Accused 'sent sister on US trip'

Feb 22 2013

The sister of a man accused of murdering missing financial adviser Lynda Spence has told a court she travelled to the US to represent her brother on a business trip.

Margaret Coats, 53, said she went to Raleigh, North Carolina, with her partner Kalvant Rakhra and a man named Tony Kelly, where they met Ms Spence and her friend Amelia.

The meeting was with a financial firm and involved discussions about investing bonds worth £3 million, she said.

Ms Coats was giving evidence at the High Court in Glasgow, where her brother, Colin Coats, 42, is on trial with Philip Wade, 42, David Parker, 38, and Paul Smith, 47. The four men deny kidnapping and torturing Ms Spence, 27, in a bid to obtain financial information from her, and murdering her. Ms Spence has not been seen since April 2011.

Ms Coats said her brother was unable to go on the trip and that Mr Kelly went as his financial advisor to protect his interests, as she did not understand everything.

Solicitor general Lesley Thomson QC, prosecuting, asked the witness: "What did Colin tell you?" Ms Coats replied: "He had told me there was some sort of deal he had been involved in with Lynda and others, to do with Stansted airport. He was a partner with Lynda."

Telling jurors about the meeting, Ms Coats said: "They (the firm) had put together a proposal, a plan, about the different avenues to go down to invest money in."

Ms Coats said she understood that Mr Coats was to get a share of the investment, but was unsure of how much his cut was worth. She said he showed her the two bonds.

Ms Thomson asked Ms Coats what she told her brother about the trip when she returned. "Things didn't seem as if they were going to happen the way Lynda had made out it was going to happen," Ms Coats replied.

She told jurors she was concerned about the circumstances surrounding the deal. Ms Thomson asked: "Did you think it was real?" Ms Coats replied: "I don't really know."