| At a sitting in Edinburgh, Lady Dorrian granted a defence motion for more time to catalogue witness statements collected over the 27 years since her death.
Miss McCabe’s body was found in Templeton Woods on the outskirts of Dundee in February, 1980.
Mark Stewart QC, appearing for Vincent John Simpson (60), of Camberley, Surrey, said the defence team had recently received a batch of 3800 statements. A number of these were found to have missing identity numbers, making it difficult to catalogue the information.
Mr Stewart added, “Inquiries of the Crown seem to indicate we have in some form some of these statements, but there is a difficulty in auditing them.”
Mr Stewart said they had also recently received a number of statements from a variety of experts which were being scrutinised.
The defence motion was unopposed by Advocate Depute Alex Prentice, who said the case was “very unusual”.
Another preliminary hearing has been set for July 2 with Simpson again excused from attending, as he was today.
Simpson first appeared at Dundee Sheriff Court charged with Miss McCabe’s murder in July 2005. Since then, there have been a further four court hearings. The last two hearings have also been preliminary with the issue of documentation featuring prominently.
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