A woman who hoped to raise her late partner’s daughter has spoken of her regret that the teenager instead fell into the hands of two guardians who murdered her.
Jean McSherry, 68, feels she ‘let down’ tragic Margaret Fleming who she wanted to bring up following Derick Fleming’s death in 1995.
His will instead named ‘trusted’ friends Edward Cairney and Avril Jones as carers, who were convicted of killing her in 2019 – 20 years after she first disappeared.
Margaret was last seen in December 1999 aged 19, however a missing persons case was only launched years later in October 2016.
Cairney, 78, and Jones, 60, of Inverkip, Inverclyde, were finally arrested in 2017 and convicted two years later, although the killers have refused to reveal what they did with her body.
Jean McSherry, 68, feels she ‘let down’ tragic Margaret Fleming who she wanted to bring up following Derick Fleming’s death in 1995
Margaret was last seen in December 1999 aged 19, however a missing persons case was only launched years later in October 2016
Ms McSherry has now revealed her heartache that she did not fight harder for custody of Margaret.
She said: ‘I have a lot of regrets. Could I have done more to get Margaret? I really feel I let her down because I feel I never fought hard enough for her.
‘I wanted to bring her up as mine. She would have had a good life.’
Her comments come as a new documentary chronicles the murder case of Margaret following the 2019 conviction.
In the Crime+Investigation channel documentary Murder At My Door, presented by actress Kym Marsh, Ms McSherry told how she was stopped from seeing Margaret after she went to live with her carers.
She said: ‘Derick said he had known Edward Cairney for years and trusted him but I said to him at the time “I don’t like him”. I had a gut feeling.
‘I just didn’t like the guy. Avril wasn’t that bad but she was controlled by him.
‘I never had any contact with Margaret. They said Margaret wanted nothing at all to do with us and said “don’t phone the house again, don’t get in contact in any way”.
‘I used to wonder if she would get in contact because I still had the same house phone number but she never phoned.
‘I wondered what she was up to. Did she get married? Did she have a family? I did think Margaret would have come to me if anything wasn’t going right but she never did so I thought her life was good.’
Derick’s will instead named ‘trusted’ friends Edward Cairney and Avril Jones as carers, who were convicted of killing her in 2019 – 20 years after she first disappeared
Ms McSherry told how she feared Margaret had been killed as soon as police contacted her in 2016 and she is convinced Cairney, a former diver, dumped her body in the sea.
She said: ‘The police came to my door and asked me if I knew Margaret Fleming. I went ‘Don’t tell me they have done her in.’ That was my exact words. As soon as they came I knew.
‘I nearly collapsed, I couldn’t get over it, I couldn’t sleep for weeks. It’s very hard to accept that a human being could do that to a kid. That’s evil, really evil.
‘You will find her at the bottom of the sea. I’m still convinced of it and nothing will change me. She’s at the bottom of the sea.’
Ms McSherry also said she wants to have a bench erected in Margaret’s memory in Port Glasgow where she grew up.
Jurors found that Cairney and his partner Jones murdered Margaret between December 1999 and January 2000. They were jailed for life with 14-year minimum terms.
The authorities were alerted to Margaret’s disappearance in 2016 when Jones applied for personal independence payments on her behalf.
She wrote that Margaret needed constant care and had self-harmed and been found eating from a dog bowl.
Her claims prompted social services and police to visit the home.
It was later found that Jones had falsely obtained more than £182,000 in benefits meant for Margaret.
Murder At My Door: The Mystery of Missing Margaret Fleming will be shown on Crime+Investigation at 9pm on February 1.