Deborah Parry, who was convicted of murdering Australian nurse Yvonne Gilford in Saudi Arabia in 1996, wants her victim’s body to be dug up to try to shift the blame on to her accomplice, Dundee woman Lucille Ferrie.
Parry (53) has bombarded Ferrie with requests to help her, but after being rebuffed now wants to have the body exhumed in an attempt to clear her name.
She hopes that with recent advances in DNA research any fresh DNA evidence could clear her name and instead point the finger at Ferrie, known as Lucille McLauchlan at the time.
Parry was sentenced to be beheaded after her conviction, while McLauchlan was sentenced to eight years in jail and 500 lashes for her part in the crime.
However, both were pardoned by King Fahd in 1998 and freed after serving only 17 months in prison following the UK Government’s intervention. The women claimed they only confessed after having been threatened sexually.
Parry, from Hampshire, said in an interview at the weekend: ”I’ve done nothing wrong. Lucy’s the one that has to live with her conscience. I’m thinking of ways to prove my innocence because, after 14 years, I’m fed up with it. I thought about asking for Yvonne’s body to be exhumed to see if we could find anything out because there’s been so much advance with DNA.”
Parry says she has tried several times to contact Ferrie, who has shunned her approaches and blocked her calls. She suggests that is because Ferrie, who lives in Broughty Ferry, has something to hide.
The two made headlines across the world in December 1996 when they were arrested after their victim was found stabbed, bludgeoned and suffocated in her room at the King Fahd Military Medical Centre in Dhahran. Police said they caught Ferrie with the victim’s bank card.
Parry says she is prepared to travel to Australia in the hope of finding new evidence.
”I don’t really know where Yvonne is buried,” she said. ”But I think she’s been forgotten in all of this.
”I got in touch with Lucy but she has put a ban on my calls. I’d actually mentioned about going to Australia and seeing Mr Gilford (the victim’s brother), but she says her life is different now.”
Once Ferrie was home in Dundee, it emerged she had been sacked from her job and had gone to Saudi to work to escape the rap for stealing £300 from an elderly patient.
She was convicted of the theft on her return and sentenced to community service and struck off by the UK Central Council for Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting (UKCC).
She has since been convicted of fraudulently using another person’s credit and debit cards to order and obtain electrical goods including two TVs and a netbook computer over the internet in 2010.
She was placed on probation for two years in February 2011 but breached that by shoplifting in Dundee city centre in November, being fined £65.
A spokesman for Ferrie said she did not wish to comment on Parry’s claims.