Erin Howlett confided in her older brother that she had concerns about her relationship with Michael Ball weeks before she died, Ball’s trial heard Tuesday.

Howlett’s brother, Dane Howlett, told jurors that he first met Ball in May 2013.

Ball and Erin Howlett had begun dating, he said, and Erin was “excited” for her brother to meet Ball.

The meeting finally happened on a Sunday, when Dane Howlett stopped at Ball’s apartment to pick his sister up and take her to a family dinner.

“I didn’t get the impression he was looking forward to meeting me,” Howlett said Tuesday.

“It more or less felt like ‘What are you doing here?’”

Howlett’s testimony then shifted to a few weeks later, when he said he asked his sister why she wasn’t bringing Ball as a guest to a friend’s wedding.

Her response, Dane Howlett said, was that the relationship was “not going well.”

“She was concerned about the age difference, concerned he had insecurities or jealous issues,” he testified.

“He didn’t like the people she hung out with. He was somewhat a little controlling as well.”

Howlett disappeared on June 27, 2013.

Eight days later, a group of teenagers swimming in the Grand River discovered a duffel bag containing her remains.

It was several months before Ball was arrested in connection with the case.

He has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and committing an indignity to a dead body.

Cross-examination of Howlett by Ball’s lawyers focused on his actions in the days after Erin Howlett’s disappearance.

Jurors heard that Dane Howlett questioned a number of her friends about her whereabouts, including a man named James Baechler.

Howlett said that his sister and Baechler were former partners who reconnected on the night of the wedding Ball wasn’t invited to, and saw each other again the following day.

Baechler initially said that was the last he communicated with Erin Howlett before her disappearance, Dane Howlett said, but later admitted that he was “supposed to see” her on the day she vanished.  

“He wasn’t speaking with her because he was angry with her,” Dane Howlett said.

Howlett told jurors that Baechler told him he had talked to Ball about Erin Howlett’s whereabouts, and that Ball claimed to have dropped her off at a gas station not far from his apartment, where she was picked up by another friend.