Murdered Arlenes sister hopeful new Suzannes law will force killer to reveal where he left body

The sister of a woman murdered by her husband almost 30 years ago is hopeful her killer will finally reveal where her body is after ministers agreed to back Suzanne’s Law.

Carol Gillies and her elderly parents have never been able to give mother-of-two Arlene Fraser a proper funeral as her killer refuses to tell them what he did with her body.

But she feels there is a chance of closure after the SNP this week backed a Scottish Conservative amendment to a new justice Bill for ‘Suzanne’s Law’, which would mean killers are forced to reveal the location of their victim’s remains or face spending the rest of their lives in jail.

Mrs Fraser’s disappearance in 1998 sparked one of Scotland’s biggest missing person investigations and her husband Nat Fraser is currently serving a life sentence for her murder after he was twice convicted of killing her, in 2003 and again in 2012.

He is due for parole in 2029 but has never revealed what he did with her body.

Mrs Gillies says she feels a ‘responsibility’ to find her sister and ‘bring her home’ and feels progress on Suzanne’s Law, named after Edinburgh bookkeeper Suzanne Pilley, whose body has not been found after she was killed by her former lover, David Gilroy, in 2010, has given them an ‘opening for us to move forward’.

The 62-year-old said: ‘This is going to affect us for the rest of our lives. It’s not right that if his behaviour in prison is very good he gets out and gets to go on leading his life - where does that leave Arlene?

‘Although she is dead, she still has her own human right to be found.

Arlene Fraser was murdered by her husband, Nat, almost 30 years ago

Nat Fraser was jailed for life for murdering his wife in 1998

‘She shouldn’t be cast aside, and buried and the truth buried with her. There’s more than one crime - there’s the murder and the concealing a body and withholding information.

‘And if he gets out [without saying where she is] he’s still continuing to commit a crime by withholding information and concealing a body.’

She added: ‘Parole boards need to get us on board, they need us to be involved and to know what non-disclosure means to families.’

Mrs Gillies, from Erskine, Renfrewshire, said it was time for politicians to realise families played a part in the process.

The grandmother-of-two said her parents, in their 80s, deserve to know what happened to their daughter.

She added: ‘I don’t see why we can’t see a change in legislation.

‘We might never know if it [the law] stays the same; it’s highly unlikely we’ll ever find out, and that is hard to accept.

‘But the new law change is like an opening for us to move forward, because right now we’re stuck.’

Arlenes sister Carol Gillies hopes her family will finally reveal where her body is after ministers agreed to back a new law putting pressure on killers to reveal where they left their victims bodies

Former Detective Superintendent Alan Smith, who was the deputy senior investigating officer on the case previously said he did not believe Fraser would ever tell where his wife’s body is because it is now the last ‘piece of control’ he has over her.

But following the Scottish Government’s decision to back the new law, put forward by MSP Jamie Greene, Mrs Gillies said: ‘It gives us hope. It means we’re not fighting the battle on our own, that the law is on our side, or at least assisting us.

‘If he gets out for good behaviour, I’d feel like the law was letting us down’.

Fraser was jailed for murdering his wife, who had made plans to divorce him, in 2003 after his friend, farmer Hector Dick, turned on him in court to escape charges.

That conviction was later quashed but Fraser was retried in 2012 and found guilty of paying a hitman £15,000 to kill Mrs Fraser.

He wanted to dodge a divorce that would have cost him £250,000 and the custody of their children.

To this day he has refused to give her family closure by revealing where her remains are.

Mrs Gillies said: ‘I thought about going out into the woods and looking for her myself in the very early days, I was so desperate, it’s just natural.

‘I just feel this responsibility to bring her home, but also guilt in not knowing how to do it. 

I’m just glad that the law is helping us because as a family we don’t know where to start.’

She praised Suzanne Pilley’s family for persevering with their calls for a change in the law, which follows the introduction of Helen’s Law in England and Wales in 2021.

Under the reforms backed by justice secretary Angela Constance on Thursday, the Parole Board for Scotland, which considers whether to release criminals who have served the punishment part of their sentence, will be given powers to take into account any failure to disclose the location of a victim’s remains when making decisions on release.

This means prisoners who do not disclose where they hid a body could be kept behind bars until they do.

Mrs Gillies is now hoping that the law comes into force before Fraser is due for parole in four years.