A TOMB OF UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

Caregiver couple kept poor Margaret captive, murdered her and lived off her benefits

- BY JANE HAMILTON

AVRIL Jones was trusted. She was a carer, a guardian, someone whose life was woven into the welfare of a vulnerable young woman named Margaret Fleming.

She could have been a force for good but became a killer.

Margaret, a gentle soul with learning difficulties, who after her dad's death in 1995, went to live with the very people chosen by him: Edward Cairney and Avril Jones, in Inverkip, Inverclyde.

The couple became her full-time caregivers.

But they controlled her life, housing her in a decaying bungalow known as “Seacroft,” managing her disability benefits and weaving themselves into every aspect of her existence.

Margaret was last seen on December 17, 1999, at her uncle's home, accompanied by Cairney and Jones. After that, she vanished, step by step, inch by inch, her presence was evaporated.

Jones later claimed Margaret went off with travellers. Cairney said she was heading abroad, living under a false identity.

Their stories shifted, fractured, and faded with time but the money kept coming: years worth of disability payments funnelled through Cairney and Jones's account without anyone checking on Margaret's welfare.

Routine social work checks only began in 2016, almost 17 years after she was last seen.

Nobody had seen her in all that time. Neither DWP nor social services could find her; the alarm was finally raised, and police were sent to Seacroft - only to discover the house that still received benefits in Margaret's name was a tomb of unanswered questions.

It took another year before Cairney and Jones were arrested.