Family of murdered Tracy eager to bring back her ashes to scatter in Loch Fyne

Before Tracy Wyatt Brannan moved to the States she lived and worked beside the loch.

Her former boyfriend, Graham MacPherson, 38, said: "I spoke to Tracy's niece and the family are wanting to bring her ashes back here to Inveraray, to put them into the loch and have a service."

Mr MacPherson, who remained good friends with Mrs Brannan after they split up 18 months ago, said she had loved Inveraray, where she lived for eight years, and was a very popular member of the local community.

Speaking from the home he once shared with her in Glen Aray View, Inveraray, he said: "Everyone knew her here; it has been a real shock. I was with Tracy for six and a half years. She was really nice - a bubbly person who would always have done anything for you."

He added: "When she was in America she phoned me up and kept in touch, with e-mails. I was e-mailing her on the day after the Inveraray Games because she was asking how it went; she loved the Highland Games."

Mrs Brannan's stepson David has been charged with murdering the Scot and stabbing his father Harold during an alleged incident at the family home in Omaha, Nebraska. Mr MacPherson said Mrs Brannan's mother had phoned him to break the news of her death. He said: "I was absolutely stunned. I couldn't believe it."

After the couple parted, Mrs Brannan, who was assistant head chef at Loch Fyne Oyster Bar, continued to live in Inveraray, where she rented a flat. She met Mr Brannan through her brother. Mr MacPherson explained: "Her brother had brought Hal and his son over and Tracy brought them up to meet me; they wanted to see Scotland.

"They came to the house and we were sitting on the decking, on a summer night. I met Hal a few times and he was fine."

He said that, despite a 28-year age difference, the couple's friendship had blossomed into romance. He added: "Tracy came up to tell me she was engaged. She had been out to America a couple of times and she got engaged on top of the Empire State Building. I was happy for her."

However, recalling one phone call from his ex-love, after she moved to the home she shared with her new husband and stepson, Mr MacPherson recalled: "She said, he (her stepson] is in the basement all the time. She said she would make the tea and he would come up for that and go back down. He would only come up now and again - come up for dinner and go back down again."

Dorothy Robertson, 60, who was Mrs Brannan's neighbour in Inveraray, said her death was particularly tragic because Mr Brannan had made her so happy.

She said: "I met him - last summer he was here - then Tracy had gone out to America for three months and when she came back at the beginning of the year, to clear her house out, she looked well and happy."

Stevie Smeaton, 26, who used to see Tracy when she called into Inveraray Co-op, where he is a duty manager, said: "She was a very popular girl."

His colleague, Emma Roden, 30, added: "She was just a genuinely lovely girl, everyone liked her."