THE devastated family of Lorraine Jones have described their unspeakable agony at losing the 'bubbly, loving girl who would always want a hug when she said goodbye'.
Her uncle and aunt, Tegwyn and Diana Langford, and her aunt Sandra Williams, sat in the court's public gallery every day listening to the horrible details unfold.
By a cruel twist of fate, it emerged Lorraine's murderers passed Mr and Mrs Langford's home at Pontybodkin, near Mold, as they took her to be dumped. They were caught on a speed camera just yards from their home.
Lorraine was born near Aldershot, where her parents lived in MoD accommodation, as Mr Lowe was in the Parachute Regiment.
Mrs Langford recalled: 'As she grew up she was a very pleasant girl, very fond of horses and swimming. She was a very good swimmer.'
She attended Treuddyn and Leeswood county primary schools and later Castell Alyn School at Hope.
When she left school she went into hairdressing and worked at Way Ahead in Priory Street, Wrexham, where she was employed for 19 years.
At 19 she was married to a police officer at Ebenezer Chapel in Treuddyn and lived at Sychdyn and New Brighton, near Mold. When the marriage ended in divorce, she moved back to Leeswood.
She worked for a period behind the bar at a local golf club at Padeswood where she met her former partner and had a child, now a teenager.
Following relationship problems, Lorraine developed a problem with alcohol and her family did their best to help and support her.
It was her drink problem that sent her to Blacon, where she met Christopher Reed.
Mr Langford told how on June 15 Lorraine rang him, asked to check the address of the nursing home where her father was living, to send him a birthday card.
She told him that she would see him tomorrow, but that night was killed.
'That was the last time I spoke to her,' Mr Langford said.
