BREAKING: Man pleads guilty to the murder of nurse Karen Buckley
Alexander Pacteau has pleaded guilty to the murder of Irish student Karen Buckley in April this year.
Pacteau was charged with the murder of the 24-year-old north Cork woman a week after she disappeared from a Glasgow nightclub on April 12.
A massive search attempted to locate Karen after her worried friends reported her missing, but tragically her remains were discovered four days later on a farm on the outskirts of the city.
Privately-educated Pacteau, 21, appeared in Glasgow High Court this morning. Ms Buckley's father John, mother Marian and brothers Brendan, Kieran and Damian are all also in court for the proceedings.
They are being supported by Mourneabbey, Co Cork parish priest, Fr Joe O’Keeffe, and a Garda liaison officer.
His guilty plea now means he faces a mandatory life sentence in prison.
Read out in court before the Honorable Justice Lady Rae, the indictment against him states: “You Alexander Pacteau aka Alexander Barr on 12 April in motor vehicle registration no. EY05 VVR at Kelvin Way, Glasgow did assault Karen Buckley, formerly of Glasgow Caledonian University, repeatedly strike her on the head and body with a spanner and compress her neck and you did murder her.”
It earlier emerged that Pacteau, who had been drinking heavily at the time, had first attempted to strangle the University Of Limerick nursing graduate in his car before battering her to death with a spanner, striking her head up to 13 times.
He later desperately tried to cover his tracks, placing his victim's body in a blue plastic barrel and filling it up with 40 litres of caustic soda – a strong chemical used in the likes of drain cleaner.
Pacteau then hid the barrel in a storage shed on an isolated farm 10km north of the city.
Karen was studying for a Masters degree in Occupational Therapy at Glasgow Caledonia University at the time of her murder.
