Innocence destroyed
Teen murder victim Paige Doherty’s best friend tells of anguish ‘Her killer broke so many hearts... mine included’
A CHILDHOOD FRIENDSHIP SHATTERED BY ONE EVIL MAN
THEY were friends who shared everything together.
Sleepovers, dance lessons and girly chats led to Angel White becoming best pals with Paige Doherty.
The two were inseparable. They’d met at primary school and spent years of carefree delight together, just normal schoolgirls who lived for One Direction, their favourite band.
Now, in her first interview, Paige’s best pal has revealed her “utter heartbreak and devastation” at the cruel loss of Paige, whose life was snatched away by evil Jo h n Leathem.
Angel, now 16, is haunted by her friend’s horrifying final moments and struggles to accept she will never see the trainee hairdresser again.
Paige was murdered in a frenzied knife attack by Leathem.
She had suffered almost 150 knife blows.
Angel, who shares Paige’s slight build, said: “I had known her all my life.
“We were best friends for as long as I can remember. Now I will never see her again.”
The pa i r me t at Our Holy
It’s heartbreaking I’ll never see her again
Redeemer Primary school as wideeyed five-year-olds.
They played together for years, in and out of each other’s homes, forging a close friendship.
“We would listen to boybands like One Direction and The Wanted and talk about what we were going to do when we grew up.
“Paige was desperate to be a top hair stylist and I wanted to be a singer or vet.
“We would watch the X Factor together and copy the dance moves. We both loved dancing and used to go to classes together.
“We used to discuss who was the most handsome in One Direction and loved singing along to the songs. Like most kids we would pore over pictures of the band and watch every move of their routines.
“Our lives mirrored every other kid in the country. We were too young and innocent to know how evil the world could really be.
“We were just normal and really down-to-earth. “She was a great friend. “It ’s awful and utterly heartbreaking to think I will never see her again because of the awful thing he did. He’s broken so many hearts, mine included.”
Angel stays two streets from Paige’s home in Whitecrook, a close- knit place, where they were forever “in and out of each other’s homes”.
Angel’s mum Amanda, remembers with a tearful smile how she watched the “wonderful wee lassies”, as she calls them, grow up together.
“Paige was always in our house,” she remembers.
“She always wanted to help me with housework, desperate to help others. She was an absolute treasure to her mum, too.
Paige was an absolute treasure to her mum
“She had a lovely way about her and it’s heartbreaking to think of how she was murdered.
“I think back to the nights Angel and Paige would sit on the couch watching TV and cry at how we won’t see Paige ever again.
“They grew up together and did all the usual things like playing in the park and as teenagers going to the shopping centre to check out the clothes in the shops.”
Leathem admitted stabbing the 4ft 8in teenager to death in the back room of his Clydebank delicatessen.
He hid her body in a bin bag, storing it briefly in his shed before dumping it in bushes by a busy road just half a mile away.
He claimed he had been provoked when Paige threatened to tell others he had touched her after he turned her down for a job.
An g e l ’s dad, community councillor John White, 52, said the community had rallied around Paige’s parents, Pamela and Andy Munro, but heartbreak was still palpable in the area.
A touching tribute of balloons in Paige’s favourite colour, pink, has
been lovingly placed by the deli where she was killed.
It lies in the heart of a community struggling to cope with the loss of the much-loved teenager.
Many parents feel their daughters could easily have been victims of violent Leathem.
“We had evil living in our midst and didn’t know it,” said Angel’s dad John.
“Leathem took one of our children and killed her. It could have been any one of them.
“I hug my children every night and appreciate I have them safe with me.
“And our hearts absolutely break for Paige’s family. How hard it must be to live knowing your lovely daughter was murdered, and so horribly.
“I hope they lock Leathem up for at least 30 years. He should crawl into a corner and hope the world forgets about him and what he did.
“But no one will forget Paige. She will always be remembered by her community here in Clydebank.
“Leathem has just made her family’s agony much worse with his lies.
“His story about her threatening to tell people he touched her unless he gave her a job is all lies.
“He has no shame or remorse. He only pleaded guilty because of was trapped by DNA evidence and CCTV camera footage.”
The CCTV footage played in court showed Paige entering the deli early in the morning of March 19.
But detectives quickly established there was no footage of her leaving, putting them hot on Leathem’s trail.
They quickly pulled together incontrovertible evidence pointing to his guilt.
Faced with such an overwhelming amount of evidence against him, he admitted the murder when he appeared at the High Court in Glasgow last week.
Leathem, 32, will be sentenced on October 12 and has been placed on suicide watch behind bars.
Amanda was rarely, if ever, in his shop, but added: “People said they didn’t like Leathem.
“Folk thought he was creepy and said inappropriate things.”
Back home in her bedroom, adorned with pictures of her favourite pop stars, Angel stares at a favoured snap of her with her pal.
It shows the pair of them dressed up for a community dance.
“She was a star,” she added. “She was a light that burned so very brightly and the world is a darker place without her because of this horrendous crime.”
She was a light that burned so very brightly