The estranged wife of an alleged Inverness murder victim has appeared in court accused of torturing and killing her husband.
Dad-of-three Ross MacGillivray, 36, was found dead at a property on St Ninian Drive on Saturday November 11 last year.
Two men – Craig Hayden, 28, from Alness, and 21-year-old Leon Headey, from Liverpool – appeared in court 11 days later accused of tying up Mr MacGillivray and murdering him.
Now, more than eight months later, Mr MacGillivray’s wife Samantha has also been charged with his murder.
The 32-year-old was arrested in Portsmouth earlier this week and appeared in private at Inverness Sheriff Court today facing a number of charges.
She faces three charges – the first being that on November 9, she assaulted Ross MacGillivray and repeatedly struck him on the head and body to his injury.
Disturbing details of alleged murder
The second charge – murder – alleges that whilst acting with others on November 11 2023 MacGillivray restrained her husband, tied his wrists and ankles together, removed his clothing, poured water over his head, repeatedly punched him on the head and body and kicked and stamped on his head and body.
The charge continues that she and others repeatedly struck him on the head and body with blunt instruments meantime, unknown to the prosecutor, and inflicted blunt force trauma to her husband’s head whereby he was so seriously injured that he died.
It is alleged that the offence was aggravated by a connection with serious organised crime and abuse of her partner.
Charge number three claims that on November 11 2023 at St Ninian Drive and a path next to the Caledonian Canal, she and others, having committed the crime and being conscious of guilt, sprayed surfaces she had touched in the house with a cleaning product, took possession of items she had touched, including wine bottles, cigarette butts and clothing, placed them into bags together with blood-stained clothing worn by the deceased, took them to the path and disposed of them
there.
The charge goes on to accuse her of pretending to police that she had been abducted by two associates, unknown to her, to avoid detection, arrest, and prosecution and she did so with intent to defeat the ends of justice and attempt to defeat the ends of justice.
She made no plea to the charges.
Inverness solicitor Willie Young successfully argued to Sheriff David Harvie that she should be released on bail.
Mr MacGillivray’s body was found in the house in the Dalneigh housing estate shortly after midnight.
Emergency services were called to the scene and an area of the nearby Caledonian Canal was cordoned off.
A heavy police presence was in the estate for several days and police confirmed they were treating his death as murder following the results of a post-mortem.
In a statement released through the force, his family said: “Ross was a loving husband, a doting father, loved by his family and friends and all who met him.”
Craig Hayden, 28, from Alness, and 21-year-old Leon Headey, from Liverpool, appeared in Inverness Sheriff Court on November 20 facing a number of charges.
