The man behind a new prime-time drama about wife killer Malcolm Webster has claimed the story is “more chilling than fiction”.
Jeff Pope, executive producer and head of factual drama for ITV Studios, spoke as the broadcaster prepares to screen The Widower now that Webster’s legal appeal against conviction has concluded.
Webster, 54, is serving a 30-year sentence after being found guilty of murdering his first wife Claire Morris by staging a car crash and then setting fire to it on the Auchenhuive to Tarves road in Aberdeenshire in 1994.
He was also found guilty of the attempted murder of his second wife Felicity Drumm in New Zealand and defrauding and attempting to bigamously marry Simone Banarjee in Oban. Webster had been motivated to financially gain from his crimes against all three women, which he plotted over 13 years.
Mr Pope said: “This is a quite extraordinary story, far more chilling than any fiction. Webster was a banal, almost benign, face of evil. He was so clever at hiding his tracks and presenting a plausible front to his friends, family and colleagues that he was able to do what he did without really attracting suspicion.
“The courage and tenacity of Webster’s second wife Felicity, and his last intended victim Simone, is all that stood between him and potentially more murders.”
The Widower will be filmed in Scotland, New Zealand and Surrey.
Actress Sheridan Smith will play Ms Morris, a nurse who worked alongside her husband at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, at the time of her murder.
They had settled near Oldmeldrum following their marriage at Aberdeen University in September 1993.
In the first months of their marriage, Webster repeatedly drugged his wife as he planned to burn her alive in the couple’s 4×4.
The crash, just eight months after the pair wed, was originally written off as an accident but Webster’s deadly web of deceit unravelled in 2004 after complaints to police about his treatment of Ms Drumm.
Webster, who failed last month to overturn his conviction at the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh, will be played by League of Gentleman star Reece Shearsmith.
Also appearing in the series is Archie Panjabi, who portrays Ms Banarjee and who police believe Webster also planned to kill in order to access her fortune.
Ms Banarjee was a consultant on the series, along with Ms Drumm, who is played on-screen by Kate Fleetwood.
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