Off The Record
A Frightening Five-Word Statement From A Four-Year-Old That Solved A 30-Year-Old Murder Is Shown In Dramatic Video
The moment a four-year-old made a frightening five-word remark that solved a murder that occurred nearly thirty years ago has been captured in dramatic video.
Murder Trial: The Girl in the River, the most recent episode of a BBC documentary that chronicles several murder trials, featured the clip.
This one came after the 1996 discovery of Caroline Glachan’s body on a Scottish riverside. When Caroline passed away, she was only 14 years old.
Following a trial, her killers, Andrew Kelly, Donna Marie Brand, and Robert O’Brien, were convicted in 2023.
All three were given life sentences, with O’Brien serving at least 22 years and Kelly and Brand serving 18 and 17 years, respectively.
The case was rescued by the testimony of four-year-old Archie Wilson, whose video evidence helped solve the case.
Kelly was watching Wilson the night Caroline died; therefore, he was interviewed at the scene of the murder.
Due to his youth and the trio’s strong alibis, which insisted they had stayed at home that evening, his testimony was dismissed at the time.
Because O’Brien, who was then eighteen and a heroin addict, was seeing fourteen-year-old Caroline and another teenager named Brand, the three were suspected.
However, the interview and other data collected on Archie were forwarded to a child psychologist when Scottish Police revisited the case in 2019.
During the interview, he responded, “Robbie,” when asked who he saw Caroline punching her. When the interviewer asks what he was using to beat her, Archie responds, “a metal pole.”
He would later say, “She got hit with a metal pole because there was metal in her eye. I saw it. I closed my eyes when the metal was in her eyes and when she got pushed into the water.”
When a pathologist’s findings revealed injuries compatible with this, which Archie would have had to be aware of, this was supported by additional evidence.
“It is obviously a concern that a very young boy is giving evidence in a murder trial and some people might think that a four-year-old boy is not someone who can be relied upon,” Alex Prentice KC, the lead prosecution attorney for the trial, stated in the BBC true crime documentary.
“Archie talks about Caroline getting metal in her eye and an injury being caused.”
“We heard from the pathologist who illustrated to the jury that there was such an injury. The question would be ‘How would he know that?'”
During the trial, a horrific love triangle between the two and Brand was connected to O’Brien’s murder of Caroline.
Brand, a “jealous rival,” had threatened to “batter” her, and the 14-year-old had previously told acquaintances that he had physically abused her.
You can watch Murder Trial: The Girl in the River right now on BBC iPlayer.
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