It could so easily have been the perfect murder. Never had Robert Wilson needed his genius for deception more than when he dialled 999 at 6.15pm on December 1 last year.
For eight-and-a-half minutes, his voice trembling with emotion, Wilson struggled to describe the horrific scene before him in the barn at Kirkandrews-on-Eden:
Operator: Ambulance, emergency.
Wilson: I’ve run over my wife.
Operator: What’s the problem there? Tell me exactly what’s happened.
Wilson: I’ve run over my wife. We’ve been feeding the cows. One of the cows must have knocked her and I’ve run over her.
Operator: You’ve run over your wife yes? In a tractor?
Wilson: On a tractor
Operator: Are you with the patient?
Wilson: Yes. Can I please drag her out of the way of the cows because they are going to stand on her?
Operator: Yes you can you do that.
Wilson: She’s all squashed.
Operator: Is she conscious?
Wilson: You can’t even see her – she’s squashed.
Operator: Did you see what happened?
Wilson: I was on the tractor. She’s not moving.
Operator: She’s not moving?
Wilson: Not at all. I dragged her out of the way of the cows.
Operator: Where is she now?
Wilson: I grabbed her and pulled her out of the way of the cattle.
Operator: You think your wife is beyond help?
Wilson: There’s nothing moving at all.
(To hear the 999 call in full, go to this story)
Throughout his trial, that was the story Wilson told the prosecution as they battled to prove that what happened in that barn was no accident.
Their theory was simple: Wilson was leading a double life, that of the ideal husband and that of a cheating husband, who was planning a new life with his secret lover.
But detectives investigating the case had to do without the one piece of evidence that is usually central to any murder inquiry: a body.
On the night of his wife’s death, Wilson created the perfect cover for his crime.
Even for the experienced 999 crews, and police officers who went to The Croft that stormy December night, it must have been appalling scene.
Sprawled on the manure covered barn floor was the body of Jane Wilson, her head crushed so horribly she was beyond recognition.
She was being cradled by Wilson, her “ loving” husband, his world shattered by his own inattention as he drove the tractor into the barn.
Neighbours saw Bob and Jane as “the perfect couple,” in love and planning a happy retirement in France.
On the night, Wilson played his part perfectly: the role of a broken man, a bereft husband, beyond consolation.
Detective sergeant Peter Proud, an officer with 24 years experience who has investigated numerous murders, saw no grounds for suspicion.
“The circumstances seemed to fit the information I had been given,” he said later.
Thus it was that the barn, though photographed, was never treated as a crime scene, and so never subjected to the kind of forensic detailed examination that entails.
Wilson’s luck continued to hold as he got permission to have his wife cremated, a mere five days later after a routine post mortem at Carlisle’s Cumberland Infirmary.
From that moment, detectives were robbed of the physical evidence they needed to show what had really happened to Jane Wilson.
It was 18 days after the funeral service, on Christmas Eve, that Robert Wilson’s luck began to change.
He would probably never have come to trial had it not been for a chance discovery by his stepchildren Sharon and Lee Kennedy, Jane’s adult children from a previous marriage.
They’d gone to The Croft to pick up a vase and a jumper, presents their mother had bought for their gran.
By a stroke of luck, Wilson was away at the time.
A farm worker gave them a key to the farm, and told them to help themselves.
Inside, memories of their dead mother flooded back as they looked at sympathy cards sent to the farm.
They went upstairs to get the presents from Bob and Jane’s bedroom.
It was a split-second decision, nothing more than a glance across the room, when Sharon spotted the card by the bed, assuming it was yet another sympathy card.
Looking closer, she realised it was a Christmas card.
Inside it, Sharon read the six simply hand-written words that were to change everything: Merry Christmas, all my love Kathy.”
Some people might have shrugged it off, but Sharon and Lee sensed something terrible may have happened.
Their suspicions aroused, they checked out the room and found more affectionate cards – including a Valentine’s card, all to Bob and all from the mysterious Kathy.
Sharon had the presence of mind to scan the cards into a computer so they could take copies away – documents they later took to retired detective inspector Bob Lindsay. He told them to contact the police immediately.
Through their actions at the farm, Jane Wilson’s children triggered a chain of events that put Wilson in the dock at Carlisle Crown Court.
Even so, detectives faced a huge mountain of work as they searched for evidence.
First, in painstaking detail, they built up a picture of his two lives, one with the wife who adored him, the other with his mistress.
As they spoke to Kathy McNeil, the 48-year-old barmaid he met on the Costa del Sol, they discovered the true Robert Wilson, a pathological liar whose lies were on a monumental scale.
Like so many people, Mrs McNeil was taken in by her lover’s lies. After all, what man would tell you his wife had died of cancer when she was alive and well at the family home?
What man would invent the story of a childhood sweetheart whose life was cut short by a brain tumour?
What man would fob you off by dreaming up the gruesome death of an aunt and uncle, and claim falsely that he’d been asked to dig the graves?
Robert Wilson told all of these lies to Kathy McNeil, the court was told.
But his deception went far beyond his need to cover up his sexual adventures: Wilson lied easily to his colleagues at Story Rail, claiming he had lung cancer.
But the detectives knew that they needed more to show that Wilson was lying about how his wife died.
They needed to prove he had a motive for murder.
During the trial, prosecutor Brian Cummings worked with witnesses to build up a detailed picture of just how Wilson would benefit from the sudden death of Jane.
First, police had to prove that Wilson’s relationship with Kathy McNeil was not what he had claimed: a casual fling all about sex.
Wilson fought hard to give that impression, saying in one police interview: “Kathy was good in a physical way. But as to being a couple, we had nothing in common.
“I was down to earth, and liked my animals and the farm and she liked her expensive clothes and going out to posh places. We hardly had a thing in common. The only thing we had in common was the physical thing.
“She wouldn’t be happy on a farm in the middle of nowhere, with horses, and old togs. “Everything had to be designer clothes. I was referred to as a bit of rough.”
But the evidence strongly suggested that Wilson was more serious about the new woman in his life.
He spent a fortune on her, phoning her every day, treating her to expensive meals in posh restaurants, even helping to pay for her divorce.
More tellingly, Wilson borrowed £15,000 so he could take her on a tropical holiday to the Maldives a few months before his wife died.
Incredibly, in court, he claimed that Jane had refused the trip – costing about the same as her annual salary as a post-woman – because she had wanted to compete in a horse show in Langholm.
Yet more lies, the jury was later to decide.
Equally compelling was Kathy McNeil’s evidence.
“Sometimes it was flattery, sometimes I felt there was a little bit of control there.”
Police also had to show Wilson was not the adoring husband he claimed to be.
Prosecuting QC Brian Cummings made the point powerfully as he confronted Wilson over his behaviour in the four weeks after Jane died.
Twice in that month, the farmer slept with other women in his marital bed, just feed from where his late wife’s wedding dress hung in the bedroom wardrobe.
The first time, on December 12, he was with Kathy McNeil during a visit to The Croft.
The second time, on New Year’s Eve, it was with farm hand Michelle Dodd.
Mr Cummings asked: “How does this square with having true feelings for your wife – having sex with another woman in her bed, less than two weeks after you killed her?” As ever, Wilson had an answer. “That was how I got my comfort,” he said.
Police also found strong evidence that Wilson was motivated by greed.
With mounting debts, approaching £300,000 he had developed a taste for exotic living – foreign travel, post restaurants, a costly race horse, Mr Cummings told the murder jury.
His estate would have been worth just £190,000 if he had divorced Jane Wilson.
With her dead, he was able to claim life insurance policies – including one taken out just two months before his wife died – making his estate worth around £910,000.
The final, and biggest hurdle for the prosecution, was the lack of direct physical evidence they had to prove what happened to Jane Wilson on the night she died.
There ample evidence to prove him a liar and a sexual predator, but as his defence QC Joanna Greenberg pointed out neither of those things made him a murderer.
It was this aspect of the case that needed the mind of a forensic pathologist.
In Home Office pathologist Alison Armour, police found the perfect ally: a woman whose expertise, gleaned over a career spanning 21 years, who personally took part in a reconstruction of the tractor “accident” to test Wilson’s story.
From her came the opinion that may have dealt a fatal blow to Wilson’s case.
Noticing the lack of blood in the barn, Dr Armour said she believed Jane Wilson was already dead when her body and head were crushed by her husband’s tractor.
The prosecution expert witness, Dr Charles Wilson, challenged that opinion.
There was a suggestion that much of Jane Wilson’s spilt blood may have been hidden in the photos of the scene, hidden beneath manure and straw.
For the jury of six men and six women, it was Dr Armour’s evidence that won the day. After nearly four weeks, they gave their solemn decision: Wilson had murdered his wife.
Only Wilson knows what really happened that night. Jane Wilson’s sister and children can only speculate about how Jane died.
After weeks of interviews and investigation, detectives felt sure they knew why Jane Wilson had died.
It was the timing of Kathy McNeil’s first planned visit to The Croft that gave them an explanation of why he killed her over that weekend.
For 14 months, he’d successfully kept separate his two lives: that with Jane and that with Kathy McNeil.
But his lover was becoming increasingly persistent: she was determined to see his home in Cumbria.
In the words of prosecuting QC Brian Cummings: “The two halves of his life were on an imminent collision course at that time.
“Jane Wilson died just when the defendant [Robert Wilson] needed her to.”
As he contemplates his inevitable life sentence, his wife’s family can take comfort in the knowledge that for him this turned out not to be the perfect murder.
