Hell and Gone Murder Line: Caroline Glachan

inherent in cold cases. We remind listeners that everyone has presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing in the podcast is intended to state or imply that anyone who has not been convicted of a crime is guilty of any wrongdoing. Thanks for listening.

She was enjoying the long weekend because that Monday was a bank holiday, so Caroline and her friends were enjoying one last weekend of summer. At around ten ten pm, Caroline stopped at home her mother, Margaret, and her mother's fiance Alan were heading out to dinner to celebrate Margaret's birthday, according to the BBC program Crime Watch. After checking in with her mom, Caroline left her house to meet up

with her best friend Joanne. On that night, Caroline had invited joe Anne and two other friends for a sleepover, but at some point her plans changed. At around eleven forty five, Caroline and joe Anne left another friend's flat. They started walking down to an area called the Ladytoon Shops in Bonhill. Joe Anne later told police that Caroline had a date. She was planning on meeting someone at midnight, so Caroline gave joe Anne the keys to her house

so that Joanne could get in without her. Then Caroline ran into another acquaintance of hers named Alison Curly on the bond Hill side of the bridge. Alison told police that she and a friend of hers named James Doherty continued walking with Caroline down the road. Alison said that at some point she and James turned right, Caroline turned left to walk down the path called Dila ship Loane to meet her day after dark. There was no lighting there,

so it got really dark down by the river. James told police that he offered to go with Caroline to meet the guy, but Caroline said not to worry, that she would be fine because she said her date was there. Caroline disappeared into the darkness. According to her mother, Margaret, Caroline's curfew was at two am, but Caroline never.

Catherine Townsend. Over the past seven years of making my true crime podcast, Helling Gone, I've learned that there is no such thing as a small town where murder never happens. I've received hundreds of messages from people all around the country asking for help with an unsolved murder that's affected them,

their families, and their communities. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder line at six seven eight seven four four six one four five. That's six seven eight seven four four six one four five, or you can send us a message on Instagram at Helen gonepod. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. As police divers pulled Caroline's body from the river, her distraught mother and family were answering questions from police about

who might have wanted to do this to her. Caroline grew up with her parents, William and Margaret Glackin. Later, Margaret testified in court that Caroline was her miracle child. Margaret said she had five miscarriages before they had Caroline, so Caroline was the light of her life. She told Crime Watch about how loving and affectionate her daughter was, and how even though Caroline was a teenager, she still

had this naive, childlike side. William and Margaret had divorced, but from everything I've read, it seems as though they maintained an amicable co parenting relationship, and it seemed clear they both adored their only daughter. Margaret was the one who identified Caroline's body. Caroline's body was sent in for forensic testing, and testing showed that Caroline had been brutally beaten.

Caroline's killer or killers had hit her at least ten times in the head, so hard that she suffered extreme fractures to the skull, and Caroline had no defensive injuries, which meant that she must have been taken by surprise. According to court documents, she lost consciousness fairly quickly. Doctor Marjorie Turner, a forensic pathologist, found that Caroline's injuries were quote probably inflicted with a blunt weapon, although there could

have also been punches or kicks end quote. She stated that one injury above Caroline's ear had a curved laceration, suggesting that it had been caused by a weapon with a curved area to it, such as a hammer, But the actual cause of death was drowning, so Caroline's killer or killers had beaten her until she was unconscious and then left her the face down in the water. Forensic testing also revealed that no alcohol or drugs were found

in Caroline system. Caroline's family was trying to process why somewhat possibly someone who lived in the small village where they had lived since her daughter was born would want to beat Caroline to death. Police were trying to find people who had been in the area at the time of the attack, and according to the Crime Watch show that aired in nineteen ninety six, one of the people they questioned was a taxi driver. The driver was going down the lane along the river next to the path

and he saw Caroline in his headlights. Now at that time, the driver also noticed a young, clean shaven man wearing a dark colored hoodie who seemed to be following Caroline. Police also tried to find regulars to the area, including a white man described as being of stocky build, aged thirty to thirty five, with a mustache and a tan. According to Crime Watch, another potential lead came from an academy. They said on the program two students had left the

grounds of the academy after midnight. Police said they believed Caroline's killer knew the area and the dark pathway well, so they were also looking for anyone else who might have seen anything suspicious, including fishermen. Police were also trying to nail down the time of death, because by the time they found Caroline's body, it had been in the

water for several hours. Police were able to roughly estimate the time of the attack to around twelve thirty am because they talked to several witnesses who heard screams at that time coming from the direction of the river, and one of those witnesses heard a female voice scream. I didn't say that. I didn't do that. So who was the source of the screen? Was that Caroline? Or could

Caroline's killer have been a woman. The other thing that police were working on was Caroline's plans for a midnight rendezvous. Allawann's best friend Joanne shed some light on the person who Caroline was planning on meeting at the black bridge that connected Bonhill and Rintain at midnight that night. Joe Anne said that Caroline's date that night was a local eighteen year old named Robbie O'Brien, but this information about

Robbie did not come out until much later. So who was Robbie and what was the truth of his involvement with Caroline. According to court testimony, Caroline was infatuated with Robbie and They had gone out together to an Oasis concert just three weeks before Caroline's murder. But Robbie was from what a police investigator later called a notorious family in the area, meaning that people felt they would be threatened if they spoke out against these particular individuals. Robbie

O'Brien was said to be involved in drugs. This was when the heroine epidemic was exploding in Scotland. This was back in the time of the movie Train Spotty in the nineties, and Robbie used heroin. Caroline's mother later told police she was afraid that he may have introduced Caroline to the drug as well. According to Joanne, she didn't like Caroline and Robbie's relationship. She thought that Robbie was

trouble in more ways than one. For one thing, Joanne told police that she had personally witnessed Robbie assaulting Caroline. Caroline's mother and friends later testified they also believed that Robbie was violent and that he was bad news. So Caroline, like a lot of young women, would sneak out to meet him in secret. Normally they would meet at that

bridge near the river. Another red flag was that Caroline wasn't the only young woman in Robbie's life, because Robbie already had a girlfriend, and at the time of the killing, his girlfriend, seventeen year old Donna Marie Brand, was pregnant. Very quickly after Caroline's death, the names of four teenagers were being talked about in the village as four people

who may have been involved in Caroline's murder. It was Robbie O'Brien and his pregnant girlfriend, Donna Marie Brand, along with their friends Andrew Kelly and his girlfriend Sarah Jane O'Neill. Police did talk to all four of these teens and they all said that they had an alibi. They said they all spent the night at a woman named Betty Wilson's flat at twelve Alan Crescent. The couple Andrew Kelly and Sarah Jane O'Neill were babysitting two young children there.

Robbie and Donna came over. They all stayed overnight, and Betty didn't come home until around ten or eleven the next morning. Because of that alibi, it seems as though police ruled out Robbie and his friends early on, and the four of them stuck to that story. For decades. Over the years the case went cold, police made public

appeals for information. In twenty sixteen, the BBC's Crime Watch program did a second episode about this case with re enactments, but in that show and in most media since Caroline's murder, no one ever mentioned Robbie or his friends. Instead, media liked the Crime Watch program focused on other leads, including

the sketch of the man in the hoodie. But in twenty nineteen everything changed, because that's when the Scottish Police Major Investigation Team started their own investigation into the case. Their investigation was documented in a BBC series called Murder Trial Girl in the River. The senior investigating officer, Detective Inspector Stuart Granger, said in that program that they had no physical evidence, no CCTV and no digital trail. Remember this was in the pre cell phone age, so they

could not check those type of phone records. Police didn't know a lot of basic facts about this case. They didn't know if there was one killer or more than one. They didn't even have a murder weapon. So they did

something that I've said before when doing this podcast. Normally time is the enemy of cold case detectives, but sometimes time can be an asset, and it seems like the investigators in this case figured that out because a lot of people who were teenagers at the time this happened, or who may have been afraid of retaliation from certain people or certain families, now had grown up. They had children of their own, and they could better empathize with

Caroline's parents. Police took another look at the original investigation and something else jumped out of them. A witness statement taken right after Caroline's murder by a potential witness who was just four years old at the time. His name was Archie Wilson. He was the son of Betty Wilson, whose flat the four teens claimed they were staying at

all night on the night of the murder. On that night, August twenty fourth into August twenty fifth, four year old Archie and his two year old brother Jamie were at home. Andrew and his three friends Robbie, Donna, and Sarah came over. When Archie's mother, Betty got back home the next day at around ten or eleven am, she saw something strange. Andrew had his pants off and was drying them by the fire, and there was also a large wet patch on their carpet. She later testified the carpet was soaked.

Andrew told Betty that the carpet was wet because Archie had urinated on him and on the carpet, but Archie told his mother that wasn't true, and Archie said something else about what had happened the night before. Archie told his mother and her sister Daisy that Robbie and Donna had been in the home with Andrew and Sarah Jane, and that Archie had been down at the leven with

the fourteens. He said that Robbie, Donna, Andrew and Sarah had been fighting a lassie, Scottish slang for young women, and that the young woman had ended up in the water. He also told his mother and Daisy that the young woman had been hit on the head. Later, at Archie's aunt's house, Archie told the story again, saying that Robbie was wet, had been fighting a girl and had pushed her into the water. Archie talked to police on August

twenty sixth, nineteen ninety six. He told them that he saw Andrew throwing boulders at the young woman, meaning Caroline, that somebody died, and that one of the young men also fell into the river. He said that was the reason why the carpet had a wet patch. Archie told police that Robbie, Donna, Sarah, and Andrew were all at the river when Caroline was in the water, that he saw Robbie hitting her with a stick and a metal pole, and that Robbie pushed her into the water. Police did

another interview with Archie, this time on video. The second interview was done a month after Caroline's death, but back then Archie's stories were over looked by police. I'm not sure why. The police who spoke to the BBC years later said that there were a lot of rumors floating around at the time of the murder. It seems as though in all this chaos, the little boy's story was ignored.

And it's also possible police dismissed his accounts because of his age, or that they simply didn't realize the significance. But during the twenty nineteen investigation that all changed. Police figured out something crucial the timeline. Archie had talked to police on August twenty sixth, but first told his story to his mom and others on August twenty fifth. Archie told his mother about something happening to Caroline at lunchtime on Sunday the twenty fifth, but Caroline's body was not

found until hours later, after four pm. So how would he have known something happened to Caroline and so many details about her eye injury unless he had been there. In twenty nineteen, police believed it was very possible that Archie had witnessed Caroline's murder, but Archie wasn't taken seriously because the fourteens stuck to their alibi and Archie had been a small child at the time. Was it really possible that not one but four killers had gotten away

for almost thirty years. But police needed more than Archie's story. They needed to crack Robbie and his friend's airtight alibi. So they went back. They went door to door. They questioned everyone again, even people who had been children at the time of the murder, and that's when they found one of Betty Wilson's upstairs neighbors, Linda Dorian, someone who had given a statement to police in nineteen ninety six, but apparently police back then only spent a few minutes

talking to her. In twenty nineteen, Linda told police She had been at home on August twenty fifth, nineteen ninety six, with her ten year old daughter Emma. She remembered that it was around midnight because she was planning on watching a movie on Sky that came on at that time. She told police that shortly before the movie started, she heard a door opening downstairs and looked out onto the street.

Linda said that she saw four teenagers who she recognized as Andrew and his friends Sarah, Robbie and Donna, leaving Betty Wilson's flat, and she saw something odd at that time of night. The fourteens had two year old Jamie inside a stroller and four year old Archie holding onto the handle. She saw the four teens and the two young children walk down in cross Main Street in the

direction of the River Leavin. This was the first time that police were able to find any kind of a weakness with the alibi and evidence that the four teens were not at Betty Wilson's home all night as they had claimed. Linda said that she saw Sarah, Robbie, Andrew and Donna and the two children all come back to the Wilson flat about forty minutes to an hour after they left, and when they did, she said they were in highly emotional states. She said she heard a commotion downstairs,

a door slamming and shouting. Linda said that Sarah in particular seemed super upset and was yelling, you're a prick, You're a dick. She said that Sarah and Donna were both wailing and that Sarah shouted quote that wasn't meant to happen, that was out of order, that was a setup end quote, and Linda said that she heard other

voices talking about being quiet because of the children. When the BBC asked police why they didn't follow this line of investigation in nineteen ninety six, the senior officer said that quote it appeared that the relevant questions were simply not asked.

to themselves. With law enforcement working on this podcast, I've found this is a global problem. This is a challenge in small towns around the world. By the way, this doesn't apply to Linda and her neighbors. That was, in my opinion, more a case of police doing these very perfunctory interviews and not asking more in depth questions, something that I have sadly seen far too often in investigations

as well. It's interesting because this case is thousands of miles from a lot of the cases that I cover, but I see so many parallels other investigations that we have covered in this podcast. Often, in my opinion, police tend to rule out testimony from anyone who was using drugs, which, to be honest, can rule out a lot of people. Another factor that stopped people from speaking out may have

been fear of Robbie O'Brien and his family. Specifically, the senior officer said in court quote Robbie O'Brien was from a particular family in that area, a family who had quite a lot of control, and there was a certain element of you don't want to.

something else that could hint at a potential motive. Two weeks before she died, Caroline told a friend that she had taken a pregnancy test and that it was positive and that Robbie O'Brien was the father. Two weeks before her death, Caroline told a friend of hers named Tracy McFetridge that she had had a positive pregnancy test and

she thought Robbie was the father. Now, there was no pregnancy reported on the post mortem examination of Caroline, but investigators think it's very possible that at the time of the murder, Caroline believed that she was pregnant, and reading through these statements, it seems as though the relationship between Robbie and Caroline seemed to be becoming more and more

confrontational and could have been headed for disaster. Tracy told police during the early investigation that Robbie's girlfriend, Donna knew that he had been seeing Caroline, and that Donna had told Tracy and Sarah Jane O'Neill that she was going to batter Caroline. Derek Hunner, a cousin of Caroline's, told police that Caroline wrote a letter to Robbie asking him to stay at her house on Saturday night, and that Caroline's mother, Margaret, had found another letter between Caroline and Robbie.

According to court documents, Margaret was concerned about the relationship between Robbie and her daughter. She stated to police that Caroline was infatuated with Robbie and that she believed he had given Caroline heroin. The prosecution and police finally believed they had enough evidence to bring charges. In November of twenty twenty one, three suspects, Robbie O'Brien, Donna, Marie Brand, and Andrew Kelly were arrested in charge with Caroline's murder.

Sarah Jane O'Neill would have been charged as well, according to prosecutors, but she died in July twenty nineteen. Their trial began in late twenty twenty three in Glasgow High Court. All three of the accused killers were now in their forties. In the years since nineteen ninety six, Robbie O'Brien had spent time behind bars four drug charges, but also from more serious charges, including ten years for attempted murder and

a serious assault. Now police and prosecutors had to prepare for the trial with no physical evidence and with one of the main witnesses being a four year old child. Archie's witness statement was crucial to this case, but prosecutors hit a setback because Archie, now in his thirties, was deemed unfit to give evidence a trial. Police talked to Archie's mother and other family members, who said that after

what he witnessed that night, he became withdrawn. He was permanently affected by what he claimed he saw that night down by the river. According to court documents, he suffered from low intellectual functioning, several mental disorders, and memory loss as a result of alcohol abuse. Because he couldn't testify, the investigators needed to find a way to make sure that what Archie saw was included at trial, so they

found a child psychologist. They wanted to get an opinion about the police's interview strategies at the time of the murder, because, of course, they were probably worried the defense would claim that Archie was being coached. But the child's psychologist testified that in her opinion, Archie's memories were genuine and that he had described a lived event. So the psychologists believed Archie's statements about being at the river and witnessing the

attack were genuine. They were allowed to be admitted not as evidence at trial, but his hearsay. It also came out in court that the morning after the murder, Archie had slept very late until almost noon after his mom, Betty,

came home. After Betty came home on the twenty fifth, she found Andrew Kelly there with her two boys, and at first everything seemed normal, but when Betty he asked about the wet spot on the floor, Andrews said Archie had urinated on the carpet, but Archie later said that Robbie had been at the flat and that Robbie had been wet. It also came out in court that Archie

had even more crucial details about the murder. He knew about Caroline being attacked in the river, and he said he saw Robbie hit Caroline with a stick and a pole. He described her having metal in her eye, a detail that detectives believe Archie could not have known about unless

he was there. The defense tried to turn the conversation to drugs and the possibility that Caroline was going to buy drugs on the night she was murdered, but the prosecution kept bringing back the motive to Robbie and Caroline's romantic relationship. Meanwhile, police found another witness in addition to the neighbor, Linda Dorian, who cast out on the fact that the four teens were in the flat with Archie and James all night. Sharon Gorman was a friend of

Betty Wilson's. She had borrowed a cassette tape from Betty and on that night, at around twelve thirty am on August twenty fifth, she knocked on Betty Wilson's door. She told police the lights in the flat were on, but no one answered. The prosecutors put together a picture of what happened in the early morning hours of August twenty fifth,

nineteen ninety six, for the jury. They said that Caroline sent a letter to Robbie saying that she wanted to meet at midnight, but unbeknownst to Caroline, she was walking into an ambush. She had no idea that it wasn't just Robbie's showing up that night, but Robbie, his girlfriend and two of their friends, and that this would be a brutal attack. It's not clear exactly who did what and when, but we know from Archie's testimony there were

multiple weapons used, including a stick and a pole. Archie also said he saw Andrew Kelly throw rocks at Caroline. Prosecutors said this was a premeditated, vicious attack. Court documents called the killing an evil, concerted crime. This was a big question during the trial who was involved with killing Caroline and what specifically did they do Because in Scotland

the rules are slightly different than in the US. Here we have the felony murder rule, so depending on the state, people can be charged with a felony and sometimes receive the same sentence as the actual killer or an even larger sentence, even if they were just there when the death happens, whether or not it was intended. The laws are slightly different, but in Scotland in the UK. In general, a person can only be found guilty of a criminal act if he or she has participated in that act.

Someone who was just there but played no part is classified as a mere bystander. But and this part is crucial, the law also clearly states that a person can participate

in an assault without actually throwing punches. The law says when there is prior agreement to commit the assault, and the person was a party to that agreement, meaning that quote, any degree of participation is sufficient to make the accused responsible for what the other part of your parties do, provided that it does not go beyond the extent of what was agreed end quote. The law also says that providing moral support to the person attacking the victim or

threatening or intimidating the victim can countess participation. And that's what happened here because crucially, at trial, the pathologists to examine Carolyne testified that it wasn't just Robbie who was responsible for her death. The pathologists pointed out the people with her killer did not help Caroline or try to save her. They just left her there to die. Judge Lord Braid stated in court that Robbie was the ringleader

and used extreme violence during the killing. He said that Andrew Kelly was also involved in inflicting murderous violence on Caroline, and because Donna knew this was a premeditated attack, she was also charged. On December fourteenth, twenty twenty three, Andrew Kelly, Robbie O'Brien, and Donna Marie Brand were found guilty of Caroline's murder. They were all given life sentences, but life in the UK and life in the US can mean two very different things. In the UK, they very rarely

have life without the possibility of parole. Robbie was found to be the main perpetrator. He was given a minimum sentence of twenty two years. Andrew Kelly was ordered to serve at least eighteen years in prison. Donna Marie Brand was forty four years old and, according to media reports, had been off drug since two thousand and three and had a lot of health problems, including a blood disorder, epilepsy, and chronic depression. She appeared in court in a wheelchair.

Despite all this, Donna was assessed as being at moderate risk of reoffending, so she was sentenced to a minimum of seventeen years in prison, Detective Inspector Stuart Granger told the press, quote, at the heart of this is a mother, a father, extended family and friends who have had to endure years of not knowing who killed Caroline. For years, this community has lived under a dark cloud, wondering if

Caroline's killers walked among them. Nothing will bring Caroline back or less than the heartache her family and friends live with. But I hope that seeing those responsible paying for their crime offers them some level of comfort.

had been justice. The judge stated that even the donna did not take part in the assault, that she shared responsibility for the crime because she left Caroline face down in the river, and in court it was reaffirmed that experts believed that even though Caroline had been brutally and viciously beaten with multiple weapons and had rocks thrown at her and her skull was fractured, she was unconscious but alive when she went into that water, so someone might

have been able to save her if they had gotten her immediate medical help or even pulled her out of the water, but they didn't. They left her there to die beside the river. I'm Catherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murderline is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's written and narrated by me Catherine Townshend and produced by Gabby Watts. Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for her research assistance and James

Wheaton for legal review. Noah camer mixed and score this episode. Our theme song is by Ben Sale, Executive producers of Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and LC Crowley. Listen to Helen Gone ad free by subscribing to the iHeart True Prime Plush channel on Apple Podcasts. If you were interested in seeing documents and materials from the case, you can follow

the show on Instagram at Helen gonpod. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder Line at six seven eight seven four four six one four five at six seven eight seven four four six one four five.