The father of a young woman whose body was dumped at the side of a country road told a court yesterday his son and the lad’s girlfriend were “as guilty as each other” of her murder.
Gordon Johnstone told the jury he was “as clear as fog coming off the sea” about his daughter’s fate.
He was giving evidence in the trial of Angela Newlands, 19, and Jordan Johnstone, 25, who deny murdering Johnstone’s sister Annalise, 22.
Newlands and Johnstone are accused of stabbing Annalise at the Maggie’s Wall witch memorial near Dunning, Perthshire, in May 2018.
Gordon said: “I just want to see justice, no matter what. All I know is that my daughter’s buried and the two of them’s as guilty as each other.”
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Gordon, of Fauldhouse, West Lothian, told the High Court in Livingston that he had gone to see his son in Edinburgh’s Saughton Prison a few weeks after Annalise’s body was found.
He admitted he had threatened to “smash his face on top of the table” if his son did not reveal what he had done to his sister.
He said Johnstone blamed Newlands for the murder and claimed he had tried to staunch the blood from a wound in Annalise’s neck with his T-shirt before she died in his arms.
Gordon said his son told him he had been at the memorial with Annalise and Newlands but had walked to their home in Auchterarder because he felt cold in a T-shirt.
He said Johnstone told him Newlands came in five or 10 minutes later and went to a sink to wash blood off her hands.
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Gordon added: “He asked her: ‘Where’s Annalise?’ and Angela said she was taking pictures of the witch’s monument.”
He said his son told him he ran to the monument to find Annalise lying there, then ripped off his T-shirt and tried to staunch the gash in her neck.
Gordon added: “He said Angela came driving down five minutes later. He was screaming to get the police, get an ambulance. She shouted: ‘I’m not getting any ambulance’.”
Earlier, the court heard that hillwalkers Elaine and Stephen Bailey thought they had found a mannequin at the site but it turned out to be a body.
Newlands and Johnstone also deny attempting to defeat the ends of justice and assault.
Johnstone also denies assaulting Annalise days before she died and stealing a caravan and its contents.
The trial continues.
