An alleged embezzlement victim of Angus solicitor Graeme Herald has spoken of her shock and anger after seeing her seven-year wait for justice denied.
Earlier this month the former Arbroath lawyer took his own life on the eve of a trial over charges of embezzling almost £600,000, including more than £85,000 from dead clients’ estates.
The charges involved sums of between £2,000 and £90,000, allegedly taken from 14 clients between 2001 and 2006.
The total embezzlement charge was a figure of £570,046 but the day before Herald’s trial was due to begin the 55-year-old was found dead at his Edinburgh home.
Among those due to give evidence in the trial was Christine Cass who, with her husband Michael, owned the Carlogie House Hotel on the outskirts of Carnoustie.
They saw their life fall apart when Herald’s handling of the sale of the hotel left them facing financial ruin.
Money from the sale of the hotel never reached them and Mrs Cass said Herald’s suicide has now deprived them, and other alleged victims, of the chance to “look him in the eye in the dock and see justice done”.
Mrs Cass said she only learned of the tragic development in the case after a friend in Angus read the news in The Courier.
Now living in Lincolnshire, she had been ready to travel with her former police officer husband to Scotland to finally stand in the witness box, after years of delay in the case coming to court.
“I was gobsmacked just speechless when I heard what had happened,” she said.
“No one wants to lose someone in these sort of circumstances but it is not enough to say that we have to consider the dead person and their family over and above the victim.
“Nobody wants to see someone take their own life but it doesn’t allow closure for anyone involved in this case.”
She added: “This affected my health and my husband’s health very badly. We were both ill for quite a long time.
“We’re OK now but we had to force ourselves to get back in the land of the living and I refused to let it get me down to the extent of just giving up.”
Mrs Cass, 70, said the Carlogie sale was to have been their retirement nest egg, but within days of the deal being completed alarm bells began to ring.
Money from the transaction never appeared and although matters were eventually sorted out through the Law Society of Scotland’s guarantee fund, which exists to help victims of crooked solicitors, the Casses reckon the whole episode has still cost them six figures.
“We didn’t have a massive list of creditors but had to scrabble around to beg or borrow money to sort that out,” Mrs Cass continued.
“All the way through this we have just felt so bloody let down by the whole system.
“We have waited seven years for this case to come to trial and finally we learn what has happened through the newspaper.
“I contacted the fiscal’s office and they simply said they couldn’t discuss someone who is dead.”