'No justice for Heather' as sick killer's sentence is cut by 11 years

Alan Cameron's 25-year minimum jail term for the murder of the 44-year-old mother, whose severed head was found beside a path in Newhaven on Hogmanay 2008, was reduced yesterday to 14 years by judges at the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh who called the original sentence "excessive".

The 56-year-old, who admitted hiding Ms Stacey's body for more than a year, butchering it and disposing of it in bags but denied killing her, could now be free in 2025. A bid to have his guilty verdict overturned was rejected by appeal judges.

Today, Heather's brother, Tim Stacey, 48, said there was "no justice" in the ruling and admitted he was dreading having to break the news to her four children. He said: "We had thought the sentence was pretty set in stone so there's something wrong when 11 years is taken off.

"At first I was quite relieved when the appeal against conviction was turned down but when I heard the sentence had been reduced I thought 'Where's the justice for Heather and the kids?'

"If they had granted his appeal it would have been a travesty. But I just cannot get my head around reducing the sentence. He has my sister's blood on his hands and now he gets a lower sentence - I know her children will be devastated. The decision is an absolute joke."

In the appeal court yesterday, the Lord Justice Clerk, Lord Gill, sitting with Lord Osborne and Lord Marnoch, said because of ambiguity around how Cameron killed his victim there was "no warrant" to impose a sentence of "such severity".

"The appropriate punishment part should be in the range that is normal in cases of murder in which there are no unusually aggravating circumstances," he said. Lord Matthews told Cameron at the High Court in Edinburgh last year: "For over a year you conducted a campaign of callous deceit in order to convince others that Heather Stacey was still alive.

"You left her corpse to rot where she lay in an insect-infested flat and attempted to cut her limb from limb. Having failed in that, you mutilated her remains by pulling them apart and then scattered them around in bin bags," he said.

Cameron also collected almost 5000 in benefits from the dead woman's Post Office account. He stuffed pieces of her body into bags and left them near footpaths in Granton with the victim's head discovered in an Ikea carrier bag in bushes at Hawthornvale Path.

The child sex offender had denied murdering Ms Stacey at her home in Royston Mains Place, Granton, in Edinburgh, between November and December 2007.

He said she died after he left to buy food and panicked as there was a court warrant for his arrest over claims he kicked a dog.