SHE stood on the steps of the court, a slight, yet dignified figure. Her clothes were smart, her haircut chic and her make-up largely intact. But her eyes reflected the kind of pain most of us shy away from even imagining.
During Marek Harcar's trial, Beatrice Jones was forced to confront the savage physical injuries her daughter Moira had suffered at the hands of the man who raped and murdered her.
Then she had to stand back silently and watch as he did everything
in his power to avoid taking responsibility for her death. Yet when she finally got the chance to speak, the bereaved mother focused not so much on her hate for the drunken Slovakian drifter who forced Moira into the park after telling a flatmate he was going out to "look for whores". Instead she spoke of the vibrancy, intelligence and humanity of the woman who had once campaigned to make Queen's Park in Glasgow – her adopted home – a better, safer place to live.
Yes, she referred to Harcar as an "evil and depraved monster". What mother wouldn't? But for the most part her moving and articulate statement was a paean to a daughter who was so much more than just "a body in a park".
"There was no side to Moira," Mrs Jones said. "She was genuinely interested in everyone, people from all walks of life and could talk and listen to them all. She was unfailingly supportive and made people feel better about themselves."
The murder of Moira Jones is one of those crimes which comes along maybe once in five years. It's one in which a middle-class woman living in a predominantly middle-class area dies at the hands of a complete stranger. Rachel Nickell and Samantha and Jazmine Bissett; Dr Lin Russell and her daughter Megan, estate agent Suzy Lamplugh – their deaths make such an impact on the public consciousness not only because of the scale of the violence but also because they are so random. There was nothing in the lives of these women which could have identified them as likely victims, nor anything they could realistically have done to protect themselves.
Certainly Moira could not have been described as vulnerable. At 40 years old, she was a popular and successful sales consultant, who seemed to relish her independence. Rigorous about her own personal safety, she wore a police whistle round her neck in case of attack. Yet it did nothing to stop 6ft 3in tall Harcar from forcing her into the park.
But Moira's murder is also unusual in the sense that despite the depressing inevitability of Harcar's descent into violence, his lack of remorse, and the terrible waste of a woman's life, it has served to confirm rather than shake many people's faith in the human spirit.
That is, for the most part, because of the way the Jones family have responded to their ordeal. Since their daughter's body was found in May last year, Beatrice and her husband Hu have been unable to work. Their son Grant has given up his life in Australia to look after them. They have described their hearts being "gouged out" by grief.
When you think of the way in which bitterness could have seeped in to fill the vacuum, it is amazing that they have continued to exude a warmth and compassion, enfolding Moira's boyfriend Paul – at whose flat she was supposed to be staying on the night she was killed before a minor row persuaded her otherwise – into their care, and extending their daughter's tolerance and refusal to condemn the fallible.
Other families might – understandably – have dwelt less on the support of the residents of Queen's Park who signed a book of condolence and called for an orchard in the park itself to be renamed in her memory, and more on those who heard her screams on the night she died and carried on with what they were doing. During the court case it emerged there were quite a few people who knew in their guts the cries emanating from the park were more than just teenagers just messing about in the dark.
They looked at their watches to note the time and thought to themselves, I wonder if something terrible is happening here, but did not phone the police. A dog walker heard a voice shout "stop it" and saw a man staring into a holly bush.
They might, quite reasonably, have become angry that a woman who has always cared for and engaged with other people should find herself abandoned as she fought for her life. Beatrice Jones, however, remembered, how, when she visited Glasgow she would often hear noises outside.
"I thought that if there was someone shouting for help at night, people would not have heeded it because there was shouting between people and couples at all hours," she said.
Other families might have dwelt less on the (undeniably) thorough detective work that saw Harcar brought to justice after he fled to his native Slovakia – and more on the inadequacies of a system that allowed him to move to this country in the first place. The Joneses would surely be justified in feeling outraged that a man with 13 prior convictions, many of them for violence, should be able to come to the UK with no-one tracking his movements.
But it is a far more fitting tribute to Moira Jones that what we should be left with at the end of the trial is not division and recriminations, but the enduring image of a woman who touched the lives of everyone around her. Beatrice Jones ended her statement last week with the words: "Moira, we will always be so proud of you and we will do the best that we can with our lives to make them worthy of you." They have already done so much to achieve that goal.
