THE friend of a 24-year-old who was stalked and had her neck slashed by her “psychopath” soldier ex-boyfriend has spoken of her ordeal at finding the body.
Maxine McGill found flatmate Alice Ruggles in the bathroom of their Gateshead flat after she had been left to bleed to death by Lance Corporal Trimaan “Harry” Dhillon.
Dhillon, 26, cut Miss Ruggles’s throat from ear to ear after he found out she had found happiness with another man.
Edinburgh-based Dhillon was jailed for life with a minimum term of 22 years at Newcastle Crown Court last month.
Speaking to the BBC, Ms McGill said: “I just wanted somebody to help her, to bring her back but I knew deep down nothing was going to bring her back. It’s something I don’t think I’ll be able to erase from my memory.
“What saddens me the most about it, is it shadows my memory of Alice when she was alive and when she was happy and that beautiful smile of hers.”
She added the scene that greeted her was “worse than what you see in films” and that she has not been the same since last October.
Dhillon, a signaller with the 2 Scots, drove 120 miles from his barracks near Edinburgh to confront Ms Ruggles and grabbed a long, sharp carving knife, cutting through to her spine.
Ms Ruggles, who worked for Sky and came from Leicestershire, tried to lock herself in the bathroom but Dhillon kicked it down.
Dhillon left the scene without dialling 999 but remembered to take her phone and the murder weapon, disposing of them on the way back to Edinburgh.
He had claimed Ms Ruggles had accidentally stabbed herself while lunging at him.
Jailing him, Judge Paul Sloan QC said: “Not a shred of remorse have you shown from first to last, indeed you were concentrating so hard on getting your story right when giving evidence, you forgot even to shed a crocodile tear.”
A trust has been set up in Alice’s name to help good causes and provide education about issues such as stalking.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here