Donna Marie Brand, who was serving a life sentence for the murder of 14-year-old schoolgirl Caroline Glachan, has died two years into her sentence. Brand passed away on Wednesday at Forth Valley Hospital, near Falkirk, at the age of 47. She was incarcerated at HMP Stirling and is understood to have died of natural causes.
Brand was convicted in 2023 for the 1996 murder of Glachan, a case that had remained unsolved for decades. Brand, along with co-accused Robert O’Brien and Andrew Kelly, lured the schoolgirl to the River Leven in Renton, Dunbartonshire. Glachan was beaten and left to drown. At the time of the murder, all three perpetrators were teenagers.
Caroline Glachan's body was discovered on the riverbank on August 25, 1996. She had been described as 'infatuated' with O’Brien, who was 18 at the time and had been warned by Glachan's mother to stay away from her daughter. Glachan left her home to meet O’Brien at a bridge over the River Leven, where the attack occurred.
The conviction of Brand, O’Brien, and Kelly brought a close to one of Scotland’s longest-running cold cases. Crucial to the investigation was the testimony of a four-year-old boy, initially deemed not credible but later corroborated by other accounts.
O’Brien received a minimum sentence of 22 years, and Kelly was sentenced to a minimum of 18 years. Brand's sentencing was delayed due to ill health, and in April 2024, she was ordered to serve a minimum of 17 years for her role in the murder.
Following the guilty verdicts, Caroline Glachan’s mother, Margaret McKeich, expressed the profound impact of the decades-long wait for justice, stating, “For the past 25 years they have lived their life and they’ve had their Christmases and their birthdays, and my Caroline was in the ground.”
A spokesperson for the Scottish Prison Service confirmed that Police Scotland and the Procurator Fiscal are notified of deaths in custody. Fatal Accident Inquiries are typically held in due course following such events.