Watching the reconstruction, the mum-of-four was horrified to realise the suspect being portrayed in the television reconstruction was likely that of her eldest son, Lee.
Having learnt that a local shopkeeper had been stabbed to death during a botched robbery in Paisley, Margaret found herself considering the possibility that her son was somehow involved.
Recalling the devastating moment during a recent interview, she said: "I watched the episode and as soon as I saw the reconstruction I froze. I recognised the clothing. It was the kind of thing Lee would wear and the man had the same kind of physical features."
Torn between contacting the police and protecting her son, Margaret ultimately chose to communicate her concerns with the authorities and hoped she had jumped to conclusions.
"I thought should I? Should I not? I was fighting with myself. I wondered was it the right thing to do or not? But in the end I decided, yes, this is right thing to do," she remembered.
Margaret recalls struggling with the email she sent to police and justified her reasons for it, saying: "I didn’t know how to word it. I basically sent it to rule him out. I wrote that I wasn’t sure that it was him."
Stricken, Margaret kept her concerns to herself and hoped she had misidentified her son, but those hopes were dashed when Lee confessed his crime to his heartbroken mother.
When police contacted Lee's mother regarding her email, she felt compelled to admit her son was responsible for the death of 48-year-old Javaus Ali's and admitted her son had confessed to the crime.
"I was shocked. I know I did the right thing within the law, but my own conscience is torn. That shopkeeper was an innocent man though, and he deserved justice. I just wish it hadn’t been my son who was the perpetrator," she says.
Despite admitting the crime to his mother, when charged with murder Lee denied it and was ultimately found guilty of a lesser charge of culpable homicide and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
In an astonishing turn of events, Margaret reveals her relationship with Lee has vastly improved since his imprisonment, saying: "Just last night on the phone, he said to me, ‘We don’t play the blame game’. It seems like we’re more loving now he’s in the jail. It’s like we’re talking more about things."
Lee, who has been in and out of custody since the age of 13, is currently undergoing sessions with a psychologist and Margaret hopes this will have a positive impact on her son's wellbeing.
"I am hoping he will be able to rebuild his life and that I will be a part of it," she admits.
