There are few certainties surrounding Samuel Jennings. No-one, not even former neighbours or business associates, could agree on what he did for a living, or the country of his birth.

For those who found him a charmer, an equal number regarded him a charlatan. Renowned for opulent tastes, time and again he became saddled by financial insecurity. No-one knows how many times he has married, nor how many children he has fathered.

In fact, there is only the one definitive truth about Samuel Jennings: he is a killer.

Seven years after fleeing a remote Scottish village where he owed tens of thousands of pounds to local businesses, the 61-year-old is beginning a life sentence in Ireland for the murder of Mary "Maimie" Walsh.

An outgoing mother-of-two from County Waterford, her life was taken for just a few thousand pounds. After bludgeoning her skull nine times, Jennings loaded her corpse into the boot of her Hyundai, then went home.

Disposing of the murder weapon, he cleaned Ms Walsh's blood from his hands, before calmly depositing the money in two Waterford banks.

It was a grisly act, but the trial which led to Jennings's conviction shed light only upon his crime, not his life. The cloak of ambiguity under which he criss-crossed countries remains intact, penetrated not even by a court of law.

The first details of Jennings's life emerged in the late summer of 2004, when he was arrested following the discovery of Ms Walsh's body. Identified in the Irish media as a Scotsman, the trail eventually led to the quiet Rosneath peninsula in Argyll.

Stories there surrounding him were legend. He had moved there five years previously with his partner, Chantelle, a tall brunette 26 years his junior.

Declaring himself a "doctor of botany" with a PhD, he drove a second-hand Jaguar and rented a modest semi-detached house. Quickly setting up a landscape gardening company, he went about ingratiating himself with businesses in the village.

The couple even married in the nearby Clievedon Hotel, an event to which scores of bemused villagers were invited.

During the wedding reception, suspicion surrounding Jennings's authenticity first arose when he was forced to borrow £150 from a local woman to pay for the sandwich buffet.

As he sought further loans from people, his behaviour grew more curious. At a village car boot sale, his stall stood out from the crowd.

While others sold bric-a-brac and clothes for between £3 and £5, Jennings attached labels for £50 and £70 on tattered second-hand items.

It would soon emerge deceit was just the beginning of Jennings's crimes. When he later surfaced in another quiet village, this time Kilmacthomas on Ireland's southern coast, Jennings told locals the same story of his background.

The "doctor" quickly found work as a loans collection agent at Provident Credit, where he was trained by Ms Walsh. The months passed, and Jennings eventually left Provident's employment, he and his wife encountering financial hardship.

One August morning, Ms Walsh was carrying a small, blue bag containing 4000 euros in collected repayments to drop off at her regular bank. It was a journey she never completed. On the day of the murder, Jennings deposited 4000 euros into two banks in Waterford.

Arrested just days afterwards, he offered only a curt protestation of innocence. "I'm stunned. I didn't do it," he told a waiting journalist.

In the time leading up to his trial, not even the Garda could establish a full and frank portrait of Jennings. During his time in custody at Limerick Prison, he continued to plot, claiming he was in Belgium at the time of the killing.

However, it later transpired that he had parked his car at Dublin Airport to support his alibi, only to have retraced his steps and booked in at a hotel in the city.

Moreover, at his trial at Dublin's Central Criminal Court, the jury heard how he even convinced a fellow inmate to write an anonymous letter claiming to be Ms Walsh's killer.

Evidence linking her blood to a carpet at his home, meanwhile, was readily dismissed by Jennings, who said his three-year-old son, Brandon, had spilt creosote.

It was not just the circumstances surrounding Ms Walsh's death that encouraged Jennings to lie. Even the most fundamental details of life proved oblique.

Garda sources say that after repeated questioning, he claimed at various occasions to have hailed from Aberdeen, Canada, and Holland.

The Herald has learned, though, Jennings made repeated references to one estranged daughter from a relationship in the Caithness area in the mid-1970s.

He claimed to have visited the child, known only as Melanie, just once.

"I don't think even he knew what was the truth," the Garda contact says. "He could go back on himself and cover stories and details with astonishing accuracy."

The physical evidence of his part in Ms Walsh's murder was insurmountable. Jennings was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment in November.

One Irish journalist attending the trial said he was emotionless when the mandatory sentence was handed down, "as if he'd been given a caution and a slap on the wrists".

Jennings is now estranged from his wife, Chantelle, last known to be working as a civil engineer in Mullungar, but now believed to have left Ireland.

Today in Rosneath, life has again assumed the everyday routine so abruptly punctuated by Jennings's arrival.

Cumulatively, people there remain out of pocket by around £30,000; indeed, one man who acted as best man at his wedding has never again seen the £5000 caravan he lent the couple.

But a mixture of embarrassment and anger means people would rather forget.

Even years later, it is still hard for people to trust newcomers to Rosneath, said Robert McIntyre, the village butcher.

"Jennings is the kind of guy you see films made about, but he turned up on our doorstep," he recalled yesterday.

"It's just lucky he fled before anyone could confront him after seeing what he is capable of. I thought he was a confidence man, but a murderer? Who'd have known?"

Now, Jennings finally has one stark reality in his life he must face up to. Imprisoned, he has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

To all who have encountered him, whether in Scotland, Ireland, or indeed, Canada or Holland, it seemed he lived several lives.

In time perhaps, Samuel Jennings's truth will out.