Kidnapping charges dropped against Scotsman

A Scotsman seen driving down a US motorway with a woman’s legs dangling outside his rented Jaguar no longer faces kidnapping charges.

John Lang Wilson Shirlaw, 61, from Edinburgh, still faces misdemeanour reckless driving and endangerment charges after a woman says he refused to stop his Jaguar when she complained about an intestinal disorder.

Motorists travelling north of Salem called the Oregon State Police to report a woman’s legs were dangling from the passenger door of a moving car, and the couple inside appeared to be fighting.

Troopers found the couple after they left the freeway and stopped in a motel parking lot.

Melany Beth Kramer, 46, of San Rafael, California, claimed that Shirlaw held her against her will because he refused to stop, and he was arrested on kidnapping charges.

Kramer said that she and Shirlaw had been returning to San Francisco after what she described as a lover’s weekend at his home in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Shirlaw, a bridge engineer who works for Parsons Brinckerhoff, a worldwide engineering and construction company, had been in San Francisco to inspect the Golden Gate Bridge. He also had a short assignment in Sacramento before his scheduled return home to Maryland on April 26.

A woman Shirlaw has been living with for the past three years had been waiting for him at the Philadelphia airport that day, and called authorities when he failed to return.

Ann Perry, 60, said she called Parsons headquarters in New York, and company officials told her Shirlaw was in jail in Oregon, and they didn’t know why.

‘‘My heart was in my throat,’’ Perry said.

She suddenly realised why she had been seeing strange caller identification listings appearing on her home phone, saying ‘‘inmate phone’’ Shirlaw had been trying to call her from jail while she was at work.

The British Embassy eventually hired a lawyer for Shirlaw who is living in the United States as a resident alien.

His main residence is in Salisbury, Maryland, according to state police.

Perry said she wasn’t completely surprised that Shirlaw had been with another woman.

But she said she became frightened when she learned that he was in jail facing a kidnapping charge that carried a mandatory prison term if convicted.

But after a Marion County grand jury heard tapes of Shirlaw and Kramer talking to state police, and a witness account, the jury declined to issue a kidnapping indictment and charged Shirlaw with the misdemeanour charges instead.

Deputy District Attorney Gina Skinner said Kramer signed an affidavit saying that she chose freely not to return to testify against Shirlaw, and on Wednesday, he retrieved his rented Jaguar from a police lot and headed south on to complete his business in California.

Perry said she still loves Shirlaw, but added: ‘‘We’ll be having a few conversations.’’