Killer: 'You are going to die after sex'

Mary McLaren tried to rebuff Patrick Rae's advances but he would not take no for an answer and after they left the club together she was "viciously" raped and killed, before being dumped in undergrowth.

Rae, 41, smiled as he was led from the dock after being sentenced to life, and told he would serve a minimum of 20 years, at the High Court in Edinburgh, where a judge had said that the horror and terror felt by his victim, Mrs McLaren, 34, of Dundee, could only be imagined.

Members of her family held hands as the jury's majority guilty verdict was announced to a cry of, "Yes."

They said: "Today's verdict does not bring Mary back to us. It doesn't take away the pain or the grief that we feel for our loss of Mary. No sentence will stop the nightmares that we all have thinking about how Mary must have suffered at the hands of this man. We miss Mary. We always will. She was at the heart of this family when she was with us and remains there now. She loved us. We love her still and cannot believe she is no longer with us.

"Patrick Rae has robbed us of a much-loved and loving daughter, wife and mother. He also denied Mary the chance of holding the grandchild that she was so looking forward to welcoming into the world. We can only hope that Mary is at peace now."

Lord Tyre told Rae, who has a long criminal record in his native Republic of Ireland for crimes, including two rapes, that he had shown no remorse.

"You preyed on a woman who… by all accounts was already the worse for drink. You viciously raped and strangled her, leaving her body to be found many days later," said Lord Tyre.

Mrs McLaren, of Rowantree Crescent, Dundee, vanished in the early hours of 25 February last year after a night out at Fat Sam's club in the city with her sister, Michelle Rodger, 27.

The sisters had met Rae in the club, and he spun them a yarn about his mother having died.

"We felt sorry for him… he was a nice chap at first. Near the end of the night I got not sure of him," Ms Rodger told the trial.

She said Rae had spoken about sex, and that she had refused his suggestion that she leave her sister and go with him. She heard her sister telling Rae: "I don't mind dancing with you. We can have a laugh, but not a laugh in the way you are thinking. Don't try any funny business."

At the end of the night, the women were leaving the club, stated Ms Rodger, and she saw Rae and was frightened.

She said she threw paper she had in her hand at him.It hit a police officer and she was then arrested.

"I shouted, 'It was meant for him. He was hassling us. He said, You are going to die after sex. That man is wanting to have sex with us and do bad things to us'," said Ms Rodger, who was taken away in a police van.

In the morning, worried relatives contacted the police because Mrs McLaren had not arrived home. A missing person inquiry was set up, and Rae was traced as a possible witness. He lied about having last seen Mrs McLaren on the dancefloor in the club, and about having left on his own.

In fact, closed circuit television footage showed that Rae and Mrs McLaren had walked away from the club.

Then, the footage showed Rae on his own. He went to a garage where, mud-spattered and with blood on his face, he bought a sandwich, a soft drink and a top-up for his mobile phone. Mrs McLaren's partially clothed body was found two weeks later, in the city centre, a short distance from the last CCTV sighting of her and Rae together.

She had been strangled, and assaulted. The body had been hidden in undergrowth and a strip of ivy had been torn off an embankment wall and used to cover her up like "a quilt".