Her story seemed no different to thousands of others. Jolanta Bledaite travelled to Scottish shores to make a better life for herself after a tough upbringing in eastern Europe.
She also arrived in Brechin with a second goal – to help in her dying father’s battle against cancer by sending him the money she earned in the fields of Angus.
Yet despite 18 months working and living in Brechin, nobody noticed she was gone.
It was not until her employer saw an artist’s impression of a severed head found on Arbroath beach that the details of her horrific death began to emerge.
The 35-year-old, who was originally from Alytus, 80 miles from the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, was living in Earlsdon House in Southesk Street, Brechin.
Her parents divorced in the 1990s after her mother began abusing alcohol.
While Ms Bledaite was described as bright at school, she never excelled, largely because of her troubled home life.
She left Lithuania for Ireland in 2002, pledging to make enough money to buy her father a house, but it was not until she arrived in Scotland three-and- a-half years later that her hard-earned cash had to be used to keep her father alive.
Former fish factory worker Sarunas Bleda, 61, is dying from prostate and intestinal cancer and his daughter had been funding his treatment.
Mr Bleda said his daughter had moved to Scotland in search of a better life after a tough upbringing and news of her murder left him unable to get out of bed.
He spoke of his anger at his “beautiful daughter” being “thrown away like a bag of soup bones”.
“What sort of argument do you have to have with someone to end up chopped up like a tailor’s dummy and thrown away?” he said.
There are more than 4,000 migrant workers in Angus and Ms Bledaite’s horrific death shone a light on the shadowy existence of many migrant workers.
Their labour keeps local factories, fruit farms and hotel kitchens afloat but their home lives are often spent in self-imposed ghettos, giving them limited contact with their local community.
Ms Bledaite’s death not only shocked the migrant population in Angus but also sparked an outpouring of grief from the community.
Sue Smith, who runs a drop-in centre for eastern Europeans from her house in Market Gate, Arbroath – has visited Ms Bledaite’s family in Alytus and raised money to repatriate her body to Lithuania.
Last night, she said Aleksandras Skirda’s guilty plea had left her feeling sad but urged the community not to seek revenge on his family, who still live in Brechin.