He was a hard-drinking Slovakian who had been jailed in Eastern Europe for violence, whose departure from the tiny village where he was raised was welcomed by many. (With exclusive video)

BY ALISON CAMPSIE and JOHN BYNORTH

He was a hard-drinking Slovakian who had been jailed in Eastern Europe for violence, whose departure from the tiny village where he was raised was welcomed by many.

With Marek Harcar's past of robbing, stealing and fighting, neighbours were glad when he left the quaint settlement of Nalepkova, close to the Czech border, for a new life in the UK.

By the time he came to these shores in February 2007 - 15 months before he killed Moira Jones, 40, in Queen's Park, Glasgow, on a wet night in May last year - he had amassed 13 previous convictions, and received a seven- month prison sentence in Slovakia for violent offences.

He had four other convictions in Slovakia and the Czech Republic that involved violence.

Yet as the net eventually closed in on him after Moira's death, his mother insisted: "He is not a bad man, but when he drinks ... I don't know."

No one could have predicted the horror and trauma that Harcar would create shortly after his arrival in Scotland.

He used brute force to take the life of the "lovely, fun woman" whose friendship and love was described in court by her partner as "one of life's privileges".

By contrast, Harcar was a sad, unsettled figure who would often drink heavily on his own and spend hours watching kick-boxing and street-fighting DVDs while smoking cigarettes. He would get sometimes get through three packs a day.

A vain person, he used sunbeds and dyed his hair to cover his premature grey.

Harcar frequently worked out and favoured the training regimes offered by various martial arts. He moved with a swagger and a sway, like a geezer, the High Court in Glasgow was told, and had a powerful physical presence.

"He walked like he thought he was someone," his friend, Lucie Pechtlova, 28, told the jury.

However, Harcar's attempts at self-preservation unravelled during the eight months he spent in prison on remand. Sitting in the dock during the trial, he looked at least 10 years older than 33, the hair longer and now fully grey, and his heavy frame vastly reduced. His well-tanned skin had given way to a porridge-type pallor.

His imprisonment in Scotland is not the first time he has spent time in jail, having been convicted on seven separate occasions in Slovakia between 1996 and 2005.

Harcar received his first custodial sentence when he was 20, serving 12 months for theft. Shortly after his release he was jailed for a second time, again for theft.

In 1998, he was twice convicted of trespass and in 1999 found guilty of assault and battery, for which he was sentenced to 10-months in prison with a probation period of two-and-a-half years.

The following February, in Slovakia, he was jailed for seven months for violence.

After a spell of good behaviour, Harcar was back to stealing and convicted again for theft in 2003. In 2005, he got 12 months in prison for theft and trespass in the Czech Republic. It was on his release that he decided to move to the UK.

"People from the village, his neighbours, thought very badly of him," said Slovakian TV journalist Darius Haraksin, who followed the Moira Jones story for Bratislava-based Joj TV.

"Once he came back from prison, a short time later he returned to jail. He had many problems with the law, not big, nothing like murder, but more minor offences and many of them.

"Maybe when he decided to move to the UK, he was running away from his problems."

Harcar arrived in Glasgow just 10 days before killing Moira Jones. He moved to the city from Liverpool, where he had been one of a large number of young Eastern Europeans who settled to take on agency work, including shifts in the many food production factories on the Wirral.

He shared a flat in the city with Lucie Pechtlova and the two became good friends. Harcar later followed her to Glasgow, where she was working as a chambermaid in a hotel close to Queen's Park.

Ms Pechtlova, 28, described in court - from behind a screen - how Harcar turned up at her flat with just a few belongings, including a stereo and a budgie, on May 18 last year.

For the first two days, she enjoyed his company and they got on well. After five days, she said, she realised she had made a "big mistake". She described the relationship as a friendship, but she told the court that it was clear he had wanted more from her.

Harcar had left Liverpool after losing his job and he was unhappy in Glasgow.

Jobless, lazy and spurned by Ms Pechtlova, Harcar described himself as a "prick with nothing" during a heated row with his friend.

The studio apartment they briefly shared is in an imposing Victorian villa which overlooks Queen's Park, just a few minutes walk from Moira Jones's rented flat.

On day 10 of Harcar's time in Glasgow, he spent the afternoon in the bedsit downing cans of beer and then drank a bottle of vodka with tonic. That night, he told his flatmate he wanted to go "downtown" to a disco and "find whores". He was barely able to walk by the time he left.

A mixture of the alcohol and lack of knowledge of Glasgow geography meant that a disorientated Harcar was unlikely ever to make it to the city centre. CCTV shows him instead staggering around the Queen's Park area.

It was here he saw Moira Jones locking up her car, which she had parked further than normal from her home.

She suffered 65 injuries that night after Harcar pulled her into the park, dragging her around the open space, beating and stamping on her.

She was raped, and small pieces of bark and leaves were found in her stomach after she was pushed face down into the earth.

She ultimately died from head and neck injuries, possibly living for half an hour after the attack had ended. It could be the ordeal lasted for as long as three hours.

Marks on her body showed that Ms Jones had put up a fight. He was 6ft 3ins tall; she was a foot shorter.

The next morning, colleagues were concerned that Ms Jones had not turned up for a business meeting. It was not like her ever to be late, let alone not show up at all.

As colleagues tried to call her, the awful picture of what had happened began to emerge. At around 9.45am, park ranger John Hillhouse found her body lying partially clothed by a bush in a remote spot in the middle of the 148-acre park. Her hair was matted to her face with blood, her trousers torn from top to bottom and her shirt ripped from her body.

As the entire Queen's Park area quickly became a major crime scene, Harcar sat in silence in the nearby bedsit, chain-smoking as the full picture of his horrific deed started to emerge in his alcohol-addled brain.

He had returned to the bedsit at 3.15am that morning in a rage, threatening to kill Miss Pechtlova. She said that over the next couple of days, she saw that rage alter to fear.

Few words were spoken between the two, but she could see something different in his face.

Harcar started to make plans to escape, and time was against him.

Around 100 police were put on the inquiry and more than 2000 people were interviewed, with 600 statements made to officers. DNA samples were taken from as many as 250 individuals.

At 5am on June 1, Harcar was collected from the flat by Marcel Korenko, a Czech who worked in Aberfeldy as a delivery driver and also knew Harcar from Liverpool. He did not know why Harcar wanted to leave Scotland so suddenly.

The murderer boarded an early flight to Brno in the Czech Republic, taking a bus over the border to Slovakia.

Police were alerted to Harcar's disappearance on June 11 - almost a fortnight after Ms Jones's body was found - during house-to-house inquiries in the area. Officers took Ms Pechtlova to the station to make a statement and permission was granted for DNA samples to be taken from a number of items in the bedsit, including a duvet cover and a toothbrush.

It is clear that Harcar had little awareness of the incriminating trail of evidence that he left behind.

Apart from the blood and semen removed from Ms Jones's body, this included a cigarette butt dropped in the park close to the spot where a number of her shirt buttons were found.

Spots of her blood remained on his leather jacket. The back of a phone was found in the park, and the rest of the phone was found in Harcar's possession.

The net finally closed in on Harcar at his grandmother's home in Nalepkovo, where he was found at lunchtime on June 16 playing poker with friends, He was calm and co-operated with police, telling officers that he was happy to help with their inquiries.

He defiantly told police: "I want the entire matter explained for I am innocent."

This was despite his black leather coat, carrying spots of Moira's blood, hanging in his bedroom closet and the discovery of the sales executive's camera in his rucksack.

Dr Gary Macpherson, consultant forensic criminal psychologist at Carstairs State Hospital, said his haphazard behaviour signalled a lack of planning of the offence and little awareness of forensics, suggesting that the murder was a clumsy, impulsive affair. If Ms Jones had not been the victim, it is likely that someone else would have been.

He said Harcar's pattern of low-level offending would normally have fizzled out by his age, but the intensity of his crimes against Ms Jones would suggest that he may have been mixing with people who supported this sort of behaviour.

Dr Macpherson said: "There exists a minority of offenders who fail to burn out' and who continue to commit increasingly serious offences across a time span.

"Some offenders show a clear trajectory of offending from delinquency and non-prosecuted offending to minor offences to more serious criminal behaviour.

"The available studies suggest that offenders who follow a chronic high offending trajectory receive social support from their peers to engage in criminal behaviour."

While Harcar was used to burglary, robbing, and stealing - he also took several items from Ms Jones, including a laptop and rings from her fingers - there is nothing to suggest that he had committed such a brutal crime in the past.

However, Dr Macpherson said there was a shared root to all these offences. "Burglary involves both invasion of another person's space and the taking' from that person. The crime of rape also involves these elements - invasion and taking.' Both crimes involve antisocial attitutes or pro-criminal sentiments, and a lack of empathy for the victim."

Indeed, it was this lack of empathy which was to horrify further the friends and family of Moira Jones after Harcar refused to plead to guilty to her rape and murder, forcing a trial and a detailed public airing of how the victim met her death, despite the overwhelming DNA evidence gathered against him.

Harcar remained further in denial of the devastation he had created by refusing to appear in court on two separate occasions, objecting to headphones he had to wear for translation purposes.

One friend, who asked not to be named, said: "It's a disgrace that he didn't even want to show any interest in what he did. He did not have any evidence to back up his alibi of incrimination and yet he could not be bothered to hear about what he did.

"He insisted on the trial and clearly had no respect for Moira's family and friends."

Timeline

February 2007 Slovakian Marek Harcar moves to the UK.

May 18 2008 Harcar moves from Liverpool to a flat near Queen's Park.

May 28 7.15pm Ms Jones enjoys drinks in the Gazelle Bar in Argyle Street with her boyfriend, Paul Thompson, before going back to his flat in Minerva St, Finnieston. She leaves at 10.45pm, driving back to her home at 80 Queen's Drive, Queen's Park.

11pm CCTV places Harcar staggering in the street close to the gates to Queen's Park.

11.15pm Ms Jones locks her Toyota RAV4, and soon afterwards is abducted and forced into Queen's Park, where she is later murdered by Harcar.

May 29 2.40am Harcar is seen on CCTV walking near the park, carrying a laptop belonging to Ms Jones.

9.45am Park ranger John Hillhouse finds Moira's body.

Strathclyde Police launch a major murder inquiry.

June 1 CCTV captures Harcar at Glasgow Airport check-in. He flew to Luton, then to Brno, in the Czech Republic .

June 11 Police inquiries lead them to Harcar's flat and forensics link him to the murder.

June 16 Police obtain an arrest warrant and a month later he is tracked down in Nalepkovo, Slovakia.

July 17 Harcar appears at Glasgow Sheriff Court, charged with murder and attempting to defeat the ends of justice.

August 9 Ms Jones funeral takes place at St Andrew's Church in Weston.

Nov 23 Lord Advocate, Elish Angiolini, will prosecute in the trial.

April 8 Harcar is convicted of abduction, rape, murder and robbery of Ms Jones and jailed for life.