A violent serial abuser and rapist faces a life sentence for murdering a vulnerable grandmother he previously threatened to kill and “bodybag”.
Mark Campbell, 37, was found by police in the driver’s seat of his Citroen car with his dead victim beside him.
Campbell had earlier induced Jane Fitzpatrick, 48, to discharge herself from hospital against medical advice, before savagely battering her head with a tyre iron.
Campbell had denied murdering his partner on August 8 or 9 in 2021 at Cable Road, Glenrothes, and claimed he had slept through her death when they were in the car.
A jury unanimously found him guilty of the murder and convicted him of a further 13 charges – 12 of them charges of assault and rape involving six other women.
The trial judge, Lady Poole, told him: “What you did to these women was harrowing and shocking to listen to.
“Your behaviour has devastated lives.”
She said the only sentence for murder is life imprisonment but she is required to set a minimum prison term, for which she needs background reports.
Sentence was deferred until July.
Year of abuse before murder
The High Court in Edinburgh heard Campbell began his offending against women when he was still a teenager and subjected them to physical, sexual and verbal abuse before murdering his final victim.
Advocate depute Chris Jones told the court he had an “obsession with infidelity” and accused women of cheating on him.
Before murdering Ms Fitzpatrick, he had subjected her to an abusive course of behaviour between September 2020 and August 2021.
During it he isolated her from friends and family, threatened her, monitored her movements and her social media accounts and damaged her mobile phones.
He also struck her on head and body to her serious injury.
During messages between her and Campbell she had said she could not handle another beating and wrote: “Look at the marks all over me for telling the truth.”
In another she said: “You told me to f*** off before you killed me. For telling the truth.”
Campbell also directed abuse at her including calling her “a slut” and “a dirty cow”.
Death while sleeping claims
Before the murder she went to the Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy, sick and unsteady on her feet from a head injury.
Staff were told she hit her head after Campbell had to brake in his car suddenly.
Following the murder, no evidence of emergency braking was found on the tyres of his vehicle.
Campbell claimed after she had left hospital they went to an industrial estate but she fell and banged her head.
He said he had tried to stem the bleeding and they fell asleep in the car.
He said he first woke when it was still dark and she said she was okay at that point.
He said: “I looked. She was sleeping. I could hear her.”
He claimed he fell asleep again and later woke and found her dead, with his door open.
“Jane was gone,” he told the court, adding he had tried to perform CPR.
Campbell later drove from the scene but was found by police, sitting in the driver’s seat with his head down.
He appeared to have blood on his trousers and around his fingernails.
A tyre iron was recovered from the car, which was found to have been used to inflict repeated blows to Ms Fitzpatrick’s head.
She was also found to have sustained extensive fresh bruising.
Pushed finger into wound
One former partner of Campbell’s told the court she had called him “a stoner” because of his drug use.
She said during a confrontation he grabbed an iron and hit her forcefully in the face with it.
During an assault on her in 2018 at a house in Glenrothes, he pushed a finger into a healing operation wound on her back and dragged her from a bed.
Another woman said she was subjected to assaults in Glenrothes between February 2003 and June 2004.
She was thrown down a flight of stairs and kicked in the stomach when she was pregnant.
Campbell also bit her on the head, tried to force drugs into her mouth and forced raw meat into her mouth.
Jealous and paranoid
One witness told the court the treatment she received at Campbell’s hands was “horrible, really horrible”.
She said: “He hit me a lot.
“He was verbally abusive to me.
“He raped me. He punched me, bit me, strangled me. He headbutted me.”
She said Campbell was “really aggressive” after drinking.
“He would call me horrible names – slut, bitch, whore… He was trying to belittle me, trying to put me down.”
The woman said he was “very jealous, very paranoid”.
“He would go through my phone.
“He would text my friends, pretending he was me, to try to get them to give information I had cheated.”
Sentence deferred
Campbell, who has previous convictions for violence, was convicted of assaulting six women and raping three of them between 2004 between 2020 at locations in Glenrothes, Kirkcaldy and Leven before committing the murder.
He was placed on the Sex Offenders Register and is due to be sentenced on July 20 at the High Court in Stirling.
Detective Inspector Scott Roxburgh of Police Scotland said: “This was an extremely violent attack that has left Jane’s family devastated and our thoughts remain with them at this difficult time.
“Campbell will now have to face the consequences of his actions.
“I would like to thank Jane’s family, friends and those in the wider community who helped officers during this enquiry.
“Violence like this has no place in our society and Police Scotland will continue to work closely with the public and our partners to bring perpetrators to justice.”
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