A fatal accident inquiry has been held into the death of a killer jailed for the brutal murder of a teenage Dumfries mum.
Michael McArthur died in Dumfries Infirmary on April 11 last year days after guards at HMP Dumfries found him slumped over the bed in his cell.
The 76-year-old, who suffered from drug and alcohol abuse, angina, leg ulcers, liver cirrhosis and type two diabetes, was treated for sepsis in hospital.
Following the inquiry at Dumfries Sheriff Court, Sheriff Kevin McCallum KC ruled that McArthur died of natural causes and that nothing could have been done to avoid his death.
He made no recommendations.
McArthur, pictured at the trial, was jailed for life at the High Court in Edinburgh in 2004 after being found guilty of murdering and then dismembering the body of 19-year-old Amy Anderson two years prior.
Amy had been a promising college student in the town before giving birth to a baby girl at the age of 18.
But after becoming addicted to heroin, she found herself on the streets.
Reports from the time of McArthur’s trial stated he had taken his victim in and let her sleep in his shelter, becoming a “father figure” to her when she had nowhere else to go.
At the time of her murder, it was also speculated that the teenager was pregnant with her second child.
Her torso was found on the banks of the River Leven in Alexandria, Dunbartonshire, in May 2002.
Her pelvis was found more than a year later in November 2003 in a pond near the river.
Amy’s head, arms and legs have never been found.
Speaking during his trial, McArthur said: “I last saw her the Friday before she went missing. I was talking to her round at the Salvation Army. She told me she was pregnant. She said she was about nine weeks.”
Jurors heard how evil McArthur suffocated the teenager and then went on to burn parts of her body after dissecting it.
During the trial, temporary judge Alastair Stewart QC described the killing as “horrific” and “brutal”.
He told McArthur: “You were convicted by the jury of a quite appalling murder.
“It is bad enough, as you did, to deprive a young woman of her life, but you compounded the crime by what can only be described as butchering the body and disposing of it in such a way that parts of it have not been found. The effect of this on the victim’s family can only be imagined.”
