PAIGE MUM DAY I FACED MY GIRL’S KILLER
Family agony as murderer launches appeal
The mother of tragic Paige Doherty today reveals her chilling encounter with her daughter’s killer.
Pamela Munro, who is facing her first Christmas without her girl, spoke to John Leathem as she searched for the 16-year- old.
Murdered schoolgirl Paige Doherty’s mum has revealed how her killer callously promised to help search for her.
Pamela Munro says cold-blooded John Leathem appeared completely emotionless as she asked for his help in the days after Paige vanished.
He betrayed no sign that days earlier he had stabbed the tiny teenager to death in the deli where her mum was standing.
Paige’s body was lying in bushes at a roadside a few miles away, where he had dumped it af ter f irst storing it in his car boot outside the shop.
Leathem, 32, who went on to try to blacken Paige’s name in court, is now adding to her family’s agony by launching an appeal.
And heartbroken Pamela has spoken out in her first newspaper interview to demand the appeal is rejected.
The hearing – at which Leathem will challenge the 27-year minimum imposed for his life sentence – is due to take place just two days before Pamela faces her first Christmas without her daughter. She said: “Even if he got out at 59, he’d still have a life, so 27 years isn’t long enough. He’s total ly deluded. This appeal is cruel.”
Pamel a’s encount er wi th depraved Leathem in March came during the two days after Paige’s failure to turn up for her parttime job in a hairdresser’s sparked a major search.
Desperate to help in the hunt, Pamela went from shop to shop near her home in Clydebank.
When she called at Leathem’s Delicious deli, she was unaware that she was talking to her daughter’s killer or that Paige had died just feet from where she was standing.
She recalls married father-of-two Leathem had cheerfully described her 15-year-old daughter as “a lively wee girl” when she had been in the shop weeks before the killing.
“I never thought anything of what he said at the time,” she said. “Now it makes me feel sick.” But the next time, as she talked to Leathem about putting up posters to help find Paige, it was different.
“Looking back, he was so cold. There was no emotion in his voice or his face,” said Pamela. “He never showed signs of knowing anything but I’d never have guessed.”
Police initially told Pamela not to worry when Paige didn’t come home on March 19 but the mum knew something was very wrong.
“We were more like sisters,” she said. “We told each other everything. I knew she would never not turn up for work.”
Tragically, Pamela’s instinct was correct. On her way to her job that Saturday morning, Paige popped into Leathem’s deli to get herself a roll and sausage for breakfast. She never got the chance to leave. Leathem admitted her murder, described by judge Lady Rae as a
“savage and frenzied attack”, when he appeared at the High Court in Glasgow.
CCTV footage after the murder showed Leathem calmly visiting a store to buy anti-bacterial wipes, bin bags and bleach before carrying Paige’s body in a bin liner to the boot of his Ford Focus.
In court, he added to the family’s pain by trying to justify his actions, claiming the teenager, who was just 4ft 8in, threatened to say he “touched her” if he didn’t give her a job. Pamela has always dismissed Leathem’s version of the killing.
She said: “Paige would never blackmail someone. I think he tried to make a pass at her and got angry when she rejected him.”
Nine months on, Pamela is still struggling to accept Paige, whose body was found two days after she went missing, is gone for good.
Her daughter’s room is just as she left it that morning.
She said: “I haven’t touched anything. I still have her unwashed clothes in the laundry basket.
“I don’t want to tidy away Paige’s life. I am not moving from this town. Paige lived in this house.”
Pamela says she is determined not to let Leathem take her happy memories away.
The mum of four has placed remembrance baubles on the Christmas tree and plans to put an angel in Paige’s stocking and place it on her grave on Christmas Day.
“It is for the whole fami ly, especially the little ones,” Pamela said, referring to Andrew, 10, Peyton, five, and Lucas, one.
“Paige loved Christmas. All the kids would sleep in one bed together
waiting for Santa. It has particularly hit Andrew hard because he is old enou gh to have some understanding of what happened and they were so close.
“She was a great big sister, she would do anything for them.”
Despi te her touching memories, Pamela is also haunted by thoughts of her daughter’s violent death.
She says she can almost hear and visual ise the moments before Paige died.
She said: “I think about how scared she must have been. I know her face when she’s scared.
“I can imagine the fear in her eyes.
“I know how she breathes when she is scared and t he t hought of t hat will never leave me.
“I was so protective of her but I couldn’t protect her in that moment.”
Pamela, who is married to Andrew, 34, is now focusing all her energy on opposing Leathem’s appeal. A petition against any cut in his term has been signed by 11,000 people.
She admitted: “With the appeal being on December 23, there is no way that our f irst Christmas without Paige can be a normal one – as much as we might try to make it that way for the kids.”
She added: “It has really affected the kids. We don’t want it to ruin their chi ldhoods. I try to stay strong for them.
“I get up every day and think, ‘I am not going to let him take my strength, he’s already taken enough.’”
Every day, I think I won’t let him take my strength. He has taken enough