A coroner will consider whether mental health doctors could have done more to help a mum whose remains were found two years after she went missing.
Mum-of-two Marie Scott was aged 58 when she went missing from her home in Hale, Trafford, in December 2017.
Police first discovered a human leg in the River Irwell, Salford, a year later before finding other body parts on marshes near to the Manchester Ship Canal, near Frodsham, Cheshire, in December 2019.
The remains were later identified as belonging to Mrs Scott.
At a pre-inquest review on Thursday (June 17), coroner Chris Morris agreed that the inquest should rule on the circumstances surrounding Mrs Scott’s death as well as the cause, in what is known as an 'article two' inquest.
Speaking at South Manchester Coroners Court in front of her family, Mr Morris said this was because there are questions over whether Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust could have acted differently before she went missing.
He explained that the evidence he had seen had seen pointed to an ‘escalation of self harm’ in the run-up to Mrs Scott’s disappearance, and that there could have been opportunities to detain her which 'could have been expected to avoid her death'.
Mr Morris said: “I do have reason to suspect that the state or its agents - in this case the mental health trust - knew, or ought to have known, of the immediate risk to Mrs Scott’s life around the time decisions were made on whether she was detainable under the Mental Health Act.”
Peter Merchant, representing the trust, had provided a statement to Mr Morris arguing that an 'article two' inquest should not take place.
Before making the decision, Mrs Scott’s son Stuart Scott urged the court for 'the evidence to be laid out and fair'.
He added: “All we would like is obviously a full hearing and for the truth to come out.”
Mr Morris promised that the inquest would be ‘thorough, full, frank, fearless and detailed’.
He also decided that a jury should not hear the case because of the complex evidence which will be heard.
Expert witnesses will be called, including a Home Office pathologist, due to the nature of how Mrs Scott was found after her death.
A desperate search for Mrs Scott was launched when she went missing after boarding a tram to Manchester from Altrincham before Christmas in 2017.
She was seen in the Deansgate and Deansgate Locks areas of the city centre before taking a tram from Deansgate-Castlefield to Victoria.
From the station, she got in a taxi to Heaton Park before asking the driver to take her to The Rock shopping centre in Bury, and she was finally seen walking along Rochdale Road.
Speaking to the Manchester Evening News as the inquest into her death was opened back in January , her husband Jim Scott said: "It's an ongoing nightmare.
"It is physically and emotionally draining. And we feel like we're not further along. We need to be able to move on with our lives.
"From my point of view, I don't have a life anymore, I have an existence. I had 40 years of marriage and it's gone.
"I even find myself now if a picture pops up on my phone I have to scroll past, as if I can't even look at her it's so sad."
The inquest will be heard at South Manchester Coroners Court, in Stockport, for five days from January 10, 2022.
Representatives from Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust will be among those giving evidence.
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