Glasgow murder victim Moira Jones' mother reveals their pain and anguish in journals for the first time

Now 12 years after the dreadful discovery of a body in the park on May 28, 2008, which turned out to be that of Moira’s, Mrs Jones relived moments as she read extracts of the journals for a BBC Scotland documentary The Dark Shadow of Murder.

Read more: Murder victim Moira Jones' family share treasured pictures of her happy childhood memories

The Glasgow businesswoman had been out for the evening with her boyfriend Paul Thompson. She returned home and parked her car only to be abducted from the street, raped and murdered. Slovakian ex-soldier Marek Harcar is behind bars serving a 25 year sentence for her murder.

Now, Mrs Jones feels able to share some of her innermost feelings and private thoughts following Moira’s murder. She wrote how their nightmare began when a plain clothed police officer had come to their door in Staffordshire. He said a body had been found in a park in Glasgow and the police thought it was Moira although they could not be 100 per cent sure.

“I asked if the post mortem was completed and if we could see Moira. I understand that not everyone chooses to see a loved one when they have died, but in our family we always have, but sometimes people make a decision like this in haste and then have regrets later,” Mrs Jones wrote.

“I needed to see Moira again. The three of us were taken to the mortuary. We were told that we wouldn’t be able to touch Moira as we would only see her through a glass screen.”

Read more: Scottish travel industry calls for more support as firms suffer long term impact of pandemic

Through tears, Mrs Jones read: “I knew it was Moira. I wanted to stroke my girl’s face but couldn’t and there was no was warm smile. No expressive gesture. No dancing eyes. Moira wasn’t there anymore. I know we tried to say goodbye, but there could be no hugs or kisses and everything was heart-wrenchingly, horribly wrong. Wrong. Moira so good, so loved, so loving, lying there cold alone in a mortuary. Dead.”

Moira was the eldest child of Beatrice and Hu and grew up in Weston, Staffordshire, with her brother Grant. She came to Glasgow in 2003 and worked as a sales adviser for a drinks chain. She had been meant to stay over at her boyfriend’s that fateful night, but drove home instead.

“If I had been in a position to fight for Moira’s life, like all mother’s, I would have done that,” wrote Mrs Jones. “I would instinctively have fought to the death to protect Moira. I couldn’t do that but my hormonal reaction to the trauma meant that I was in a constant state of readiness.”

Mrs Jones recalled in the documentary a moment when she wanted to send a school friend of Moira’s a 40th birthday card.

“From yards away one card appeared to jump at me and I read life begins at 40. It hadn’t for Moira, it had ended. I thought I was going to fall down. I swayed on the spot fighting back nausea and tears for several seconds. I couldn’t choose a card.”

With the horrific circumstances in which Moira was taken from them, there was further anguish as they were told it would be some time before they could hold a funeral service for her.

Mrs Jones added: “We did ask about how long Moira’s body would stay in the mortuary, as we would have to arrange a funeral. We were told to prepare ourselves for a wait. Moira’s body could not be realised until an arrest could be made. Moira had been violated in the worst possible ways and then her body subjected to a post mortem. Now we were told there would be more of the same at a much later date and this on behalf of whoever was accused. This did not seem right. This was so gut-wrenching, so very painful. I wanted to say that now surely they must leave her alone.”

Harcar came to Britain in 2007, 15 months before he killed Moira, and by that time he had13 convictions. He received a seven month prison sentence in Slovakia for violent offences and had four other convictions in Slovakia and the Czech Republic involving violence.

Harcar arrived in Glasgow just 10 days before killing Moira. She was abducted her her flat raped, beaten and stamped on.

Her body was found the following day with a total of 65 injuries.

A few days later, on June 1, Harcar boarded a flight to the Czech Republic and took a bus over the border to Slovakia.

Police traced him via DNA samples from his Glasgow flat and arrested him at his grandmother’s home in the village of Nalepkovo. He was jailed for life in 2009. The killer spent months appealing his conviction before abandoning that bid and plotting a move home instead.

He was transferred from HMP Edinburgh to Carstairs, Lanarkshire, in 2015, after doctors deemed him untreatable.

Harcar was then held with other sex offenders at HMP Glenochil, Clackmannanshire, before being flown to Slovakia in November 2016.

“I don’t know how we got through the months that followed. The months of waiting for the criminal justice system to follow its due course,” wrote Mrs Jones. “We were in hell on earth, hurting, bewildered and still knowing very little about what had happened to our darling girl. The death certificate had simply said head and neck injuries and that told us nothing. We did know that Moira’s murder was a brutal one, but had no detail. It rained every day for weeks. I felt the whole world was weeping and that it should be weeping, but yet I kept most of my tears on hold.”

All of a sudden Moira’s family were thrust into the world of media appeals and television cameras and they bravely put themselves forward.

Mrs Jones added: “The silence when we entered the room packed with people was profound. I didn’t intend to read my statement I wanted to deliver it from the heart. I knew what I wanted to say and I had to do it my way.”

Mrs Jones told a police appeal press conference “think deep and hard, if you saw anything, if you heard anything. If you are in the least bit suspicious of anyone please tell the police… don’t wait until the heart is ripped out of another family.”

During the investigation the family sought solace in the Angus town of Carnoustie which had fond memories for them. It was here one early morning that Mrs Jones found herself speaking to Moira saying: “I told her how loved and precious she always was and always would be. I reminded her about my lack of faith and said how much I wish I hoped I was wrong as I so needed her to hear me. I so needed her not to feel alone anymore. So wanted her to feel peace. I wanted to shout her name so loudly that it penetrates to every part of the universe so that somewhere she can hear me."

In the years following Moira’s death the family started the Moira Jones Foundation to help families going through the loss of a loved one through murder. They have gone on to help more than 1000 families across the UK through the grant-aided charity. It has led to an annual event, the Moira Run, significantly held in the park where she lost her life.

Scots comedian and actress Elaine C Smith, has herself taken part in the event.

She said: “I think it is a really joyous day in a place that for many people, for a long time became a real place of darkness and of desolation and awfulness if you like. To do this reclaims it.”

Moira’s father Hu said of the event “just to get up in the morning and think maybe we will be able to help somebody today and a perfect legacy for my darling daughter and my terrific son.”

Opening her journals for the first time, also meant opening up her heart publicly and revealing she how she has hope.

Mrs Jones concluded: “I have to believe that you still exist. That you still watch me sometimes, that you still love me somehow. I have to believe that life has meaning somehow. That I am useful here sometimes, that I make small differences somewhere. I have to believe that I need to stay here for sometime and that all this teaches me something, so that I can meet you again somewhere.”

The Dark Shadow of Murder is on BBC Scotland on Tuesday September 1 at 10pm.

For information on the Moira Fund go to http://www.themoirafund.org.uk/