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	Judge Sentences Student's killer to Life for 'Inhuman' and 'Evil' Attack By Esther Addley The Guardian [Scotland] May 5, 2007 http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article/0,,2072964,00.html • Rapist dumped victim's body 'like rubbish' • Case was 'more fantastical than episode of Taggart' A convicted child rapist was yesterday jailed for life for raping and murdering a Polish student then dumping her body under the floor of a Catholic church. Peter Tobin, 60, bludgeoned and stabbed Angelika Kluk, 23, before her body was dumped "like so much rubbish" in a crypt. Tobin will serve at least 21 years before he is considered for parole. Lord Menzies said at the high court in Edinburgh that in the course of his career in the law he had never encountered a more tragic or more terrible case. It brought to a conclusion one of the most remarkable murder trials to take place in Scotland in recent years, a case which, as the defence barrister acknowledged, had it been presented to the producers of the Scottish crime drama Taggart would have been scoffed at as too fantastical to be true. For six weeks the case has transfixed Scotland, as daily revelations of ecclesiastical intrigue, sexual obsession and the victim's terrible injuries emerged. In the course of the trial, the parish priest of St Patrick's church in Glasgow, Father Gerry Nugent, 63, told the court that he and Ms Kluk had had a sexual relationship in 2005, and admitted that he was an alcoholic; Tobin's defence QC had argued in his closing speech that there was "clear evidence" to connect the priest in some way with the young woman's death. The jury also heard from Ms Kluk's married lover, Martin Macaskill, 40, whose wife was apparently complicit in the relationship, and an eminent 65-year-old Aberdeen sheriff, Kieran McLernan, who had volunteered to teach the dead woman golf. Ms Kluk, a student from Skoczow near Krakow, who was living in the parochial house attached to St Patrick's, knew her killer as Pat McLaughlin, a genial handyman who helped out around the church. In fact, Peter Tobin was a violent rapist, who had been jailed for 14 years in 1994 for a savage attack on two girls aged 14 and 15, in which he forced them to take drugs at knifepoint before raping one of the girls and sodomising her friend. If that case was described by the trial judge at the time as "the worst I have ever come across", the attack on Angelika Kluk was "inhuman", Lord Menzies said. The young woman had been bludgeoned six times about the head with a wooden table leg, gagged and tied up with tape wrapped tightly around her face, raped and then stabbed 16 times in the chest. Her body was dumped beneath the floor of the chapel in an underground chamber next to the confession box. So shocking were her injuries that the public had to be removed from the court before pictures of her body could be shown. "You are, in my view, an evil man," the judge said, adding that Tobin had showed "contempt and disdain for the life of a young woman with her whole life ahead of her". Ms Kluk's sister Aneta, 28, sitting in the public gallery, shouted "thank you" to the jury after their unanimous verdict was announced. In a statement she said she and her father were grateful that her sister's killer was likely "to spend the rest of his days behind bars". Ms Kluk, a student of Norwegian at Gdansk university in Poland, was a regular visitor to Glasgow in academic holidays, where her older sister lived and where she worked as a cleaner to earn money for her course. A devout Catholic, she first came to St Patrick's in the summer of 2005, and moved into the parochial house after Fr Nugent offered her a room in exchange for some cleaning duties. Though the pair, Fr Nugent said, had had a sexual relationship which had soured, she returned to the church the following summer. She was last seen on September 24 last year, in the company of Tobin, whom she had been helping to paint a shed; her partly decomposed body was discovered five days later. She had been due to return to Gdansk to resume her studies within days. Tobin first became associated with St Patrick's around six weeks before the murder, when he started attending a twice-weekly soup kitchen for the homeless at the chapel. He began turning up at the church every day offering to do odd jobs and rapidly became "a godsend", the parish priest said. St Patrick's, situated in a wasteland of tower blocks and tangled motorway flyovers in Glasgow city centre, has been closed since the killing; a church spokesman said it was likely to reopen in late summer after a service of "cleansing". Fr Nugent resigned last month as a priest at the request of his diocese and the congregation has been scattered. In a statement, Mario Conti, the Archbishop of Glasgow, said his behaviour had "fallen well short of that which is expected of every priest". This week a number of long-dead bouquets of flowers remained attached to the railings of the abandoned church. One faded note read: "In the hope that the darkness will not overshadow the light and all the good done." The characters The Killer: Homeless handyman Peter Tobin, 60, was known to everyone as Pat McLaughlin. He was introduced to St Patrick's by the director of a volunteer group helping homeless people. He had been painting a shed with Angelika, whom he called his "apprentice", when she disappeared. The Priest: Father Gerry Nugent, 63, operated an open-door policy at his former church, giving accommodation to those in need. He met Angelika in the summer of 2005 and said the pair had a sexual relationship which ended in September that year. A self-confessed alcoholic, he returned to drink after a sober spell around the time he met Angelika. The Lover: Martin Macaskill, 40, runs a chauffeur business from his Inverclyde home. He met Angelika at the end of June 2006. He said he loved her and carried on seeing her after his wife learned of the affair. The Lover's Wife: Annie Macaskill tried to accept her husband's relationship with Angelika while maintaining her marriage. She helped to distribute missing posters after her disappearance and attended a memorial service for the student. Her husband had been asked to stay away by the Kluk family.
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