Annalise Johnstone's friend thought murder accused were "pulling her leg"

Annalise Johnstone’s best pal thought the couple accused of her friend’s murder were ‘pulling her leg’ when they gave garbled accounts of where she had gone, a jury heard today.

Donna Paton, 43, who was looking after Annalise’s pet dog Sadie, said she had phoned the dead girl’s brother Jordan Johnstone to try to find out what had happened after learning her friend was dead.

She said Annalise had gone off with Johnstone and his co-accused Angela Newlands earlier the previous day promising to return in an hour or so to collect her pet.

She said: “She never ever asked me to watch the dog before, but if she’d ever made arrangements with me she was always on time. She was punctual.”

Giving evidence at the High Court in Livingston, Miss Paton said there was “no hint” that Annalise would not be returning to Ardrossan that night.

She said she became concerned when Annalise failed to collect her dog as promised and even more worried the following morning when she found her friend’s phone was switched off and she was not active on Facebook as usual.

When Annalise’s sister Shabbana broke the news to her later that Annalise’s body had been found dumped in rural Perthshire she asked for Jordan Johnstone’s number and phoned him.

She told the jury: “I asked where Anna was. He says that he dropped her off at their uncle’s in Beith somewhere.

“We were on the phone quite a wee bit but it was confused. His girlfriend was taking the phone in between while I was trying to talk.

“It wasn’t very clear. He said she’d gone hitchhiking at 3am.”

Asked if she’d challenged Johnstone about what he was saying she said: "No, really. It was her brother.

“I was cool with him on the phone. It wasn’t a challenge but he seemed quite confused.”

Under cross examination by Johnstone’s defence counsel Keith Stewart she added: “I never thought anything untowards had happened. I just thought it was a prank at first, that they were just pulling my leg. (It was) Maybe a bit sick, and I thought they were having me on.

“She was taking the phone when Jordan was being confused and stuttering. He was trying to talk to me. He was nice on the phone.

“But the phone would get grabbed off him and she’d say: ‘We haven’t seen her’. She would take the phone off him and help him along."

Under questioning by Mark Stewart, counsel for Newlands, she admitted that Annalise had self harmed in the days before her murder because she was anxious to return home from a holiday break with the accused couple.

She said: "I already knew she’d cut herself before she showed me – it was just through the skin, just surface wounds, the same as she’d do on her legs.

"It was just for attention. It was a way of her releasing her frustrations. She was really really scared.

"She told me she cut her wrists to get home because they wouldn't bring her home."