A man accused of murdering and hacking up a Montrose mother-of-three sent his ex-wife a Facebook message, saying he was “happy about what he had done”.
The text did not mean much to Barbara Whyte, who had barely been in contact with her ex-husband Steven Jackson since they separated more than 17 years ago.
The message was sent just days after Kimberley MacKenzie died at Jackson’s flat in Market Street, Montrose.
Jackson, 40, and co-accused Michelle Higgins, 29, are on trial at Glasgow High Court.
They deny murdering 37-year-old Miss MacKenzie by striking her with a hammer, machete and knives.
The pair are further accused of dismembering her body and wrapping the parts in bin liners, later recovered by police at locations around Montrose.
It is accepted by the court that Miss MacKenzie died at Jackson’s Market Street flat on October 27, last year.
Miss Whyte, from Rattray, near Blairgowrie, told the court that she married Jackson in September 1996.
They split up about three or four years later and have only been in contact about three times since.
Miss Whyte, 43, said she sent Jackson a private Facebook message on October 26, last year. She said she needed to speak to him about their teenage daughter.
She posted: “How you doing? You ex-wife here, well one of them anyway. LOL.”
“I heard nothing for a few days,” she said. “So I sent further messages, something about him not talking. I was a bit confused to why he wasn’t answering.”
The jury heard that he responded to the new message. Miss Whyte said: “He said something about how he was happy about what he had done. It had no relevance to me.”
Earlier, witness Philip Keilloh said that legal highs may have caused him to get confused about a key piece of evidence.
On Wednesday, the 35-year-old told the jury that his partner Penny Verrall “went mental” after learning that her best friend Miss MacKenzie had slept with her son Danny, then 19.
Mr Keilloh said that shortly after finding out, they went to Jackson’s house to buy legal highs.
There, they spoke to Higgins and told her what had happened. Mr Keilloh said she pulled out a dagger – like a Skean Dhu – and asked if they “wanted something done about” Miss MacKenzie.
Under cross examination by Mark Stewart QC, Mr Keilloh said that he smoked a lot of legal highs at the time and this may have caused him to get mixed up.
He said it was possible the conversation with Higgins never happened and he was getting confused with another incident.
He had originally told police he and Miss Verrall met Higgins on the High Street, but changed his statement – to say it happened at Jackson’s flat – after police told him they could not find any evidence of the meeting on CCTV.
Asked again by advocate depute Ashley Edwards QC if he was sure about the conversation, he said he believed that it did happen.
The trial before Lady Rae continues.
