O’Brien, originally from Dumbarton, is separately accused on various dates between June 1, 1996, and August 25, 1996, of assaulting Carolinel at locations including Balloch Country Park and Renton in Vale of Leven and “elsewhere in Dunbartonshire”.
It is alleged O’Brien assaulted the Caroline by punching her face, placing his hands around her neck and compressing her throat.
In evidence, the schoolgirl’s mother told the court her daughter was dating O’Brien and the pair had gone to an Oasis concert, held in Balloch Park on August 3, 1996.
She said: “Caroline was quite infatuated with him. I didn’t approve of the relationship. I felt he was too old. I did have words with them about that.”
Mrs McKeich aldded that her daughter had informed her that O’Brien had assaulted her. She added: ““She told me that he [O’Brien]had lifted his hands to her. He gave her a slap.”
She said she made her views known clearly to her daughter “absolutely on more than one occasion”.
Advocate Depute Alex Prentice KC asked Mrs McKeich if she had approached O’Brien – known to Caroline as “Robbie” – over the claims.
She said: “I did. It was roughly about two to three weeks before her murder.“I asked him what he thought he was playing at with a 14-year-old girl. I wasn’t happy with him and he should stay away from her.”
The day the girl’s body was discovered by police – August 25, 1996 – was her mother’s 40th birthday.
Mrs McKeich told the court she went out in the evening to celebrate, returning around 2am or 3am on August 25, but her daughter was not home.
She said: “I sat and waited and thought, ‘she will come in anytime now’. I was angry at her and I was upset that she would stay out so late. And then I thought she will come in the morning because she will be frightened to face me.”
The advocate depute asked her: “Did you receive bad news that day?”
She replied: “I did. It was in the later afternoon.”
He then asked: “Did you identify your daughter?”
Fighting back tears, Mrs McKeich said: “I did.”
However, Ian Duguid KC, for O’Brien, asked Mrs McKeich: “Before August 25 you had a conversation with Caroline about heroin?”
She said: “I did yes. She told me she had tried it but she didn’t like it.”
He put to Mrs McKeich that “around the time of her death there were a number of things going on in her life that perhaps she wasn’t being entirely honest about in her explanation to you, is that fair?”
She said: “That is fair”. Later, Anne Marie Tomlin, a former family friend who was “like an aunty” to Caroline, said she had seen Caroline on August 24 and asked if she would be coming to stay at her place which they had previously discussed.
“She said she was going to meet friends that night,” she told the court.
Jurors were then shown a video of former Strathclyde police officer James [Hamish] McMeekin and his team recovering the schoolgirl’s body, face down in the river embankment.
Facial injuries were visible when she was turned over.
The trial, before judge Lord Braid, continues.
Top picture: The towpath along the River Leven, Scotland’s second fastest flowing river, at Renton in West Dunbartonshire.
Caroline Glachan was found dead in the River Leven, Renton, Dunbartonshire on August 25, 1996.
