Murder of Margaret Fleming

Margaret Fleming was a Scottish woman with learning difficulties who was murdered by Edward Cairney and Avril Jones, the couple who had been named as her guardians and who acted as her full time carers in the village of Inverkip, Inverclyde. She was born on 1 November 1980 and had been cared for by Cairney and Jones since 1995, after her father died and named the pair, his close friends, as her guardians in his will. She lived with them at their bungalow, known as Seacroft, on the coast road south of the village, while Jones took charge of managing her disability benefits.

Fleming was last seen independently on 17 December 1999, during a visit with Cairney and Jones to a relative of Jones. Within weeks the couple were telling Jones's mother that Fleming had left home with a member of the travelling community. For seventeen years nobody outside the household checked on her welfare, and it was only in 2016, when a change to the benefits system forced Jones to reapply for Fleming's support on her behalf, that officials realised no one had had contact with Fleming since 1999. Police Scotland opened a missing person inquiry after officers could not locate her at the house.

While under investigation, Cairney and Jones gave interviews to the BBC and STV in 2017 insisting Fleming was alive. Cairney claimed she had travelled around Europe under false identities, worked as a gangmaster hiring agricultural labourers, and was involved in drug dealing, while Jones said Fleming had attacked her and run off before a benefits assessment. Prosecutors later told the High Court in Glasgow that these accounts were fabrications designed to conceal a murder that had in fact taken place between 18 December 1999 and 5 January 2000, and that Jones had gone on claiming Fleming's benefits for her own use throughout.

In 2019, Cairney and Jones were convicted by majority jury verdicts of murdering Fleming and of perverting the course of justice. Jones was also convicted unanimously of fraud and ordered to repay 182,000 pounds in wrongly claimed benefits. Both were given life sentences with a minimum term of fourteen years before parole could be considered. Despite an extensive search of the couple's rundown property and its cluttered garden, Fleming's body was never found, making the case one of a small number of UK murder convictions secured without a body. The case was the subject of the BBC documentary Murder Trial: The Disappearance of Margaret Fleming, broadcast in January 2020.

Both of Fleming's killers have now died while serving their sentences. Edward Cairney died in HMP Edinburgh on 15 October 2023 at the age of 82.

Avril Jones, who was jailed for life alongside co-accused Edward Cairney in 2019 after being found guilty of killing Ms Fleming at their house in Seacroft, has died in prison.

Avril Jones, 66, convicted of murdering vulnerable teenager Margaret Fleming, has died at HMP Stirling on Sunday, November 8, while serving a life sentence.

No cause of death has been made public. Neither Cairney nor Jones ever revealed what happened to Margaret Fleming or where her remains might be, and her family has never been able to recover her body or hold a funeral.