# 61: Murdered on a Night Out in Glasgow (Karen Buckley)

An episode of [Outlore with Eleanor Neale](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1682504024), 3 Jan 2024, 47 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO1073161049.mp3

Today's episode is on a case I covered back in 2020 about Karen Buckley, an Irish student in Scotland and her killer, Alexander Pacteau. Trigger Warning: Sensitive topics Resources: https://linktr.ee/usualdisclaimer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

## Transcript

[0:07] Hello, usual disclaimer listeners, it's Eleanor.
[0:09] Just popping in quickly before we get started to let you know
[0:12] that since there's no new episode this week, we'll be
[0:15] taking a dive into an old one from my YouTube channel archive.
[0:20] The murder of Karen Buckley was one that shocked our whole
[0:23] nation. She was just like any other
[0:25] young woman her age, a university student on a night
[0:28] out at a local club who went home with a man and was never
[0:32] seen again. Karen's case is 1.
[0:36] I come back to a lot because she really could be any of us.
[0:40] I don't know about you, but Case has always hit me so much harder
[0:43] when I can relate to the victim, and Karen was the kind of girl
[0:47] I'm sure I would have been friends with if I'd met her.
[0:50] So I hope you enjoy this blast from the past and we'll be back
[0:53] again with a new kiss for you next time Today, we're going to
[1:01] be doing another case from Scotland, which I don't think
[1:04] I've done a Scottish case in a long time, but this case is
[1:06] really unique in the way that it did happen in Scotland.
[1:10] However, the victim herself was Irish, so that's a whole 2
[1:14] nations that were affected by this incident.
[1:17] Well, the whole of the UK was affected by it.
[1:20] But before we get into the case, I just want to give my usual
[1:22] disclaimer that I mean absolutely no disrespect to
[1:25] anyone that I talk about in this video.
[1:27] This video is for educational purposes and everything I'm
[1:30] about to say, it's just information that I have found on
[1:33] the Internet and I'm compiling into one video.
[1:35] So like I said, today we're going to be talking about a
[1:38] relatively recent case from Scotland.
[1:41] However, the victim herself was from Ireland, so we'll start
[1:44] over there. Karen Buckley was born in 1991.
[1:47] She was the first child to John and Marion Buckley, later having
[1:51] three younger brothers, making Karen the first of four
[1:54] siblings. She was born and raised in an
[1:56] area named Morn Abbey in County Cork in southwest Ireland.
[2:00] And this area was very small, very rural.
[2:03] It was a farming community. It's one of those places where
[2:07] everyone knows everyone. All the kids play together, all
[2:10] the parents and neighbors, and they're all friends.
[2:12] And Karen Buckley was a very nice, normal girl.
[2:15] She had a nice friend group. She liked traveling and going
[2:18] out to socialize. By all accounts, she was just a
[2:21] very nice, average Irish girl. She was known to be very kind,
[2:26] very caring, very, very sensitive, very tender with
[2:29] people like she, she was one to look after you, you know, she
[2:33] was always just trying to help people.
[2:34] She was very well liked, she was easy to get along with.
[2:37] Karen was also very family orientated.
[2:40] Her brothers and her parents were everything to it, like this
[2:44] was a very nice, close family. They were all very happy.
[2:48] Her and her three brothers often went to their local GAA club
[2:51] where they played Gaelic athletic sports for Clyde
[2:54] Rovers, particularly Gaelic football.
[2:56] Karen was very ambitious, she was very hard working, she'd
[2:59] done well in school all her life and then when it came to it she
[3:03] went to the University of Limerick to study nursing.
[3:06] Like I said, she just loved caring for people, it was one of
[3:09] the things that she was best at and that in turn manifested
[3:12] itself in a career in caring for people.
[3:15] She was very passionate about nursing.
[3:18] During her time in university Karen worked as a waitress in
[3:21] the Hibernian Hotel and pub and her Co workers there recall her
[3:25] being such a positive person, always smiling.
[3:28] She could be having the worst day, she could be ill, she could
[3:32] be tired, she could be upset, but she would never be without a
[3:35] smile. She was always such a such a
[3:37] light for others. She did a lot of travelling
[3:40] around this time, both during and after her graduation from
[3:43] university. She went to places like
[3:45] Thailand, South America. She just liked experience in
[3:49] different cultures, different walks of life.
[3:52] Karen graduated university with her nursing degree in the early
[3:55] twenty 10's and she decided that for her first job in nursing she
[4:00] was going to move to England. She became a nursing student at
[4:04] the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Essex and it was while she
[4:07] was there, while she was working that job, that she realized she
[4:10] had a real passion for occupational therapy.
[4:13] She knew that that was the avenue that she wanted to take
[4:16] in this career, so she began looking up the kind of
[4:19] qualifications that you need to be an occupational therapist.
[4:22] She realized that she was going to need her master's degree and
[4:24] so she was going to have to go back to university and the only
[4:27] university or the best university she could find the
[4:30] that offered that course was 1, all the way up in Glasgow in
[4:34] Scotland. So in January of 2015, Karen
[4:37] Buckley moved to Glasgow in Scotland and enrolled in
[4:40] Glasgow's Caledonian University to get her master's.
[4:43] While she was there, she got a flat with three other girls,
[4:46] three other students, and she was integrating into student
[4:49] life very well. They were very social, they were
[4:52] making friends, everything was going so well.
[4:55] The girls would go out drinking almost every single week, as do
[4:58] most students that is. And this day, April 11th 2015
[5:04] was no different. They all got ready together in
[5:06] the flat that evening, they were having pre drinks at their
[5:09] place, just the four of them. Karen got dressed into a black
[5:12] jumpsuit, a black leather jacket, red heels.
[5:15] She took extra care with her hair that day, she curled some
[5:18] black hair extensions, clipped them in.
[5:20] She looked beautiful, she was ready for her night.
[5:23] They decided to go to Sanctuary nightclub that night, which was
[5:26] in the West End of Glasgow. They got a taxi there.
[5:29] They arrived shortly before my night and they went in.
[5:31] Everything was good. They were having drinks, they
[5:34] were dancing, it was going the same as any other night out ever
[5:37] had. And then around 1:00 AM.
[5:39] So they'd been in the club about an hour at this point, Karen
[5:42] picks up her bag and tells her friends that she's just going to
[5:44] the toilet and she'll be back in a minute.
[5:46] So Karen goes off to the toilet, her friends carry on getting
[5:49] drinks, they carry on dancing. And then they realized that it's
[5:52] been a while since Karen left and she still wasn't back.
[5:56] So they were waiting for her and they were waiting for her, but
[5:58] she just wasn't coming back. And and they were starting to
[6:01] get worried. She'd never just left before.
[6:04] I mean, the most reasonable explanation here was that maybe
[6:07] she'd gone home. Maybe she'd just walked home by
[6:09] herself and not waited for the girls.
[6:11] But she hadn't done that. She hadn't even said goodbye to
[6:14] her friends. She'd actually also left her
[6:16] leather jacket with them because it seemed as though she was just
[6:19] going to the toilet and that she was coming right back.
[6:21] Maybe it had just been a last minute decision.
[6:23] Maybe she'd gotten to the toilet.
[6:25] Maybe something had gone wrong, or, you know, she just wanted to
[6:28] leave. And so she left.
[6:29] After all, this was a 24 year old woman.
[6:32] If she wants to leave a club by herself, she can leave a club by
[6:34] herself. Her friends were a little bit
[6:36] intoxicated at this point. They were in a club.
[6:38] They were all drinking alcohol. And so I don't think they quite
[6:41] realized the gravity of the situation until they got back to
[6:44] the flat that night. And Karen wasn't there.
[6:47] They all texted her or messaged her on different social medias,
[6:50] thinking that maybe she'd just gone back to a boy's flat.
[6:52] Maybe she'd met a boy in the club and gone back to his house,
[6:56] but still, Karen was very good at letting her friends know
[6:59] where she was and where she was going to be.
[7:01] You know, she, she wouldn't just go to a boy's house and forget
[7:04] to text them. But she had been drinking, Sir.
[7:07] Maybe. But when her flatmates woke up
[7:09] the next morning and they went into Karen's room, she still
[7:12] wasn't there. She still wasn't home, and she
[7:14] hadn't texted, called, messaged any of them.
[7:18] Now, at this point, her friends were very concerned.
[7:20] This wasn't like her to just take off either by herself or
[7:24] with a stranger, to not text her friends back, to not be back by
[7:27] midday the next day. And like I said, she was 24
[7:30] years old. She wasn't irresponsible.
[7:32] She was quite sensible in the way that she liked to keep
[7:35] people up to date with where she was if they were worried.
[7:38] And so because her friends knew that this was so out of
[7:41] character for Cameron Buckley, they decided to go to the police
[7:44] station and report her as missing.
[7:46] Police interviewed all three of the girls to kind of get an idea
[7:49] of who Cameron was, and they too agreed that this was very out of
[7:53] character for her. And so on that same day, her
[7:56] parents back in Ireland were contacted and informed that she
[7:59] was missing. So like I said, this case was of
[8:02] immediate high priority. This was a young woman that had
[8:06] gone missing in the middle of the night, intoxicated in an
[8:10] area where she doesn't really know many people yet.
[8:13] There's a whole manner of dangers here.
[8:16] Maybe something happened to her when she was making her way
[8:18] home. Maybe she got lost, maybe she
[8:21] fell over. Maybe she was intoxicated, she
[8:23] stumbled, she fell all over, injured herself and couldn't get
[8:26] up. Or maybe something much more
[8:28] sinister happened. Maybe someone found her and took
[8:31] advantage of her drunk state in one way or another.
[8:34] Who knows where Karen could be right now?
[8:36] Within 24 hours of Karen being reported missing, her family had
[8:41] flown over from Ireland to Glasgow and they were giving
[8:44] public appeals on the news, begging for anyone with any kind
[8:47] of information to report it to police.
[8:50] Karen's disappearance was spread all over the news and all over
[8:53] social media as well, with police specifically asking for
[8:57] anyone that could give any kind of eyewitness testimony, anyone
[9:01] that could have been at Sanctuary nightclub or just in
[9:03] the West End of Glasgow that night to come forward and maybe
[9:07] say what they'd seen. And that was when police
[9:09] received one eyewitness statement.
[9:11] And this person said that they had seen Karen Buckley that
[9:15] night outside of Sanctuary nightclub, speaking to a man.
[9:19] So the CCTV outside of the club was checked.
[9:21] I mean, it was already going to be checked, but by now police
[9:24] had gotten hold of the tapes and on these CCTV tapes, police saw
[9:29] who they believed to be Karen. I mean, CCTV footage is never
[9:33] very good, but they believed they saw Karen and a man walking
[9:37] in the opposite direction of Karen's flat.
[9:40] Now immediately this was quite worrying since Karen had told
[9:44] her friends that she was only going to the toilet.
[9:46] What happened in that space of time that stopped her from going
[9:49] to the bathroom, that ended up with her outside speaking to a
[9:53] man walking away from the club? Police received a phone call
[9:56] just two days into the investigation from a man that
[10:00] had found what he believed to be important evidence in this case.
[10:05] He'd found a handbag in a bin. And when he'd looked through it,
[10:09] when he'd looked through the purse to try to find ID, to find
[10:11] its owner, it was Karen Buckley's purse.
[10:14] It was Karen Buckley's handbag that she'd taken to the club
[10:17] that night, just in a rubbish bin outside of a local park
[10:20] which was a few miles away from the club.
[10:23] Now this was very, very concerning.
[10:26] How had it ended up there? Karen obviously hadn't done this
[10:29] herself. Why would she put her own
[10:30] handbag with all of her belongings, phone, purse,
[10:33] everything in a bin? This seemed as though someone
[10:36] was trying to dispose of evidence through the help of
[10:39] witnesses that were at Sanctuary nightclub that night.
[10:42] Police were quickly able to identify the man that was seen
[10:45] speaking to Karen that was seen on the CCTV footage and that man
[10:49] was 21 year old Alexander Pacto. So police got in contact with
[10:54] actor and brought him in for a questioning.
[10:56] Now, he wasn't necessarily a suspect, just a person of
[10:59] interest, just someone that had seen Karen after everyone else
[11:03] that day. And he probably had a better
[11:05] idea of her next movements, where she'd been after the club.
[11:08] And besides, he didn't seem guilty or paranoid or anxious in
[11:12] his questioning. He seemed very cool, calm,
[11:14] collected. He didn't seem like he was
[11:16] hiding anything. Pector told police that he'd
[11:19] literally just met Karen then and there that night at 1:00 AM
[11:23] outside of Sanctuary nightclub, the two of them began talking.
[11:26] They hit it off and he invited her back to his apartment for
[11:30] the night. He said that Karen agreed.
[11:32] He took her back to his flat, The two of them had consensual
[11:35] sex, and then she left his place at about 4:00 AM that morning.
[11:39] She didn't stay the night. And he said that the reason for
[11:42] this was that she'd actually banged her head on one of his
[11:45] bedposts that night. And this hit was very bad.
[11:49] It made her bleed, she was dizzy, she had a headache, and
[11:52] she wasn't feeling well afterwards.
[11:54] And so instead of staying the night at his like she planned
[11:57] her, she was just going to go home and be in the comfort of
[11:59] her own house. Now this statement, it does make
[12:03] sense. It makes sense that she might
[12:05] have hurt her head and then gone home off her own accord.
[12:07] However, it did worry police that Alexander Pacto gave that
[12:12] piece of information without being provoked, without being
[12:15] asked not to jump the gun or anything.
[12:17] Not to label Alexander Pacto as a suspect too early.
[12:21] However, people that have something to hide from from
[12:24] police will often give up information unprovoked.
[12:28] They'll explain things before they've even been asked.
[12:31] So for example, if police were to go and search Alexander
[12:35] Pacto's home and maybe find Karen's blood on his bed, then
[12:40] he'd already explained that in his questioning, so it doesn't
[12:42] look as suspicious. If he'd already given an
[12:45] innocent reason as to why that blood might be there before he
[12:48] was even asked, then it it doesn't look suspicious.
[12:52] However, you know, police are professionals and they've seen
[12:55] this a million times before, so it actually does end up looking
[12:59] suspicious because they know that trick.
[13:00] So for that exact reason, police decided to get a search warrant
[13:05] of Alexander Pacto's home because they were a little bit
[13:09] wary of this man at this point in the investigation.
[13:19] Factor was put up in a Holiday Inn hotel and he was put under
[13:22] 24/7 police surveillance as his home was being searched.
[13:27] Because, you know, this man could potentially be a suspect.
[13:32] Searches were still going on elsewhere.
[13:34] It wasn't just Pactor's home. They were searching places like
[13:37] woods, fields, forests, bodies of water, just out of fear that
[13:42] maybe Karen was already dead and her body had already been
[13:45] disposed of. However, nothing had come up
[13:47] just yet. So Alexander Pactor lived on a
[13:50] street named Dorchester Ave. And as it was being searched, as
[13:54] the flat was being searched, other officers were going door
[13:57] to door asking his neighbors about him.
[14:00] Just trying to learn who this man was and, you know, learn a
[14:03] bit more about that night. Had anyone seen or heard
[14:05] anything? And interestingly enough,
[14:08] Pacto's neighbors couldn't really tell police much about
[14:11] him. No one had really spoken to him
[14:13] that much. He was quite to himself, quite a
[14:17] not a learner, but you know, not antisocial, just didn't really
[14:23] involve himself. But other than that, none of the
[14:25] neighbors had really seen anything or heard anything
[14:28] either on the night of Karen's disappearance or really since
[14:31] then. They hadn't seen Pacto doing
[14:33] anything weird or suspicious. However, the police weren't the
[14:37] only ones that were going door to door speaking to Pacto's
[14:40] neighbors that day. The press had actually gotten
[14:43] wind of the fact that a house was being searched on Dorchester
[14:46] Ave. and so they all flocked to the scene.
[14:50] Basically what was going on in this case was the that police
[14:53] had said to the press that they were looking into one man in
[14:57] particular, but they hadn't identified this man.
[14:59] And the press being the press, were desperate to identify this
[15:04] suspect and to get a name and a face on their magazine, on their
[15:08] front page. They wanted to be the first
[15:10] people to identify this man and to break this story.
[15:14] So the press were going door to door asking all his neighbors
[15:17] like who's the man in that house?
[15:18] Who are they questioning? And that is how the name
[15:21] Alexander Pacto. When the pictures of Alexander
[15:24] Pacto were leaked to the press, police weren't 100% ready to
[15:29] release that kind of information yet.
[15:31] But of course, the press don't respect anything ever.
[15:34] And so the story was released anywhere.
[15:36] And his face was everywhere. His name was everywhere.
[15:40] However, this was potentially quite a good thing because
[15:43] police ended up receiving a lot of leads from this, a lot of
[15:47] people calling in to tell them different things about Pacto.
[15:51] And one of these phone calls was from Pacto's former Co worker.
[15:54] Now, Alexander Pacto had never really had permanent jobs.
[15:58] He just kind of picked up odd jobs here and there.
[16:01] And one of these men knew Alexander Pacto because he used
[16:05] to illegally sell fireworks and this man knew where Pacto stored
[16:11] those fireworks. And he told police, well, if
[16:13] Pacto is looking to hide anything else, then it's
[16:16] probably going to be in that same location.
[16:18] This location was a farm named High Craigton Farm and Pacto had
[16:23] a deal with the farm owner that he would rent out a shed space
[16:29] from him for £10 a week. And so that was where he was
[16:32] always keeping his illegal fireworks.
[16:35] I don't think he really did the firework thing anymore, but that
[16:38] was where he used to keep them. So police went there
[16:40] immediately, they got a search warrant and they began looking
[16:43] around this whole farm, this whole thing, this huge piece of
[16:47] land, all these different sheds, barns, everything.
[16:50] And one of the immediate things that they saw was a big burn
[16:54] patch on the ground. So it seemed as though a fire
[16:58] had been made there rather recently because the grass was
[17:01] freshly burned. They continued searching through
[17:03] all of these sheds, through boxes and barrels, just in case
[17:07] they found a murder weapon, in case they found any of Karen's
[17:10] clothing or belongings, you know, anything.
[17:12] And then in one of the sheds, one officer came across a large
[17:16] plastic barrel, like in a big industrial blue plastic barrel.
[17:20] It had some stuff stacked on top of it.
[17:22] So he took the stuff off, and he opened this barrel, and inside
[17:26] he found the body of Karen Buckley.
[17:29] But it wasn't just her body in this barrel.
[17:31] Her body was submerged in a liquid, and this liquid was
[17:35] later identified to be sodium hydroxide, which is a corrosive
[17:41] liquid, kind of like an acid. So whoever had put Karen's body
[17:45] in this barrel had been trying to dissolve it and get rid of
[17:49] evidence. For whatever reason, this hadn't
[17:51] worked. The chemical hadn't dissolved
[17:53] her body and barely corroded it, and so her body could be
[17:57] recovered for a proper burial. It was damaged, don't get me
[18:00] wrong. However, the chemical hadn't
[18:02] reacted quite as fast as I think it should have done, or at least
[18:06] as fast as the killer wanted it to.
[18:08] The body was taken for an autopsy, however, due to the
[18:12] corrosion, not much could really be told from the body.
[18:15] However, one thing that was glaringly obvious was that Karen
[18:19] had been bludgeoned to death. She'd been beaten to death.
[18:23] Her head had multiple wounds on it.
[18:25] They could also very vaguely tell that she had self defence
[18:30] wounds all over her arms and hands.
[18:32] So this had been a struggle and and Karen was fighting for her
[18:37] life. And as they'd done with
[18:38] Alexander Pacto's flat, press got wind of the fact that this
[18:42] area was being searched and they all flocked there.
[18:45] And some sources said that one reporter even found a gold
[18:49] earring on the floor, which is believed to have been Karen's
[18:52] earring. But then again, this piece of
[18:54] information might not be 100% correct because the press do
[18:57] like to have their own exclusive information, exclusive stories.
[19:02] And it was this reporter that found it and identified it as
[19:07] Karen's earring. So was it really Karen's
[19:09] earring? I don't know.
[19:10] This reporter said that they recognised it from the pictures.
[19:13] Either way, police at the scene at Hyde Craghton Farm got in
[19:16] contact with the police that were monitoring Alexander Pacto
[19:20] and they informed him what they'd just found.
[19:23] And Alexander Pacto was arrested then and there in the middle of
[19:27] a Starbucks. And that day, Karen's family
[19:30] were informed that this missing person search had now turned
[19:34] into a murder inquiry. And you know, it's bad enough to
[19:38] learn that your daughter had met this horrific fate when she was
[19:42] so young and she was so innocent and she had so much life ahead
[19:46] of us. She didn't deserve this.
[19:47] But it must have been even harder for the family because
[19:50] this was a country that they weren't from, Karen wasn't from.
[19:54] They weren't with all of their family and their loved ones to
[19:57] be able to grieve together and come for each other.
[20:00] They were in the middle of Scotland.
[20:01] They didn't know anyone. This was the.
[20:03] The country that their daughter was murdered in and now they
[20:06] were stuck there because they had to help in this
[20:09] investigation. But Scotland as a whole, more
[20:12] specifically Glasgow, which is where this case happened, all
[20:16] did as much as they possibly could to show their support to
[20:19] the Buckley family. There were memorials, there were
[20:22] candlelit vigils held moments of silence.
[20:25] Newsreaders were showing their support.
[20:27] And it all must have affected Scotland almost as much as it
[20:30] affected Ireland. Like yes, Ireland had lost a
[20:34] wonderful citizen, someone that was going to make a huge
[20:36] difference one day, but Scotland were coming to terms with the
[20:40] fact that this was one of their own that had done this, one of
[20:43] their own that had committed this heinous act and taken the
[20:46] life of such a wonderful person. Carol Buckley's funeral had a
[20:51] huge turn out. There were so many people there,
[20:54] from her university, from her old jobs, from her school, just
[20:58] friends, everyone. It was clear that Karen had
[21:01] touched a lot of people in her life and affected a lot of
[21:05] people. Meanwhile, Alexander Pachter was
[21:08] now in police custody and awaiting his first questioning.
[21:11] But who was this man? Where did he come from?
[21:15] Why had he done this? Police wanted to find out more
[21:18] about him. And so police spoke to a lot of
[21:20] his friends and family just to get an idea of who this man was,
[21:24] what his day-to-day life was like, stuff like that.
[21:27] They found that Pacta had been born into a relatively wealthy
[21:30] family. His father was French, his
[21:32] mother was Scottish and he was one of four children.
[21:35] And he'd never struggled a day in his life.
[21:38] He'd always got everything he'd ever wanted.
[21:40] They had money, they had a nice lifestyle.
[21:43] He was born into luxury. He attended a private grammar
[21:48] school, so it was a fee paying school.
[21:50] He had to pay to go there. He was on the football team
[21:53] there and he ended up graduating with average grades.
[21:57] He didn't have too many friends in school.
[22:00] He had friends, but just not a huge group.
[22:02] He kept his circle quite small. He just wasn't all that social
[22:06] in general. It was nothing too concerning
[22:08] because he was just a teenager. He was growing up, you know, a
[22:11] lot of teenagers are quite shy and not that social.
[22:14] But in his mid teens, everything came crashing down for Alexander
[22:18] Pachter. His parents split up, his father
[22:22] went bankrupt and that was the source of most of their money.
[22:25] And so now his his parents split up, his mother got custody of
[22:29] him and his siblings. So he was living with his
[22:31] mother, who was the lower income of his two parents.
[22:35] And this was a huge shock to the system for Pactor.
[22:38] He'd been used to luxury and private schools and, you know,
[22:42] getting everything he'd ever wanted and now he was living in
[22:45] a council flat with his mother. This was such a ego knock for
[22:50] him. He had to leave his private
[22:51] school since his family could no longer afford to pay for him to
[22:54] go there and so he joined a public school for his ear
[22:57] levels. However, he didn't like it.
[23:00] It wasn't for him and he ended up dropping out before he
[23:03] completed his exams at 17 years old.
[23:06] In November of 2011, Alexander Pacto was in a very serious car
[23:11] crash that left him in a coma for seven several weeks.
[23:15] After that, he was unable to walk for six months.
[23:19] He was pretty much bed bound and wheelchair bound for six months.
[23:22] And then after that, when he finally learned to walk again,
[23:26] he had to use crutches for a further year.
[23:28] This rendered him unable to work.
[23:30] He physically couldn't do anything.
[23:32] He couldn't walk anywhere. He couldn't do anything.
[23:34] And so he then began claiming disability allowances.
[23:38] At one point in his late teens, Alexander Pachter and his mother
[23:42] started butting heads. They didn't get along any
[23:44] anymore, and so it was mutually decided that Alexander was going
[23:48] to move in with his father. However, at this point, his
[23:52] father had a new life. He had his own life, he'd got a
[23:55] girlfriend, and I think this girlfriend had a child of her
[23:58] own. So Pacto moved in with his
[24:00] father and his father's girlfriend.
[24:02] However, he just didn't feel comfortable.
[24:05] He wasn't made to feel welcome. He didn't get on with his
[24:08] father's girlfriend and after one particularly bad argument
[24:12] with the girlfriend, Pacto decided to to move out and get
[24:15] his own place. And that was when he decided to
[24:17] get in contact with a friend and see if a friend wanted to move
[24:20] out with him because he couldn't really afford to live alone
[24:23] because he was living off the disability benefits.
[24:25] So he and a friend decided to start renting this flat on
[24:29] Dorchester Ave. Occasionally Pacto would
[24:32] illegally sell fireworks and he would help out at a local garden
[24:36] centre just for a little bit of extra money, but it really
[24:39] didn't make him too much money on the side.
[24:41] And like I said, all of this was a huge ego and knock for Pactor.
[24:45] He was used to living a life of luxury, and now he had to rely
[24:50] on handouts from the government. This, this wasn't what he was
[24:53] used to, and he didn't like it. But oddly enough, everyone that
[24:56] knew Alexander Pactor at this point in his life was very fond
[25:01] of him. They viewed him as a very kind,
[25:03] very charismatic, very funny person, someone that they all
[25:07] liked being around. The only potentially negative
[25:10] characteristic that his friends pointed out was that maybe he
[25:13] was weirdly open. For example, Pacto often
[25:17] solicited prostitutes and he would go into work at this
[25:20] garden centre occasionally and just tell everyone every detail
[25:25] like it was stuff that people didn't really need to know.
[25:27] Which wasn't concerning, it was just a little bit odd, not
[25:31] necessarily a red flag of anything at all.
[25:33] His friends actually describe him as a gentle giant, which is
[25:37] very disturbing when you think that someone with such a a kind,
[25:41] harmless reputation could be capable of such horrors.
[25:45] He was very, very tall. I'm not exactly sure how tall,
[25:48] but he was. It was huge.
[25:50] He had big, broad shoulders. He was just a big guy, a very
[25:54] seemingly strongman. So police decided to run
[25:58] Alexander Pachter's name on the database to see what kind of man
[26:03] they were dealing with. Was this man a previous
[26:05] criminal? Was this his first run in with
[26:07] police? And they found that he'd had a
[26:09] few charges against him in the past.
[26:12] For example, one of these was that he'd attempted to commit
[26:16] forgery once in the past. He printed out a bunch of
[26:19] fraudulent banknotes and luckily police found him and seized them
[26:24] all before they managed to get into circulation, and for that
[26:27] he received community service. However, it was another charge
[26:31] on his record that really worried police.
[26:34] When Pacto was just 17 years old, he was charged with the
[26:38] attempted rape of a 24 year old woman in a dark alley in the
[26:43] same area in the West End of Glasgow where Karen had gone
[26:47] missing from. Pacto had been walking down the
[26:50] street one night when he bumped into a woman and the two of them
[26:53] got talking. She told him that she was on his
[26:55] way home and he said Oh well, so am I, I live that way.
[26:59] We can share a taxi if you want. So the woman agreed and the two
[27:02] of them set off walking to the taxi rank through this dark
[27:05] alley and as they did, Pacto pushed her against the wall and
[27:09] attempted to rape her. The victim screamed and
[27:12] passersby rushed to the scene to come and save her and luckily
[27:16] she was unharmed and she was able to get away before anything
[27:19] happened. However, these passers by
[27:22] witnessed Pactor doing his pants back up, like zipping his pants
[27:26] back up. So this woman took Pactor to
[27:28] court for this. And in court, Pactor was
[27:31] actually acquitted on off this charge.
[27:34] So he wasn't sent to prison for this because he told the jury
[27:38] that he was gay. And so he'd never do this.
[27:41] He would never even want to have sex with a woman.
[27:43] He wouldn't want to have any kind of sexual contact with a
[27:46] woman, so he would never do that.
[27:47] And somehow they believed him. They just took his word for it
[27:50] that he was gay and that he didn't want to have sex with a
[27:52] woman. And so for them, that was
[27:55] evidence enough that he didn't try to rape this woman.
[27:59] I find that absolutely unbelievable.
[28:00] He said the only reason that he'd been just seeing his pants
[28:04] when those passers by came along was that the woman had attacked
[28:08] him first, thrown him to the ground, and as he'd fallen on
[28:12] the ground, his belt buckle had come undone.
[28:14] I mean, I don't know about any of you watching this, but my
[28:17] belt buckle has never come undone when I've fallen on the
[28:20] ground. That just doesn't happen.
[28:22] But what was especially eerie about this court hearing was
[28:26] that Pacto actually said, and this is a quote, I did not
[28:29] sexually assault this woman. I would never make an attempt to
[28:32] sexually assault this woman. I believe rape is the lowest of
[28:35] the low. I'd rather be charged with
[28:37] murder than attempted rape. But like I said, he was
[28:41] acquitted of that charge and he was let go with no kind of
[28:45] punishment. But as all of this was coming
[28:47] out onto the news, Karen Buckley's murder, Alexander
[28:50] Pacto's face, his name was everywhere.
[28:53] This woman who he'd attempted to rape actually got back in
[28:57] contact with police to tell them her story again.
[29:00] She just thought it might help them to convict him to know that
[29:03] he was capable of such violence and that he'd done it before.
[29:15] So anyway, at this point in the case, police have packed her in
[29:19] for questioning and he tells them his timeline of events.
[29:23] Like I said, he told them that he'd met Karen for the first
[29:26] time ever in his life outside of Sanctuary Club that night.
[29:30] They got talking, they got flirting, and he invited her
[29:33] back to his home where they had consensual sex.
[29:36] She banged her head by accident and then decided she wanted to
[29:40] go home at 4:00 AM. And then she left his flat and
[29:43] she never saw him again. And that was was all he knew.
[29:45] But of course police knew that that just wasn't the case.
[29:48] There was too much evidence to say that Pactor had a hand in
[29:52] her murder. So they tried to trip him up to
[29:56] put him on the spot and either make him confess or say
[29:59] something that might incriminate himself.
[30:01] And they said, well, Karen Buckley's body was found with
[30:04] self defence wounds all over her arms.
[30:07] Something happened to her that night.
[30:08] Someone killed her and you were the last person to see her
[30:11] alive. And so Pactor, on hearing that,
[30:14] he decided to change his story, change his version of events.
[30:18] He said that, yes, he and Karen had gotten into a physical fight
[30:22] that night. However, she attacked him first,
[30:24] and he was just trying to defend himself.
[30:26] He didn't want to hurt this woman.
[30:28] And that was actually the real reason why she left in the
[30:30] middle of the night, because they'd gotten into an argument.
[30:32] They had a fight, and obviously they didn't want to stay around
[30:35] each other. So she left and she went home in
[30:37] the middle of the night. But he was still sticking to
[30:39] that story that she left his house at 4:00 AM.
[30:41] She went home and something must have happened to her on her way
[30:45] between Pactors house and her flat.
[30:47] I mean Pactor could come up with any kind of cover story he
[30:49] wanted to at this point but the fact of the matter was that
[30:53] Karens blood was found inside his house.
[30:56] The two of them were seen on CCTV together leaving the club,
[30:59] and her body was found decomposing in a shed that Pacto
[31:05] used to hide things from police. But police couldn't charge him
[31:09] just yet. They wanted to build up as much
[31:12] evidence as they possibly could against him, and so they decided
[31:15] to seize his mobile phone. They looked at his search
[31:18] history and they found that the morning after Karen disappeared
[31:22] around 8:00 AM the next morning. He had Googled the properties of
[31:27] sodium hydroxide, which is also known as caustic soda, which is
[31:31] the corrosive liquid that Karen's body was found.
[31:34] And as soon as police saw that, that was the last little piece
[31:38] of evidence that they needed to charge Alexander Pacto with the
[31:42] murder of Karen Buckley. After speaking with the friends
[31:45] of both Karen Buckley and Alexander Pacto, the prosecution
[31:49] were able to piece together a timeline of events that happened
[31:54] on the night of Karen's murder. So on Saturday April 11th, 2015,
[31:59] like I said, Karen and her three roommates were all pre drinking
[32:02] at their flat. They were having a nice time all
[32:04] getting ready together and then they left for the club at 11:45
[32:09] PM. Karen had only had a few drinks
[32:11] at this point, so she wasn't wildly intoxicated or anything.
[32:14] She was just tipsy, she'd just had a couple.
[32:17] The CCTV in the club even confirms that that she was
[32:21] walking, talking fine. She was in a very sound mind at
[32:24] this point. She wasn't drunk.
[32:25] Karen and her friends were drinking, they were dancing,
[32:28] everything was as normal as any other night out had ever gone.
[32:32] Meanwhile, 21 year old Alexander Pachter was setting off for the
[32:36] club. Around 7 or 8 of his friends had
[32:39] been round at his flat that day. They were all pre drinking at
[32:42] his. And then they decided to get
[32:44] taxes to Sanctuary. However, because there were
[32:46] seven or eight of them, that meant that they would have to
[32:48] take two different taxis. So 1 taxi was called, they
[32:52] filled it up, and then there was maybe like three of them
[32:54] leftover that were going to get a second taxi to the club.
[32:56] So the first taxi goes to the club and the second group of
[32:59] boys is about to call for a second taxi.
[33:02] And Alexander Pacto was in that second group.
[33:04] But Pacto began saying to his friends that he couldn't really
[33:07] be bothered waiting for a second taxi.
[33:09] It was always quite hard to get a taxi into town on a Saturday
[33:12] because all the taxi firms were busy and he didn't want to wait.
[33:16] So he offered to drive them all to town.
[33:19] Even though he'd had a few drinks and he'd had more than
[33:22] Karen. He was drunk, but he offered to
[33:25] drive under the influence to the club.
[33:27] And somehow his friends were all OK with that.
[33:30] And so they jumped in the car, they drove to the club, they all
[33:33] went inside and everything was normal still for them.
[33:37] So both groups were now in the club.
[33:39] Everything was going well. And then at 1:00 AM, Alexander
[33:43] Pacto decides to step out of the club for a minute.
[33:45] Whether he wanted some air or a cigarette or whatever.
[33:48] I don't think he was planning on going home because he was just
[33:51] kind of stood about outside. He wasn't in a rush to get
[33:54] anywhere. And around this same time, Karen
[33:57] Buckley exits the club as well and she crosses the road to the
[34:00] other side and it was there where she was approached by a
[34:04] very tall man. This was Alexander Pacto.
[34:07] She didn't know this man. This was literally the first
[34:10] time she'd ever spoken to him. CCTV footage from inside of the
[34:14] club confirms that neither of them had spoken in the club.
[34:17] They hadn't been anywhere near each other.
[34:19] So they hadn't like met in the club and then planned to meet
[34:23] outside. This guy just approached her and
[34:26] the two of them spoke and they kept walking down this road.
[34:29] Of course, Alexander Pactor is the only person that knows what
[34:33] they were talking about. And of course he isn't telling
[34:36] police that. So we don't know what was said.
[34:39] But we can tell from the CCTV footage that it didn't seem
[34:43] flirty, like there was no touch. There was no holding hands or
[34:47] him putting his arm around her or, you know, there was.
[34:49] There was nothing like that. It genuinely looked like two
[34:52] people that had just met walking down the road.
[34:55] It's theorized that Pactor offered Karen a lift home in his
[34:58] Ford Focus and she accepted and within just 20 minutes of
[35:03] meeting him, Karen Buckley was murdered.
[35:06] Pacto did originally set off driving in the direction of
[35:10] Karen's flat and so I'm sure she believed that he was genuinely
[35:14] giving her a lift home. However, a few minutes into
[35:16] this, Dr. Pacto turns off onto quite a deserted Rd.
[35:21] CCTV on that street sees the car park up, pull over on the side
[35:26] of the road, and it stays there for 12 minutes and 46 seconds.
[35:30] And it's believed that in that 12 minutes, Alexander Pacto
[35:35] murdered Karen Buckley. As I said before, Karen's cause
[35:38] of death was bludgeoning. She'd been beaten to death.
[35:42] It's believed she'd been hit around 13 times with what they
[35:46] think to be something like a large heavy wrench.
[35:49] And she'd actually been beaten so hard that this had caused a
[35:53] subdural hemorrhage. After the murder, Pacto drove
[35:56] around for a little while until eventually pulling in at a local
[36:00] park and disposing of Karen's handbag in a rubbish bin.
[36:04] He then drove back home and he was back in his flat by 2:00 AM.
[36:09] And all of this had happened within an hour of Karen leaving
[36:13] the club. Once he was home, he carried
[36:15] Karen's lifeless body into his flat, wrapped her up in a sheet,
[36:20] and then left her on the floor while he crawled into bed and
[36:25] slept just a few feet away from his murder victim.
[36:30] The next morning, he woke up around 8:00 AM and began
[36:33] planning how he was going to dispose of this evidence,
[36:36] dispose of Karen's body. And that was when he grabbed his
[36:39] phone and Googled sodium hydroxide, the corrosive fluid
[36:43] that Karen was later found in. Pacto left Karen's body in his
[36:48] bedroom, locking his bedroom door on the way out so that his
[36:51] roommate couldn't go in. He got in his car once again
[36:54] with the blood all still inside it.
[36:56] By the way, he hadn't cleaned up after killing Karen in the
[36:59] passenger seat of his car and he drove to a local B&Q which is
[37:03] like a homeless store in the UK. He left his car in the car park.
[37:08] Bear in mind this was in broad daylight.
[37:10] Now it was the morning and there was blood all over his car.
[37:14] He just left it there for anyone to walk past.
[37:16] He went inside the B&Q store and purchased 9 litres of sodium
[37:21] hydroxide, a mask and some gloves.
[37:24] He then drove to a local # stretcher, which is just a cheap
[37:28] shop in the UK, and he bought even more sodium hydroxide so to
[37:33] not look too suspicious if he bought a huge amount all from
[37:37] one place, he was spacing it out.
[37:39] He then drove back home to the flat.
[37:41] He put Karen's body inside his bathtub and then began pouring
[37:46] the sodium hydroxide over her naked body.
[37:49] He waited around for a while, waiting for the chemicals to
[37:52] start reacting and start dissolving her body, but it was
[37:56] taken a lot longer than he'd expected it to.
[37:59] So, in an attempt to try to speed up the process, Alexander
[38:03] Pactor made one large incision in Karen's body, all the way
[38:08] down her tartar from the top of her chest to the bottom of her
[38:13] abdomen. However, this corrosion process
[38:15] still wasn't fast enough for him.
[38:17] He shared a bathroom with his roommate, who was currently at
[38:20] work but was going to be home by 8:00 PM that night, and by now
[38:24] it was probably around 5:00 PM. He knew that his time was
[38:27] limited and that he needed to have Karen's body gone by the
[38:30] time his roommate got back. He knew he was going to have to
[38:33] do this some other way. And so Pacto began and trying to
[38:37] bottle up the sodium hydroxide from the bath once again so that
[38:41] he could maybe use it at a later date.
[38:43] He then rinsed and dried Karen's body and carried it back to his
[38:47] bedroom, where for the second night in a row, he slept just
[38:52] feet away from his murder victim.
[38:54] The next morning he woke up bright and early at 5:00 AM,
[38:58] knowing that he had to transport this body without anyone seeing,
[39:01] and so first thing in the morning was probably the best
[39:04] way to do that. The first thing he did was drive
[39:06] to local canal and throw in the murder weapon, that huge heavy
[39:11] wrench that he for some reason kept in his car.
[39:14] He then drove to some shops again.
[39:16] He went to a Tesco and I think another pound stretcher.
[39:19] And there he purchased alcohol. Not the drinking kind, but you
[39:23] know, the one with really high percentages that's often used
[39:25] for, I don't know, other purposes.
[39:28] It's used for genuine technical purposes.
[39:30] He also bought a lighter, some padlocks and some more clothes.
[39:35] He walked up to one of the staff at this supermarket and asked
[39:39] them what the best product was to get blood out of his
[39:43] mattress. He then drove back home and
[39:46] loaded his car with different pieces of evidence.
[39:48] So his mattress sheets, Karen's clothing, and then he drove them
[39:53] to High Craigton Farm and lit a fire using the alcohol and the
[39:58] lighter and this was what that burnt patch in the grass was
[40:02] from where he was burning all of this evidence.
[40:05] He then drove back home and all. Ordered online a big plastic
[40:08] barrel, like a big industrial plastic barrel to collect.
[40:12] Later that day, he went to pick up the barrel.
[40:14] A few hours later he brought it back home, build it with the
[40:18] sodium hydroxide that was left. He then put Karen's body inside,
[40:23] sealed this barrel and then took the barrel back out to his car.
[40:27] One of his neighbors even told police that they'd witnessed him
[40:30] trying to get this huge barrel into his car and he was
[40:33] struggling, obviously because it was very heavy.
[40:36] It was full, not only with Karen's body but then with loads
[40:39] of liquid as well, and it was huge.
[40:41] It was a huge barrel as well. Eventually he managed to get it
[40:44] into his car and drive off, going back to High Farm.
[40:48] Like I said, he was renting a storage shed at High Craigton
[40:52] Farm from the farmer that owned it for about 10 lbs a week.
[40:55] And so he carried the barrel into this storage shed.
[40:58] There he secured it with a bunch of padlocks he put over like a
[41:03] dirty sheet and then piled some other objects on top of it to
[41:06] make it look less suspicious, to make it look like it had just
[41:09] always been there. I think he put like a bicycle
[41:12] wheel on top, an old paper shredder.
[41:14] And then when he closed the door of this storage shed, he
[41:18] padlocked that up with a few different padlocks.
[41:20] And then he left High Craigton Farm for the last time.
[41:24] He drove back home to his flat that evening.
[41:26] And to his surprise, police had already been.
[41:29] He'd already been identified as the man that was seen speaking
[41:34] to Karen outside of the Sanctuary nightclub that night.
[41:36] Police had originally come to the flat at around 4:30 PM.
[41:40] However, Pacto wasn't home when they'd got there, so they had to
[41:44] get in contact with his landlord, who had a spare key.
[41:47] And he said he was going to come and let police in.
[41:49] But by the time police got out there the second time, Pacto was
[41:52] already home. And when they came in, police
[41:55] actually walked in on Alexander Pacto scrubbing his carpets and
[42:00] there was a very strong smell of bleach in the flat.
[42:03] Pacto looked up at the police and said, oh, I was just going
[42:06] to come and see you. So police had a quick look
[42:08] around his flat and they noticed a few weird things such as his
[42:14] mattress was the wrong fit for his bed and it didn't have any
[42:17] sheets on. They noticed that his bedroom
[42:19] didn't have much stuff in it, but the stuff that it did have,
[42:24] the stuff that was kind of laying about on the surfaces was
[42:27] very strange. There was like a roll of tape, a
[42:30] toolbox, a couple of different nail brushes, who keeps multiple
[42:35] nail brushes out on the side? So this was already looking bad
[42:39] for Alexander Pachter before he'd even been brought into the
[42:42] police station for the first time.
[42:44] As he was brought in for questioning, his car was also
[42:47] seized and it was searched, but by now they couldn't really find
[42:50] anything thing well with their eyes anywhere.
[42:54] Instead, they decided to bring in cadaver dogs that can smell
[42:58] the scent of blood and of human corps.
[43:01] And these dogs alerted to the smell of Karen Buckley's blood
[43:06] in Pacto's car. They also found some other
[43:09] pieces of forensic evidence. Throughout this case, of course,
[43:12] they'd been forensically testing pretty much everything they'd
[43:15] got. They found some of his
[43:16] fingerprints on the inside of this big industrial barrel on
[43:20] his his tires of his cars. They'd found a particular type
[43:23] of mud that matched the mud at High Crayton Farm.
[43:27] So they knew that it was him in his car transporting the body
[43:30] there. The evidence was just stacking
[43:32] up against Alexander Pacta, and he knew it.
[43:36] And I think he was getting very anxious at this stage, very
[43:39] overwhelmed. And so when it came to his first
[43:42] trial, he decided to just plead guilty to the murder of Karen
[43:47] Buckley. And that meant that a trial
[43:49] didn't have to go ahead. This was just his first court
[43:52] hearing where he decides his plea.
[43:54] And if they plead guilty, then there's no reason for a trial.
[43:57] So on the 8th of September 2015, Alexander Pacto had his
[44:02] sentencing hearing. He didn't need a full trial, but
[44:05] he did need to come to Court One more time just so that the judge
[44:08] could decide how long he was going to be in prison for.
[44:11] And on this court date, Alexander Pacto was very
[44:17] emotional, very remorseful. He was crying.
[44:19] He was, he was suddenly very different to what he'd been like
[44:24] throughout this whole investigation.
[44:26] Like I said, he was very cool and calm in all of his
[44:28] questionings. He was very matter of fact.
[44:30] He, he wasn't upset about anything that had happened.
[44:33] But now he seemed like he was one of the officers that was
[44:37] questioning Pacto all the way through this actually said that
[44:40] he thought that Pacto enjoyed it, that he he liked all the
[44:44] attention anywhere. At this court hearing, the judge
[44:48] described Alexander Pacto as a callous and calculated human
[44:52] being and she sentenced him to life in prison with a minimum of
[44:56] 23 years. The minimum sentence normally
[44:59] would have been 25 years, but because he pleaded guilty
[45:03] legally she has to honour that and give him a lesser sentence.
[45:07] However, it is still live in prison and there is still a
[45:10] chance that he will never get out and I think it is unlikely
[45:13] that he will ever be released, especially due to the lengths
[45:17] that he went to try to hide the body and dispose of the body.
[45:20] He literally bought a corrosive substance to dissolve the body
[45:24] in. Like he he thought he was going
[45:27] to get away with this I think at the end of that year.
[45:29] So just within a couple of months of receiving his
[45:32] sentence, Pacto tried to appeal the sentence but a couple of
[45:36] days before it was due to go to court for the appeal hearing, he
[45:39] actually withdrew that. So it never, it never went to
[45:44] court. Pacto's prison life has been a
[45:47] misery, quite frankly. He has been targeted by other
[45:51] prisoners. They all hate him.
[45:53] They all want to harm him. He's actually been transferred
[45:56] prisons once for his own safety. But yeah, that is about all I
[45:59] have on this case. Thank you so much for listening
[46:05] to usual disclaimer. At this point, I just want to
[46:08] say that if you've been affected by any of the topics we
[46:11] discussed today, please check the description where we've left
[46:13] some helpful resources. If you want to hear more cases
[46:17] like this one, make sure to follow Usual Disclaimer on your
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[46:23] episodes. And if you really enjoyed, I'd
[46:26] love it if you could leave a rating and a review too.
[46:29] Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor Neil is an Audio Boom Studios
[46:32] production. See you next time.

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