"Bible John" is an
an unidentified serial killer who is believed to have murdered three young women
between 1968 and 1969 in Glasgow, Scotland.
Each of the victims of Bible John was young brunette women
between the ages of 25 and 32, and all had met their murderer at the Barrowland
Ballroom: a dance hall and music venue in the city. The perpetrator has never
been identified and the case remains both unsolved, and one of the most
extensive manhunts in Scottish criminal history.
The murders committed by Bible John would prove to be the
first time in Scotland in which the Crown Office authorized the publication of
a composite drawing of an individual suspected of murder for public viewing.
This unidentified serial killer became known as "Bible
John" due to his having repeatedly quoted from the Bible and to have
condemned any form of adultery while in the company of his final victim. The known movements and modus operandi of
convicted serial killer and rapist Peter Tobin have given rise to suspicions
that he may be Bible John.
First murders
Patricia Docker
On 23 February 1968, the naked body of a 25-year-old
auxiliary nurse named Patricia Docker was found in the doorway of a lock-up
garage by a man on his way to work in Battlefield, South Glasgow. The location of her body was only yards from
her home in Langside Place. Her body bore evidence of extensive blunt force
trauma—particularly to the face and head, and she had been strangled to death
with a strong ligature, possibly a belt. Patricia's handbag, watch, and clothes were
missing from the crime scene; her clothing was never found, although her
handbag was later recovered from the River Cart by an underwater search unit,
whereas her watch was recovered from a pool of water close to the scene of her
murder.
Extensive door-to-door inquiries in the area produced a
woman who recalled hearing a female scream, "Leave
me alone!" the previous evening, although little hard evidence was
discovered at the crime scene. Nonetheless, an ambulanceman who retrieved the
body informed investigators the victim had been a nurse who worked at
Mearnskirk Hospital in nearby Renfrewshire. Consequently, the victim was formally
identified by her father the following day.
The night prior to her murder, Patricia—a married mother of
one estranged from her husband—had informed her parents of her intentions to
spend the evening dancing at the Majestic Ballroom in nearby Hope Street,
although for unknown reasons, she had chosen to spend the majority of the
evening at the Barrowland Ballroom, likely to attend the over-25s night which
the Barrowland hosted each Thursday. When she failed to return home that evening,
her parents presumed she had opted to spend the evening with a friend. Police inquiries would only determine several
days later that in the late evening, Patricia had left the Majestic Ballroom to
attend the Barrowland, where she had likely encountered her killer.
A postmortem conducted by Gilbert Forbes at the University of
Glasgow Medical School would confirm that the cause of death had been
strangulation, and that Patricia's body bore no clear evidence of sexual
assault. Furthermore, the stage of rigor
mortis upon her body at the time of discovery indicated she had likely died
shortly after she had left the Barrowland Ballroom. Investigators would conclude this individual
had likely grabbed Patricia before repeatedly punching her and kicking her in
the face as she twice screamed "Leave
me alone!" He had then proceeded
to rape Patricia before strangling her to death, before leaving her body—naked
with only 1 shoe next to her—close to the doorway of the lock-up garage at
Carmichael Place.
Jemima McDonald
On Saturday, 16 August 1969, a 32-year-old mother of three
named Jemima McDonald also opted to attend the Barrowland Ballroom to spend the
evening dancing. Jemima was a regular attendee of the Barrowland, and as per
family custom, her sister, Margaret O'Brien, took care of her three children as
Jemima attended the Barrowland. As
midnight approached, Jemima was seen by several individuals to be in the
company of a young, well-dressed and well-spoken man of slim build aged between
25 and 35 and between 6 ft 0 in and 6 ft 2 in (180 and 190 cm) in height. This individual had short, dark brown hair
with fair streaks, likely spoke with a distinctive Glaswegian accent, and
occasionally inserted brief Biblical quotations into his conversation.
Jemima was seen leaving the Barrowland shortly after
midnight on 17 August in the company of this individual, and was last seen
walking towards either Main Street or Landressy Street, in the direction of her
home, at approximately 12:40 a.m. The
following day, Jemima's sister, Margaret, became concerned when her sister
failed to return home. Later the same day, she began hearing local rumours that
young children had been seen leaving a derelict tenement building in MacKeith
Street discussing a body in the premises. By the Monday morning, Margaret was so
concerned that she herself, fearing the worst, walked into the old building,
where she discovered her own sister's extensively battered body lying face
down, with her shoes and stockings lying beside her.
A postmortem concluded Jemima had been raped and extensively
beaten, particularly about the face, before she had been strangled to death with
one of her own stockings. Her murder had occurred approximately 30 hours before
her body had been discovered. Unlike
Patricia Docker, the body of Jemima McDonald was fully clothed, although her
underclothing had been torn, and like Patricia, Jemima had been menstruating at
the time of her death.
Police inquiries into Jemima's movements on the night of her
murder produced several eyewitnesses who were able to accurately describe the
man with whom Jemima had been in the company of at the Barrowland. Door-to-door
inquiries on MacKieth Street also produced a woman who remembered hearing
female screams on the evening of Jemima's murder, although this individual
could not recall the precise time. Consequently, police considered this
information of little use to their inquiry.
Initial investigation
Although the City of Glasgow Police noted several striking
similarities between the murders of Patricia and Jemima, including the fact
both women had attended the Barrowland Ballroom on the evening of their murder,
that both had been beaten before being strangled to death with a ligature, that
the handbag of both women had been taken from the crime scene, and that both
women had been menstruating at the time of their deaths, initially, both
murders were not considered to be the work of the same perpetrator.
Despite extensive public appeals, the investigation into the
murder of Patricia Docker in 1968 had quickly become a cold case as police had
little information, owing to both a lack of witnesses, hard evidence, and the
fact the investigation had been severely hindered by the fact investigators
would only discover the fact Patricia had attended the Barrowland Ballroom on
the evening of her murder three days after her death. Eighteen months later, following the discovery
of the body of Jemima McDonald, police became aware of remarkable similarities to
the murder of Patricia Docker. Although police did not conclusively link both
murders to the same perpetrator, they could not completely discount this
theory. In addition, police were certain the perpetrator or perpetrators held a
high degree of local geographical knowledge, although may have been a stranger
or strangers to the district as none of the eyewitnesses whom investigators
conversed with directly knew the individual(s) seen in the company of either
woman prior to her murder.
For the first time in a Scottish murder hunt, a composite
drawing of the man with whom Jemima had last been seen alive was given to the press,
being widely distributed via both newspapers and upon television throughout
Scotland in efforts to identify the suspect. Moreover, both male and female undercover
police officers performed discreet surveillance at the Barrowland Ballroom in
efforts to identify the suspect. Police
surveillance at the Barrowland Ballroom would be terminated in late October
1969 due to the initiative both failing to produce any suspects, and being
blamed by proprietors for a sharp decrease in attendance figures.
Helen Puttock
On 31 October 1969, a man walking his dog discovered the
body of 29-year-old Helen Puttock behind a tenement in the Scotstoun district
of Glasgow. Her body was found beside a drainpipe in the back garden of her
Earl Street flat. She had been stripped partially naked and extensively beaten
about the face before being raped, then strangled to death with one of her own
stockings. The contents of her handbag had been scattered close to her body,
although the handbag itself was missing from the crime scene. Grass and weed
stains upon the soles of Helen's feet and shoes indicated that she had engaged
in a ferocious struggle with her killer, and she had evidently at one point
attempted to scale a nearby railway embankment. Her body also bore a deep bite
mark on her upper right thigh, and her murderer had placed her sanitary towel
beneath her left arm. As had been the case with the two previous victims, Helen
had been menstruating at the time of her murder.
The evening prior to her murder, Helen and her sister, Jean
Langford, had been to the Barrowland Ballroom, where both had become acquainted
with men named John. One of these individuals had said he worked as a slater
who resided in Castlemilk, while the other individual had been a well-spoken
man who did not disclose where he actually lived. After being in the company of
these two individuals for in excess of an hour, all four left the Barrowland to
head home. The individual named John who had been Jean's dance partner walked
to George Square to board a bus, while Jean, Helen, and the individual who had
been Helen's dance partner hailed a taxi. The trio set off from Glasgow Cross, making a
20-minute westward journey toward Jean's Knightswood residence, where she
alighted the taxi, which then continued towards Helen's Scotstoun residence.
During conversations between the trio upon this journey, most of the crucial
information pertaining to the killer's psychological profile became apparent.
Jean—who had enjoyed a Chapel upbringing—would later inform
detectives that her sister's companion had been a teetotal individual who
repeatedly quoted from the Old Testament stories of Moses during the time she
and her sister had conversed with him in the taxi; having previously referred
to the Barrowland as an "adulterous den of iniquity", and of his
disapproval of married women visiting the premises as the quartet had retrieved
their coats at the end of the evening. She had herself alighted the taxi at Kelso
Street, before viewing the taxi turn towards Earl Street.
Suspect
The suspect was described by Helen's sister Jean as being a
tall, slim and well-dressed young man with reddish or fair hair rounded neatly
at the back, aged between 25 and 30, and approximately 5 feet 10 inches (1.78
m) in height. This individual had given his name as either "John Templeton", "John
Sempleson", or "John
Emerson", and he had been a polite and well-spoken individual, having
frequently quoted from the Old Testament during the trio's taxi ride home,
although he had indicated he was neither a Catholic nor Protestant individual. Jean would also state to investigators it had
become increasingly clear to her as the trio had ridden in the taxi that this
individual had considered her presence in the vehicle to be an inconvenience. At one point during this ride, this individual
had explained to the women the reason he refrained from consuming alcohol was
due to his being conditioned so by a strict parental attitude, before adding: "I don't drink at Hogmanay; I
pray." He had also alluded to his father's belief that dance halls
were "dens of iniquity", with any married woman who frequented these
premises being "adulterous" by nature.
Although Jean Langford had informed detectives that the man
accompanying Helen had been a "slim, tall" individual who had been
dressed in a well-cut brown Reid and Taylor brand suit who smoked Embassy
cigarettes, she also recalled this individual mentioning that he had been
familiar with several drinking premises in the Yoker district of Glasgow, and
that he had at one stage worked in a laboratory. She would also recall distinct facial features
of this man, such as his having overlapping front teeth. (Bouncers at the
Barrowland Ballroom dismissed much of this description, claiming that the man
in Helen's company had been a short and well-spoken individual with black
hair.)
The last possible sighting of this individual was made by
both the driver and conductor upon a night service bus, who noticed a young man
matching Jean's description alighting a bus at the junction of Dumbarton Road
and Gray Street at approximately 2:00 a.m. on 31 October. This man had been in a notably disheveled
state, with mud stains on his jacket and a livid red mark on his cheek just
beneath one eye. Both witnesses also recalled his repeatedly tucking a short
cuff of one sleeve into his jacket sleeve (a man's cuff link had been found
alongside the body of Helen Puttock). This individual was last seen walking towards
the public ferry to cross the River Clyde to the south side of the city.
Link to series
The murder of Helen Puttock held remarkable similarities to
the two previous murders, further arising suspicions that all three murders had
likely been committed by the same individual. All of the victims had been
mothers of at least one child who had met her murderer at the Barrowland
Ballroom; the handbag of each woman was missing; each victim had been strangled
to death; and at least two of these women had been raped prior to her murder. In addition, the three women had been escorted
home by her killer and murdered within yards of their doorstep, and all had
been menstruating at the time of her death. Each had had her sanitary towel or tampon
placed upon, beneath, or near her body, leading to speculation the women had
been murdered due to their refusing to engage in intercourse with their
murderer due to their experiencing their period.
"It is quite
incredible that this man has eluded us. I am positive this man comes from
Glasgow or nearby. He is between 25 and 30, between 5 ft 10 in and 6 ft tall,
has light red hair, good features, blue-grey eyes and a smart modern
appearance. I do not think he is a very religious man, but just has a normal
intelligent working knowledge of the Bible which he likes to air ... there must
be many people who know someone who looks like this artist's impression."--Detective Superintendent Joe Beattie,
describing the prime suspect in the Bible John murders (1972).
Ongoing investigation
Within hours of the discovery of the body of Helen Puttock,
an additional composite drawing of the suspect was created using the detailed
description provided by her sister; this composite drawing would rapidly become
one of the most famous facial composites in Scotland. Detective Superintendent
Joe Beattie asked the public to closely study this composite drawing, should it
resemble anyone they knew. Due to the suspect's hair being unfashionably short
for the era, over 450 hairdressers in and around Glasgow were shown the updated
composite drawing of the suspect, and all dentists in and around Glasgow were
asked to examine their records to determine whether they held records of a male
patient with overlapping incisors and a missing tooth in the upper right jaw.
Both lines of inquiry would prove fruitless.
More than 100 detectives were assigned to work full-time on
the case, and 50,000 witness statements would be taken in subsequent
door-to-door inquiries. Ultimately, more
than 5,000 potential suspects would be quizzed in relation to the murders in
the first year of the inquiry alone, and Jean Langford would be required to
attend over 300 identity parades, although she was adamant none of the
individuals required to participate in these identity parades had been the
individual with whom she had last seen her sister, and all would be cleared of
any involvement. Fearing that the
perpetrator would strike again, a team of 16 detectives were instructed to
mingle with dancers at all dance halls in Glasgow. In particular, these
detectives frequented the Barrowland on Thursday and Saturday nights at the
over-25s events, where each victim was presumed to have met her murderer.
Despite the extensive manhunt, no further developments would
arise and the investigation into the three murders gradually became cold, with
many individuals assigned to the case opining that the perpetrator had either
died, been jailed for an unrelated offense, had been incarcerated at a mental
hospital, or that senior police officers had known his actual identity, but had
been unable to prove he had committed the murders. Others speculated that he may have simply
moved away from the Glasgow district, or murdered whenever in the vicinity;
this possibility prompted police to circulate multiple copies of the composite
drawing at all British Army, Navy and Air Force bases in the United Kingdom,
Europe, and the Middle and Far East, although this potential line of inquiry
also failed to produce any significant leads.
Potential suspects
"John White"
One former Detective Chief Inspector, Les Brown (then
working with the Strathclyde Police), has supplied current investigators with
details of the arrest of a suspect conducted in 1969 which he believes was of
an extremely likely perpetrator, but which was dismissed simply because this
individual did not have notably overlapping front teeth.
According to Les Brown, the man's arguing with a young woman
in the Barrowland Ballroom immediately prior to his arrest had greatly raised
investigators' concerns, yet—despite the fact the suspect had closely resembled
the facial composite and had subsequently supplied police with a false name and
address before revealing his true name and address in the Gorbals—was simply
released. According to Brown, the simple fact of this particular suspect not
having notably overlapping front teeth - despite one police sergeant's
acknowledgement of his being the best suspect yet - was sufficient enough for
ordering his release.
Several years later, Brown extensively conversed with a
detective who had taken the same individual to a hospital after arresting him
outside the Barrowland Ballroom at the time of the murders. Although the
suspect had needed several stitches in his head following an altercation, as
soon as his handcuffs had been released, he escaped from the hospital. At the
time of this incident, this individual had also falsely given his name to
medical personnel as John White.
In addition to this basic circumstantial evidence, the
"whole demeanour" of this individual had led Les Brown and several of
his colleagues to believe this individual may have been the perpetrator.
John Irvine McInnes
In 1996, Strathclyde Police exhumed the body of John Irvine
McInnes from a graveyard in Stonehouse, South Lanarkshire. McInnes, who had
served in the Scots Guards, had committed suicide in 1980 at the age of 41,
having severed the brachial artery in his upper arm. He had been the cousin of
one of the original suspects in the series of murders. A DNA sample was taken from McInnes's body for
comparison with semen samples discovered upon the stockings with which victim
Helen Puttock had been strangled.
The results of the testing conducted proved inconclusive,
with then-Lord Advocate Lord Mackay stating insufficient evidence existed to link
McInnes with the murder of Helen Puttock. The Crown would officially clear McInnes of
any involvement in the Bible John murders in July 1996.
Peter Tobin
Several criminologists and investigators have suggested that
convicted serial killer Peter Tobin may have been Bible John. Tobin had been
convicted in May 2007 of the 2006 murder of a Polish student named Angelika
Kluk, who had been raped, beaten, then stabbed to death; he had relocated from
Shettleston, Glasgow to England in 1969 after marrying his first wife, whom he
had met at the Barrowland Ballroom the same year as the murders attributed to
Bible John had ended. Tobin would
subsequently live in Brighton for 20 years from 1969, although from the late
1980s, he would alternately reside in either Scotland or the South of England.
Tobin had been in his mid-40s when he committed the 1991
murder of two teenage girls whose skeletonized bodies would subsequently be
unearthed from the garden of his home in Margate, Kent in 2007. He would be
convicted of these murders—alongside that of Kluk—between 2007 and 2009.
Commencing serial murderous offences of an extremely calculated nature at such
an age is unusual—though not unheard of—for a male. Furthermore, the fact that
Tobin had attacked Kluk with such violence, then hidden her body before
absconding to London prior to his subsequent arrest in addition to the
abduction, restraining and concealment known to have been exhibited upon the
two 1991 murder victims unearthed from the garden of his Margate home did not
suggest the work of an amateur in any of these three cases.
Striking contemporary visual similarities exist between
Peter Tobin when aged in his 20s and the 1969 composite drawing of Bible John.
In addition, all three of Tobin's former wives have given accounts of being
repeatedly imprisoned, throttled, beaten and raped at his hands, and each has
stated he had been driven to extreme physical violence by the female menstrual
cycle (a factor long suspected by investigators as being the perpetrator's
actual motive behind the murders). In
addition, Tobin is known to have been a staunch Roman Catholic with strong
religious views, and the alias Bible John had given to Jean Langford and Helen
Puttock in 1969 is similar to one of the pseudonyms known to have been
regularly used by Tobin: John Semple.
Criminologist David Wilson actively investigated Tobin's
case for three years and strongly believes the available evidence supports his
theory that Peter Tobin is Bible John. He has stated that the moment he believed
Tobin was Bible John occurred during Tobin's trial for the 1991 murder of
18-year-old Dinah McNicol, one of the women whose body had been unearthed from
his Margate garden. The circumstantial evidence which Wilson uses to support
this theory includes striking similarities between trial testimony from an
acquaintance of Dinah's who had been in her company on the evening of her
abduction and the conversation with Bible John that Jean Langford claimed to
have had on the evening of her sister's murder; among the important points of
overlap are both men mentioning they did not drink at Hogmanay and had a cousin
who had once scored a hole-in-one in a golf match. This information—alongside other
circumstantial evidence—has led Professor Wilson to state: "I didn't set out to prove Tobin was Bible John, but I would stake
my professional reputation on it."
Although DNA testing has been used to clear several
suspects, detectives believe obtaining a forensic link between Peter Tobin and
any of the murder victims linked to Bible John is unlikely due to the
deterioration of the physical samples via poor storage.
Operation Anagram
As a result of a police investigation named Operation
Anagram, which was initiated in 2006 to trace the movements of Tobin throughout
the decades and to determine his potential culpability in any other crimes, a
woman informed investigators she had been raped by Tobin after she had met him
at the Barrowland Ballroom in 1968, shortly after the first of the murders
known to have been committed by Bible John. Another woman informed investigators in 2010
that she had endured a threatening experience with Tobin at the Barrowland
Ballroom, claiming that Tobin had introduced himself as Peter, before pestering
her to go with him to a party in the city's Castlemilk area. When this woman
viewed pictures of Tobin dating from the late 1960s and early 1970s, she
stated: "[He] was the man who came up to me so many years ago in [the]
Barrowlands. I am 100 per cent certain [that] Tobin is Bible John."
Aftermath
No further murder victims killed in Scotland or elsewhere in
the United Kingdom have ever been conclusively attributed to Bible John, and
the manhunt for this murderer would prove to be one of the most extensive
manhunts in Scottish criminal history. The murders of the three women remain
unsolved, although this remains an open case, with many investigators remaining
certain that the perpetrator(s) of these crimes had highly likely been shielded
by one or more individuals whom he had known.
No uniform consensus that the three killings were actually
the work of the same person exists. It
has been claimed that the gap of 18 months between the first two killings is
unusual for a serial killer, and that the latter two murders may have either
been copycat killings, or the sole two committed by the same perpetrator.
Criticism has also been levelled against the police for potentially hampering
their own investigation by prematurely jumping to the conclusion that all three
murders had been committed by the same person.
In 1983, an anonymous individual contacted Strathclyde
Police. This individual claimed to conclusively know that his friend had been
Bible John. According to this anonymous individual, both he and his friend had
been raised in the Cranhill district of Glasgow, and both had frequented the
Barrowland Ballroom in the 1960s. Allegedly, this individual had read an
article in the Evening Times five years previously before suddenly realizing
his friend had been the perpetrator of the murders. The alleged suspect was
traced living in the Netherlands, married to a Dutch woman. Nothing more was ever heard from the anonymous
individual or the reputed suspect.
In 2004, police announced their intentions to genetically
test a number of men in a further attempt to identify the perpetrator, with all
individuals concerned being requested to submit blood samples. This endeavor followed the previous discovery
of an 80% genetic match from the semen samples retrieved from the final crime
scene attributed to Bible John with a DNA sample retrieved at the site of a minor
crime committed two years earlier. The sample was enough of a match to lead
officers to believe that the person who committed the offence was related to
the killer.
The sole witness ever to have engaged in a lengthy
conversation with Bible John, Jean Langford, died in September 2010 at the age
of 74. Langford had given police the
description used to form the second composite drawing created of the suspect,
which continues to remain the biggest clue as to the perpetrator's physical
appearance. Despite Professor Wilson's assertion that Peter Tobin may have been
Bible John, when Jean Langford discussed her sister's murderer many decades
later, she dismissed this theory, stating emphatically that Tobin had not been
the man with whom she had shared a taxi on the night of her sister's murder.
Media
Books
Harrison, Paul (2013). Dancing
with the Devil: The Bible John Murders. Skipton: Vertical Editions. ISBN
978-1-904-09173-8..
Malloy, Andrew D. (2011). Bible John - Closure. Kent: Pneuma Springs Publishing. ISBN
978-1-907-72816-7..
Stoddart, Charles (1980). Bible John: Search for a Sadist. Edinburgh: Paul Harris Publishing.
ISBN 978-0-904-50589-4..
Wilson, David; Harrison, Paul (2010). The Lost British Serial Killer. London: Brown Book Group Limited.
ISBN 978-0-751-54232-5.
Television
The BBC has
broadcast a 30-minute documentary focusing upon the murders committed by Bible
John. Presented by Hugh Cochrane,
this episode was screened on 18 September 1970, and concluded with a direct
quote from Jeremiah, Chapter 23, Verse 24, appealing to the perpetrator to hand
himself in to the police: 'Can any hide himself in secret places, that I shall
not see him? Saith the Lord?
STV have
broadcast a 45-minute documentary focusing upon the murders committed by Bible
John. This documentary, titled In Search
of Bible John, was initially broadcast in 2011, and explores the
possibility Peter Tobin may have been the perpetrator of the three murders.
The case of Bible John featured in a December 2005 episode
of Unsolved. Narrated by Alex Norton, the program primarily
focuses on the death of the final victim, Helen Puttock, and includes
interviews with Puttock's husband.
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