The man who killed Irish student Karen Buckley in a “brutal and motiveless attack” lodged an appeal just eight days after being sentenced, it has emerged.
Alexander Pacteau, 21, was jailed for a minimum of 23 years early this month after admitting bludgeoning Karen Buckley to death with a spanner in April.
The former public schoolboy from Glasgow then attempted to dispose of the 24-year-old's body in a vat of chemicals.
Judge Lady Rae said she found it “extremely difficult to find words appropriate to describe the dreadful crime to which you pleaded guilty” as she sentenced him for murder at the High Court in Glasgow earlier this month.
She added: “To you she was a stranger who appears, tragically, to have accepted a lift in your car. Within a matter of minutes, for some inexplicable reason, you destroyed her young life.”
But last week Pacteau lodged papers at the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh in a bid to reduce his sentence.
A court spokesman said: "He lodged a notice of intention to appeal against sentence on 16 September."
Karen Buckley, who was from Cork but was studying for a masters degree in occupational health therapy at Glasgow Caledonian University, went missing in the early hours of April 12 after a night out with friends at the Sanctuary club in Glasgow’s west end.
She had disappeared after telling friends that she was going to the toilet, leaving behind her jacket.
CCTV images showed her talking to Pacteau outside the club, sparking a high profile missing person enquiry. Pacteau was initially said to be assisting police with their enquiries and claimed she had had consensual sex with him at his flat.
Her handbag was later discovered dumped in Dawsholme Park, near Pacteau’s flat but in the opposite direction from which Karen Buckley would have walked home.
Four days after her disappearance her body was found at High Craigton Farm, on the outskirts of Milngavie, after a search involving specialist police divers, a helicopter crew and search dogs.
Later it emerged that Pacteau had offered Karen Buckley a lift home in his Silver Ford Focus. The car was seen stopped for over 12 minutes in Kelvin Way, less than a mile from the club. He then killed her by strangling her and battering her with a spanner.
Pacteau took her body to his flat in Kelvindale where he tried to dispose of it in his bath using caustic soda. He later burned his mattress and clothing at the farm and put her body in a barrel in a storage unit he rented at the farm to the north west of Glasgow.
After her murder two candlelit vigils were held; the first in Glasgow’s George Square organised by former Scottish Socialist politician Rosie Kane where Karen’s parents and brothers joined hundreds of Glaswegians.
The second was held in Garnethill, where the Irish student had lived, giving locals a chance to remember their neighbour “who didn’t get to come home”.
Karen’s family said they were “absolutely heartbroken” by the loss of their “cherished” daughter.
Her father John Buckley, 62, said at the time: “Marion and I, together with our sons Brendan, Kieran and Damian, are absolutely heartbroken. Karen was our only daughter, cherished by her family and loved by her friends. She was an outgoing girl who travelled the world, where she met lots of people and thoroughly enjoyed her life. We will miss her terribly.”
At the time of the trial he described Pacteau as “truly evil” and said he hoped he would “spend the rest of his life behind bars”.
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