THE extent of Linsey Cotton’s con was laid bare in court.
She spun a warped web of lies that led to the tragic double suicide of frantic mother and daughter, Margaret and Nicola McDonough.
They ended their lives together after Cotton convinced them they faced 20 years in prison.
Pretty student Nicola, 23, was found slumped unconscious and bleeding in a corridor of a Premier Inn in Greenock.
Mum Margaret, a 52-year-old foster carer, was found in the double room they had checked into.
Baffled cops originally thought the pair had been the victim of an attack.
But the truth when it unravelled in court last week was even more horrific.
Single mum Cotton set up an online dating profile, again using the false name “Stephanie”, to lure Margaret McDonough’s son Michael into an online relationship in 2012.
She convinced the RAF corporal to pay for an engagement ring, despite never meeting.
She then posed as a friend of Stephanie and told Mr McDonough that her friend was on a secret clinical trial run by a company called Biotech Scotland. No such company exists. She even went so far as to claim that
the company was trying to kill Stephanie because it would receive £100 million if all the clinical trial patients died.
The weird set-up started to fall apart when Cotton told the McDonough women they had breached a confidentiality clause about “Stephanie”.
She said they would go to prison for the breach if they did not hand over £5,500.
They were found injured in the Premier Inn days later.
In her defence, Cotton claimed to have committed the crimes purely because she wanted a relationship with the RAF man.My weird life with crazed Linsey: Conwoman lured first victim into love and kept him prisoner – click here to read more
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