PRIVATELY educated Alexander Pacteau was 17-years-old when he left school and set up his own furniture business.
But within a matter of months, the wannabe entrepreneur's business dream was in tatters and he was in a coma.
It was the result of a car accident.
Pacteau, who suffered a broken hip and ribs, was in a coma for weeks and unable to walk for six months after the serious crash.
He found himself unable to work and was "too embarrassed" to tell his family that money was tight.
So the former Kelvinside Academy pupil devised a plan to forge bank notes worth £6000.
He was caught by police before he had the chance to try and spend any of the notes and pleaded guilty at Glasgow Sheriff Court to printing £20 Royal Bank of Scotland notes in March 2014.
His unsophisticated money-printing scheme is Pacteau's only previous conviction.
Around a year before he murdered Karen Buckley, Pacteau was spared jail and instead given a community payback order of 225 hours of unpaid work.
In court, he was described as a young man "from a good family" and there was no hint of the killer that he would become.
His defence lawyer said: "The root of this offence goes back to 2011 when Mr Pacteau was 17, he left school and embarked upon his own business enterprise with an online furniture business.
"He told me he felt ashamed that he had to sign on for benefits despite his injuries and circumstances he found himself in and did not want to admit this to his family so he put on the pretence he was running his own business again, successfully."
During the hearing, the court heard Pacteau intended to restart his furniture business.
He later moved into "courier business" but is understood to have been unemployed when he killed the Irish nurse.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article