The report of Alexander Pacteau pleading guilty to the murder of Irish student nurse Karen Buckley covers the front pages of all of the nationals this morning.
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He embarked on a journey to various stores to buy quantities of caustic soda before placing her body in the bath at his flat after making sure his flatmate was out for the day.
It has emerged Alexander Pacteau was previously accused of a sex attack on woman – just a mile from where he murdered Karen Buckley.
Meanwhile, the student’s handbag had been found at a park near to the man’s flat and the police hunt focused on the two sites in the north west of the city.
A timeline of events leading to Alexander Pacteau’s arrest.
A body was later found at High Craigton Farm near Milngavie, ending the four-day police search.
Pacteau will be sentenced on September 8 at Glasgow High Court by Justice Lady Rae, who described his actions as “callous and calculating”.
Pacteau, dressed in a grey suit, sat with his head bowed throughout and displayed no emotion as he was led away to his cell. Minutes earlier, she was spotted talking to Pacteau just after leaving The Sanctuary nightclub. “We miss her terribly”.
But the morning after the murder, at 8am, Pacteau carried out an internet search in relation to the properties of caustic soda – a highly corrosive substance.
He eventually returned the corpse to his bedroom – before his flatmate came home to find Pacteau cleaning the hall and tenement close. He had moved her body into his locked bedroom wrapped in a duvet, the court heard. It left the area at just after 2am and Pacteau drove to his nearby flat on Dorchester Avenue.
Karen’s parents, Marian and John Buckley, are also at the High Court in Glasgow today.
Pacteau later burned his mattress and other items at the farmland, before taking the barrel, with Ms Buckley’s body inside, to his vehicle.
He put the barrel in one of the units, covered with a sheet and obscured by a bike wheel and a paper shredder which he placed on top of it.
Pacteau visited a vehicle valet on his way home, at around 4pm, the court heard.
The officers noticed that the flat smelled strongly of bleach.
But Det Supt Jim Kerr said Pacteau had told numerous lies to police.
The lawyer said Pacteau can offer no “rational explanation” for his actions but that he had said he was “extremely intoxicated” when he met Miss Buckley outside the nightclub and has a “limited recollection”.
By this time Ms Buckley’s disappearance had been reported and a massive police operation was under way to locate her.
However, he said in court that the woman had slapped him in the face while they were in the lane and she managed to grab him to the ground where he struggled to get up.
Further footage then showed his vehicle driving towards the city centre in the direction of Miss Buckley’s flat before entering Kelvin Way. “The last face she saw and the last voice she heard was of that cold-blooded, cowardly murderer, who calmly set about trying to dispose of her body so she would never be found”.
She left Ireland to work at the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow, Essex, for several months before moving to Glasgow Caledonian University in February.
“Of course that is not the case”, Mr Mulholland told the court.
Pacteau had then claimed that he had struck Ms Buckley after she hit him first.
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The news outlet has acquired the transcript from his previous rape trial in 2013 where Pacteau was described as a “daft young lad” who was involved in an incident that went “horribly wrong” by his counsel Sarah Livingstone.
