Alexander Pacteau, 21, has admitted the murder of Irish student Karen Buckley in Glasgow.
Advertisement
A major search was launched for 24-year-old Miss Buckley when she was reported missing from the flat she shared with friends after failing to return home from a nightclub in Glasgow’s west end in April this year.
He left the club at around 1am alone, telling a steward he was going to get something from his vehicle which was parked around 100 metres away.
Pacteau eventually dumped the student’s remains inside a barrel at a farm in Drymen, Stirlingshire.
Detailing how she ended up across the road near the accused, the barrister said it was “not known what transpired between them”, but CCTV footage showed them walking towards Pacteau’s auto.
Meanwhile, police searching his flat found traces of Miss Buckley’s blood.
She was dead when the vehicle left Kelvin Way at 1.18am.
They also reveal Karen’s handbag has been discovered in Dawsholm Park, near Dorchester Avenue in the Kelvindale area of Glasgow, early in the afternoon.
He used his phone to look up the properties of a chemical called sodium hydroxide, or caustic soda.
Over the next two days Pacteau bought dozens of litres of the chemical from stores across north Glasgow.
Pacteau eventually headed back to his flat where he stripped Karen and dumped her in a bath filled with caustic soda.
Pacteau was found cleaning the hall and stairwell when his flatmate returned home at around 8pm. He had moved her body back into his locked bedroom wrapped in a duvet.
In the early hours of the next morning, Pacteau ditched the spanner used to kill Karen in the Forth and Clyde canal.
Bizarrely, at one point, he asked a member of Tesco staff if they could recommend a cleaning product to remove blood stains from a mattress.
He made his first journey to High Craigton Farm, an area familiar to him from a previous job selling fireworks which were kept in a storage unit there.
Around 8pm that night, officers then make the grim discovery of Karen’s body there.
He drove to Asda in Bearsden and bought another lighter and lighter fluid.
He then took the mattress in his auto to the farmland where he burned it along with other items before returning to the flat and taking the barrel to his vehicle.
Pacteau then visited a auto valet on his way home, at around 4pm.
He poured more chemicals into the barrel before sealing it. He was seen by a witness struggling to put a large blue barrel in his vehicle outside his flat at around 2pm.
The killer eventually drove with the body to the farm – but popped into an Asda store en-route to purchase padlocks and white spirit. He appeared in court on crutches after he had been involved in a vehicle crash in August 2012, which led to him being hospitalised for one month and requiring surgery on his hip. He then covered it with a bed sheet and weighted it down with a paper shredder and bike wheel.
The complainer had told the court that the pair had decided to get a taxi together and had walked up a laneway near Baliol Street in the city, where she alleged Pacteau had tried to sexually assault her.
Advertisement
Police officers knocked on his door around two hours later after he was identified on the CCTV footage.
