation which was compared to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. Shannon was found alive and well on 14 March 2008 at a Batley Carr house belonging to 39-year-old Michael Donovan. Donovan is the uncle of Craig Meehan, the boyfriend of the kidnapped girl's mother, Karen Matthews.
Hugh Matthews, Lord Matthews is a Senator of the College of Justice, a judge of Scotland's Supreme Courts.
Robert Black was a Scottish serial killer and paedophile who was convicted of the kidnap, rape and murder of four girls aged between 5 and 11 in a series of crimes committed between 1981 and 1986 in the United Kingdom.
The Soham murders were a double child murder committed in Soham, Cambridgeshire, England on 4 August 2002. The victims were two 10-year-old girls, Holly Marie Wells and Jessica Amiee Chapman, who were lured into the home of a local resident and school caretaker, Ian Kevin Huntley, who subsequently murdered the children—likely via asphyxiation—before disposing of their bodies in an irrigation ditch close to RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk. The girls' bodies were discovered on 17 August 2002.
Peter Britton Tobin was a Scottish convicted serial killer and sex offender who served a whole life order at HM Prison Edinburgh for three murders committed between 1991 and 2006. Police also investigated Tobin over the deaths and disappearances of other young women and girls.
April Sue-Lyn Jones was a Welsh child from Machynlleth, Powys, who disappeared on 1 October 2012, after being sighted getting into a vehicle near her home. The disappearance of April Jones, aged five, generated a large amount of national and international press coverage. Mark Bridger was subsequently convicted of murder.
Helen Elizabeth Bailey was a British author who wrote the Electra Brown series of books aimed at a teenage audience.
The murders of Harry and Megan Tooze, also known as the Llanharry murders, were the high-profile killings of an elderly couple at their remote Ty Ar y Waun farm near Llanharry, Rhondda Cynon Taf, Wales, United Kingdom, on 26 July 1993. The couple were shot dead at point blank range with a shotgun in an execution-style killing, and their killer had attempted to hide their bodies in the cowshed of the farm. Their best china was found mysteriously laid out on the table in the farmhouse as if the couple were expecting a guest, and their lunch was found cooked but not eaten on the stove. It was described by the lead detective in charge of the case as the "most baffling" case he had investigated.
