Sex offender jailed after terrifying wife so much she jumped from bridge

A convicted paedophile has been jailed for killing his vulnerable wife after he terrorised her so extremely that she “climbed over the barrier of a Dundee road bridge and fell to her death”. Lee Milne beat, choked and verbally abused 28-year-old Kimberly Milne before her death from multiple vehicle impacts in 2023.

The jury in the Glasgow trial agreed that Kimberly was “clearly terrified” of her husband and was “taking a course of action to get away from him” when she fell from the bridge on the busy A90. CCTV footage caught some of Lee Milne’s aggression toward his victim hours before her death:

Lee Milne in sex offenders register

Lee Milne had already been convicted and placed on the sex offenders’ register for sexually assaulting two young boys in 2024.

After one incident in which Milne attacked and choked her, Kimberly told police that:

Lee and I were in his home and he went through my phone. He saw messages from other men before we were together. He got angry and started to shout and swear at me.

On another occasion he beat her so severely she lost consciousness, after she confronted him about his infidelity. A witness told the trial that on the night of Kimberly’s death she saw the couple having an argument, then later saw Milne pinning a “cowering, scared” Kimberly against a wall. A text message presented in evidence during the trial gave an idea of the emotional manipulation the abuser used against his victim:

How can I leave him if he’s saying he’s going to do himself in without me.

Kimberly’s mother Lynne Bruce said Milne had appeared at her own house the morning after killing her daughter. Bruce’s statement said:

I was woken up by Lee at my door. When I answered he said something along the lines of Kim has gone. I didn’t know what he was on about and he came in the house.

He said something along the lines of Kim had pulled the steering wheel and crashed the car. He then said Kim had gone up to the bridge and he had chased her. He tried to grab her hands and she looked up at him, shook her head before jumping off.

A detective said after the verdict that Milne:

is a violent bully who demonstrated emotional and physical violence towards Kimberly and coercive control. Witness testimony and CCTV evidence painted a picture of quite horrendous domestic abuse.”Witnesses described him as being very aggressive and it was obvious Kimberly was terrified of him. He never fully accepted accountability for his actions and tried to attribute blame to Kimberly’s vulnerabilities.

Milne was sentenced to eight years in prison, plus a three-year close monitoring and supervision order to begin after his release. The case is the first in Scotland in which a partner was held criminally culpable for causing the death of an abuse victim who then took their own life following a course of domestic abuse.

Such consequences for abusers should be written directly into UK law, but with Keir Starmer —a serial protector of abusers — in Downing Street, it looks unlikely to happen.

Featured image via the Guardian