Scotland's most senior law officer travelled to Ireland last month to meet the family of murdered Cork nurse Karen Buckley and brief them on the case against the man accused of their daughter's killing.
Lord advocate Frank Mulholland QC, the Scottish equivalent of the Director of Public Prosecutions, flew to Cork to brief John and Marian Buckley on the progress in the case against Alexander Pacteau.
Pacteau had been charged with the murder of Ms Buckley at Kelvin Way in Glasgow on April 12th, and on Tuesday he pleaded guilty to the charge when he appeared at the High Court in Glasgow.
A spokesman for the crown office and procurator fiscal on Wednesday confirmed to The Irish Times that Mr Mulholland went to meet the Buckley family in July.
“The lord advocate met the Buckley family in Cork and spent the day briefing them on the progress in the case against Alexander Pacteau so they were fully informed of events,” said the spokesman.
It is understood Mr Mulholland visited the Buckley family farm in Mourneabbey in north Cork and saw where Ms Buckley grew up so he was fully familiar with her life story for Pacteau’s court case.
Not unusual
According to the spokesman, it is not unusual for the Lord Advocate to personally brief the families of murder victims in advance of someone going on trial for the killing of their loved one.
“Families often meet the prosecutor in advance of a trial and in the past there have been cases where the Lord Advocate has travelled abroad to brief the affected parties,” said the spokesman.
Prosecuting the case against Pacteau before High Court judge Lady Rae, Mr Mulholland gave an outline of the case against Pacteau after the 21-year-old entered a guilty plea to the charge.
In an agreed narrative, Mr Mulholland told how Pacteau killed Ms Buckley by striking her on the head with a spanner and then tried to destroy her body by soaking it in a bath of caustic soda.
He also submitted a victim impact statement on behalf of Ms Buckley’s parents and two others on behalf of her brothers Kieran and Damian.
“No words of mine can explain the effect that this terrible incident has had on the family and they wish to express their feelings in these three victim impact statements,” said Mr Mulholland.
He also told Lady Rae that the Buckley family wished to submit some family photographs to convey the life they enjoyed with their daughter before she was so brutally taken from them by Pacteau.
They also included a photograph of Ms Buckley’s bedroom where the family have kept the huge number of letters of sympathy and messages of support they have received since her death.
Media storm
Ms Buckley's murder continues to attract huge media attention in Scotland with at least eight Scottish papers carrying Pacteau's trial on their front pages on Wednesday.
Among those to devote huge coverage to the case was the Herald, which reported that Pacteau had told a former workmate last November what he believed would constitute the perfect murder.
‘Perfect murder’
Furniture shop salesman George Taylor told the newspaper that Pacteau once said to him that "the perfect murder would be to kill someone and then get rid of their body in a barrel of acid".
"We just thought 'that's Alex going again, talking a load of s***'. We thought it was from [television series] Breaking Bad. We just changed the subject," said Mr Taylor who had not met Pacteau since then.
"He was a bit of a Walter Mitty character, a fantasist. He was always going to become the next millionaire. We just took it that he was a young boy," he reportedly said.
