Career criminal is guilty over death

A CAREER criminal who gave a tragic teenager a fatal dose of methadone has been warned he faces a lengthy jail term after being convicted of the girl’s culpable homicide.James Whitson gave a lethal dose of the class A heroin substitute to Vikki McGovern – knowing she wanted to kill herself.

Within two days, the 19-year-old had died after taking the methadone at a hostel in Edinburgh’s St John’s Hill.

A five-day trial at the High Court in Dundee heard Vikki’s mother, Pamela Bowmaker, tell how tragic Vikki “changed” after the death of a close family friend.

She said: “She didn’t really react to the death – she went in to herself instead. She went really quiet and that’s when her problems started.

“She was normally a bubbly, outgoing girl before that. Vikki was just a happy-go-lucky person. But after that she started self-harming.

“She moved into a flat where she had support if she needed it.

“Then she moved to St John’s Hostel and took time off college with a view to going back later.”

Miss Bowmaker said just months after that move in June 2008 her daughter had tried to kill herself. She said: “In August 2008 she sent me a text message saying she was sorry and that somebody had given her methadone and that she was in hospital.

“She said she loved me and her brothers and sisters and that she would never do it again.

“I visited her at her hostel and she said that at the time she had wanted to die. After that I saw her every day.”

The court heard that Vikki tried to kill herself 13 times in the three years before her death.