Nicola Sturgeon has revealed she feels like a "mug" for caring about Peter Murrell in the months before he pled guilty to embezzlement - and won't be visiting him in prison. The former first minister also claimed that her estranged husband was "lying to me right up until he pled guilty."
Sturgeon's Fringe comments
Speaking with broadcaster Iain Dale at the Edinburgh Fringe today, Sturgeon said she was not informed Murrell had been negotiating a guilty plea with the Crown Office from March this year. The ex-SNP leader said she only found about his intention the week before he appeared at the High Court in Edinburgh to enter his plea.
Murrell admitted embezzling more than £400,000 from the SNP over a decade. He was later jailed for five years.
'Living with somebody that I never really knew'
Sturgeon said: "Over the years, he never really levelled with me. The day he pled guilty, I was still learning about some of the detail of what he had done for the first time. I suddenly realised I had been living with somebody that I never really knew properly."
She added: "That's something for me to come to terms with, and I don't think I'm there yet, but also for my family to come to terms with. It's a really difficult process."
Emotional impact
Sturgeon continued: "There's some days I don't think about it that much, and there are some days I can't think of anything else. And I think it's going to be like that for quite some time."
Asked by Dale if she still cared about Murrell, the former SNP leader said: "I didn't know he was going to plead guilty until very close to the point that he did. I struggled to see how he couldn't be guilty. But I found out less than a week before he was going to plead guilty, so I didn't have very long to prepare myself for that. I'd still been thinking he was going to go to trial, that might be a year away."
Discovery of plea negotiations
"But when the prosecution read out some of the details in court, there was this one that hit me like a ton of bricks, and it was that he had been negotiating a guilty plea since March 3. And I hadn't known that. He was still lying to me right up until the day he pled guilty," she said.
She continued: "He was very isolated over that period, he very rarely left the house, he wasn't communicative, I was a bit worried about his well-being and his mental health. And then, now I think, what a mug, why were you worried about him? He didn't worry about me. He didn't worry at all about what he was doing."
No prison visit
Asked if she would visit him in prison, Sturgeon replied: "No." She added: "I'm not going to speak to him, I'm not going to visit him."
Sturgeon also reflected on media coverage, saying: "Pick up a paper or a magazine in the last couple of months he's been in prison, there was a period after he pled guilty, where my name and picture was on more front pages than his. I was the first minister. I expect scrutiny and accountability for things I do. I'm not responsible for the crimes of someone else."
She concluded: "I have felt, at times, rightly or wrongly, that he's had an easier bloody ride than I have."
