MALCOLM Webster has been convicted of murdering his first wife and attempting to murder his second, as well as of fraud, theft and attempted bigamy.

The relief at justice having been done at last, expressed by the brother of Webster’s first wife, Claire Morris and felt by all involved in the lengthy case, must be tempered by the realisation that the con man very nearly got away with his attempt to stage the same crime on opposite sides of the world.

In 1994 Grampian police investigated the crash that killed Claire Morris in rural Aberdeenshire and concluded it was an accident, a finding endorsed by the Crown Office. At least two constables relayed concerns about the fatal crash to their superiors but were told the matter was closed. Other officers and firefighters also had reservations about the lack of skidmarks on the road and damage at the crash site but did not take them any further. Perhaps this was due to Webster’s apparently convincing display of grief (which also convinced Claire Morris’s brother). But the fact that these suspicions were not followed up is a disturbing pointer to a culture in Grampian police at the time which did not encourage a rigorous pursuit of the truth. Awkward questions were avoided.

When, five years later, New Zealand police officers alerted their colleagues in Aberdeen to concerns about the death of Claire Morris following complaints from Felicity Drumm that Webster was trying to kill her and traces of sedative were found in her body following a car crash, alarm bells still failed to ring clearly. The Grampian force looked into Ms Drumm’s finances but found there was insufficent evidence to re-open the case, a decision later endorsed by the Crown Office.

Cold cases pose obvious difficulties but the similarities between the crashes involving both of Webster’s wives were surely too great to be considered a coincidence rather than as grounds for suspicion.

Without the persistence of Jane Drumm, the sister of Malcolm Webster’s second wife, Felicity, the investigation into the 1994 crash and the death of Claire Morris would not have been re-opened. Even so, it depended on the coincidence of Jane Drumm revealing to a British policeman the family’s concerns about Webster’s poisoning of Felicity and robbing her savings. That officer alerted Grampian police.

Once the investigation was underway, the pioneering and dedicated work of a pathologist and toxicologist in Aberdeen underpinned the evidence gathered with painstaking care. Nevertheless Webster was still preying on women for financial gain, to the point where he faked the symptoms of someone undergoing cancer treatment to gain sympathy. The danger was recognised by the police who warned two women their lives were in danger.

That underlines just how much greater a tragedy this might so easily have been. Despite the convictions on all charges, Grampian Police must face up to their failings in 1994. The first step should be personal apologies to the Morris and Drumm families but the next, for all Scottish police forces, must be to learn the lessons from this appalling case.