Monster Alexander Pacteau faces new trial after jail claims more than 10 years on from brutal murder of Karen Buckley
The monster, 31, was collared a decade into his minimum 23- year sentence for killing student nurse Karen Buckley in Glasgow then trying to dissolve her body in a barrel of chemicals.
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Prison sources have told how he attracted the suspicion of guards after bragging about his alleged mobile to fellow inmates.
It is claimed the handset was then discovered by staff in the lifer's cell at Saughton nick in Edinburgh.
An insider said: 'Pacteau had a phone and was telling other lags that he had one.
'He is very quiet and doesn't speak to many folk inside. He thinks he is better than everyone else.
"He thinks he is something special. But word seems to have got out then the screws got onto him and found the mobile.'
We told in 2019 how prison chiefs moved the brute to Saughton after he had allegedly caused chaos at HMP Kilmarnock in a row over staff checking mail for drugs.
Two years earlier, he had moaned to warders that other lags were urinating in his soup.
Pacteau was 21 in April 2015 when he met Karen, 24, outside the former Sanctuary nightclub in Glasgow's west end.
The Irish student was on a night out with friends when the ex- private schoolboy persuaded her to go to his car.
Pacteau was seen on CCTV talking to her before they drove to nearby Kelvin Way, outside Kelvingrove Park.
CCTV footage of Pacteau buying corrosive liquids
The motor was parked up for 12 minutes, during which time the brute had strangled her and beat her 12 or 13 times with a spanner.
The sicko dumped her phone and bag in the city's Dawsholm Park then carried Karen's body into his flat in nearby Kelvindale.
He then tried to dissolve her remains in a bath of caustic soda.
Later, he put the body in a vat filled with chemicals and left it in a storage unit at a farm in Milngavie, five miles away.
He then paid to have his car professionally cleaned in a further bid to destroy evidence.
But some soil remained on the tyres, with tests proving it had been at Dawsholm Park.
Pacteau was arrested after Karen's corpse was found four days later.
Detectives revealed he had seemed to 'enjoy' being grilled by them over the chilling crime.
The remorseless fiend eventually pled guilty to murdering Karen, who had been studying occupational therapy at the city's Caledonian Uni.
Caging him at the High Court in Glasgow, judge Lady Rae said: 'To you, she was a complete stranger who appears, tragically, to have accepted a lift in your car.
'In a matter of minutes, for some unknown and inexplicable reason, you destroyed her young life.'
We told how Karen's dad John Buckley, then 62, from Mourneabbey, County Cork, called Pacteau a 'truly evil coward'.
The phone case against Pacteau called today at Edinburgh Sheriff Court.
He is expected to go on trial later this month.
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