• 2 months ago
nurses who kill S03E02
Transcript
00:00Nurses and carers, we place our life in their hands. But are we always safe? This is the
00:14series that tells the stories of those who take the lives of the people they're supposed
00:18to care for. A routine call for paramedics. A grisly find. An elderly lady bludgeoned
00:32to death. I felt really sorry for not only Mary, but the family who were going to have
00:38to hear about this. The media quickly on the scene as they hear reports even they find
00:45shocking. Her killer may have been her carer. A woman neighbours simply did not suspect.
00:52They seem to say she was a model citizen because she was acting as a carer for Mary. Had the
00:59woman captured on camera calmly withdrawing cash smashed in the head of somebody she was
01:05supposed to be looking after? And was Sandra Weir about to return to finish off the job?
01:13We need to understand that by this point, Sandra is operating like an animal.
01:43As a paramedic, you get the feeling that you're going to have to deal with a lot of
02:12things. When you're walking up to things, I get that, I do, especially. I get a feeling
02:20that something bad's happened and often it has happened. The paramedic was right to trust
02:29his feelings. News desks correct to dispatch reporters. I got a phone call from a news
02:36editor to say, can you go to Leaven? So as any reporter does, they started driving up.
02:42Straight away, we were off the opinion this was a suspicious death and we should get to the scene.
02:47The drama and majesty of the Firth of Forth on Scotland's east coast offers impressive sights.
02:56It can be easy to forget that alongside the geography and ingenuity that has provided a
03:04passageway to ships and travellers alike for centuries, there are people who go about daily
03:09life in much the same way as those living anywhere. Suffering the ups and downs, troubles and scrapes.
03:16Something Alan McIntyre experienced most working days. So in 2016, then I was a paramedic team
03:29leader working at Leaven Ambulance Station in Fife. Alan patrols a patch which is rich with
03:38open spaces, low on population. The ebbs and flows of life in Leaven is such that he's got
03:45to know a lot of people down the years, hence the sense of shock on the day that he was called to
03:50the home of a woman called Mary Logie. Over 35 years, I've seen a lot of death and devastation
03:57in my job as a paramedic. This one particularly touched me because it was so close and nearby
04:05and some of the people involved in the community, the patients' minds prior to dealing with Mary
04:12Logie. So there was a closeness there about things that had happened.
04:18Mary Logie, 82, a grandmother. A familiar face around the town of Leaven. Everybody says Mary
04:31was a very well-liked person. She was very active in the community. Mary Logie was the sort of old
04:40lady you often come across in your neighbourhood, I suppose. She was a well-loved character locally,
04:45she was described as funny, she was a churchgoer and a member of various societies and things that
04:52went on in the church. Mary had lived in the house for 46 years since the house was first built and
04:59knew everybody in the area and she lived there with her cat who was called Sam and she left the
05:06door open so Sam could come and go freely throughout the day. So that was a clear signal that Mary felt
05:11perfectly safe living where she did. One winter's day with a cold wind whipping across the Forth,
05:19Mary Logie was brutally killed. We were first alerted to Mary Logie's murder on the 5th of
05:27January 2016 when an email arrived from Police Scotland's communication office. Thomas Brown
05:33is a journalist who was soon to be dispatched from Glasgow to cover the developing story of
05:38the day. The email was quite specific, it says that the woman had been named Mary and at the very
05:45top line gave her age as 82 and it told us that she had been found with head injuries in her house.
05:50That set alarm bells ringing with me because it's very unusual for the police to give so much detail
05:57away early on. First on the scene to register that Mary had died had been the paramedic Alan McIntyre.
06:04We'd just checked our vehicle and it was fine and we were ready to go and we got a call to go along to an
06:13elderly female that had fallen and leaving. Pretty routine call for us so we were there within minutes,
06:20parked the ambulance, we knew exactly where to go and when we arrived at the scene and we were met
06:27by three people standing outside the house at Green Gates and Leaven. One female who had a dog
06:36I recall, one gentleman and another elderly female. Mary's flat was a block of four flats with a staircase
06:47that led up from the ground floor to Mary's floor and it was a balcony where there was two front
06:53doors. Mary's house was to the left. What struck me was it appeared to be a very quiet street
06:59and it was a very average street but it seemed to me just a very normal street where there's people
07:04coming and going, there was people going about picking up kids from I assume nurseries and
07:09taking them home and getting on with their business.
07:15A normal street perhaps but something grotesquely abnormal had taken place.
07:23So we walked up towards the house and I said what's happened and the female then said it's an
07:30elderly lady and I think she's fallen. So we entered the house together as we do as a crew
07:38and when we got into the house I could see what is now known to be Mary Logie lying in the living room floor.
07:47I must say there was a substantial amount of blood that made me think this was more than a fall.
07:54So we as paramedics always go into this rescue mode so we then decided that we need to immediately
08:01try and save this woman's life. So we then went to attach one of our defibrillators to the patient
08:10and one of our defibrillators to the patient and then just as we were opening the clothing to see
08:15where we were going to attach these pads there was an awful lot of blood.
08:20I went to the head end of the patient and I was checking
08:24Mary's airway only to find out that there was catastrophic injuries to her head.
08:29One of the three people, the woman with the dog, was called Sandra Weir.
08:34It was she who'd made the original emergency call to paramedics.
08:42Sandra Weir lived next door to Mary Logie. Sandra Weir had some sort of sight problems. In fact she
08:51Sandra Weir had some sort of sight problems. In fact she had a guide dog but there was some
08:58there's some sort of discrepancy around whether or not she actually was entitled to it or whether
09:03she actually needed it. There were stories that she may have been collecting for
09:08blind charities and not passing the money on and things like that.
09:13And as Mary became older I suppose and needed a little bit more help a little bit more support
09:19perhaps naturally she turned to the neighbour next door and the neighbour next door Sandra Weir was
09:25only too happy to to assist and became her unofficial carer really I suppose.
09:33A carer with a bad habit. This is not somebody functioning as a normal human being
09:42on account of a prolonged drug addiction that has taken over not just her life but her very human
09:50identity. Sandra Weir was a drug addict. She'd been addicted to heroin for many years and and had a
10:01habit an ongoing habit which was requiring something like 100, 150 pounds a day to feed.
10:07And nobody except her dealers knew. We we did a little bit of searching. We we got a family tree
10:13to establish who Sandra was and and who her husband was but there was very little
10:20information available to us about who she was or or any kind of major history.
10:27There was certainly nothing to suggest at the time and nobody said anything about any drug issues
10:32which obviously later on transpired to be she was a heroin addict. None of that came out on the street.
10:37Everybody says that she was a very normal woman who cared for Mary.
10:45But those who thought that were wrong and only when the full truth about Sandra Weir was uncovered
10:51would the truth about what had happened to Mary Logie be uncovered.
10:55This was no ordinary day by the Firth of Forth.
11:14Sandra Weir, a secret junkie who turned carer for a woman superficially as an act of kindness,
11:20was always short of money.
11:29The lengths that she went to to feed her drug habit had already cost her dearly.
11:37Sandra had lost her job. She'd formerly worked in a solicitor's office but had lost her job
11:42and Mary knew this and and Sandra was being so kind to her that Mary was in the habit of
11:48slipping her a fiver or a tenner every now and then. So there was some sort of financial
11:53benefit to to Sandra Weir although it wasn't a formalized arrangement.
12:00In a town at the mouth of the River Levenwood was spreading that January day which saw first
12:05the paramedic crew, then police and then journalists arrive in a quiet street in the town.
12:11Mary Logie was dead and she had not died from a fall. This was no accident.
12:18We then got into a little panic deciding what's happened here and my colleague pointed out a
12:26rolling pin lying next to on the couch next to Mary. It was then that we said something bad's
12:34happened here. We look around and I can see that there was lots of blood and lots of blood that
12:39looked as though it had been cleaned up like a bad wine stain that had been cleaned and then
12:46fresh blood on top of it. Outside the woman with the dog, the part-time carer called Sandra Weir.
12:55Paramedics thought on receiving the emergency call that Mary Logie had been the victim of a fall.
13:01They soon discovered how wrong they were. I've been in the ambulance service for
13:06at that time 35 years. I've never seen anything as bad as this. These injuries were horrific
13:14and what looked like a defenceless old lady. Particularly I had difficulty dealing with it
13:20and I remember saying to my colleague, are you okay? The things that we're saying.
13:24We nodded to each other saying yeah I'm fine but I've never seen such devastation
13:34in my 35 years career in the ambulance service.
13:37The abandoned rolling pin nearby was soaked with blood. It would still need to be proved for certain
13:43but it appeared that had been the murder weapon. The details of events were being added to the
13:49timeline. When I got back to my car I phoned my news editor who was in Glasgow to tell him that
13:55the lines off that we had had about the murder weapon had been stood up by the DCS.
14:04Stood up by the DCI and there was a silence on the phone for about two to three seconds.
14:11I think that was myself and the news editor. The news properly sinking in about how brutal
14:16this attack's been on a defenceless 82 year old woman in her home.
14:22So we decided then that we need to make this scene safe and we need to make sure we're safe.
14:28So we had a look around the house to see if there was anybody in the house that could have done this
14:33to this poor lady. There was real concern on the part of the paramedic team that the killer was
14:39still in the house. Nervously they checked. Nobody was in the house so I made my way to the the door
14:47and I can hear lots of people talking outside very loudly. So I opened the door and there were
14:54three people there. Three people were a male, a lady and an elderly lady and they were all talking
15:03at the same time. So I remember shouting very loudly, stop what's happened here.
15:11At that point locals still thought there had been no more than an accident.
15:16From what I recall somebody said to me, oh she's fell, the lady's fell. I said don't come in here
15:22then just stay at the door and wait until I need you. I went back into the house and I spoke to
15:30my colleague and said yeah something bad's happened here, let's get the police. So we
15:36pressed and activated our emergency button on our radio and asked for the police to attend.
15:45Police arrived within five minutes. Mary's home was officially declared a murder scene.
15:51After about 10 minutes of watching the forensic officers carrying out their investigation at
15:55Mary's property I then started knocking on some of the neighbour's doors to ascertain if anybody
16:01had seen anything or could tell us anything that would help us with our story. The first door I
16:05knocked on I was met with an elderly woman who must have been in her 90s who was in floods of
16:10tears as she had heard the news that her friend had been brutally murdered in her home and she
16:16was panicking that there was a serial killer on the loose around leaving and that put us in a
16:23state of fear and alarm for our own safety. That was a common theme amongst most doors that we
16:27knocked on that day. People felt an uneasiness about what had happened and they all told us
16:33that the area was very safe and there was never any issues with anybody in and around the area
16:38and suddenly one of their own community members had been bludgeoned to death in their house.
16:47As murmurings of grave discontent spread around leaving Sandra Weir was still in the vicinity of
16:52Mary Logie's home. Was she showing signs of agitation? No, she was playing a game on her phone.
17:01While everyone is there sort of worrying and panicking almost as to what's happened to Mary
17:09Sandra Weir sits down and starts playing Candy Crush on her phone
17:12really completely indifferent to what's gone on. We need to recognise that this was somebody
17:18for whom reality was a very different thing than it is for us. Weir was never free from the effects
17:25of drugs. Who could know where her mind and emotions were as she played the game? It's
17:31horrifying to hear how nonchalant she appears to be playing Candy Crush in the immediate aftermath.
17:38What it tells me is something about the type of killer that she is. Sometimes murderers get
17:46a lot of sadistic excitement, a lot of pleasure from the actual act of murdering
17:53and in the immediate aftermath they are therefore in a heightened state of arousal.
17:58They're not able to sit and play on a video game, a computer game. The fact that Sandra was able to
18:04do that tells me that this is a murder that came out of a complete sense of emptiness and
18:11meaninglessness and senselessness to life that I think was the psychological product of years and
18:17years of drug addiction. Soon after the first police officers had arrived at the murder scene
18:23Sandra appears to have left. Police were looking for her. Meanwhile journalists hunted for angles
18:29on the story. After about five or six hours of standing in the street and speaking to folk
18:36people were beginning to come and lay flowers and I spoke to one woman who had attended with
18:40her daughter who knew Mary through the church and both her and her daughter who were maybe
18:4510 years of age were both crying at the thought of Mary being killed in the way she was.
18:54The community was in shock as Thomas Brown delved so a name came up in his research.
19:01Had he spoken, people asked, to Mary's de facto carer? I spoke to various neighbours on the day
19:07who said that Sandra was a carer and she helped Mary and she was very nice. No one had any real
19:14bad word to say about Sandra. They said she was partially sighted and had a guide dog.
19:19No one said a bad word about her either.
19:24The paramedics were still on hand to see if they could do anything. Soon they were told to leave.
19:29They said look we're trying to protect the scene here so can you just leave your equipment lying
19:34and we left everything as it was and then we decided then we went back out to our ambulance.
19:44Detectives wanted to talk to Sandra Weir. She after all was a regular in Mary's home
19:50and it was she who had found Mary before calling paramedics.
19:56They want to take the forensic evidence as best they can
20:00and so they go to Sandra Weir who's by this time left and said can we have your clothing
20:06that you're wearing today and she said of course you can and my shoes here you are but she gives
20:11them the wrong clothes. She doesn't dare give them the clothes she was really wearing because
20:15she knows the likelihood is there will be blood spatter and various other trace evidence that
20:21would help to prove what she'd actually done. It was still day one January the 5th 2016.
20:28Did detectives already have a suspect in mind for murder?
20:49After handing over clothes to detectives Sandra and her husband Alex Weir seemed to have left
20:54leaving. The van used by Mr Weir was no longer parked on the street. It seemed odd to a lot in
21:01the community. It seemed odd to Thomas Brown. We had asked police about the next door neighbour
21:07the Weir's and police had nothing to they wouldn't make any comment on that at the time
21:12and that again was telling to us.
21:16We already had an instinct just with the way the cordon was set up that police were not looking
21:21that far afield to find the evidence they needed to find Mary's killer.
21:26It was very clear that it was very close to that block.
21:32As their inquiries continued at pace the police discovered a lot about Sandra Weir.
21:37How she was visually impaired, raised money for training dogs for the blind one of which she
21:43appeared to have. They also uncovered her secret a drug addiction.
21:50She felt that it did need to be hidden which meant that the only way that she could operate
21:57within the world was deceptively because she because she was a drug addict she was
22:03within the world was deceptively because she because she felt she had to hide this this only
22:10thing that she cared about this only only thing that that drove her on a minute by minute basis
22:16because she had to hide that it meant that every communication with everybody else was based upon
22:22that had to be deceptive essentially and she learnt how to effectively deceive people.
22:31The effectiveness with which she deceives people almost has an instinctual quality to it
22:38and she knows instinctively that if she presents herself as a victim that she's not going to be
22:45questioned it's just socially unacceptable for us to question somebody with a disability about the
22:52the veracity of that disability and she knew that instinctively so this would be the most effective
22:59deceptive strategy so that's someone she adopts.
23:09The people in Leven who knew Mary Logie and Sandra Weir thought that this was a relationship
23:13of a lady growing elderly and infirm being helped by an ad hoc carer. That was all part of a story
23:21concocted by Sandra Weir to both fuel and cover up her addiction to heroin. Motivation for caring
23:28for Mary was about an opportunity for Sandra Weir to take advantage of Mrs Logie. So Mary was not
23:36physically mobile she would therefore have lost a huge amount of her muscle mass of her muscle
23:42strength and that becomes a vicious cycle because if you're not moving your lungs aren't exercising
23:49so your lungs are weaker. Everything about her was weak and frail by this stage and while Sandra
23:56Weir may well have been a drug addict which meant that she wasn't in physically good shape
24:02she was decades younger and stronger than Mary. Mary would have had no idea of the danger that
24:10she put herself in when she started relying increasingly on this apparently presentable
24:19helper. One who knew where Mary kept her money and in which accounts.
24:27Every time Sandra needed to pay off her debt Mary unwittingly paid.
24:34Mrs Logie began to notice the mystery of her dwindling account.
24:40As Sandra was helping herself to more and more of Mary's money
24:44the effect that it had on Mary was beyond just the loss of money because Mary had always been
24:50used to running her own finances and knowing how much she'd spent and what she'd spent it on
24:56and when she saw that money had gone and she didn't remember spending it it caused her to
25:03think that she was losing her mind that she'd forget was forgetting having spent money on
25:08things and why did I why did I spend that money where's it gone rather than perhaps look for the
25:14obvious and suspect well Sandra Weir must be stealing it. Mary blames herself and she gets
25:19herself into quite a state thinking I you know I'm going I'm going mad here.
25:26The deceitful drug adult Sandra Weir had been stealing for years.
25:33Sandra was working in a lawyer's office and we weren't clear what her job was in this office but
25:38she worked there for a period of time and they became suspicious when money started going missing
25:44from their office and very quickly the finger was pointed in Sandra's direction
25:51and they sacked her. They didn't inform the police because they had no hard evidence that it was
25:55definitely Sandra. As well as not knowing that Sandra was this drug addict with an expensive
26:03habit Mary also didn't know that Sandra had been sacked from her job at the solicitor's office
26:09and the reason for that sacking was that she'd been stealing money to feed her drug habit and
26:15it's perhaps not surprising perhaps inevitable that given access to Mary's bank and to her
26:21funds Sandra started helping herself because it was the only way she could feed her addiction.
26:26And as Mary grew more frail so Weir became bolder. There was distinct escalation in the amount that
26:34she was taking and in 2014 she had the job of settling a vet's bill for for Mary and she used
26:44the card to withdraw £1,500 and you know this was just such a huge sum of money by Mary's standards
26:51and of course it became noticed and Sandra confessed to having taken the money but said that she'd
26:58she'd done it by mistake that she'd used Mary's card instead of her own and Mary being trusting
27:04being a Christian forgave her. I said yeah it's okay it doesn't matter and and things really
27:10carried on as normal. Sandra Weir went to her parents and said look I need to pay this money back and
27:16Sandra Weir went to her parents and said look I need to pay this money back and
27:20they helped her they gave her some money to go towards paying Mary back
27:25again not knowing that the whole reason for this theft and the reason for Sandra needing money
27:31was her addiction to heroin. Weir, a cool customer who could play candy crush as her
27:38murdered victim lay a few feet away was just too good at covering up her addiction for people to
27:44know. What we didn't know was that Sandra was a heroin addict that had never come out anywhere
27:52nobody had spoken about that the neighbours certainly around there knew nothing about that
27:57they they seemed to say she was a model citizen who who got on with life and was they in their
28:03opinion that she was helping Mary because she was acting as a carer for Mary and did lots of things
28:09for her. It was during the trial that came out she had a heroin habit and because of an element
28:17of theft which the police had always said from the beginning that there was an element of
28:20housebreaking burglary in this this incident they didn't realise I think that it was it was Sandra
28:27who was doing it who was taking things to feed her drug habit that shocked us because no one had
28:34no one was aware of that neighbours were unaware of that and I suspect Mary's family would have
28:39been totally unaware of that. Her husband with whom she lived had absolutely no idea he had no
28:46idea she was using heroin no idea she was addicted and so had no idea that she was having to steal
28:53to support her habit and you wonder how good Sandra Weir must have been at concealing things
29:02and about acting if she's able to keep something like that from the man with whom she lives.
29:09Matters inside Mary's home were coming to a head for Sandra Weir.
29:16A relative of Mrs Logie had noticed that Christmas cards containing money sent to Mary
29:21were missing. Feeling under suspicion but still needing cash for drugs Weir looks to others.
29:30After these Christmas cards go missing which is 2015 on Boxing Day Sandra Weir takes out a loan
29:37from her friend she's you know I'm struggling I need some money can you lend me some money quickly
29:44and I promise I'll pay you it back on the 5th of January. So there was this this kind of
29:50deadline for Sandra Weir to get this money back to her good friend within the next sort of week
29:56or 10 days. There was no way she could repay her debt. It would later be suggested that Mary had
30:06raised the issue of the missing money with Sandra if so that added to the danger she was in.
30:12Mary trying to tackle Sandra on the basis of morality on the basis of principle on right and
30:19wrong trying to be upfront about it had no chance because Sandra was operating from
30:26instinct from an a primal basis morality and principle made no sense to Sandra.
30:36The moment she was challenged she was going to attack.
30:48On January the 5th which was the repayment day Sandra Weir was due to pay 150 pounds back to
30:54her friend. Mary Logie is meant to be going to the bakery to pick up her usual order
31:00and she doesn't arrive. She's also meant to go and see a friend of hers in hospital
31:05and she doesn't turn up for that either. So something has clearly happened. Nobody knows
31:10what's gone wrong. Why is Mary ill? Why is she not reliable? Mary with her routine who
31:18always does what she says two things that she's not turned up for something must be amiss.
31:23She could not turn up for her meetings because she was dead.
31:28Sandra Weir had taken a rolling pin from Mary's kitchen and then lashed out.
31:36About nine o'clock on the morning of the 5th of January
31:38for some reason Sandra Weir has attacked Mary Logie.
31:45We don't know what was going on. We don't know what was going on.
31:49We don't know what was going on in Sandra Weir's mind. What we do know is that her only aim
31:55was getting enough money to get her next fix of drugs.
32:01Whether Mary found her possibly pilfering, confronted her or had confronted her about
32:08the money going missing we don't know. What we do know is that Sandra Weir attacked Mary
32:14with her own rolling pin and she bludgeoned her and beat her about the head.
32:21So she may have intended to kill Mary when she launched that frenzied attack on an essentially
32:28completely helpless and defenceless woman. But if she didn't intend to kill her she certainly
32:37didn't care whether she did or not.
32:44It's not thought that Mrs Logie died. Instead she lay motionless, helpless.
32:51What the trial was told was that there was an attack in the morning about 8am where Mary was
32:57attacked in her house and she was possibly attacked over a period of time, two hours
33:03possibly. It became clear during the trial and it was confirmed that the murder weapon was a rolling
33:09pin and Sandra Weir left her lying in her house, still alive again is what was told in court. She
33:19would have still been alive at that point and Sandra got on with her day. Sandra Weir left
33:25the house. She went back to her house and got her dog and walked into the town and she went
33:32to the pharmacy, picked up prescriptions which was a regular thing she would do.
33:39Took some money out of the bank and got on with her day.
33:45Later she returned and prosecutors would claim she then attacked Mary again.
33:52She returned later on that day to carry out a second attack on Mary to kill her.
33:59After having bludgeoned Mary 31 times with a rolling pin,
34:03coming back and then finishing off the job is horrifying.
34:09It's something that it's difficult to explain from any kind of human perspective. It again
34:15persuades me of the primal state that Sandra is operating in, that she's not operating as a human
34:24being, as a civilised human being. In the animal kingdom when your prey is weakened you don't
34:30respond empathetically, you don't let them off, you take advantage of the fact that they're
34:35weakened, you finish it off and I think that's what's happened here. We need to understand that
34:43by this point Sandra is operating like an animal.
34:49Would detectives get the evidence needed to see that Sandra Weir was convicted?
35:06A combination of evidence pointed to what had happened to Mary Logie.
35:15Could the case against Cara Sandra Weir be proved? Was the killer who played Candy Crush about to
35:21be convicted of murder? Early in the investigation it appeared detectives had suspect number one in
35:27their sights. During the course of the second day a second team of forensic officers turned up
35:35and there was about five or six in that team and they all went up the stairs and went to the right
35:40towards the Weir's property and they spent about three to four hours coming and going from the
35:47Weir's house and they took in boxes and cameras. It was clear that there was evidence in that
35:53property that was linked to Mary's death. They'd obviously found something inside the house
36:00and I suspect that would be clothing from the time or any other evidence that had been left behind.
36:04And they removed about 15 to 20 evidence bags full of items from Sandra's property.
36:14Now under arrest Weir was denying murder. Mrs Logie must have fallen down the stairs she said.
36:23Sandra Weir attempted to claim that Mary had died by falling down the stairs.
36:30Now she may well have believed that the police were stupid enough not to work out the fundamental
36:37difference between the appearances of an attack with a rolling pin with its curved edges and a
36:44fall down the stairs where she may have hit her head where it would have been a very sharp
36:49right angle distinction. We also would have seen very very different injuries. So Mary's injuries
36:58were very much consistent with her putting up her hands desperately in an attempt to defend herself.
37:08As I was checking Mary for injuries to get give myself an idea how catastrophic her injuries were
37:16particularly noted that Mary's hands were quite badly swollen which suggested to me that
37:24these were defensive wounds. Weir was now powerless to stop investigators uncovering
37:31her drug-induced drive to get cash from wherever she could. She was seen using Mary's bank card at
37:38a cash dispenser. They discovered how she had used a guide dog to convince charitable passers-by in
37:45the community to donate unwittingly to Sandra and not the guide dogs for the blind. As the
37:52information progressed throughout the paper people were pointing towards Sandra Weir just
37:59because of some of the stuff that had been in the news which was you know the CCTV footage,
38:07the stuff surrounding the guide dogs. These are all things that members of the public would see
38:14so yeah I suppose that the finger was pointing at Sandra Weir. Obviously this was the second
38:22day of the story so news about how she died what had happened when she died was all out there people
38:29people were aware of it and were absolutely shocked and horrified about what they were hearing on the
38:33news reading in the newspapers and reading on news websites and there was then an anger when people
38:40again realised that Sandra Weir was somehow implicated. People didn't know what she had done.
38:47The evidence was simply too compelling. The motive to kill was to cover up her theft from Mary.
38:53The method was savage befitting someone whose drug use had desensitised her to what was actually
38:59going on in the real world that she saw through a haze of heroin. When all this evidence was put
39:05together there was a pretty compelling case that Sandra had murdered Mary to be put to a jury and
39:11and there was further evidence. There was a CCTV footage from the 3rd of January which showed Sandra Weir using an ATM machine to withdraw money from Mary's account interestingly without her guide dog on that occasion and a financial investigator looked at the account and tried to work out where the money had gone and how much had been spent properly and how much had been sold and she came to the conclusion over just three months that Sandra had committed suicide.
39:42November 2015 to January 2016 nearly three and a half thousand pounds had been stolen
39:49by Sandra Weir directly from Mary's bank accounts.
39:55The case was put to a jury in Court in Edinburgh where Sandra Weir faced a murder charge.
40:01The court case was in the High Court in Edinburgh. It was strange to be in that setting
40:06because as a paramedic nobody actually prepares you to go to court and be cross-examined by
40:15prosecution and defence lawyers.
40:21A defence lawyer questioned me about the stain I saw because in my statement I did point out that
40:27there was lots of blood and lots of blood that looked as though it had been cleaned up like a bad
40:32wine stain. So I was questioned in the court what that stain looked like.
40:39I did glance across to Sandra Weir a few times and she didn't appear to be moved by
40:43anything that was being said.
40:49So this rather compelling case was put to the jury and unusually it took them less than an
40:56hour, 55 minutes, to come back with a verdict that they were satisfied that Sandra Weir had
41:02killed Mary Logie and Sandra Weir was rightly sentenced to 21 years in prison for the murder.
41:16Back in Leven a community stunned with the knowledge that a carer who had volunteered
41:21to nurse an elderly lady growing frail would instead systematically rob her and then brutally
41:28murder her. Regulars who saw Mary in church gathered to mourn. During the service that
41:37Reverend Nisbet took he says that we have to understand that in life sometimes really bad
41:42things happen and that is definitely something which is very true of this case in particular.
41:48You know a woman, totally innocent woman, just getting on with her life at late stages of her
41:53life suddenly being struck down the way she was by Sandra Weir and battered to death. I think
42:00that's something that will certainly be one of the stories that will live with me for as long as I
42:04continue doing this job and it's the details of Mary's death is certainly something I remember
42:10vividly. Something as if it just happened yesterday because it was such a shocking crime that had
42:16happened in a street that was very quiet. Attacks on older people in their houses like this are very
42:24few and far between and when they do happen they're horrific and a lot of the time there's
42:29never any real understanding or reason as to why these happen but unfortunately they do.
42:38People in Levenmouth were quite horrified at this because I think a defenseless old lady in the
42:44house and the stuff that was getting printed in the papers was kind of touching the community so
42:50everybody was quite touched by what was going on. I would say they'd be devastated at what
42:55they were hearing and it certainly was distressing for me and I'm sure the family too.
43:03Distressing for an entire community, Levenmouth Scotland took the murder of Mary Logie at her
43:08carer's hands badly. In my career in news for the last six years I have covered over 100 murders
43:17and Mary Logie's murder is definitely within the top five ones which I will remember for
43:21the rest of my career. It was sickening, horrific and must have been terrifying for Mary.
43:31There was an elderly lady who said to me that she's not actually left her house alone
43:37since the Mary Logie murder because she doesn't feel safe in the community.
43:42Sandra Weir will not be eligible for parole until the year 2037.
44:06you