Sex offender guilty of fiancee's murder

A convicted sex offender was facing life behind bars last night after being found guilty of murdering his fiancee, dismembering her body and dumping her remains in bags.

Shop worker Alan Cameron, 56, hid Heather Stacey's decomposing body at her Edinburgh flat for more than a year before scattering the parts across the north of the city.

The 44-year-old's severed head was found by a dog walker near a popular footpath on Hogmanay 2008.

Mr Cameron was convicted, after an eight day trial at the High Court in Livingston, of killing the mother of four at her Royston Mains Place home between November 29 and December 11, 2007. The jury also found him guilty of attempting to defeat the ends of justice and of stealing nearly £5,000 over 11 months from his victim's Post Office account. After the verdicts were delivered, it emerged that the killer was jailed for six and a half years in 1995 at the High Court in Glasgow for nine sex offences involving children. He was released in June 1999 and placed on the sex offenders register for life.

The guilty verdicts were greeted with cries of "yes" from onlookers in court.

It may never be known how Mr Cameron, described as a fantasist and a liar, killed his fiancee.

It was suggested he might have murdered her to get her money or because he was jealous of her associations with other men. He embarked on an elaborate scheme to cover his tracks and, when her remains were found, they were so decayed that scientists could not say how she died. As part of that scheme, the killer failed to report Ms Stacey's death and led people to think she was still alive. Cameron then hid her dead body at the flat for 13 months and moved it from room to room. He repeatedly returned to the property to check on the security and would even sleep in the same flat as the rotting body.

He was forced to dispose of her remains when the council moved to repossess the property.

At some point after Ms Stacey died, Mr Cameron made a botched attempt to chop up the body. He eventually pulled her badly decayed limbs apart with his hands.

Mr Cameron then wrapped the body parts and dumped them in secluded areas of Hawthornvale Path, West Granton Road and Granton Crescent.

In the months after her death, he made repeated withdrawals of his victim's money, totalling £4,965. Mr Cameron was arrested in January last year, days after Ms Stacey's severed head was found beside the Hawthornvale Path, Newhaven.

He confessed to hiding the body but claimed his fiancee died when he nipped out to buy chips.

Mr Cameron said he failed to get help when he found her lifeless body because a warrant was already out for his arrest over claims he kicked a dog.

But prosecutors argued that only a murderer could have behaved the way he did.

Judge Lord Matthews deferred sentencing to June 23, when Mr Cameron will be locked up for life.

He told him: "You treated this lady, who was entitled to look towards you for love and support, like so much rubbish."