When Nat Fraser was locked up for life almost five years after the cold-blooded murder of his wife, it seemed that justice had finally been done.

No-one could surely have predicted that the next decade would bring a lengthy appeal process, a Crown apology, a fresh trial and a political storm over the role of the highest court in the land.

It now remains to be seen whether today's verdict is the line in the sand Arlene Fraser's relatives have so desperately sought since 1998.

With no remains ever found, prosecutors always faced a tough challenge to secure a conviction.

At the centre of the 2003 case was one crucial strand - evidence about Mrs Fraser's jewellery. The trial heard that her engagement, wedding and eternity rings mysteriously turned up in her bathroom nine days after she vanished.
It was claimed that Fraser had placed them there, suggesting he had access to her body.

The evidence was deemed so important it was described as the cornerstone of the prosecution case. They were the "tokens of love" which would ensnare Fraser.

But by March 2006, it emerged that evidence relating to the rings was not made available to the defence at the time of the trial. The then Lord Advocate, Scotland's top prosecutor, said he regarded it as "a matter of serious concern".

The Crown Office announced an investigation and Grampian Police ordered a separate inquiry into their handling of the murder probe. Within months, Fraser walked free from prison on bail.

At his 2007 appeal, the defence claimed the trial was a farce and that the Crown was guilty of an "extraordinary degree of incompetence".

The court heard that the defence was never informed of evidence from police officers Neil Lynch and Julie Clark suggesting that the rings had been in the house on the day Mrs Fraser went missing.

Prosecutors apologised for "deeply regrettable" events which arose in the preparation of the trial, but insisted compelling circumstantial evidence pointed towards Fraser's guilt.

Judges in Edinburgh agreed and threw out Fraser's appeal in 2008. As he was led from the court, he vowed: "The fight will go on, as will the fight to get to the truth."

The following year the businessman was refused a chance to take his fight to London and all options to appeal in Scotland were exhausted. But Fraser persevered, asking the Supreme Court directly if it would hear his case.

In a rare move, it agreed and his assertion that he did not receive a fair trial - centred on the non-disclosure of the rings evidence - was aired afresh last year before five justices of the UK's highest court. The justices ruled that the conviction was unsafe, giving the Scottish courts little choice but to formally quash it.

As soon as the Supreme Court had spoken, the case entered the political arena.
First Minister Alex Salmond said the court should have no role in Scottish criminal law.

Its increasing involvement in "second-guessing" Scotland's highest court of appeal was "totally unsatisfactory", he alleged.

Scotland's Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill, had previously criticised the London court for "undermining" the authority of the High Court in Scotland. He spoke out after another controversial ruling, known as the Cadder judgment, on the rights of suspects to legal representation.

But the intervention attracted criticism from political opponents, who said some of the language used was ill-advised and provocative.

Scottish judges, however, gave the green light to a fresh prosecution. During the 2012 trial, Mr Lynch and Ms Clark testified that they saw Mrs Fraser's rings in her bathroom on the day she disappeared. The Crown did not suggest their evidence was anything other than truthful.

Whatever the jury made of their evidence, and the rings saga in general, will never be known, but it is clear from their verdict that the evidence against Fraser - in its entirety - was overwhelming.

Arlene Fraser appeared happy in the weeks before her disappearance, she was moving on and was due to meet a solicitor to discuss divorcing husband Nat on the day she vanished.

The mother-of-two never made that appointment after seeing her children off to school on the morning of April 28 1998.

Arlene, 33, doted on her two young children Jamie and Natalie. Friends and family described how she was devoted to them, always taking them swimming and dancing.

Elgin-born Arlene McInnes, as she was then, met Nat Fraser at the age of 21 and married him two years later. Her mother, Isabelle Thompson, said Arlene had been an outgoing, popular teenager, different from her sister Carol, who was the quieter of the two.

Arlene left school at the age of 16 with no particular ambitions and took up a series of part-time jobs at clothes shops in Elgin where she could pursue her interest in fashion and make-up. Her appearance was important to her and she liked to wear nice clothes and make-up.

She also suffered from Crohn's disease, a bowel condition which she took medication for and which she would be in a lot of pain if she went without.

Arlene maintained a close relationship with her parents and sister, but she kept her loveless, tempestuous marriage a secret at first. As it turned sour, Arlene kept a brave face in front of them and tried to conceal the fact that Fraser was abusing her, but already they were sensing something was wrong.

After the birth of her second child Natalie, in 1992, Arlene immersed herself in the lives of her children as she and her husband drifted further apart. When Natalie started school, Arlene went back into education, enrolling for a business studies course at Moray College in Elgin four days a week.

It was Arlene's devotion to her family which made alarm bells ring from the minute she disappeared.

Just a few weeks earlier she had finally told her mother about the problems in her marriage. Reflecting on the build-up to her daughter's separation from Fraser earlier in 1998, Mrs Thompson said: "I knew there were arguments."

She said Arlene was upset and worried about the children following the separation, but later "relaxed". "(She was) rid of any animosity, rows, anything like that. She'd made the break," she said.

Her stepmother, Catherine McInnes, when asked about the state of the marriage from the late 1980s into the 1990s, said: "I think it was sort of deteriorating." By the mid 1990s it was "certainly not happy".

Arlene's sister, Carol Gillies, 49, told the trial she was concerned about her younger sister by the late 1990s as she was unhappy in her marriage. By mid-April 1998, the couple were separated and Mrs Fraser had seen a lawyer about getting a divorce.

Arlene planned to meet her solicitor on the day she disappeared to discuss the divorce and told a friend of her intentions. Patricia Gauld, 47, said Arlene was "a lot happier" after separating from her husband.

She told the court: "She said that she was going to file for divorce and all she wanted out of the marriage was the house and the custody of the children. She was on good form. She was quite happy. She did not seem scared or anything."

Meanwhile, Arlene's solicitor revealed that by March 1998 she had formed a serious intention to proceed with the divorce. Loanne Lennon, 40, agreed there had been "matrimonial disharmony" between the couple a year before Arlene vanished.

"She was a typical mother. I don't think there was any doubt in her mind that the children would be living with her," said Mrs Lennon. "I formed the view that the children were her paramount concern."

But the young mother was never given the chance to start that new chapter in her life.

Nat Fraser, to the outside world, seemed the contented family man running a successful fruit and vegetable wholesale business. Back in the 1990s he was a familiar figure in Elgin, making deliveries at hotels and shops throughout the area.

He was full of banter with his regular customers, always light-hearted, joking with the staff. Fraser, 53, was also well-known at the local hotels, performing with his band the Minesweepers, and was renowned for being sociable.

But beneath the cheery exterior lurked an aggressive womaniser consumed by jealousy and suspicion about his wife Arlene, who was seeking to divorce him.

Her family said in an interview after Fraser was convicted of her murder in 2003 that he was having affairs with other women before the couple were married in 1987.

They said Fraser's first recorded assault on his wife was in 1990 and prompted her to flee to the newly-opened women's refuge in Elgin before returning home a few weeks later.

By the autumn of 1997, Arlene had begun a two-year business studies course at Moray College and, as her children grew older, began spending more time out of the house with her friends.

Fraser, they said, grew increasingly angry at his wife's new-found independence and complained to anyone who would listen that she was a "bad mother" who was neglecting the house.

To Arlene's family it was apparent things were going downhill fast, but they were still largely in the dark about the full extent of the problem.

The watershed came the month before she vanished when Fraser seized Arlene by the neck while she was in the bathroom, forcing her blood vessels to burst.

She contacted the police, sought an exclusion order banning Fraser from the house and told her family the full horrific story of their abusive marriage.

During the 2012 trial, one of Mrs Fraser's friends spoke of a conversation between the two close to when she disappeared. Marion Taylor, 52, said: "She said that Nat had said to her if she wasn't going to live with him, she wouldn't be living with anybody."

Prosecutors said those "chillingly prophetic" words helped to sum up the case.

Advocate depute Alex Prentice QC said: "It is a case involving a possessive, controlling man who could not bear to see his young wife apart from him, who could not bear the thought of his wife with another man, who could not bear the thought of another man bringing up his children, who could not bear to part with the money which was so important to him."

These thoughts, the Crown argued, "festered" in his head to such an extent he "instructed, instigated and organised the murder of his wife".

Fraser, who was later charged with attempting to murder his wife in March, finally took matters into his own hands, arranging for her to be killed on April 28 1998.

Police said in 2003 that the extraordinary lengths Fraser went to, both to plan the killing and conceal it afterwards, were the product of an arrogant streak which proved his undoing.

But despite being locked up for life, it could never bring closure to Arlene's family, who did not find out what happened to the 33-year-old's body.

Fraser's continual legal battle and subsequent retrial forced them to revisit the events surrounding her disappearance 14 years ago.

Her mother, father and sister found themselves giving evidence for a second time, coming face to face again with the man responsible for ending Arlene's life so abruptly.

Dressed in jeans and a range of colourful shirts, Fraser carefully watched dozens of witnesses pass through the court. Sitting in the dock listening intently to their evidence, he took detailed notes, pausing occasionally to remove his glasses and look up.

Today, after 14 years of denying any involvement, together with deceiving the police and his wife's family, he has for a second time failed to escape justice.