Nat Fraser convicted of murdering his wife - again

**bb1** Wed May 30, 2012 6:47 pm

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/husband-convicted-again-wifes-murder-161937939.html

Husband Convicted Again Of Wife's Murder

By James Matthews, Scotland correspondent | Sky News – 1 hour 24 minutes ago

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Husband Convicted Again Of Wife's Murder
A "possessive and controlling" husband has been convicted for a second time of murdering his wife.
Nat Fraser was found guilty at the High Court in Edinburgh of killing Arlene Fraser in 1998. The body of the mother-of-two has never been found.
Fraser was first convicted in 2003 , but his conviction was quashed last year.
Arlene Fraser, 33, was last seen waving to her children as they set off for school from their home at Elgin in Moray in April 1998.
The day she disappeared she had been due to consult a lawyer about divorcing her husband of 11 years.
The marriage had deteriorated and he suspected she was having an affair.
The trial heard evidence that Nat Fraser had confessed to a friend that he hired a hitman to strangle his wife, then burned her body and ground down her teeth.
The fruit and vegetable seller had said: "If I can't have her, nobody will."
When Fraser, 53, was convicted in 2003, he was given a minimum sentence of 25 years in jail.

However, his conviction was quashed on appeal to the UK Supreme Court in London in May 2012, after his lawyers argued that he had not received a fair trial.
That decision centred on a key piece of evidence in the original case.
Three of Arlene Fraser's rings appeared in the bathroom of her house several days after she went missing.
The prosecutors at the original trial suggested Nat Fraser had placed them there to make it look like she had left home.
However, it later emerged that prosecutors had evidence that the rings had been in the bathroom on the night she went missing.
It was evidence they did not disclose to the defence.
The UK Supreme Court judges ruled that the information might have led to a different verdict in the original trial.
The Supreme Court ruling provoked criticism from Arlene Fraser's family and anger from Alex Salmond , Scotland's First Minister.
Whilst not commenting on the case itself, he said the UK court should have no say in Scottish criminal law and complained that the ruling threatened the independence of Scotland's criminal legal system.
Scotland has a different legal system from England and Wales.
The UK Supreme Court can rule, however, on cases where there is conflict between Scottish law and human rights legislation.

Scottish prosecutors launched a fresh prosecution of Nat Fraser and, after a six-week retrial, he has been found guilty of murder a second time.
The jury heard how he thought he would lose nearly £90,000 if his wife left him and he told a friend "he wasn't going to be beaten".
During the trial, Fraser had tried to pin the blame on a former friend, Hector Dick.
Mr Dick had been jointly accused at the original trial but was freed and became a prosecution witness.

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It feels as if this has been going on for eternity - and it just about has. If he had pled guilty to begin with, he would probably be out by now, instead of starting all over again.