The turning point in the Alice Farquharson murder inquiry came when a key test result came back, police have revealed.
Her husband – Keith Farquharson – made a frantic 999 call claiming he heard a noise while in the shower and came out to find his wife stricken – but his web of lies quickly untangled.
The court heard officers initially treated the death as non-suspicious and that the home was to be returned to the family.
But one officer, Insp Chris Kerr, disagreed and called for a postmortem examination.
Det Insp Gary Winter, who worked on the case, told the Evening Express a pathologist report was then carried out.
He said: “Homicides in a domestic setting are perhaps the most difficult and challenging crime scenes for police to deal with.
“At the time, you know there are a number of natural ways bereaved people react to the death of their loved one and so it is hard to read too much into it.
“Farquharson said he had no knowledge of it – but the pathology test results were completely at odds with that account and he was arrested within 24 hours.”
Later on, Farquharson changed his story and said he had struggled with his wife but it was an accident.
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Det Insp Winter said: “I’m struggling to comprehend how he arrived at that version of events.
“We might never know the truth in terms of how much he said about the struggle was truthful.”
Alice had stood by her husband despite him cheating on her and once being demoted in his job as a police officer for sending a pornographic poem to a female colleague.
He had flings with two women in 2018 and his wife had suspicions he was seeing another woman shortly before she was killed.
She did online searches for a woman he had seen and also did web searches indicating she wanted to move to Shetland.
Farquharson admitted his wife did not trust him and said she had asked him moments before the struggle: “Do you love me?”
In court, he tried to explain why he lied to police with his shower story.
He said: “I continued with the lie because I was in a state of shock.
“I felt guilty and did not want my family to know.”
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