Convict tries to buy murder house

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A convict has launched a legal battle to buy the council house where he killed his partner with chloroform in an "almost perfect murder".

Craig McCreight is serving life for murdering Yvonne Davidson at the house they shared at 5 Fairinsfell, Broxburn, in West Lothian, in February 1999.

McCreight, 36, wants to use "right-to-buy" legislation allowing a tenant to purchase a home at a discounted rate.

The council is resisting arguing he should not benefit from a crime.

West Lothian Council claims he could not acquire the benefit of the tenancy in consequence of the murder and therefore has no right to buy.

This was no crime of passion, but the premeditated, cold-blooded murder of the mother of your child and two other children...it was almost the perfect murder Lord UistHigh Court in Edinburgh, 2002

The local authority had previously made an offer to sell the house to him, although he was already behind bars for the murder at the time.

Three judges at the Court of Session in Edinburgh have now held that the dispute over the tenancy should be settled in the courts.

Mother-of-three Miss Davidson was found in a neighbour's garden, but for three years her death was put down as a tragic drug-linked accident.

But further evidence emerged and in 2002 McCreight stood trial at the High Court in Edinburgh and was found guilty of murdering Miss Davidson, 34.

The trial judge, Roderick Macdonald QC, now Lord Uist, ordered he should serve at least 18 years under a life sentence.

He told him: "The crime you committed was an act of unspeakable evil. This was no crime of passion, but the premeditated, cold-blooded murder of the mother of your child and two other children...it was almost the perfect murder."

Miss Davidson ran a pub, the Clifton Arms, and already had a son and daughter when she had a baby girl, Abbi, with McCreight in 1997.