By a Democrat reporter
A Renton man charged with the murder of Caroline Glachan told a detective he did not leave the house of a woman he knows on the night he is accused of killing the Notre Dame schoolgirl.
Robert O’Brien was arrested in November 2021 after police re-investigated the death of 14-year-old Caroline in August 1996.
A court heard that on being arrested, O’Brien said: “I never killed her.”
O’Brien, 45, Andrew Kelly and Donna Marie Brand, both aged 44, deny murder.
Caroline’s body was discovered in the River Leven in Renton near the Black Bridge, which connects Renton with Bonhill, on 25 August 1996.
David Barr, a now retired detective constable, was one of the officers who interviewed O’Brien in 2021.
The accused was said to have been in a relationship with Caroline at the time of her death.
During eight hours of police questioning, O’Brien said he was at the Renton home of Elizabeth Wilson, who was known as Betty, that night.
Betty Wilson had arranged for her two sons to be babysat by Mr O’Brien’s co-accused, Andy Kelly, and his then girlfriend Sarah Jane O’Neill.
The jury in the High Court in Glasgow had earlier heard evidence that Ms Wilson’s son, Archie, who was four-and-a-half at the time, claimed he had seen a “lassie” getting “battered” and falling into the river on the date of the alleged murder.
In his interview, O’Brien told the police he never left the street where Ms Wilson lived.
Prosecutor Alex Prentice KC put to Mr Barr: “Throughout the interview his position was that he was in Betty Wilson’s all night and did not leave until the following morning?”
Now retired Detective Constable Barr replied: “Yes.”
O’Brien’s counsel Ian Duguid KC suggested to Mr Barr that the suspect had instead remarked to police: “I never killed anyone in my life.”
But the retired police officer said that was not what O’Brien initially said, although the accused did appear during the interview to attempt to correct his remark.
‘Some affection’
The jury was told that Andy Kelly and the other co-accused Donna Marie Brand were also arrested in November 2021.
Both also insisted they had been at Ms Wilson’s house at the time of the killing.
The court was told Kelly spoke of Caroline, who lived in Bonhill, with “some affection” during his interview.
Ms Brand meantime claimed it was “nonsense” that she and others had been witnessed leaving the property that night.
Mr Prentice proceeded to tell jurors that he did not intend to call any more witnesses for the prosecution in the case.
And he withdrew a separate charge that O’Brien assaulted Caroline on various occasions in a number of places in Vale of Leven in 1996.
The three accused deny murdering Caroline at the River Leven in West Dunbartonshire on August 25 1996.
The trial, before Lord Braid, continues.