The murderer of west Belfast teenager Megan McAlorum is to be released from prison following an application to the parole board.
Thomas Purcell murdered the 16-year-old in 2004 in an attack so brutal that her family had to have a closed coffin.
The killing shocked the community of west Belfast due to the savage nature of the attack and the age of both the victim and the killer.
Thomas Purcell was only 16 at the time, but had already clocked up a number of previous convictions.
On the Easter Sunday Megan was murdered, she had met up with friends at the Hunting Lodge after finishing a shift at the Glenowen Inn, where she worked. Megan decided to visit a friend at a local fast food outlet.
It is believed as she was walking home from the take away Purcell pulled up in a car and offered her a lift.
Twelve hours later Megan's badly beaten body was discovered on a desolate stretch of land in a forest half a mile from the Glenside Road in Dunmurry.
She had 54 fractures to her skull. An expert said her injuries were the kind expected if someone fell head first from a four storey building.
After killing Megan, Purcell made his way to the Royal Victoria Hospital where he feigned chest pains to give himself an alibi. He was said to have been laughing and joking with a doctor, before stealing her mobile phone which he later tried to sell to a relative.
He returned twice to where he left Megan's semi-naked body the next day. The first time was to drag her remains into a ditch, the second was with two young relatives, thought to be aged 12 and 14, to pretend to discover the body and report it to the police.
While there was evidence Megan was raped, the sexual assault could not be proved beyond reasonable doubt and Purcell was not convicted of a sex offence which could have significantly increased his sentence.
Arrested shortly after Megan's body was discovered, he showed no remorse and continually denied murdering the popular teenager, pleading guilty just as his trial was due to begin.
On May 2006, he was sentenced to a minimum of 15 years at Belfast Crown Court.
Purcell was eligible for parole in May 2019 after serving his 15-year minimum jail term, but was deemed at the time unsafe to be released into the community and his application was refused.
He reapplied and the family have now been informed that he will be released permanently in March.
A member of the Traveller community, Purcell applied to be transferred to a prison in England where he had previously lived and served out the rest of his sentence at a prison close to Oxford.
Following her murder, Megan's heartbroken mother Margaret set about campaigning for a change in the law after discovering her daughter's killer has been transferred out of Northern Ireland through the media.
Mrs McAlorum met the prison service who issued an apology for the hurt caused and her campaign resulted in changes to the victim information scheme so no other family had to through the same thing.
The 63-year-old died in 2017 while waiting for a liver transplant to treat a rare auto-immune condition she had fought for decades.
She was buried alongside her daughter in City cemetery.
As part of Purcell's release conditions the McAlorum family asked that he be banned from the area of Belfast where the immediate family live and work and also be banned from the cemetery where Megan is buried.
They had asked that he be banned from moving back to Northern Ireland, but that request was refused.
Megan's older sister Lynn said the family remain convinced that Purcell will offend again.
"He remains a danger to the public, we feel certain he'll strike again.
"We remember Megan every day, what happened never leaves us, her life was taken from her, all her dreams and hopes for the future gone in an instant. The sentence he received never reflected the crime.
"He gets to start again, that doesn't seem like justice to me".
