Murder Trial returns to court with new TV cases and podcast

Caroline Glachan was a 14-year-old schoolgirl whose body was discovered on the banks of the River Leven in Renton on 25 August 1996. Caroline’s death would become one of Scotland’s most high profile and heart breaking unsolved cases. Despite extensive enquiries and one arrest over the years, police failed to charge anyone for the murder.

However, in November 2023, three people – Robert O’Brien, Andrew Kelly and Donna Brand – stood trial at Glasgow’s High Court accused of murder, 27 years after Caroline’s death. The trio were accused of violently attacking the schoolgirl before pushing her into the River Leven. A fourth suspect died before she could be arrested.

Ean Coutts was a retired army veteran whose remains were uncovered in a disused industrial unit in Glenrothes, Fife in 2020. The horrifying discovery led the police to create a facial reconstruction image in the hope of identifying the victim. They confirmed the identity as Ean Coutts who lived alone in Kinglassie, a small village in central Fife. Three years on, Murder Trial follows the case as 33-year-old David Barnes stands trial at the High Court in Edinburgh, accused of Ean’s murder.

Meanwhile, a new 10-part podcast series, Inside The Murder Trial, will delve deep into the case of Renee and Andrew MacRae who vanished in 1976. One of the biggest unsolved murder cases in Scottish legal history, the podcast will take listeners through the 2022 trial at Inverness High Court where 80-year-old William MacDowell stood accused of killing his former lover and her son, disposing of their bodies and concealing the murders for 45 years.