BURIED 'LIKE A DOG' IN SHALLOW GRAVE; Dolina's body moved to woods, court hears.

Byline: By Gordon McIlwraith

A MURDER accused claimed he felt sick as he buried an elderly woman "like a dog" in a woodland grave, a court has heard.

John Lawson, 48, claimed it was a "nightmare" and the worst thing he had ever done.

Lawson returned to the spot where he had initially hidden the body of 87-year-old Dolina MacLean to move it to the remote forest clearing where he had worked before.

But he told police that Dolina had collapsed and died in front of him six days earlier when he made her get out of her car on a country road.

Lawson claimed he tried to revive her.

In a police video shown at the High Court in Edinburgh, the former French Foreign Legionnaire told officers: "I know I'm going down for this for a long time but I am not going down for a murder I didn't commit."

He is accused of abducting and murdering Dolina, of Stanley, Perthshire, on May 30 last year, assaulting her and abandoning her in a state of unconsciousness or death.

Lawson, who denies murder, claimed his decision to get in Dolina's car outside Tesco in Perth was a "spur of the moment thing". He claimed his car was out of fuel and he wanted to take her vehicle, so he could go and visit his son.

Lawson said: "I walked up to the car and got in it in the passenger side. She asked what I was doing there and I told her to start the car and drive.

"I couldn't believe I was doing it. I was feeling a bit desperate and took desperate action. She was agitated and upset.

"I said I just want a shot of your car and I will take you some place and drop you and someone else will pick you up."

During the journey into the Perthshire countryside, he took over the driving and stopped at a lay-by close to a gate leading to Saddlebrae Wood, near Almondbank.

Lawson, formerly of Spittalfield, near Perth, claimed: "I got out and asked her to go up the pathway. She wasn't keen but eventually she started going.

"But she fell and hit her head on one of the gate hinges. I lifted her up and she stood there and looked a bit dizzy.

"Then she did the same thing again and I went to look at her. Her eyes were rolling back in her head. I know when someone is dead."

Lawson claimed he tried to revive Dolina and when that failed, he panicked and pulled her body into a wood. He dumped it in a drainage ditch.

Asked why he hadn't just driven away after Dolina got out of the car, he replied: "Because she could have been picked up in a minute. The police would have been on to me in a few minutes."

Six days later, he hired a van and took her decomposing body to Knowehead Woodland, near Dunning, Perthshire, where he'd previously planted trees.

Lawson borrowed a spade and dug a grave before placing her body in it.

One of the officers quizzing Lawson said he had buried her in the same way you would bury a dog and he replied: "I know. It was disgraceful."

The trial continues.

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TRAGIC: Dolina MacLean was found dead in woods