A courageous campaigning brother of a nurse drugged and burned alive by notorious “Black Widower” Malcolm Webster has died.
Peter Morris wanted Webster to rot behind bars for murdering Claire Morris, 32, in a staged road crash in Aberdeenshire 25 years ago.
He lost a leg after an ill-fated walk from her grave to Holyrood in his struggle for better support for victims and families.
Until his death Peter was convinced that, had he not been caught, Webster would have become a serial killer like Dr Harold Shipman.
During his 2011 trial in Glasgow, it emerged Webster had the inquiry report on Shipman stored on his computer.
He was exposed as a pathological liar and serial seducer with an “insatiable appetite for wealth”.
Webster was found guilty of murdering his first wife Claire and attempting to murder his second wife Felicity Drumm in New Zealand.
Webster later tried to marry Oban woman Simone Banarjee, 41, posing as a terminal cancer victim, but was unable to due to bigamy laws.
He was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 30 years at the High Court in Edinburgh.
Webster, now 60, staged car crashes in order to claim life insurance money. He obtained more than £200,000 after he killed Claire on a remote road.
He faked a collision with a tree and then set his Daihatsu 4x4 jeep on fire with her in the passenger seat.
Webster initially convinced police that the fireball crash was a freak tragedy. Detectives didn’t
investigate further as there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding Claire’s death.
But weeks earlier, Webster had convinced her to take out tens of thousands of pounds worth of life cover over a dozen policies.
Flush with his payout, former nurse Webster went on a spending spree and treated himself to a yacht and flash cars.
Five years later, after running out of cash, he proposed to New Zealand national Felicity and began plotting her murder. Chillingly it would replicate his strategy of faking a car crash and blaze.
By killing Felicity, the mother of his 13-year-old son, Webster would have netted more than £750,000 of insurance money. But Felicity survived the crash in Auckland and it sparked an investigation that cast doubt on Claire’s death.
Detectives started digging into Webster’s past when one of Felicity’s sisters report suspicions about him.
They found he was already engaged to Simone in Oban and was posing as a leukaemia victim as part of a scheme to fleece her.
Webster’s deception was described in court as “an Oscar-winning performance”.
Earlier, Peter experienced Webster’s acting skills when he held his hand as he wailed over his wife’s coffin.
Peter later told the Record: “We were both in tears. At the time, I was holding the hand of my sister’s husband – that’s how I perceived it.
“In reality, I was holding the hand of her murderer.”
With Webster jailed, Peter vowed to walk in Claire’s memory from her grave in Tarves, Aberdeenshire, to the Scottish Parliament. He ended up in Ninewells Hospital, Dundee, with horrific blisters on his right foot.
But he continued on to Holyrood to deliver a 6000-signature petition calling for a foundation to help crime victims.
However, gangrene set in and Peter, who suffered from diabetes, had to have part of his right leg removed when he got home to Kent.
Proud family man and grandad Peter, 55, died last Thursday.
His wife of 35 years,
Christine, said: “My darling Peter passed away peacefully with us all around him.
“As a family we will take strength from each other and those around us.”
