A FORMER fiancée of fiend Iain Packer told of her shock when she discovered her ex-lover was accused of murder.
The mum-of-two hooked up with “jittery and nervous” Packer five years after Emma Caldwell’s brutal slaying but insists she had no inkling of his dark side.
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It was only when a pal told her the gravity of the crimes he was accused of committing that she had any idea of what the brute was capable of.
The woman – who doesn’t want to be identified – said: “A pal called me one day and said, ‘Are you sitting down?’
“She told me she was coming over and when she arrived she put a newspaper down in front of me and it was Iain accused of murder.
“I was in total and absolute shock. I was horrified because obviously if I had known that I would have walked away.
“It was in 2011 he was accused of raping someone and that’s when he was in a relationship with me. We had just got engaged. I was like what the f***.”
She told how the pair began dating in East Kilbride, Lanarkshire, around 2010 before she eventually introduced him to her family.
But it wasn’t long before a hint of Packer’s true colours began to show themselves.
Recalling the start of their relationship, she said: “I knew him years and years ago because he used to hang out with a friend of mine.
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“So when he asked me out I knew who he was and thought he was alright and I’ll take the chance.
“He was quite jittery and nervous when we met on our first date in a pub in East Kilbride about 2010.
“I was nervous too because I had never really had a proper conversation with him.
“We had a glass of wine and a chat but I didn’t actually bring him to the house for about three months.
“We were chatting on video chats on my computer every day, just getting to know each other.”
Things started to develop but she couldn’t help but notice Packer’s controlling character coming to the fore.
She said: “We started to see each other but he was too possessive.
“He would be phoning me when I was out with my friends and asking what I was doing constantly.
“That put me back a wee bit and I kept my distance but we continued the video chats.”
She said when she felt she had gained his trust she introduced him to her sons and the pair kept dating.
Their relationship seemed to be on solid ground and eventually Packer popped the question.
But she says that was the moment everything changed.
She said: “He would stay a couple of nights and everything would be great but after he put an engagement ring on my finger he started to change.
“He started picking on the boys and taking things off them and making things up about them.
“He basically got between me and my boys and one of my sons had to go and stay with his dad.”
She started to notice Packer had a mysterious side and he would storm out in a rage and vanish for hours.
She said: “When someone’s phone rings in the middle of the night and you know there’s someone else involved then that tells you that they are cheating on you.
“That’s when things started to kick off because it was happening a lot and then money was disappearing out of my account and things like that.”
But one night Packer lashed out at her quiet son after he came home from school in 2011.
She said: “I was in the kitchen making dinner and I could hear them arguing.
“They went outside and Iain came back in and said you better get a nurse.
“My son’s eye was all swollen and I ran over to get a nurse who lived across the road.
“While he was being attended to my son was kicking Iain.
“Iain asked us not to call the police because he would lose rights to see his own son.”
Just a few months after the pair were engaged she told Packer it was over — but he refused to go quietly.
She said: “He kept coming back and pestering me and he wouldn’t leave me alone but I wasn’t prepared to have a guy in my house bullying my kids.”
After the split, it was a few years before she discovered the true nature of her former fiancée.
She said: “I didn’t feel any threat from him.
“It was only after he put the ring on my finger that he changed and I saw a different side to him.
“But it was only after I read what he was accused of that I started to think back to certain things like the times he would storm out and disappear for hours.
“But I still find it hard to believe he could be violent because I haven’t seen that.”
She added: “I’m not a medical person but through the years I’ve heard people speaking about being bipolar and thought maybe there was something like that in him.
“One minute he would be nice and the next something would trigger him and he would turn.”
