Worthing son shares tale of his mum's killing in documentary

Brandyn McKenna was nine when he woke up on Mother’s Day in 2006 to discover his mother Caroline Devlin, 35, had died.

Growing up, he believed it was due to natural causes – but when her ex-partner Robert Trigg was charged in 2016 with her manslaughter and the murder of another ex-girlfriend, Susan Nicholson, the Gatwick Airport security officer sat through the trial and got justice when Trigg was given a life sentence.

Now 21, Brandyn has appeared in an episode of 999: Killer On The Line for the Crime+Investigation channel, which recreated the deaths of his mother and Ms Nicholson and aired on Monday.

He said: “As a family, we want to keep it in the public eye, because we don’t want this to happen to anyone else.

“I don’t want any other family to go 11 years without justice.”

The documentary makers visited Brandyn’s home in Worthing and filmed him for four hours – a process which made him relive hard times, like his ninth birthday. He said: “It was the best day I can remember with her – what made it difficult was having that brilliant birthday, and never having one again because my mum isn’t here.”

The day she died, Brandyn recalled complimenting his brother Jordan, then 13, on the ‘lovely flowers’ he bought for her – before Trigg knocked on their bedroom door and told Jordan to check his mother was okay, leading him to her dead body.

Brandyn described the murderer as a ‘drunken slob’, but that he made his mum happy. He said: “All we wanted was for her to be happy.”

In the weeks that followed, Brandyn attended a memorial match at Worthing Football Club, where she worked, and released balloons with his three siblings at her funeral in Auchinleck, Scotland.

Raised by his uncle in Worthing, Brandyn said he hoped his mum would be proud of his achievements.

The documentary features a 999 call from a neighbour of Susan Nicholson, who he murdered in 2011.

At a recent inquest into his mother’s death, Brandyn asked for answers about her post-mortem.

It was announced earlier this year that the Independent Office for Police Conduct, the police watchdog, will be reviewing Sussex Police’s conduct around Miss Devlin and Miss Nicholson’s deaths, and if any chances to bring Trigg to justice earlier were missed.Despite having a history of domestic abuse known to police, the killer was only imprisoned after Miss Nicholson’s parents spent £10,000 of their life savings to get a private prosecutor.