Vote Of No Confidence In Grampian Police

  Following the conviction of Malcolm Webster, Grampian Police has been subjected to severe media criticism.

  An article in "The Times" by Mike Wade contained the following section:

  After his 19-week trial, critics expressed incredulity at the conduct of the first police investigation into the crash. They are also baffled by the force's failure five years later to act on information from police in New Zealand.

 "Grampian was full of shambolic police investigations in the 1990's" said a police source "the initial enquiry was not good, Webster was never suspected."

 Peter Morris, Claire's brother, said that during the trial he had been approached by Chief Inspector Ian Wallace, who was a constable at the time of the murder, and had suspected Webster since 1994.

 "He had suspicions at the time... he saw the peculiarities in what had happened. He and another officer went to their seniors to try and make further inquiries, but their efforts were quashed."

  An editorial in the "Sunday Mail" states:

 You would not need to be Miss Marple to smell a rat. Luckily for Webster there were few Marples at Grampian Police .... it seems clear that the death of Claire Webster in 1994 was far too quickly written off as an accident.

  Inexperience, bad decisions, Webster's dramatic talents and - most probably - a disinclination to open what would have been a can of worms meant Grampian simply closed the file, shut the drawer and locked the cabinet.

 It was not, of course, the only inquiry botched by the force in the 1990's when the notorious murders of nine-year-old Scott Simpson and Arlene Fraser also took far, far too long to be solved.

 Even when the Scots police were contacted by their counterparts in New Zealand after Webster's attempted murder of his second wife, they refused to act.

  This damning criticism of Grampian Police in the 1990's, puts into context their failure to investigate either the sexual abuse allegations made by Hollie Greig or the suspicous death of her uncle, Roy Greig. The mainstream media have not yet reported on these matters but surely it can only be a matter of time before this happens.