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00:54
It's 7am on April 12, 2015, and the southeastern fringes of Glasgow's Dawson Park are almost deserted.
01:03
On one side of the park, families from the nearby middle-class suburbs push buggies towards the green playing fields and duck ponds.
01:11
But on this side, there is a look and feel of industrial grit.
01:16
A two-metre high wall softens the sound of trains stopping every 15 minutes at the Kelvindale station.
01:22
And the sounds of the nearby recycling centre and industrial park cast off a constant drone of noise.
01:30
On a dry day, you'll find a steady flow of dog walkers here, coming into the park through a gate on the dead-end Dawsham Road.
01:38
They head for the grassy parkland and the wild meadows, where they let their dogs run off the leash.
01:45
But drizzle falls this morning.
01:47
On this Sunday morning, however, only one person is walking past the Dawsham Road side gate.
01:54
There's a bin just by the road.
01:57
A tall rectangular metal bin with an open hole near the top.
02:02
Visible inside the bin is a black handbag.
02:07
The person entering the park sees it and pulls it out.
02:11
They look inside to find an Irish passport and a mobile phone.
02:16
The passport is in the name Karen Buckley.
02:20
Born 1991, County Cork, Ireland.
02:40
¶¶
02:49
When someone is killed in Ireland, the Gardaí call in a specialist unit of forensic crime scene examiners from the Technical Bureau.
02:56
This is Ireland's real-life version of CSI, but it's nothing like the movies or TV shows.
03:03
For 25 years, I was one of the detectives on that team.
03:07
My name is John Sweetman.
03:09
My job as a guarded detective in the Technical Bureau was to read the evidence that could not speak for itself.
03:16
I learned to see what others might miss. Fingerprints smudged on the handle of a door.
03:21
Weapons disguised in everyday objects.
03:24
Handwritten notes that revealed more than the writer ever intended.
03:28
The smallest traces often unravelled the big story. And now, I'm here to tell you those stories.
03:35
In this podcast from Go Loud, I take you inside some of Ireland's most haunting investigations.
03:42
This is Lines of Inquiry, a Go Loud original podcast that follows the evidence step by step and tries to uncover the real story behind the headlines.
03:52
In this episode, a case that united two countries in horror.
03:57
The senseless murder of a young Irish woman, living abroad in the prime of her life, and the relentless police investigation to catch a killer and unravel a complex and disturbing cover-up.
04:14
The light drizzle forecast for Saturday night, April 11, 2015, didn't stop thousands of people heading out to pubs and clubs across the Scottish city of Glasgow.
04:25
On any given weekend, venues across the city and its west end were full. Many nightclubs ran at full capacity, and bars and pubs were no different.
04:35
Glasgow is a university city, brimming with young people.
04:39
The city has its rough edges, but it is a friendly place, a place where people talk to you when you're queuing or waiting around or just walking by.
04:50
That evening, 24-year-old Karen Buckley was out in the city with three Irish girlfriends.
04:55
They were all studying occupational therapy at Glasgow's Caledonian University.
05:01
Before leaving, they were getting ready at their flat on Hill Street, Garnet Hill.
05:07
Karen had arrived in Glasgow only two months earlier and was learning the city's ways.
05:12
Before arriving in Scotland, she'd spent some time as a nurse at the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow, Essex, but she wanted to specialise in occupational therapy, so had chosen Glasgow to do her master's degree.
05:26
Karen's true home, though, was Ireland, on a farm just outside Morne Abbey, a parish of just 1,000 people near Mallow in North Cork.
05:36
She grew up there with her parents, John and Marion, and three older brothers.
05:41
In between school and studying nursing in Limerick, she travelled the world, visiting the US, Thailand and South Africa.
05:49
Moving from place to place came easy to her, and she was confident in new situations.
05:56
That Saturday night, they did what many students do. They got ready at home, had a few drinks, took a few pictures and then headed out late.
06:06
They decided to go somewhere new for them, a popular place with students called the Sanctuary Nightclub on Dumbarton Road in the city's West End.
06:16
They arrived at 11.25pm and queued outside for 20 minutes before getting in.
06:22
Inside, the club's three dance floors were packed.
06:26
The booths were full and the bar queues were deep.
06:30
Karen and her friends had drinks and danced.
06:33
At one point, one of her friends broke the zipper on her dress and Karen took off her own jacket and gave it to her friend.
06:42
Just before 1am, around an hour after arriving, Karen told friends she was going to the toilet.
06:49
A while later, they noticed she hadn't returned.
06:53
They called her phone, but there was no answer.
06:56
They kept trying, leaving messages and texts, but still she didn't reply.
07:02
Karen had only had a few drinks and wasn't drunk. She wasn't upset or stressed.
07:07
She'd just gone.
07:11
As two hours passed without her returning the only logical answer they could find was that she must have bumped into other friends or classmates and just not told them.
07:21
Either that or she'd gone home.
07:24
They just couldn't work it out though why she didn't come back for her jacket.
07:30
At 3am Karen's friends left the club and went back to the flat.
07:37
When they woke on the Sunday morning she still wasn't home.
07:41
They texted and called again but still nothing.
07:46
As the morning rolled on their worry and fear grew.
07:50
It was strange enough that she'd leave without telling them but it was completely unlike her not to return their calls the next day as well.
07:58
She also hadn't posted any updates on her social medias as she usually would.
08:05
By lunchtime, the friends called Glasgow police, who immediately went around to the flat and took a missing persons report.
08:13
After realising just how out of character this was, they went directly to the club to talk to staff and to find any CCTV from the night before.
08:24
Armed with the knowledge that Karen left the club around 1am, the club's manager pulled the footage from the external camera at the front doors.
08:33
And there, in the grainy footage, was Karen leaving the club, not wearing her jacket, just as her friends had said.
08:43
The police watched the footage, seeing Karen step onto the footpath, where a few people were milling around.
08:49
She was alone, and didn't appear intoxicated or distressed.
08:55
She then crossed the road.
08:57
A tall, dark-haired man stood there, using his mobile phone.
09:03
Karen appeared relaxed as she walked over on her own accord.
09:07
She and the man chatted for a few moments.
09:10
Then, at 1.06am, they walked down the road together and soon disappeared from the camera's view.
09:20
Police then pulled CCTV footage from inside the club to see if this man might have been a friend or acquaintance of Karen's.
09:28
Perhaps they'd see them speaking together inside.
09:33
Going back just before midnight, they followed Karen inside the club as best they could.
09:38
They never saw her with the man.
09:42
When shown the images, Karen's friends told police they didn't recognise him either.
09:48
When she didn't return for a second night, Karen's missing persons case was upgraded to a high-risk inquiry.
09:56
Police Scotland's Detective Superintendent Jim Kerr was on Karen's case as lead detective.
10:02
Kerr and his team prepared clips and stills of Karen and the man talking outside the club, ready for a media appeal on that Monday.
10:12
That morning, Karen's parents travelled from the family farm in County Cork, flying to Glasgow with the hope that they could help find their daughter.
10:21
Police released photos of Karen and still images from the CCTV.
10:27
An appeal was made for the man to come forward.
10:31
As the appeal went out, cybercrime and video analysts were attempting to trace the man's movements, trawling backwards from 1.06am.
10:41
Using the same camera from the door, they went back to just before 1am, where they could see people standing around outside the club.
10:50
Then the footage showed a man walking out of the club.
10:54
The analysts thought that this could be the man they were looking for.
10:58
He exited the club but then went back in.
11:02
Almost immediately he came out again.
11:05
With a better view of him the second time, they knew it was him.
11:10
The man then crossed the road before pacing up and down.
11:14
It was at that moment Karen was seen exiting and approaching him.
11:20
the pair walked off casually at exactly 1.06am.
11:25
Beyond that, the team weren't able to see the pair walking any further, and so their search widened.
11:34
Just minutes after Karen had left the club, a public street camera picked up a silver-grey Ford Focus, turning back onto Dumbarton Road, where the club was.
11:44
It then drove east towards Glasgow city centre, in the general direction of Karen's flat.
11:52
Police considered the idea that the man may have offered Karen a lift home.
11:58
Another camera captured the same car turning onto Kelvin Way, a long tree-lined boulevard which heads towards Glasgow University.
12:08
Police examined footage from a camera at an intersection at the top of Kelvin Way.
12:14
It should have taken a car a minute at most to reach there from the last spot they had seen it.
12:19
They watched and waited, and nothing.
12:23
It would be twelve minutes before the car reappeared.
12:27
Where it had been, or what had caused the delay, they couldn't know.
12:32
Those twelve minutes existed in a blind spot between cameras.
12:38
At that point, police didn't know who was in the car, but through footage from cameras capturing snippets of that Sunday morning, they followed it on its journey.
12:49
The car then turned west.
12:52
If Karen was in the car, and if the car had been bringing her home, it should have turned east.
12:58
They decided to keep following the car however they could.
13:02
It was the only lead they had.
13:06
As they trawled hours of footage from countless cameras across Glasgow, one police officer looked further back in time on the street cameras near the club.
13:16
Back to just after 11.30pm.
13:19
And he saw it.
13:21
At 11.38pm, as Karen and her friend stood in the queue outside the club, that same grey Ford Focus was seen arriving nearby.
13:32
The car parked and three men got out of it.
13:35
Police could see the driver.
13:38
It was him.
13:39
The tall, dark-haired man who would walk away with Karen less than 90 minutes later.
13:45
They knew his face.
13:47
And now they knew his car.
13:51
The police search for Karen covered Glasgow's West End, areas around the club and through a nearby park.
13:58
They had found no trace of her.
14:01
They decided to once again appeal to the public for help, this time in identifying the man seen with Karen.
14:09
Late that Monday afternoon, Detective Superintendent Jim Kerr made a televised briefing.
14:15
He entered the room with the waiting media with information and a strategic plan for how much information to give out.
14:26
This time, police released CCTV footage of Karen and the man talking and walking off.
14:33
They were very clear. This man was not a suspect, but they hoped they could speak to him and he could help them find Karen.
14:42
Detective Superintendent Kerr's words made clear how grave the situation appeared.
14:49
He told the press they were worried Karen had come to harm. Whether it was foul play or an accident, they couldn't know.
14:57
He didn't share any details about the car.
15:00
That decision was calculated by police as being necessary.
15:04
If they told the public they knew the car she had left in, if anything untoward had happened to her, they ran the risk of the driver destroying evidence.
15:14
Or, if she had been kidnapped, the driver might start using a different car, or worse still, harm Karen.
15:23
As police briefed the media, detectives were back at the Sanctuary nightclub. They were examining more CCTV footage.
15:31
On the club's interior cameras, just before 1am, they saw something new.
15:37
It was the driver of the Ford Focus.
15:40
He approached what appeared to be his friends at one of the VIP booths.
15:45
He stayed only for a few seconds before walking away again and immediately exiting the venue.
15:51
He never went back into the club.
15:54
Within a few minutes, he was outside, talking to Karen.
15:59
The club's manager looked at the footage.
16:02
He didn't recognise the man, but he did recognise one of the other people at the VIP booth.
16:09
Police contacted that person and asked about the unidentified man.
16:14
At last, they got a name.
16:17
Alexander Pacto, 21 years old.
16:23
If there was any doubt on this new information, it was soon expelled, as calls came into the police hotline following the public appeal.
16:32
Several people called, saying they knew the man in the CCTV images.
16:37
All gave the same name, Alexander Pacto.
16:42
With his name and the make of the car, investigators were able to search the car registration database.
16:49
The system came back with a match and an address.
16:53
Dorchester Avenue, in the Glasgow suburb of Kelvindale.
16:59
At 4.30pm on Monday 13 April, detectives walked up the dozen or so steps to Alexander Pacto's Dorchester Avenue flat.
17:09
The three-storey building was one in a long row, each set back from the road on a small hill, maybe 15 feet above street level.
17:18
A tall old tree growing towards the house from the street was bare, with no sign of springtime leaves emerging.
17:27
Black metal railings guided the detectives up the wide steps to a brown door with two narrow vertical glass windows.
17:34
The building was old, a little shabby.
17:38
The decorative concrete surrounding the door had grown weathered and dirty.
17:42
There was no answer at the door.
17:45
They returned at 5pm.
17:48
This time the door opened.
17:51
They were greeted by the man they had seen on those grainy CCTV images.
17:56
He was holding his iPhone with the torch on.
18:00
I was just coming to see you, he told them.
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18:58
As the detectives stood at the door of Alexander Pacteau's home, with the 21-year-old man standing before them, they were struck instantly by something unusual.
19:08
A strong smell emanating from the house. The smell of bleach.
19:14
As he had answered the door, he had told them, I was just coming to see you, and he then went on to explain why.
19:21
He said he'd seen the reports about Karen on TV and was about to head to the police station.
19:27
He told detectives he had met Karen outside the club by chance.
19:32
He then told them that the pair had consensual sex before she left around 4am to walk home.
19:39
Pacto had scratches on his hands and arms.
19:43
As police entered the home they noticed a lock on Pacto's bedroom door.
19:49
Inside the room there was a toolbox, parcel tape and nail brushes lying around.
19:55
The room was dark and they suspected then that they knew why he had answered the door with his phone in hand with the torch on. He had been using it in that darkened bedroom when they knocked.
20:07
Then they noticed the mattress.
20:09
It was new and too small for the bed frame.
20:13
Police then asked him if he would go to Helen Street Police Station to make a witness statement, and he agreed.
20:21
That afternoon, while reviewing Pacto's file in the database, detectives had discovered a recent conviction for fraud.
20:28
He'd printed £6,000 and £20 notes using a printer he had at home.
20:35
He was handed a community payback order, which is the Scottish equivalent of a community service order.
20:42
By the time police called to his door, he had completed 225 hours of unpaid work as his penalty.
20:52
As police considered his past acts of deception, the smell of bleach in his home and the various items in his bedroom, along with his admission Karen had been inside his house, police now had a probable cause to search.
21:07
As Pacto left for the police station, Detective Superintendent Jim Kerr applied for an urgent warrant to search the flat and his car.
21:18
Forensic scientists arrived and as they waited for the warrant to come through, residents of Dorchester Avenue watched as Pacto's apartment was cordoned off and his car clamped.
21:29
Police had gathered information from the man in the nightclub booth, as well as others who had phoned in about Pacto following the appeal.
21:37
By the time he was heading in for his witness interview, Scotland police had a good idea of how he spent his Saturday evening.
21:45
He'd gone for dinner with family and then met up with seven friends at his flat before heading out.
21:52
At 11pm they'd ordered two taxis to take them the three or so kilometres to the sanctuary nightclub, but only one taxi showed up.
22:02
Pacto then decided to drive himself and two of the friends to the club in his car.
22:07
This matched the footage seen of him arriving by car at 11.38pm, the exact time Karen and her friends were in the club's queue.
22:17
Pacto's group had booked a VIP booth with waitress service and a one-litre bottle of vodka for £250. This meant they entered the club almost straight away, skipping the queues, at around 11.45pm, the same time Karen entered.
22:37
Door security also remembered him.
22:40
At 1am, Pacto had told them he was going to get something from his car, which was parked around 100 metres away.
22:47
When Pacto arrived at Helen Street Police Station, a routine property search was carried out.
22:54
In his pockets, they found two small keys and a receipt from the Pound Stretcher store on Crow Road.
23:01
The timestamp read 11am Sunday, ten hours after Karen was last seen.
23:08
The items purchased were caustic soda and drain unblocker.
23:14
Detectives Chris Sneddon and Alex Ward sat opposite Pacto in the interview room.
23:20
The young man was calm and forthcoming. He answered every question.
23:25
They asked him if he would like a solicitor, but he said no.
23:29
They asked him about the purchases he'd made at Poundstretchers the morning after Karen had supposedly left his flat.
23:37
As he had told police at his home, he said he'd driven Karen back to his flat and they'd had consensual sex.
23:44
This time he expanded on that.
23:47
He explained that Karen had hit her head on his bed frame, and he hadn't realized she had cut herself and bled.
23:55
He said he had offered to drive her home, but she wanted to walk, and she left at 4 a.m.
24:01
It was the following morning that he saw the blood on the bed frame and mattress.
24:05
When he saw the reports that Karen was missing, he panicked that police might think he'd done something to her, as he might have been the last person to see her.
24:15
And so, he explained, he went to buy cleaning products.
24:19
He also wanted to clean his flat, and he said they had clogged drains.
24:25
When asked where his housemate was at the time he explained that both the housemate and the housemate's mother were asleep in the flat at the time.
24:34
The mother was staying over as the pair were going hill-walking early the next day.
24:41
Back at Dorchester Avenue, the forensic search team found something that may have supported Pacto's story of Karen hitting her head.
24:49
They found traces of blood on his bedsheet and his bed frame.
24:54
The detectives asked Pacto about the mattress, wondering why it seemed too small for the bed frame.
25:01
He admitted he'd swapped his for a smaller one after Karen had left.
25:06
He told them he was so worried about the blood that he burned the mattress and his clothes on a forest road close to his mother's home, about a 30-minute drive from Glasgow.
25:17
He said he had also disposed of some of the cleaning materials.
25:21
At the flat, the forensic team went through each room using chemical swabs and luminol, a substance used to detect invisible traces of blood.
25:33
Despite Pacto's attempts to remove Karen's blood traces, they found more.
25:38
It was on the floorboards beneath the carpet in his bedroom, in the hallway and communal stairwell, and in the bathroom, including in the bath.
25:49
At 11.55pm, after six hours of questioning as a witness, police explained to Pacto that while his flat, car and phone were being examined, he would be released to a hotel.
26:01
He was then asked to sign his witness statement.
26:05
The investigators knew that there wasn't enough evidence for an arrest, but they felt it was close.
26:12
Pacto was taken away to stay at the Holiday Inn, where police remained outside watching him.
26:19
That night, Detective Superintendent Kerr fast-tracked the digital analysis of Pacto's phone data, including location retrieval.
26:29
Police then began a massive sweep of odd city and regional council CCTV footage, private business security tapes, including from the pound-stretcher store Pacto had visited that Sunday morning.
26:42
They looked through footage from every public traffic camera along the route between the nightclub and Pacto's flat, as well as out towards his mother's home, where he said he had burned the mattress.
26:54
At 4am the following morning, Pacto's Ford Focus was towed away to be forensically examined.
27:01
Detectives soon located Pacto's flatmate.
27:04
He confirmed that his mother had stayed over on Saturday night and that they'd gone hill-walking early on Sunday.
27:12
Around lunchtime, Alexander texted him to ask what time he'd be home.
27:17
He replied, around 8pm.
27:21
When he walked through the front door at 8.15pm, he found Alexander frantically scrubbing the hallway floor and communal stairwell with heavy cleaning products.
27:33
Fifteen minutes later, Alexander went to bed and locked his door.
27:40
Door-to-door inquiries began around Pacto's home, with police asking if anyone had seen Karen or anything unusual.
27:49
One neighbour told police how that Monday, around 10am, almost 36 hours after Karen was last seen, they'd watched a tall man with dark hair struggling to get a mattress into the back of his car.
28:03
The man was using phone charger cables to try to tie it up.
28:08
He was shoving the mattress into a grey Ford Focus.
28:12
A separate neighbour on the same street told police that later that day, around 2pm, he had watched the same dark-haired man struggle to carry a massive heavy blue industrial plastic barrel.
28:25
The man took it out of the apartment building and loaded it into the back seat of his car.
28:32
Detectives visited pound-stretchers on Crow Road and collected their security tapes.
28:39
As they watched, they spotted Pacto at 11am casually walking around the store with a red plastic basket full of cleaning products, including caustic soda and drain unblocking fluid.
28:55
As the search widened, so did the press and public interest, both in Scotland and Ireland.
29:03
Karen's face was on the front pages across both countries.
29:07
The British general election campaign was then in full swing, but was pushed off the front pages by the story of the missing Irish woman.
29:17
At 2pm on Tuesday 14 April, two and a half days since Karen was last seen, police called another press conference.
29:27
This time Karen's parents would speak.
29:31
Detective Superintendent Kerr and the team had been as honest as they could be with Karen's parents about the fact that they had interviewed the man last seen with her.
29:40
But they were careful not to give false hope.
29:44
To protect the investigation, they had to be careful and selective on what they could say to them, or anyone else, regarding their interview with Pacto.
29:54
As they prepared for the press conference, police knew it was important to hold back some information.
30:01
Pacto was by then a suspect in their eyes, but they could not portray that to the media at that stage.
30:08
They had to let the investigation follow the proper processes or risk prejudicing a future trial.
30:15
At 1.40pm, just 20 minutes before the press conference, a member of the public contacted police.
30:23
They told them that on the previous Sunday morning at 7am, some six hours after Karen was last seen, they had been walking along Dawsham Road, by the entrance to Dawsham Park.
30:35
The spot was just minutes from Pacto's home on Dorchester Avenue.
30:40
In a bin there they noticed a handbag.
30:44
A handbag that they now believed belonged to Karen.
30:48
It contained a passport and a cell phone.
30:52
The person handed the items over to the police, admitting that they had wiped the phone of all its data, intending to keep it.
31:00
Police knew that the location of the discovery was not on the route Karen would have taken if she was walking home.
31:07
It was in the opposite direction.
31:13
The search out on the streets of the city soon moved to focus on Dawsham Park, with the area cordoned off.
31:20
A helicopter searched overhead and hundreds of additional officers were drafted to assist specialist teams, including police sniffer dogs and teams of divers who would search the nearby river and canal.
31:33
Back at Helen Street Police Station, the information about the handbag and its contents gave the CCTV tracking team an exact location and time frame to look for both the Ford Focus and Caron.
31:47
As the press conference began at 2pm that Tuesday, Detective Superintendent Jim Kerr felt they were closing in on Alexander Pacto, but he knew there was not yet a single piece of solid proof to confirm those suspicions.
32:01
Pacto could have been telling the truth about Karen leaving his flat at 4am.
32:06
There were ways in which a story could prove to be plausible.
32:11
There was still a possibility that harm came to Karen after leaving Dorchester Avenue.
32:17
Kerr told reporters police were gravely concerned for Karen's safety.
32:22
It had been more than 60 hours, roughly two and a half days, since she was seen on CCTV footage leaving the club.
32:31
He released the latest information that Karen's handbag had been found in the bin at Dawson Park.
32:37
He said they had traced the man that she had been seen with outside the club, but he was not being treated as a suspect and was helping with their inquiries.
32:46
Kerr said police wanted any information the public had, especially regarding a silver-grey car that was seen driving in the rural areas 15km north of Glasgow city centre between 11am and 3pm on Monday.
33:02
He explained that Karen had apparently left their witnesses' flat at about 4am, planning to walk the hour-long journey to her home.
33:10
But she had not been seen since.
33:13
He added, Karen is a lovely girl, close to her family and popular with her friends.
33:20
She has only been in Glasgow a few months and, if staying out, will always let her friends know, hence the real concern here.
33:30
Karen's parents then spoke.
33:33
They sat at a long table facing the gathered media, with a cluster of microphones stacked in front of them.
33:40
They said what they could about their daughter to the crowd of reporters and the world.
33:45
Karen's mother, Marion, said, We just want Karen home safely. We are desperate.
33:52
She is our only daughter. We love her dearly.
33:56
If anybody has any information, please come forward. We would dearly appreciate it.
34:02
They said they were trying to stay positive and holding on to the hope of good news coming.
34:08
Karen's father, John, then said, We are desperate to get her back and safe with her family.
34:14
She is our only daughter.
34:16
We love her dearly and we just want her to come home safe and sound.
34:29
By this time, the Facebook page Please Help Find Karen Missing in Glasgow had been set up and already had 27,000 likes and hundreds of messages of urgency and hope.
34:41
Friends paid tribute to her, with one message calling her a kind, caring girl who wouldn't hurt her fly.
34:49
The post finished saying, Come back to us safe, Karen. Come back soon. Missing you, my little bookaroo.
34:57
Another wrote, All your friends are supporting each other, waiting on news every second of every minute of every day.
35:06
I love you. Kiss kiss.
35:11
Back home in Ireland, Karen's neighbours had taken over the care of the family farm, and their community rallied and supported the family and each other.
35:21
In Glasgow, at Helen Street Police Station, the team continued to review various CCTV of the park area.
35:29
When they searched the cameras that covered the roads leading in and out of Dawson Park, they noticed something that could prove significant.
35:39
At 1.26am, just 20 minutes after Karen left the club, Alexander Pacto's silver grey Ford Focus could be seen arriving at Dawsham Road, alongside the park.
35:50
The car stopped near the quiet, secluded industrial entrance, not far from his home.
35:56
The same entrance where the handbag was found in the bin a few hours later.
36:01
The car sat there for over 20 minutes before leaving the area and heading back towards Pacto's home.
36:08
As they viewed the footage, police were hit with a haunting question.
36:13
If Pacto was dumping Karen's bag at 1.30am, did that mean by then Karen was dead?
36:20
If so, was her body in the car as it sat parked outside Dawson Park?
36:28
In total, police analysed more than 1,200 hours of camera footage in those few days.
36:35
As they worked through the mountain of footage, they pieced together Pacto's movements after leaving the club.
36:43
They came to believe that Karen had accepted an offer of a lift home from Pacto.
36:48
They had walked to his car before driving in the direction of her flat.
36:52
He then turned on to Kelvin Way, a long and dark tree-lined street.
36:58
This was the location where his car had stopped for twelve minutes, before appearing again at the top end of the street, a journey that should have taken just one minute.
37:08
He then turned left in the direction of his flat.
37:12
He drove beyond his home to the secluded side of Dawson Park, where he dumped her handbag in a council bin.
37:19
He parked there for just over 20 minutes, before returning to his home at 2am.
37:25
As police placed the pieces alongside each other, they began to believe that whatever happened to Karen, it might have been during that first 12-minute stop.
37:37
With the discovery of the handbag and subsequent park footage, the team believed they had just blown apart Pactau's story of Karen leaving his home at 4am.
37:47
As the day ended, the search for Karen extended to the industrial park and buildings near the park and Pactau's home.
37:55
While waiting to see whether Karen's wiped phone would reveal any information, the investigators had obtained emergency data from mobile phone network providers.
38:05
They could see which cell towers Pacto's phone had pinged at different times on the Sunday and Monday.
38:11
Because this only gave them general areas as opposed to exact locations, they didn't have a clear map yet, but they had general locations.
38:20
One was just north of the city, in a regional location.
38:24
But it was too close to the city to be the area where Pacto told them he burned the mattress.
38:30
It was somewhere he had not spoken about.
38:34
As they waited for the complete phone location data, they used Pacto's bank records to compile a list of the stores he had visited.
38:41
There were over a dozen different shops across the north of Glasgow.
38:46
Detectives went to retrieve CCTV from each shop, including any others in the same areas that sold cleaning products.
38:55
Meanwhile, police continued to monitor Alexander Pacto at the Holiday Inn.
39:00
The public interest in the search for Karen was so much that the appeal for information was on every news bulletin in both Scotland and Ireland.
39:09
One person who called the hotline worked for a car valet in Glasgow.
39:14
They told police that at around 4pm on Monday, just over 36 hours after Karen went missing, a tall, dark-haired man had brought a grey Ford Focus in to be cleaned.
39:26
The staff noticed that the car smelled heavily of chemicals and bleach and that the passenger seat was damp.
39:34
When the Daily Record newspaper hit the stands on Wednesday morning, there was no doubt who Scotland police suspected of foul play.
39:42
Alexander Pactow's name and picture was on the front page.
39:46
The paper had interviewed his mother, who repeated what she had been told by police, that her son was not being treated as a suspect.
39:54
She told reporters that other people believed that they saw Karen after 4am.
40:00
As that Wednesday morning unfolded, three days into their search, police got the findings of the forensic team who had examined Pacto's car.
40:09
They had dismantled it and thoroughly examined it.
40:13
A cadaver dog had been brought to the car, specifically to detect the scent of human remains.
40:19
The dogs are trained to ignore standard blood staining or household chemicals.
40:25
When sniffing near the boot, the dog became highly agitated, signifying that a body may have been transported inside it.
40:35
Technicians also found minute blood splatters inside the front passenger side of the car.
40:41
Testing of that blood and the blood found in Pacto's flat would reveal that each sample matched Karen's DNA.
40:50
The blood evidence from both his car and flat now contradicted his alibi that she had simply left at 4am with a bump to her head.
40:59
This shifted the case from a missing person to a possible homicide and Alexander Pacto was officially a suspect.
41:08
On the afternoon of Wednesday April 15th 2015 police watched Alexander Pacto as he left his room at the Holiday Inn and travelled into Glasgow City.
41:18
At 1.55pm, plainclothes officers approached him and his mother at a Starbucks.
41:24
Police told him he was being detained as a suspect for the murder of Karen Buckley.
41:30
He made no comment when taken into custody.
41:33
At the station, police devised a detailed strategy for Pacto's interview.
41:39
In 2015, police were only allowed a strict 12 hours of questioning. Then they would have to either arrest him or release him.
41:47
Time was short but the investigating team were confident that in the coming 12 hours they would gather enough evidence to arrest and charge Pacto.
41:57
They had noticed during his previous interview that he appeared comfortable in front of police, cocky almost.
42:04
He had come prepared with an answer for everything.
42:07
This time they expected it would be different as they laid out the evidence built across three days of exhaustive police work.
42:15
They went in with a plan to reveal some of their evidence, but not all, not right away.
42:23
Then sit back and let him talk.
42:26
They intended to allow him to talk himself into a corner and break down his own alibi.
42:32
When he arrived at the station, the 21-year-old Pacto appeared calm.
42:38
During the routine processing and search in the holding area, he was asked to empty his pockets.
42:44
a crumpled note on Holiday Inn notepaper fell out.
42:48
As police read it, they realised it was a list of all the things he'd already told them, the details of his story, a sort of cheat sheet of his alibi.
42:59
As the interview began, Detective Inspector Jamie Picken asked Pacto to again tell them about meeting Karen.
43:07
He repeated his story that she had knocked her head but it wasn't serious and, after refusing a lift home, she had left at 4am.
43:16
Pacto was articulate and intelligent, even charming as he answered the questions.
43:22
It seemed to the police that he was enjoying being interviewed.
43:26
They began to wonder if he saw their questioning as a challenge.
43:30
But as the questions went on, his demeanour began to shift.
43:34
His early confidence began to leave him. He fidgeted with his fingers, keeping his head down as he quietly answered questions without looking up.
43:43
Detective Inspector Picken confronted him with the CCTV footage from Poundstretcher, but he shrugged it off, just as he had done before.
43:52
However, by the time police sat in that room with Pacto, they were armed with a wealth of digital data retrieved from his phone.
44:00
This time the team had a much clearer picture of his movements and purchases. in the hours and days after Karen's disappearance.
44:08
They could now tell a very different story to the one he had told previously, down to the minute.
44:15
On Sunday morning at 8am, seven hours after Karen was last seen on CCTV and six hours after Pacto's car arrived home, he googled the properties of sodium hydroxide, better known as caustic soda.
44:30
It is a readily available and well-known corrosive substance, which has the potential to dissolve human tissue if given enough time.
44:40
Later, at 9.42am, he drove to hardware shop B&Q.
44:45
There, he purchased six litres of caustic soda, along with heavy-duty masks and gloves.
44:52
He asked a staff member for advice on how to remove bloodstains from a mattress.
44:58
At 11am, he purchased bottles of caustic soda and drain-unblocking fluid at Poundstretcher.
45:05
From there, he went home to the flat.
45:08
At 12.38pm, he texted his housemate to ask what time he would be returning home.
45:14
The housemate said 8pm.
45:18
At 8.15pm, his housemate returned home and found Pacdo scrubbing the flat and outdoor stairs with strong chemicals. Shortly afterwards, Pacdo went to bed.
45:30
The next day, Monday, at 4.52am, he drove to Bridge 27 on the 4th and Clyde Canal near his flat.
45:38
He stayed there for a short time.
45:41
At 6.27am, he purchased white spirit and a lighter from Tesco.
45:47
He then did something that police were yet to explain.
45:51
At 6.45am, he drove to a rural area a few kilometres north of Glasgow.
45:57
Police were still unable to determine the exact location.
46:01
They knew it was not the area he had told them he had visited, where he said he had burned his mattress in a panicked state.
46:09
He was home again by 8.30am, and at 8.34am, he used his phone to Google industrial-sized storage containers, buying one online.
46:21
By 9am he was at a Glasgow packaging company collecting a 220 litre industrial blue plastic barrel.
46:30
On his way home, at 9.38am, he stopped again at a pound stretcher.
46:35
He bought more caustic soda and drain unblocking fluid before returning to his flat.
46:41
By this point he had purchased between 40 and 45 litres of caustic soda.
46:48
Around 20 minutes later, his neighbour saw him trying to fit a mattress into the back of his car.
46:55
At 10.27am, he was at an Asda supermarket. He bought another lighter and lighter fluid, and 20 minutes later he had returned to that rural area, just a few kilometres north of Glasgow.
47:08
He was home again by 11.20am.
47:11
He stayed there for over two hours before a second neighbour saw him struggling to get an industrial-sized blue barrel into his car.
47:20
After this, traffic cameras saw his car driving out of central Glasgow.
47:25
The blue barrel was visible on the back seat.
47:29
At 2.22pm he returned to Asda where he bought two heavy duty padlocks and additional white spirits.
47:37
At 2.35pm he drove back to that countryside area for the third and final time.
47:44
He arrived at the car valet station at 3.30pm.
47:48
While he casually waited for his car to be deep cleaned, he used his mobile phone to make a listing online.
47:55
Grey Ford Focus, quick sail.
47:59
He then returned home where, at 5pm, he opened the door to the police.
48:08
The interviewing detectives now had a mountain of evidence that they knew broke down Pacto's entire alibi.
48:15
But they still needed to be exact in their approach.
48:18
They were still missing parts to the story. Still things unknown.
48:24
It was at 3pm that day, just one hour after Alexander Pacto's arrest, when Scotland police got a call from another member of the public.
48:33
The man had seen the appeal about the grey Ford Focus and recognised it as the same car belonging to a man he used to work with in a fireworks business.
48:43
He gave the name Alexander Pacto.
48:46
He told them about a location that he felt might be relevant to the investigation.
48:51
Pacto had rented storage space for the fireworks, he said, on a farm just north of Glasgow.
48:59
Within 30 minutes, police were on their way.
49:14
On the evening of Wednesday, April 15th, four days after Karen disappeared, her neighbours and friends gathered in Morne Abbey County Cork for a mass of hope.
49:25
They prayed for Karen's family and for her safe return home.
49:31
As they came together, they were not aware that events in Scotland and the search for Karen were entering a new and tragic phase.
49:41
Within thirty minutes of receiving the tip-off about the storage space Alexander Pacto had rented, a police search team was on their way to the farm north of Glasgow.
49:52
A long driveway veering off the main road led to a farmyard nestled among miles of open land.
49:59
The stone walls and barbed-wire fences that hemmed in the surrounding fields felt far removed from the city of Glasgow.
50:08
Once on the farm, police found a number of houses and sheds, old brick buildings dating back decades or more.
50:16
Some were painted white with black slate roofs and old wooden doors.
50:21
Others were small bare brick structures.
50:24
A police helicopter circled above, flying over the surrounding fields and woodland, and police rode out on scrambler bikes to search the wider area.
50:35
The owner of the farm said he had dealt with Pacto in the past and the young man had visited the farm again on Monday of that week.
50:43
He had rented a shed at the price of £10 a week.
50:48
When police approached the shed he'd rented they noticed a brand new padlock on the door.
50:54
They tried the key that they had found in Pacto's pocket.
50:58
It fit.
51:00
As they pulled open the door they saw a sheet covering something large.
51:06
A bicycle wheel and paper shredder were placed on top, holding the sheet in place.
51:11
When they looked underneath the sheet, they found a blue plastic barrel.
51:18
They suspected that the barrel was full of caustic soda and drain fluid.
51:23
Worse, they believed it might contain Karen's remains.
51:31
The scene was declared a biohazard and the fire service were called in.
51:36
They had to wait for the area to be cleared and the scene deemed safe to investigate and all the while the clock ticked on their 12 hours to question Pacto.
51:48
It was just before 8pm six hours into their custody clock when the barrel was deemed safe to open.
51:58
Inside they found Karen's body Alexander Pacto was formally arrested for the murder of Karen Buckley.
52:15
Overnight, a post-mortem examination showed Karen had injuries indicating she had been the victim of a physical assault before her death.
52:25
Over the following 24 hours, after being cornered with the overwhelming evidence against him and after speaking with his solicitor, Alexander Pacto changed the story again.
52:36
This time, he said that after going back to his flat, Karen fell and hit her nose on the head of the bed, causing her to bleed.
52:45
She went from the bedroom through to the bathroom.
52:48
She then became angry and started slapping him.
52:51
He said he then reached for the nearest item he could find, a spanner, and began hitting her around the head.
52:58
He said he then panicked and decided to get rid of her body, spending the next two days in a haze.
53:04
He didn't say where the spanner was, and police hadn't found it.
53:09
One of the detectives interviewing Pacto, D.I. Jamie Picken, laid out piece by piece the CCTV of his shopping and car locations, the blood evidence from his home and car, and the barrel.
53:23
He had CCTV footage of around a dozen places, Pacto looking calm, shopping for 45 litres of corrosive liquids.
53:32
Even faced with all of this new evidence, police didn't notice any panic in Pacto. He remained calm as he responded.
53:42
As the news emerged that Karen's remains had been found, her father John released a statement in which he said that he, her mother Marion and Karen's three brothers were absolutely heartbroken.
53:56
The search party across Glasgow quietened.
54:00
The Sanctuary Nightclub announced that they would close their doors for the night as a sign of respect.
54:07
At 3pm the following day, Alexander Pacto was formally charged with murder and attempting to defeat the ends of justice when he appeared at a private hearing at Glasgow Sheriff Court.
54:19
He was remanded in custody.
54:23
At 5.30pm on a Friday, Glasgow's centre would typically be full of people giddily beginning their weekend, maybe heading out of town or heading to the pub after a long week of work.
54:35
But that Friday felt different in the city.
54:39
Eight hundred people of all ages and walks of life came together in St. George's Square.
54:45
Flowers, candles, cards and messages were laid out in the square, and a piper played.
54:52
Many Irish living in the city and beyond felt compelled to travel from all over to attend.
54:58
Mourners sang the cork anthem, The Banks of My Own Lovely Lee, and Tom McGarvey sang Danny Boy, with the sound of the bagpipes soaring over the square.
55:12
Karen's death had affected the people of Glasgow in many different ways, but the support shown to Karen's parents and brothers that evening was unlike most had ever seen.
55:23
There was a sense that Karen could have been anyone's daughter or sister.
55:27
She could have been anyone's friend, or any of the hundreds of women in the crowd.
55:34
After visiting the Glasgow Caledonian University campus where Karen was studying, her family arrived at the vigil, where Derry-born Glaswegian Pauline Bradley was so moved that she composed a song for Karen.
55:48
There is sorrow over the waters for one of Ireland's daughters, and from Glasgow to Cork we all share your pain, she sang.
56:02
A silent vigil was held the following night in the area of Garnet Hill, where Karen had lived with her friends.
56:09
Candles were lit in the shape of a triscale, a Celtic triple spiral.
56:15
Back home, Ireland's Minister for Foreign Affairs, Charlie Flanagan, spoke publicly, sending support to the community and Karen's parents.
56:26
Four days after Pacto's arrest, police discovered why he had made that one stop on the bridge between his house and Dawson Park over the 4th and Clyde Canal.
56:37
Under the bridge, police divers went into the water, and from the bed of the Fort and Clyde Canal, they pulled out a 30cm adjustable metal spanner.
56:47
Forensic scientists successfully isolated microscopic blood traces from its crevices, which were definitive DNA matches to Karen.
56:57
It was initially suggested that Karen's body would be released to the family the following day to bring her home for her funeral.
57:04
But that was delayed as Pactow exercised his right to an independent autopsy.
57:11
Although the legal framework on this would change later in 2018, back in 2015, defence solicitors had an almost automatic right to conduct their own second and independent post-mortem on a body before it could be released to the family for a funeral.
57:28
While this second autopsy was being conducted, police officers recovered the remnants of a partially burnt mattress at the farm.
57:35
It also held traces of Karen's blood.
57:39
Because of the second autopsy, Karen was not transported back home to Cork and laid to rest until April 28th.
57:48
600 mourners, including police officers from Scotland who had been involved in her search, school friends and the wider community, joined her family and friends at the Church of St Michael the Archangel in Morne Abbey.
58:00
With the church full, hundreds spilled outside.
58:05
Karen's classmates stood in silence in their nurses' uniforms.
58:09
They all carried a single red rose.
58:13
As the hearse drove away, they lined the street alongside schoolchildren, forming a guard of honour.
58:21
At the Buckley home, Karen's old bedroom was filled with thousands of handwritten letters sent to her family by people across the world.
58:30
Over the four months between Pactow's arrest and his court date, Scotland's most senior prosecutor, the Lord Advocate, Frank Mulholland QC, took on the task of preparing a watertight case.
58:43
The expectation was that Pactow would plead not guilty.
58:47
Detective Superintendent Kerr and his team meticulously reviewed each piece of evidence, including every moment of thousands of hours of CCTV.
58:58
They went back to look at street footage from around the club during Pacto's very early 12.30am exit, before meeting Karen.
59:06
Because Karen was in the club at the time, street footage of the time wasn't initially relevant.
59:12
But now they were building a case to prove pre-meditation and the exact method in which Karen was killed.
59:20
It was at around 12.30am on Sunday the 12th of April when they knew Pacto was outside the club that they saw a young woman in a pink dress walking on her own down Church Street where Pacto had parked his car.
59:34
Then they saw him, close behind her, ducking in and out between parked cars.
59:40
He was stalking her.
59:42
The woman in the pink dress then stepped out onto the street and hailed a taxi.
59:47
She drove off and Pacdo continued walking back to the club.
59:53
The footage matched up with other footage of him leaving the booth at 12.30am, then coming back to his friends before leaving again and meeting Karen.
60:05
On June 4th, Detective Superintendent Kerr stood in front of the media once again. This time, he showed a CCTV still of the young woman and asked for the public's help to trace her.
60:18
He stressed that she was in no way connected with the death of Karen, but that she may have information that could assist the investigation.
60:26
The woman came forward.
60:28
She had no idea how close she had been to Pacto.
60:33
She may not have known it at the time, but she had not only had a terribly lucky escape, she had also assisted the prosecution in gathering solid proof of premeditation, which could prove to be critical if Pacto's defence argued that he didn't intend to kill Karen.
60:50
As August approached, the team had painstakingly pieced together what they believed had happened to Karen that night.
60:57
They could now disprove Pacto's latest story, that he didn't mean to kill her in his flat, that it was all a tragic accident and all he did after that was the result of his panic.
61:08
But the full evidence police had gathered from the car and Karen's injuries had shown he had killed her before he arrived home.
61:17
They believed that it was during those twelve minutes when his car was hidden from cameras on the long street between the club and his home that he had killed her.
61:26
Injuries to both her hands and arms as well as the injuries to his that were seen when police first met him proved some sort of struggle had occurred and that Karen fought for her life.
61:39
With the soft tissue injuries to her neck, investigators concluded she had been strangled.
61:45
Her post-mortem also showed that she was struck 12 or 13 times on the head with the spanner found in the canal.
61:53
Pacto's claim that they had sex that night was proven to be completely false.
61:59
Karen died in the car within 18 minutes of leaving the nightclub.
62:04
Police believed that he had a premeditated plan to violently assault and kill a woman that night.
62:11
After carrying out his plan he dumped her bag and went home where he collected a sheet, wrapped her in it and carried her from the car up the communal stairs into the flat while his housemate and their mother slept.
62:25
He took Karen into his room and locked his bedroom door from the inside.
62:30
The next morning he began his calculated cover-up, starting with googling corrosive liquids.
62:37
When his attempt at dissolving her body in the bath was unsuccessful, he dragged her remains back into his room, wrapping it in a duvet.
62:47
He then attempted a deep clean of his bedroom and flat before his housemate returned home.
62:53
The following morning, Monday, April 13th, at 4.52am, he drove to the canal bridge to dispose of the spanner.
63:02
He then spent the day buying the blue barrel and dozens more litres of caustic soda and bleach, all at different stores, not to raise a suspicion.
63:12
Then he rented the shed and hid Karen there.
63:16
He got his car cleaned and tried to sell it.
63:22
What he didn't know was that dozens of people across Glasgow had seen him, or had memories of him, to tell the police.
63:30
Friends had recalled times he'd spoken of the best way to get rid of a body, or how he might attack a woman.
63:37
On August 11, 2015, Karen's family arrived at court with Morne Abbey Parish Priest, Father Joe O'Keefe, and a Garda liaison officer who travelled with the family from Ireland to support them.
63:51
Before Alexander Pacto entered the courtroom, the prosecution withdrew the second charge of attempting to defeat the ends of justice in exchange for a guilty plea.
64:01
Alexander Pacto and his counsel knew the evidence against him was overwhelming.
64:07
When the court clerk read out the official indictment, Pacto's defence lawyer, John Scullion QC, stood up.
64:15
My lady, the panel pleads guilty to the charge on the indictment, he said.
64:21
This was the moment everyone in that courtroom had been waiting for.
64:25
Karen's family would not have to be dragged through a lengthy, traumatic public trial.
64:30
Witnesses would not be called and the press could finally speak on something they had been unable to report on for months as it may have prevented Pacto from receiving a fair trial.
64:43
The moment it was stated in court that Pacto had pled guilty the county clerk read a statement to the court In it, he confirmed Pacto had been charged with sexual assault in November of 2011, but was found not guilty in February of 2013, just over two years before he murdered Karen.
65:04
There were audible gasps in the courtroom.
65:07
In November 2011, a 24-year-old woman was walking home alone from a 21st birthday party in central Glasgow when she met Alexander Pacto, then 17, in the street.
65:20
Pacto forced her down an alleyway.
65:23
A passerby heard her screams and intervened and Pacto was subsequently arrested and charged.
65:29
Shortly after his arrest, Pacto was involved in a severe single car crash that put him into an induced coma for a month.
65:38
after breaking ribs and a hip he couldn't walk for six months and used crutches for a year after that the trial for attempted rape was postponed for over a year until he recovered this resulted in him receiving disability living allowance In February 2013, he finally stood trial at Paisley High Court on crutches.
66:02
Attending court physically impaired led to the misunderstanding that he was physically impaired at the time of the attack.
66:09
He denied that he had attempted to rape the woman, claiming he was a homosexual and had no sexual interest in women.
66:16
He said that in the laneway the woman had suddenly turned violent and slapped him across the face, knocking him flat to the ground.
66:24
He claimed that his belt buckle accidentally came undone as he fell and his pants came down as a result.
66:31
He was found not guilty.
66:33
Ultimately, there wasn't enough evidence for the jury to convict.
66:38
The woman who had accused him of attempted rape would later say, After the verdict, my world fell apart and I can't describe the agony of not being believed.
66:49
In the aftermath of the trial she was so concerned about Pactow's danger to women that she wrote a letter to the Scottish Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill.
66:58
She pleaded with the minister to stop him from doing this or worse to another woman or girl.
67:05
She wrote, I dread to think what he may be capable of doing to others in the future.
67:10
I cannot sit back and do nothing.
67:15
After Pactau pled guilty, she spoke publicly for the first time.
67:20
She said that when she saw his name in the media, she felt like someone had taken all the air from my lungs.
67:27
I've accepted that I won't get justice, she said, but I believe when he is sentenced in a strange way, that will be my justice.
67:35
These past few months have been very hard.
67:38
I feel selfish even uttering such words because it is nothing compared to the pain and suffering of Karen Buckley's family.
67:49
At the murder trial, Glasgow High Court heard there was no evidence of a sexual assault in Karen's murder.
67:56
Both the trial judge and senior detectives described the savage killing as motiveless.
68:03
As the prosecution presented their evidence to the judge, they detailed the forensic timeline.
68:09
Prosecutors made clear in court that Pacto's initial version of events, including a claim that he had consensual sex with the victim, was a lie.
68:18
Karen was never in his flat alive and they never had sex.
68:24
Scotland's chief prosecutor, the Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland, told the High Court that no words of mine can express the effect this terrible murder has had on the family.
68:35
It was said that Karen Buckley's encounter with her murderer outside a nightclub was entirely random but prosecutors told the court they believed Pacto was intent on attacking some woman that night.
68:48
He explained all the evidence as being undeniable and the court heard how police had found Pacto's fingerprints on the blue barrel that he had filled with caustic soda in an attempt to destroy Karen's body.
69:01
An assigned social worker who had dealt with Pacto said he showed no remorse over what he had done.
69:07
Police forensics experts also found that although Pacto had thought he had scrubbed every shred of evidence of Karen's death from the car by having it professionally valeted, pieces of mud were found stuck in the tread of the tyres and they matched soil samples from the park where Karen's handbag was dumped and the farm where her body was later recovered.
69:28
Pactow's defence argued that because the prosecution had formerly withdrawn the concealment charge, and so his actions after killing Caron were not part of the case anymore, the judge should ignore the attempts to conceal the crime when passing sentence.
69:43
This legal manoeuvre deeply angered the judge, the Honourable Lady Ray.
69:48
After hearing the arguments, the judge accepted the guilty plea but officially deferred sentencing for four weeks to allow for the compilation of criminal justice social work reports.
69:59
Pacto was led down to the cells.
70:03
During the final sentencing on September the 8th, the judge publicly attacked the prosecution's decision to drop the lesser charge.
70:12
The Crown, for some reason, decided not to persist in seeking a conviction on that charge.
70:19
I regret that the Crown, in withdrawing Charge 2, has to some extent tied my hands in relation to this sentence.
70:27
Despite her frustration with the prosecution's decision, Judge Lady Ray rejected the defence argument that she should ignore the cover-up of the murder.
70:37
She ruled that because of the horrific details of the cover-up were still written into the agreed narrative signed by both parties, she was legally entitled to view his post-murder conduct as a massive aggravating factor.
70:51
She then sentenced Alexander Pacto to the full 23-year minimum life sentence.
70:58
Addressing him directly, she said, This crime is a very shocking and disturbing case.
71:05
You killed a young woman who was a stranger to you in what appears to be a motiveless, senseless, brutal attack.
71:14
Outside the court, Karen's father, John Buckley, described Pactow as truly evil and said he hoped he would spend the rest of his life in prison.
71:26
In a statement released after the hearing, he said he and her family were devastated and heartbroken at the thought of his daughter's final moments.
71:35
The panic and fear she experienced as she fought for her very survival, but she had no chance against that coward.
71:44
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.
71:57
He thanked the people of Glasgow and Ireland for all their support.
72:02
What a waste of a young life.
72:04
It all seemed unreal, he said.
72:07
We miss her terribly.
72:12
In December 2025, ten years after the murder of his daughter, John Buckley wrote a letter to Alexander Pacto in prison.
72:21
With it, John enclosed a religious prayer and a small crucifix from the pilgrimage site of Medjugorje.
72:29
Of writing the letter, John said, I told him I forgive him, and that if we turn back to Jesus, no matter how bad or what harm we've done, if we're sorry, he will forgive us.
72:42
Maybe in his own time, he will turn back to God.
72:47
I hope he will be in heaven someday.
72:54
Thank you.
73:16
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73:20
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73:32
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73:37
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73:43
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73:53
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74:02
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74:04
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74:11
Join me next time as we open another case and follow the evidence wherever it leads.
74:41
Because, in the end, everything done in the dark comes to light.
