Life term for wife murderer Fraser (From The Argus)

Life term for wife murderer Fraser

12:49pm Wednesday 30th May 2012 in National News © Press Association 2013

A "possessive and controlling" businessman who arranged the murder of his estranged wife after she began divorce proceedings has been jailed for life following a retrial.

Nat Fraser was ordered to spend at least 17 years behind bars for killing mother-of-two Arlene Fraser, whose body has never been found.

Mrs Fraser was 33 when she vanished without trace from her home in New Elgin, Moray, on April 28 1998.

Nat Fraser, 53, was convicted of "instructing, instigating and organising" her murder after a fresh trial lasting more than five weeks at the High Court in Edinburgh.

The trial heard claims the former fruit and vegetable wholesaler admitted to paying a hitman £15,000 to kill her and said his wife's body had been burned.

Fraser was originally found guilty of the killing in 2003 but his conviction was quashed last year and a fresh trial was granted after the UK Supreme Court ruled that the initial conviction was unsafe.

Judge Lord Bracadale spoke of the "shocking and wicked nature" of Fraser's crime.

He said: "The evidence indicated that at some point before the 28th April 1998 you arranged for someone to kill your wife Arlene and dispose of her body.

"Thus you instigated in cold blood the premeditated murder of your wife and mother of your children, then aged 10 and five years. The killer must have known that Mrs Fraser would be at home alone on a Tuesday morning and that information must have come from you.

"The murder and disposal of the body must have been carried out with ruthless efficiency for there has not been a trace of Arlene Fraser from that day to this and her bereft family continue to live without any satisfactory knowledge of what happened to her remains."