Caroline Glachan’s killers lose appeal against conviction

Donna Brand and Andrew Kelly were found guilty of murdering 14-year-old Caroline on the banks of the  River Leven near the Black Bridge in Renton in 1996 along with their co-accused Robert O’Brien, following a trial at the High Court in Glasgow in 2023.

All three were jailed for life and O’Brien was ordered to serve at least 22 years in prison for murder. Kelly was ordered to serve a minimum period of 18 years and Brand 17 years.

Brand and Kelly, both 45, appealed against their convictions claiming that there was insufficient evidence to support the evidence presented to the court. O’Brien was refused leave to pursue an appeal.

But judges at the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh refused their conviction appeals and also rejected a challenge by Brand against the length of the minimum term of imprisonment imposed on her.

Scotland’s senior judge, the Lord Justice General, Lord Carloway, sitting with Lord Matthews and Lord Beckett, said there was evidence that both O’Brien and Brand had previously shown malice towards the victim.

He said there was also evidence that the deceased intended to meet up with O’Brien in the vicinity of a bridge over the Leven. The trio along with a fourth adult and two children left a flat in Renton before the schoolgirl victim was subjected to the attack, which was seen by a child witness.

Lord Carloway said the attack on the deceased involved serious violence, including the use of a pole and a stick and boulders being thrown at the teenager.

He added: “From this evidence the jury would have been entitled to hold, as indeed they did unanimously, that the purpose that all had in going to the scene was to be serious violence against the deceased.”

Lord Carloway said the appeals had to be refused and added: “There was a clear rational basis for the jury’s unanimous verdict.”

He said the sentence imposed on Brand was not considered to be excessive given “her participation in this horrific crime.” The sentence appeal was also refused.

The killers were all teenagers at the time they launched the brutal assault on Caroline from the Bonhill estate on the opposite side of the river from Renton.

Her body was discovered face down in the river on August 25 in 1996 by a passerby. A post mortem showed she suffered at least ten blows to the head and sustained extensive skull fractures.

O’Brien (46), Brand and Kelly all denied murdering the teenager and claimed they had alibis as they were somewhere else at the time of the crime.

Gordon Jackson KC, for Kelly, said there was forensic evidence presented at the trial that was consistent with rocks being thrown but argued that this could not corroborate the evidence of four-year-old Archie Wilson that Kelly threw rocks.

Solicitor advocate Ann Ogg, for Brand, said: “It is my submission there was insufficient evidence that the appellant had actively associated herself with the common criminal purpose, which included the taking of human life.”

Miss Ogg argued that no reasonable jury properly directed by the judge could have returned a guilty verdict in the circumstances of the case.

She said: “I submit the trial judge was correct. The trial judge said you have to find evidence of participation. There was no participation.”

Top of page: Left to right — Caroline Glachan, Andrew Kelly, Robert O’Brien and Donna Brand and the spot where Caroline died by the riverside.