A man has appeared in court accused of murdering the head of a notorious “family from hell” and trying to kill his wife.
Barry Henderson was arrested by police probing the death of Gordon Graham in a ferocious flat blaze in a north-east port nearly two decades ago.
Mr Graham’s wife Anne managed to escape from the first floor property through a window.
Yesterday, 41-year-old Henderson appeared in private on petition at Peterhead Sheriff Court accused of Mr Graham’s murder.
He also faced a charge of attempted murder.
Henderson, whose address was given as Fraserburgh, made no plea and was committed for further examination and released on bail.
Dad-of-five Mr Graham’s body was found in the flat he shared with his wife after it was destroyed by fire in the early hours of Sunday, May 3, 1998.
The blaze was initially ruled to have been an accident.
But the investigation into Mr Graham’s death was reopened in 2009, at the same time as police launched a fresh probe into the deaths of Derek Youngson and his stepfather Derek Roy in a fire at a flat in Fraserburgh’s Kirk Brae on Hogmanay 2006.
The Grahams were dubbed the “family from hell” by neighbours when they lived at Glenrothes.
They were evicted from their home in the Fife town in 1994 after a string of complaints from other residents.
Mr and Mrs Graham moved to the north-east with their children Dean, David, Heather and Sharon.
Eldest son James also joined them after being released from a young offenders institution.
He had been sentenced to five years for knocking down former beauty queen Pauline McConnachie in a stolen car outside her home on Christmas Eve 1994. She lost a leg as a result.
He served two-thirds of his sentence, but died in 2002 aged 26 following a car crash near Rosehearty.
James’s 18-year-old brother, Dean, had died a year earlier.
