A co-accused in a High Court murder trial told her mum she was still in love with the ex she allegedly killed, just hours on from the grim find of his beaten and burned body in an Angus nature reserve car park.
As jurors heard Tasmin Glass has given birth to a baby boy since being charged with Arbroath oil worker Steven Donaldson’s murder, her mother Wendy told an Edinburgh High Court jury there was “no way” her only child was involved in the crime.
Mrs Glass, 54, said that as rumours spread through Kirriemuir she asked her daughter in the days after the Kinnordy discovery if she had played any part in the 27-year-old oil worker’s death.
“She said no – we believed her and we still do,” freelance magazine journalist Mrs Glass told the sixth day of the Edinburgh trial against her daughter and Kirriemuir co-accused Steven Dickie and Callum Davidson.
From the witness box, the mum said she was currently looking after Glass’s 13-week old son, after her then 19-year-old daughter confirmed she was expecting in the days after Mr Donaldson was found.
Mrs Glass told the trial she had first met the Arbroath man around October or November 2017 when he came to their Kirrie home, and described things between him and Tasmin as “just a normal, happy relationship”.
In winter 2017, Tasmin moved to Glasgow to be nearer the band she was singing in and Mrs Glass said there were then “quite often arguments” between the pair.
“As far as I know it was off by Tasmin’s 19th birthday, which was on March 14,” Mrs Glass said.
“The reason I know that is we went out for Tasmin’s birthday tea and joked about how she didn’t have a boyfriend.
Asked about June 6, the day before Mr Donaldson’s body was found, the witness said her daughter had arrived home at just after 11pm and seemed like “normal Tasmin, very happy”.
She also told the court her husband, who was sleeping upstairs, did not leave their Northmuir home the whole night.
The following morning her daughter sent her a message wishing her parents a happy 30th wedding anniversary.
Around 4.30pm Mrs Glass was contacted by her daughter saying she was in the back of a police car near the road to Kinnordy, because they thought Steven Donaldson’s body had been found there.
On the way to Dundee police headquarters to give a statement, Mrs Glass tried to reassure her daughter the body would not be Steven.
“She said to me she had been supposed to meet Steven at the top of Kirrie Hill, but he wasn’t there.
“She couldn’t understand why he would be at Kinnordy, because as far as she knew he didn’t know where that was.
“She said to me ‘I think I still love him’,” the witness said.
Mrs Glass was also asked about money difficulties Tasmin had become involved in around April and May 2018 and the witness described those as “minor hiccups”.
Advocate depute Ashley Edwards then asked if, in the days following the body discovery, the witness was given information her daughter was pregnant.
The prosecutor asked Mrs Glass: “Did you speak to her?”
“Yes”
And did she confirm that?”
“Yes”, replied Mrs Glass.
Kirrie supermarket shop door confession from accused the day of body find
Alleged Kinnordy killer Callum Davidson made a shop door confession to a man in Kirriemuir town centre, on the evening Steven Donaldson’s body was found, that he had been involved.
Jamie Stewart told the High Court Davidson said a “baseball bat had snapped over the person’s head with one swing” and that he had gone to get rid of weapons at his grandmother’s farm near the Angus town.
From the witness box, 30-year-old Mr Stewart also told jurors 24-year-old Davidson had implicated co-accused Tasmin Glass’s dad in the sequence of events, saying he had been left to “get rid of the boy”.
Mr Stewart told the trial he became aware of a body being found at Loch of Kinnordy on June 7 and had passed the road leading to the nature reserve earlier that day, where Glass was in her car beside a police roadblock with her head “slumped over the steering wheel.”
He and his partner were then at the Co-op in Kirriemuir around 7.30pm that night, when they met Steven Dickie, Callum Davidson and Davidson’s girlfriend Claire Ogston.
Davidson spoke to his then partner, Kirsty Milne, and had “told us he had been there when some of it had happened.”
“He went on to say that there had been a carry on up the park and the baseball bat had snapped over the person’s head with one swing and that he had punched him,” he told the court.
Mr Stewart said Davidson had said he “punched the boy as well and he took the weapons away to get rid of them , and left Tasmin’s dad there to get rid of the boy.”
Questioned by the prosecutor over what he understood Davidson was talking about, the witness replied: “He said they, so I was presuming it was him and Steven (Dickie).
“Did you respond?” said the advocate depute.
“I’m sure I said that’s going to get you years for doing that,” added Mr Stewart.
“I looked at Callum, shook my head and telt my girlfriend ‘Let’s go’.”
Asked how Davidson seemed, he replied: “Pretty calm.”
Cross–examined by advocate Jonathan Crowe, for Davidson, Mr Stewart admitted there was a long history of feuding between his family and Davidson’s.
He denied making up the story to get Davidson into trouble.
“I’m telling you what he said,” the witness told the court.
The trial continues.
THE CHARGES
The charge faced by all three accused alleges that between June 6 and 7 2018 at the Peter Pan playpark, Kirriemuir and Loch of Kinnordy nature reserve car park, they assaulted Mr Donaldson and arranged to meet him with the intention of assaulting him, and once there repeatedly struck him on the head and body with unknown instruments whereby he was incapacitated, and thereafter took him to Loch of Kinnordy where they repeatedly struck him on the head and body with a knife and baseball bat or similar instruments, repeatedly struck him on the head and neck with an unknown heavy bladed instrument and set fire to him and his motor vehicle, registered S73 VED, and murdered him.
Dickie and Davidson face four other charges including one of behaving in a threatening manner towards two men between January 2014 and June 2018 by making threats, following them on foot and in a motor vehicle, presenting weapons and acting in a threatening manner.
They are also charged with putting a kitten in a bag in Main Street, Lochore, Fife on an occasion between February 1 and May 31 2017, swinging the bag about and punching and kicking the kitten; behaving in a threatening manner towards a man in St Malcolm’s Wynd, Kirriemuir and elsewhere between December 1 2017 and February 28 2018 by following him on foot and in a vehicle, and threatening him with weapons.
Both also deny following and staring at a woman and kicking her car in Kirriemuir between August 1 2017 and April 31 2018.
Davidson faces a further charge of assaulting a man between June 1 2017 and December 31 2017 at a house in Glengate, Kirriemuir by pushing him to the floor and threatening to punch him.
Dickie is also accused of assaulting a woman at the Ogilvy Arms pub in Kirriemuir between February 1 and 28 last year by seizing her by the wrist and neck and threatening her with violence.
