A Fife mother’s “blue-eyed boy” has been sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of her murder.
A jury today took only an hour to unanimously decide Ross Taggart hid Carol Anne Taggart’s body under a caravan after strangling her to death in their Dunfermline home following an argument last December.
The callous killer enjoyed cocktails and a cinema trip in Edinburgh paid with his mother’s credit card just hours after driving her body, which was wrapped in bedding from their home, to her caravan in Kinghorn’s Pettycur Bay.
He later dragged the body to a neighbouring vacant caravan and hid it under the stairs, where it was found during a police search three weeks later.
The 31-year-old always insisted that Carol Taggart had walked out of their Dunfermline home following an argument on December 21 and driven off.
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But a string of her family and friends told the trial it was out of character and “impossible” for the 54-year-old to have both stormed out of her own house and left the mobile phone that was “glued to her ear.”
Advocate depute Iain McSporran told the jury: “Ross Taggart is a liar start to finish and will only tell you what he thinks will forward the story he has concocted.For further coverage and reaction, see Thursday’s Courier“The inevitable and irresistible conclusion I ask you to reach is that Ross Taggart murdered his mother.
“It’s a rare enough crime made all the more monstrous by the contemptuous and deliberate movement of her body and the utterly casual and cruel indifference to her family and friends.”
Taggart had denied killing his mother at her home in Dunfermline’s Hill of St Margaret by repeatedly striking her on the head and strangling her.
He was jailed for life and told he will serve a minimum of 18 years in prison.See also: Judge’s full sentencing statement Video: Family ‘devastated’ Background reports Carol Anne Taggart first reported missing