Alesha MacPhail’s father walked out of court as the teen accused of killing his daughter claimed to have been having sex with his girlfriend “once or twice a week”.
The 16-year-old boy took to the witness stand to claim he had a ‘friends with benefits’ relationship with Toni McLachlan, 18, which Mr MacPhail knew nothing about.
The accused said he was having sexual relations with Ms McLachlan ‘once or twice a week’ near the end of 2017, and that the night of the abduction he had sex with her in a garage.
Robert MacPhail walked out of the courtroom at the High Court in Glasgow when the allegations were made.
The accused claimed that Ms McLachlan complained about her relationship to him, and that they communicated by commenting on old Instagram posts.
He said she left a message saying ‘meet me at the shelter’ the night Alesha went missing, and that he met her to smoke with her, before the pair went to a garage to have sex.
The accused said that he was seeing someone at the time of the murder, but that the ‘friends with benefits’ relationship began in late 2017.
The boy said: “Toni and me began seeing each other, not in a going out sort of way but more a friends with benefits.
“One day I went to buy weed and I offered if she wanted to smoke with me, because we were both drunk.
“It was a fairly frequent thing - once or twice a week.
“She complained about her relationship to me - Rab was abusing her verbally and physically.”
He said that he and Mr MacPhail had fallen out about money in February and that although he messaged him asking for drugs the night of the abduction he knew ‘he probably wouldn’t sell it to me’.
And he claimed that Ms McLachlan left the MacPhail home to have sex with him the night Alesha vanished.
The boy said: “Toni came down the stoney path and tapped me a fag, we then walked up the high road and went to the park.”
He claimed he walked with her to a garage where they had sex.
The accused said: “She had a condom with her so she gave me that.”
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He said he gave Ms McLachlan a hoodie ‘because she was feeling cold’ then went home and had a shower.
The accused said he went out again wearing a pair of shorts and holding a top, because he thought he had lost his phone.
When he returned home, he claimed he went out the third time wearing a pair of “shoes, a top and had a torch.”
He said: “I went to the shed and then retraced my steps.”
The accused said his phone was lying ‘at the bottom of the shore road’ and he went home and went to bed.
The boy told the court the jogging bottoms and boxer shorts found on a beach had been ‘lost in the sea’ as he jumped off a pier, alone, on June 29 - the Friday before the murder.
He said that the following day he went camping with friends.
And the accused said he believed his mum had a drinking problem and he had been “upset” after they argued following a party he organised on Snapchat.
After a friend went round to reassure him, he then went out to buy cannabis, he claimed.
The trial continues.
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