Bible John

Bible John
Details
Victims	3
Span of crimes	22 February, 1968 – 30 October, 1969
Country	Scotland
Date apprehended	Unapprehended

For other uses of the name, see Bible John (disambiguation).

Bible John is the nickname of an unidentified serial killer who is thought to have operated in Glasgow, Scotland, in the late 1960s. Three murders were attributed to him, but it is not clear if they were the work of the same person.

Murders

On 23 February 1968, the body of 25-year-old Patricia Docker was found in a Glasgow doorway. She had been strangled. The previous night she had been out dancing at a nearby club, the Majestic Ballroom in Hope Street, Glasgow.

On 15 August 1969, Jemima McDonald, 32, went for a night out at the Barrowland Ballroom. The next day she was found in an old building, strangled with her own stockings. Witnesses said they had seen her leaving the club at midnight with a tall, slim young man with red hair.

On 31st October 1969, 29-year-old Helen Puttock was found murdered. She had been to the Barrowland Ballroom the night before with her sister Jean and had met two men called John. One said he was from Castlemilk; the other did not disclose where he was from. After being in their company for well over an hour, they left to head home. Castlemilk John headed to George Square to get a bus, while Helen, Jean and the other John got into a taxi. They crossed the city to the Scotstoun area where Jean got out. The taxi then continued to Earl Street in Scotstoun where Helen lived.

This was the last sighting of Helen alive. Her body was found in the early morning by a man walking his dog. The woman had been strangled, and her handbag was missing.

The suspect was described by Helen's sister Jean as being a well-dressed young man — tall, slim and with reddish/fair hair — and described as being polite, well-dressed and well-spoken. She said the stranger had given his name as "John" and that he had frequently quoted from the Bible. He was reported to have said: “I don’t drink at Hogmanay, I pray,” and to have referred to Moses and his father’s belief that dancehalls were “dens of iniquity”.

The last possible sighting of Bible John was of a well-dressed young man in a dishevelled state with possible scratch marks on his face, getting off a bus at Grey Street at Sauchiehall Street around 1.30am. He was last seen heading towards the public ferry to cross over the River Clyde to the south side of the city.

The police made a determined effort to hunt for the killer, now nicknamed "Bible John", but although a number of suspects were questioned, no arrests were ever made, and no further victims have been attributed to him. All three victims had been strangled, and all were menstruating at the time, and had sanitary napkins or tampons placed on or near the bodies. Their handbags were also missing.

In 1996, police exhumed the dead body of John Irvine McInnes, the cousin of one of the original suspects, from a Lanarkshire graveyard. McInnes, who had served in the Scots Guards, had committed suicide aged 41 in 1981. Police ran a DNA test and compared it with semen found on Helen Puttock's tights and announced it to be non conclusive.

Lord Mackay, then the Lord Advocate, said there was not enough evidence to link the murders with McInnes.

On 12 December 2004, police announced they were to DNA test a number of men in a further attempt to solve the case. This followed the discovery of an 80% match to a DNA sample taken at the site of a minor crime two years earlier.

New developments

The 4 May 2007 conviction of Peter Tobin for the similar murder of student Angelika Kluk led to speculation that he is Bible John. There are similarities between Tobin's police mugshot from that era and the photofit artist's impression of Bible John, and Tobin moved away from Glasgow in 1969, the same year as the killings officially ended. Police have not commented upon any similarities, but said that any surviving forensic evidence will be rechecked.

Tobin, 61, was convicted in 2008 of the murder of 15-year-old Vicky Hamilton, who went missing in 1991. Her remains were found at a house in Margate, Kent, where Tobin once lived. Essex Police had been investigating the disappearance of another missing girl, Dinah McNicol, also missing for 16 years. On 16 November 2007, a second body was discovered under the patio of the Margate home, which was later confirmed to be McNicol's. Tobin was also convicted, on 16 December 2009, of the murder of Dinah McNicol in August 1991.

In an interview with a police psychiatrist, Tobin admitted that he had killed up to 48 other women. When questioned about this, he replied "Prove it."

As a result of Operation Anagram (set up to locate Tobin's other victims) a woman said she had been raped by Tobin after she had met him at the Barrowland Ballroom in Glasgow in 1968 - around the time of the bible john killings.

At the start of September 2010, the only woman to have ever come face to face with Bible John, Jean McLachlan, passed away aged 74, marking the end of the hunt for the killer.

Jean, who shared a taxi with the mystery killer and her sister Helen Puttock, gave police the description used in the artist's impression, which remains the biggest clue to his appearance more than 40 years later.

See also

• Bible John-A Forensic Meditation
• Black and Blue

External links

• BBC report of DNA tests carried out in December 2004
• Sunday Mail reports background to new DNA test
• Crime Library story on Bible John
• Scotsman article and 2005 artist rendition of suspect