The Hunt for Bible John (2021): Season 1, Episode 2 - Episode #1.2 - full transcript
Glasgow, at that time,
was in a state of flux.
People were living
in awful conditions.
People still hadn't recovered
from the war.
So there was a kind of evangelism
ridding the city
of its famous slums.
# Out of the land of shadows
and darkness
# We were returning towards
the morning light... #
It wasn't just changing, it changed,
it could not be understated.
It was real physical alteration
in the fabric of the city.
There was no thought
about community.
They just chucked the people out
and left them to get on with it.
The old way of working class life
was being swept away overnight.
Emptiness and absolute dislocation.
Everything Glasgow knew was
being taken away.
And that was stitched into further
anxiety about this man
who seemed to be on the rampage.
It's been Scotland's most
enduring murder mystery.
Three women were killed
after meeting a man
at this Glasgow dance hall.
He quoted the scriptures, leading
to his nickname...
The notorious serial killer,
Bible John.
There was something about these
particular killings
that got under the skin.
I mean, this was somebody patrolling
dance halls and picking up victims
at random and killing them.
The notion of this kind
of sadistic sexual murderer
just really wasn't around
at that point in our history.
It was the biggest
murder investigation
of its kind in Scotland.
The investigators were suddenly
trying to work out
how it is, that three times this
man was able to kill and slip away.
They say time's a healer,
but it never does heal.
It's still a vivid memory.
It was the third of the
Bible John killings
that really brought this invisible
man and this myth really into focus.
The big thing was the third one,
it was relentless.
When I began investigating
the Bible John murders,
I was commissioned by the Sunday
Times to go and track down some
of the people who had been centrally
involved in the case.
And a critical witness
was Jeannie Williams,
who was Helen Puttock's sister.
Jeannie was a very
impressive witness.
She remembered that they decided
to go out dancing.
And Helen was married and her
husband, who was in the army,
was on leave at home at the time.
Yeah, I just was at home
with the boys
and obviously put them to bed,
and her mum said to me,
you know, "For goodness' sake,
"don't worry, it's natural and just
something she likes to do."
And so in the end,
I actually fell asleep.
They headed off to the Barrowland,
and the place was, as usual,
heaving with dancers on the floor.
There were others around the edges,
sort of eyeing up the talent,
as it were.
And I think it was Jeannie who
first picked up a dancing partner,
who was a very good dancer,
called John.
And then Jeannie noticed a man
who was, she said,
"A cut above the others."
He seemed well turned out,
short hair cut.
Very smartly dressed
in a brown suit.
He came along and asked
Helen to dance.
They spent the evening dancing,
and then they all four
left together.
And as they were leaving,
there was a problem
with the cigarette machine.
They'd put the money in and
cigarettes wouldn't come out.
This character, John, suddenly got
absolutely enraged by this,
and she noticed his cold anger.
He turned to them and said, "These
places are dens of iniquity."
Jeannie took in all the detail
of his appearance.
One thing she noted was that his two
front teeth were crossed,
and he had a missing tooth
at the back.
Now that was obviously
a very important detail.
The night was cold and dry, and the
news vendors with the first
editions of the morning papers
were on the verge of quitting
the corners as the streets emptied.
They walked out, they caught a taxi,
the other John went off and caught
a bus, leaving the three
of them together.
That's Jeannie, Helen
and this man, John.
They shared the taxi because in
those days, taxis were expensive.
They talked a bit about him
and his life, although he was,
she remembered, rather withdrawn.
And then at one stage, she asked,
"Do you support Celtic or Rangers?"
And he said he was agnostic.
And Jeannie didn't know
what agnostic meant.
And she said, "Does that mean
you're an atheist?"
And he then quoted something
from the Bible.
Now, she couldn't remember
what the exact quotation was.
And then he insisted that Jeannie
get out of the taxi
near her home.
And that was the last that Jeannie
ever saw of her sister, Helen.
At 7:25, the next morning, a black
Labrador dog being taken for
an early morning walk by his owner
found the body
of Helen Puttock in this
backcourt at 95 Earl Street.
She had been beaten and strangled.
She was lying face downwards
at an angle to a wall.
Her clothes badly displaced.
There were signs that at one stage
she might have tried to escape
from her attacker, run up that
embankment and been dragged back.
The murder hunt began.
Police combed the back court
and the railway embankment.
They traced the taxi and the driver.
In charge of the police inquiries
in this case, a man who handled nine
successful murder investigations
last year alone,
former RAF pilot now Detective
Superintendent, Joseph Beattie.
Will you see to that
before tomorrow?
Joe Beattie was the absolutely
classic Glasgow detective.
Meticulous in his search for detail.
The following day, Joe Beattie
took me into the bedroom.
And the first question he asked me
was, "did you hit her?"
And I said, "No."
And he then stripped me
and completely...
..went over my body to make sure
I had no scratch marks
or anything like that on my body.
And then he said,
"I'm ever so sorry, son.
"I didn't think for one minute
it was you,
"but it's something I had to do."
In these days, I'm still just
a very young detective.
But even the worst detective
could have put it together
that these three could be linked.
They might not have been,
but you've got to look at it.
That's really when it all blew up.
You know, everything, you know,
went into overdrive.
Police believe there are
similarities in the killing
of Mrs Puttock and the deaths of
two other women in the past year.
Nurse Patricia Docker was
discovered dead
in Langside a year ago.
And mother of three
Miss Jemima McDonald was found dead
in Bridgeton three months ago.
There were so similar.
On each occasion they had all
been at the Barrowland.
The three of them were murdered
by strangulation.
On each occasion, an article
of clothing was removed.
The three of them, raped.
On each occasion the women
were menstruating.
Three in a oner, you know,
a serial killer on the loose,
just shocked people.
There was immediate speculation
that he was some kind
of sexual deviant.
Some speculation that he'd had
an issue with women
who were menstruating and had turned
against women for that reason.
There was nothing different
about them, they were just women,
poor unfortunate lambs
who were led to the slaughter
by this guy.
This was the condition
in which the body was found.
Helen had been knocked unconscious
and strangled
with one of her stockings.
Her face was bruised and from
the grass and broken dock leaves
stuck to her feet and her neck,
it was clear
she'd put up a fierce struggle.
There were signs she'd tried to
escape from her killer,
by scrambling up
the railway embankment
that ran along the back of the
gardens behind the close.
She'd been caught, struck with some
heavy instrument on the head...
..and dragged back along the grass
before she'd succumbed.
The evidence is perfectly plain.
Helen Puttock is on her way
home to her husband and children,
and is raped and killed.
She fought.
Her body gives clear evidence
that there was
a considerable brutal
and painful struggle.
I know how strong she was.
I know what a fighter she was.
I knew straight away, you know, from
what Joe Beattie told me, that...
..it was a maniac.
But then it was very, very difficult
to know exactly what to do,
because the two boys, they were
very young at the time.
Helen was absolutely devoted to
them, and they loved her to bits.
David was five and Michael
was 18 months old.
So obviously at that age there was
no way I could tell them
that their mum has been strangled.
And so I actually told them, well,
I told David because Michael
was too young to understand anyway,
that his mum had been hit by a bus
and she had been killed.
But that was just a white lie
because I just couldn't bring
myself to tell them the actual
truth at that time.
Well, what happened was, when
Michael was seven
on his way home from school, one
of his friends from down the road,
she suddenly said to Michael,
"Do you know your mum was murdered?"
And that's how he found out.
He was really anti-me because I had
actually told them
a lie that, you know, she had been
run down by a bus.
And in fact...
..at one stage, he even, more or
less, accused me of doing it,
which was very hurtful to me.
Because, Michael...
..thought that...
..I lied to him, and that maybe
I was involved.
We'd more or less become
estranged for about 20 years.
And so it was just sad...
..when I was told that he had died.
All through his life, he actually
felt that society owed him a debt
because of what it had done
to his mum.
Now, the police would like to talk
to this man because they feel
he could give them vital
assistance in their inquiries.
He may have reasons of his own
for not coming forward,
but the police will exercise
the maximum discretion
if he will only talk to them.
Joe Beattie was under
tremendous pressure.
Working first thing in the morning,
last thing at night.
I was a young detective constable,
working at Drumchapel at that time,
nothing to do with the Bible
John inquiry.
But they decided to get all the
detectives in and see,
did anyone have any suggestions?
Jeannie had told police that
the suspect had mentioned
details about his life, maybe his
job or where he lived,
and she just couldn't remember
what it was,
and it was really important
to find out.
And I thought, that's an ideal
person to be hypnotised
so that we could find out what did
he say and what he didn't say.
So I raised my hand and said,
what about hypnotism?
And immediately everybody burst
out laughing and said,
"Who are you, you idiot?"
So I was ordered to away back and
hide in Drumchapel, out the road.
But a few days later,
I got a phone call
from Chief Superintendent Beattie
to say he wanted to see me.
And when I went down to see him,
he said, "That was quite
a good idea you had."
So the police asked a hypnotist
to put her under hypnosis,
to see if the subconscious would
come out, and she could recall.
We got more information about what
the suspect had said.
She remembered he asked
the women, were they married?
And they said...they both said yes.
And he said, "Oh, you know what
happens to the adulterous wife,
"did you read it in the Bible?"
"No, I never saw that."
"She gets stoned to death."
He's quite well spoken with
a Glasgow accent.
He was said to be between 25 and 30,
light auburn, reddish hair
brushed to the right.
He may have marks on his face
or hands of recent origin.
The suspect was five foot ten
and he had overlapping teeth.
He smoked Embassy cigarettes.
Everything was known about this guy.
He may speak of having had a strict
religious upbringing,
and make reference to the Bible.
The press will look at things
from their own perspective.
They'll say, "I need someone
to hang this on..."
..and you need a name.
It is thought that his Christian
name may be John.
Newspapers dubbed him Bible John.
And that's really what sort of
linked all three things together
in the minds of the public,
Bible John, it was the same man.
He was the same killer.
Police hunting the dancehall killer
have been flooded with calls
from people who think they know
the mysterious Bible John.
With him quoting all this
Bible carry on,
I think he was a bit of a fanatic.
He had something against women,
you know, because they were...
They hadn't the right to go out
and enjoy theirselves.
You know, they should be staying
in their house with their family.
They obviously thought
it was quite chilling.
A Bible-quoting monster,
picking up women from dance halls
and killing them.
Is it really the case that the man
that you are searching
for as the killer could
strike again?
There's a possibility
he may, yes.
The search goes on.
Somewhere there may be two
plainclothes men
waiting for a door to open.
Somewhere a telephone may be ringing
in a police office.
Marine, murder and Beattie.
For Joe, Jeannie Williams was an
absolutely critical witness,
particularly her physical
description of Bible John.
Every word that the victim's sister
said was gospel to him.
What the police do is decide,
using Jean's testimony
in particular, to produce
a portrait.
Into the scene, Mr Lennox Paterson,
registrar of Glasgow School of Art.
I did manage to get an impression
of a type of person, rather
like a handsome ladies' man.
And I did try to prevent
an expression.
It may be that he can change
his expression
and his tune to suit company.
The face of Bible John.
Murder Squad detectives last night
issued this artist's impression
of a man they wish to interview in
connection with the killing
of Mrs Helen Puttock.
When it first came out, it was such
a striking poster.
People, it caught their eye.
It was used and used and used.
And it was taken around newsagents
and was taken to dentists,
it was taken to doctors.
It looked as if he was on leave
from the Army,
short back and sides.
Clean complexion, blue eyes.
And that's what they looked
at, you know,
just a perfectly straight up,
handsome chap.
It was in the papers
and on the television,
and you were a bit,
you know, frightened.
It seemed so good, the artist's
impression, that it was just
a question of time before somebody
said, "I know him."
It's a very able artist at work.
And Jeannie, the victim's sister,
when she saw the drawing, she said,
"Give that man a medal."
It was so closely resembling
what she could recall.
I've been doing it now
for about 35 years,
I think, something like that.
And it is always fascinating
how much people can recall.
The poor, bewildered witness arrives
with a fuzzy picture in their head,
maybe, of what their attacker
looked like.
As it is, it's from their head
into my head, down my arm
and onto the paper.
It is important that any detail
that the witness recalls,
it should be included.
One of the aspects of the poster
that is seldom mentioned,
is that Bible John was said to have
had crooked teeth.
They were very obvious
and very significant.
You don't see that in the poster.
So at the moment,
what I'm trying to do
is make a copy of his drawing...
..but open the mouth to depict
these teeth.
You live very close to it.
In fact, they say that you carry
a plastic replica
of the teeth of the man you're
anxious to...?
No, no, this is quite untrue.
We do have a plastic replica
of the teeth.
Here's the plastic replica of the
teeth, but they're not carried
by me or any of the other officers.
I think with witnesses, one
of the things you need to do
is to find out every
possible detail,
in as gentle a fashion as you can.
Because, after all, you're taking
them back to the scene
of something horrific.
We couldn't think of it
in our worst nightmares,
the sort of things
that I've heard about.
It's a process called cognitive
interview technique,
giving them the chance to perhaps
find new memories that they
didn't even know they had.
Lennox Paterson, he had not
had the advantage
of working for the police before,
as I have.
At the time, they were
taking a leap in the dark.
They didn't know
what was going to happen.
The League of Red-Headed Men
is bigger than any police force.
The special investigation,
branches of the Armed Forces
and the British Transport Police
helped to spread the net.
And all through the city streets,
the foot slogging goes on.
It was the biggest murder inquiry
Scotland has ever, ever seen.
Hundreds of detectives were involved
and 50,000 police statements
were taken.
Right, gentlemen, the situation
is still the same.
He's out there and we're in here.
The guys who worked there,
they were absolutely dedicated
to what they were doing.
I mean, Joe Beattie, for instance,
he would work his backside off.
He has...a definite hairstyle.
Police took the step of interviewing
all barbers in Glasgow
to see if they had any customers
with that colour of hair.
His teeth were described,
the suit he wore.
Yes. It's a most unusual suit.
They went round tailors in Glasgow,
with photographs of the suspect,
asking if he'd bought
a suit from them.
Was the killer a service man?
He'd been abroad.
Perhaps could have been a seaman.
Police said he was polite,
well-spoken,
and might make reference
to the Bible.
Could even have been a priest.
Then there was a story,
he could have been a monk.
They were suddenly raiding every
church and every Sunday service
in the land, looking for some
gibbering religious fanatic.
Let us pray.
He may well have quoted
the Bible, but it seems to me
it could have been quoting
the Bible as a joke,
or in passing.
If you were brought up at that time,
you'd be able to spout
bits and pieces of the Bible,
Old and New Testament,
because everybody did
religious instruction.
It may even have contributed
to a lot of misnomers
around that killer.
It might have thrown
the scent a little bit.
Now, of course, that grows
out of the west coast of Scotland's
particular anxieties at that time.
This is a place of sectarianism.
This is a place of Catholics
and Protestants -
of a great deal of anxiety
about where you belong
on the religious spectrum.
That's the Glasgow of the period.
But the papers needed
an identity for this killer,
and so they jumped on it.
He became a bit of a bogeyman,
I suppose, in Glasgow,
because, you know, mothers would
tell their kids if they were bad,
"You just be careful, otherwise
Bible John will get you."
Weans all around Scotland were
frightened of Bible John,
and they didn't even understand
what Bible John was.
He was the Freddy Krueger
of his day.
Murder is the most compelling
crime of all.
Most of us are students
of this grisly subject.
At this point
in our social history,
the notion of the sadistic
sexual murderer just didn't exist,
and I think a lot of people
would have found it really quite
frightening because they were being
faced with a really very
unusual type of individual
that they possibly didn't even know
existed at this point.
What's the murderer like?
What is he really like?
Well, I can't think, reading
about some of the terrible murders
that are committed,
that they're human.
I don't think they can be human.
Yeah.
I mean, this is
a classic misunderstanding
of what a murderer
is actually like -
this notion of this superhuman
monster just doesn't ring true.
Typically, they're
inadequate individuals.
Typically, they're people
who are living out
some kind of
"I'm the victim" narrative,
or perhaps some great heroic story.
To the criminologist, the victim
is part of the equation.
Terence Morris of the
London School of Economics.
You see, it's very difficult
for people in our society to see
the victim as anything
except the total innocent.
This is simply not the case.
I mean, obviously, that kind
of attitude is not something
that...is accepted these days.
One has got to recognise
that certain victims behave,
for a variety of reasons,
in a way which precipitates
their own death.
I think in that time it was
possible to judge women,
especially working class women,
for having been out.
"What's a woman doing out on a
Thursday when they've got kids?",
people would say.
Almost as if they were somehow part
of the darkness that enveloped them.
This is a horrific thing.
The idea that by somebody putting
themselves in a vulnerable situation
or finding themselves
in a vulnerable situation,
they somehow precipitated a murder.
It is ridiculous.
It is inaccurate.
These days, what we know
is that predatory offenders
like Bible John would have picked
up on that vulnerability,
and that's how their vulnerability
played into the equation.
Not that it was in some way
their fault, what happened.
Understand the murder inquiry is now
five months old this weekend,
has anything special been happening
this weekend
being a holiday weekend?
Well, I would say this is the first
day that the men have had off
since the murder inquiry started.
Does the fact arise that
you still have a lot to do?
I mean, are you, in fact,
now at the dry and desperate stage?
No, we're anything
but dry and desperate.
In fact, I would say that we have
at least half a dozen good tricks
up our sleeve that we can
and will use
if we don't get the phone call
or information we're seeking.
But we're far, far
from being dry and desperate.
Certainly what we did
on that enquiry,
we did as much as we could,
but probably in the wrong direction.
On lots of occasions
I felt that.
The police tried something new.
Something entirely new in Scotland.
Photofit.
It is an assembly of five
different facial parts,
pieced together from the evidence
of witnesses.
Photofit, a system devised
by a man living in England,
going under the name of
Jacques Penry,
who was not even a policeman.
Jacques Penry
was a very good salesman.
When he was on his uppers
at an earlier time,
he sold Bibles from door to door,
and made a great success of it.
It is my business to detect
and analyse facial characteristics.
He liked to describe
himself as a face expert.
But he had no academic
or scientific background at all,
and he really made his living
out of his wits.
I would like you
to observe for yourselves
the vast difference between
two young girls of opposite type.
Number one is aggressive,
determined,
practical, and much
of the motor type...
Penry had a belief
that you could
infer people's character
from their physical appearance.
It's like a long, angular nose
was clearly of someone
who had artistic temperament.
These two distinct profiles
represent opposite natures.
Now, here are the two young
ladies in question.
Ruth is number one
and Joan, number two.
It comes across in a very smooth
and convincing way.
Suppose that you were in the
presence of somebody you disliked
and they said something disagreeable
about you in the presence of others.
What would you do?
I'd be furious.
And how would you behave
in similar circumstances, Joan?
I think I should blush.
But it was through that
that he got the idea of constructing
a face from the component parts
and the way in which you could
change the appearance of a face
by taking out one set of eyes and
putting in a different set of eyes.
Crooks beware, the Home Office
now has a new system
of criminal identification.
Photofit.
Said to be even more accurate than
the line-drawn identikit process
currently used by the police.
The inventor,
Mr Penry of Tunbridge Wells,
introduces the new technique.
Well, Photofit was launched
at a grand reception
at the Savoy Hotel in London,
and it was taken up
enthusiastically by all
but one of the British
regional police forces.
The real face of Bible John.
Police hunting Bible John,
the man wanted in connection
with three murders,
issued this remarkable
picture yesterday.
People saw "Bible John" everywhere.
"He's Bible John", it said,
and women would be looking
everywhere.
Their brothers, their uncles,
their old boyfriends, thinking,
"Could that be Bible John?".
My mother, I mean, she grew
up round there and she went
to the Barrowland,
and she describes to this day
the eyes of that man, and what
he meant, and how we feared him.
And I appeal to everyone,
if you think you know this man,
contact your nearest
police station immediately.
Bible John here has his hair
as it was seen that night.
If he changes style slightly,
in keeping with modern trends,
it would be to grow it
a bit longer.
Maybe on a Georgie Best idea...
The police very rarely issue
to the public
sketches or composites,
because they inevitably
create enormous amounts
of publicity.
Most of these are for internal use,
thumbed up on bulletin boards.
But, of course,
in the Bible John murders,
there was an appetite
for any information.
Up and down the city streets,
in and out of the eagle,
the Nags Head, the buses,
the blue trains, the ballrooms,
always showing the picture.
Oh, yes?
I think the Photofit
was almost too good
because it produced hundreds,
literally hundreds,
of wrong leads, and took up
an awful lot of police time.
As notifications continue to come
in by telephone from other parts
of the country, detectives
on the murder squad have already
covered about 50,000 miles
in Glasgow and the surrounding area.
And of course, the docks, to check
out the crews of the ships
that were berthed there
at the time of the murder.
The scope of the inquiry
is enormous.
People were imagining this killer.
It's hard to over-describe really
the native fear that
that can engender,
especially in a particular area
where the murder
have been happening.
The city went into a
kind of fearful lockdown.
The quest impinges
on the life of ordinary people
nearly everywhere.
A man on a taxi journey to Edinburgh
innocently quotes the Bible
to the driver,
and finds himself deposited at
police headquarters as a suspect.
Another man, tired of being teased
for looking like Bible John,
assaults his wife.
That's how deep the fear
and the paranoia went.
Day in, day out, something new.
Faces in the busy streets
being studied closely.
Anybody who looked
a wee bit like that picture
was getting brought in, you know,
and we were interviewing them,
seeing them, talk to them,
bringing them in.
It does in many ways, I think,
provide a very...
..problematic distraction
for the police.
Lots of times, you know,
people would phone up
and say it was their next door
neighbour and stuff like that.
You know, just to wind them up,
you know?
In talking to approximately
40,000 people so far,
the police have been given
the names of men who resemble
the description of Bible John,
and some of these men have been
picked up more than once.
Beattie came in.
And he's, you know, commenting,
"You're a real likeness".
You know, calls everybody "son",
sort of style, you know?
That didn't cheer you up though?
No, not at the time, it didn't.
I mean, I can talk about it now but
at the time I was getting worked up.
There was so many of them
that the police started to issue
cards that said
"I am not Bible John."
If you were cleared,
you got one of these cards.
There was even one policeman who
was a dead ringer for Bible John,
who was called in.
He eventually became
an Assistant Chief Constable,
and he did look like Bible John,
but it wasn't him.
I think that one of the biggest
problems with the Bible John...
..theory
is the reliance on that image.
But having said that, the police
need to keep that story going
so that the public remember,
so to bring it back
we used to arrange
identification parades,
and the story would be out again.
Whenever anybody was hauled in
as a possible suspect,
the first thing Joe Beattie
would do is look at their teeth,
and almost immediately,
if the teeth weren't right,
he'd say, "Well,
that's very unlikely."
Now, I've no doubt,
there was this witness
tried her best in every way
to help us with this because
her sister was murdered.
But it isn't good just to base it
on the one person.
People see...
..things that they are,
in some ways,
conditioned to see - any legal
or crime historian knows that
witness testimony, with the best
will in the world,
is...not necessarily
particularly accurate.
Entering the scene
in the spring of this year
came a mysterious figure,
an elderly Dutchman who calls
himself a paragnost,
a man of psychic powers, who has
used them to help police in Europe
and America with murder cases.
Gerard Croiset, he had helped
police to solve a number of
really unusual cases
by clutching a bit of clothing
from the victim, or whatever,
and I got a book on him
from the library,
read up on him and I thought,
"You know, I wonder if we could get
him over to do Bible John."
60-year-old Gerard Croiset
is a puzzling man.
From his home in Utrecht, he looks
at photographs and offers clues
he says will solve
the mystery or the crime.
Nobody knows whether
he really is clairvoyant,
or whether it's just a lot
of luck,
but he's built up
quite a reputation.
"Croiset gives lead in hunt
for Bible John.
"World-famous Dutch
clairvoyant Gerard Croiset
"last night looked into the past
"and compiled a detailed dossier
to help Glasgow detectives
"track down Bible John.
What were his psychic
prognostications? What?
Well, he confirmed certain things
that the police had in mind.
For instance, on a map of Glasgow -
a large scale map of Glasgow -
he delineated an area where
he claimed the suspect lived,
and this area has,
for a long time,
been thought by police to be
the area where the man does live.
He started sketching things,
and he sketched an old engine
and old cars,
a road, and a hill
with greenery on it.
I recognised roughly
where it was.
It was Bellahouston Park
on the Paisley Road West,
and we actually found
an old engine
and rusty cars.
He described the man as
having a military bearing
with his chest puffed out
and shoulders back.
The police had never revealed
publicly that, you know,
that the suspect had carried
himself in this manner.
Well, I didn't disregard
or dismiss Croiset.
There's a book being written
about Croiset,
and Croiset's public service
has been excellent in this book.
Joe Beattie was quite excited
about it, and he got his detectives
to do door-to-door inquiries
all round the areas
where we thought this might be.
Well, when you checked over
this area this man represented,
did you, in fact, find any
possible suspects in there?
We have had several suspects
from this area and, of course,
we have screened them possibly
closer than we would normally.
Of course, they've come up negative,
but we're still hoping.
Actually, the police have often
been quite drawn to psychics,
although it's all pretty bogus.
I mean, obviously I did it to help
boost the circulation
of the newspaper,
to get me big stories.
But as a crime reporter, I felt
in a way it was my moral duty,
you know, to get as much publicity,
and the more publicity it was
given, the more people came forward.
Joe Beattie, not surprisingly,
was obsessed by this case.
He went to great lengths
to try and build up
a picture of Bible John.
Since February 1968,
police have hunted the man
known as Bible John.
But today there is a new urgency.
"An urgency sparked
by a psychiatrist called in
"to give them an insight into
Bible John's personality.
"His report made grim reading."
From recollection, it was actually
Joe Beattie that handed me
Dr Brittain's treatise
on sadistic sexual murderers,
and asked me if I'd like to do
a story on it, which I did.
I was happy do it because it kept
the inquiry alive
for the police at a time
when it was, you know,
beginning to flounder a bit.
Dr Robert Brittain was an
experienced forensic psychiatrist.
In other words, he was a doctor
who specialised in working with
what used to be called
"the criminally insane".
Dr Brittain
had impressive credentials.
He had worked at Broadmoor,
then onto Carstairs,
both special hospitals,
where he would have been
exposed to a number
of these types of individuals.
Joe Beattie realised that there was
something he didn't understand
about the type of individuals
that he was investigating,
so he went to Dr Brittain
for insight.
"The seeds of his abnormalities
would seem to be planted
"at a very early age, and
a careful history will often show
"clear evidence of some
manifestations of his perversions,
"even before puberty.
"He can be prim, proper,
even prudish,
"avoiding profanities himself, and
condemning obscenity, vulgarity,
"or impropriety in others.
"He condemns sexual conversations
and deplores blue stories."
That approach to Dr Brittain,
a psychiatrist,
would have been really quite
forward-thinking at that stage
in our social history.
"The method of killing
is almost always asphyxia,
"and a gag may
occasionally be employed."
It looks very much as if she may
have been strangled, doesn't it?
"Such men will sometimes explain
that shooting
"is too sudden a way
of killing the victim.
"For their pleasure
will be ended too quickly."
Tiny haemorrhages in the eyes,
as one sees with strangling.
"The sight of suffering
can excite him further,
"and his brutality can be increased
by the helplessness
"and fear of his victim."
The detail and the insights
and the understanding
that Dr Brittain shows,
before even the FBI was beginning
its profiling activities in America,
that was really quite remarkable.
'Detective Superintendent
Joe Beattie said yesterday...
'We are treating the doctor's
report very seriously.
'We have never wanted to put
the public into a panic,
'but we cannot exclude
the possibility
'that this man may strike again.
'The psychiatrist's report
underlines this.'
When you create a picture
of somebody who is really bizarre,
who gets sexual excitement
out of hurting others,
then that raises the intrigue
and the anxiety, of course.
And if you can say a serial killer
is just like anybody else,
wandering around the streets,
that makes people very anxious.
Is he an unusual character
living behind commonplace
conventional facade, or what is he?
I would say that this man
is possibly a loner.
He lives, I would think,
with a relative,
is a personable man, good looking.
He possibly occupies
some place in society
where he has a little authority.
"These people read,
study and collect books
"which relate in some way
to their perversion.
"Some are fiction.
"Some are not.
"But it is sufficient, however,
to say that they commonly relate
"to some of the following..."
Such a man, such
a superficially clean cut,
upstanding figure, must have
some kind of social contacts.
Yes, he does have social contacts.
They are aware of him,
but unfortunately
they are eliminating him in their
mind because of this clean-cutness
that you speak of.
The idea that there
could be some gentle,
withdrawn, almost shy individual,
who, beneath that facade,
could be capable of this
kind of sadistic sexual activity
would have been something I think
the general public would have found
really quite alarming.
Making available these sorts
of reports from experts
about the nature of the individual
who the police are looking for
is potentially very dangerous
and inappropriate.
If the expert has got it wrong,
that can be very misleading,
and there are plenty of cases
where the profile has been made
publicly available, and that
has meant the actual offender
has gone unnoticed, unexplored,
because the police, or in fact
other individuals have thought,
"Oh, no, it can't be him
because it doesn't fit the profile."
What Dr Brittain doesn't give us
are facts and figures,
are probabilities, are percentages,
or any empirical data about the type
of individual he's describing.
Nonetheless, it's an account
that would be useful
in terms of extending
investigators' understanding of the
type of individual
that they may be looking for,
particularly
at that point in our history.
It was a great story to do,
and it showed how the police
were trying absolutely everything
to get to the bottom of the story,
and identify the killer.
What does your own particular sixth
sense as an experienced detective
officer tell you -
is he still about, or is he gone?
I would feel he's still about.
Joe Beattie was determined
to get to the bottom of it.
Unfortunately,
that wasn't to be the case.
Joe had explored
every avenue he could,
and tried everything he could,
and it just got to the situation,
there was nothing left to do.
Joe Beattie, to the end of his days,
still regretted that
that was the case.
He calls it "the one that got away".
Well, I was drawn to the
Bible John murders back in 1996.
There'd been renewed interest
in the case.
They reckon
they might have a suspect,
and they've begun
digging up a corpse.
Police in Strathclyde say
they're close to confirming
the identity of a serial killer
known as Bible John,
who committed a series of murders
a quarter of a century ago...
'By the time dawn broke over
Stonehouse Cemetery,
'police had already prepared the way
for the exhumation of John McInnes
'from the grave where he's been
buried since his suicide
'16 years ago.'
He was an ex-army type.
He'd been at the Barrowland,
and they were going to dig up his
body and do some DNA tests on it.
DNA testing, genetic fingerprinting,
which matched samples from
Helen Puttock's clothing
with swabs from a member
of the suspected killer's family.
Jeannie Williams
never thought that John McInnes
was the right man.
She'd seen him in identity parades.
She didn't get that
jolt of recognition
that she would have expected.
And Joe Beattie agreed,
he didn't think McInnes
was the right man, either.
'Strathclyde Police received
a report last week from experts
'showing there is no match between
John McInnes' genetic fingerprint
'and semen stains found on the
tights of one of his victims,
'Helen Puttock,
who was strangled in 1969.'
Victims deserve answers.
I was a detective superintendent
of Strathclyde Police.
I was in the police
for 34 years.
In 2007, I was the
detective superintendent
running an operation
called Operation Anagram,
regarding a serial killer,
Peter Tobin.
'They have searched for nine days
here, using pickaxes, radar,
'and even their bare hands at times,
all in a vain search for bodies.
'Police suspect Tobin,
who's from Renfrewshire,
'of killing many young women,
and they still do.'
We researched any potential links
between Peter Tobin and
the so-called Bible John.
Peter Tobin,
with the first two murders,
was in Brighton.
He got married.
The artist's impression
that was compiled,
it shows that the suspect
had red hair.
We have photographs
of Peter Tobin in the '60s
and Tobin,
his hair is not like that.
There was DNA found on
Helen Puttock's tights.
One thing for sure, that DNA
is not Peter Tobin's,
because Peter Tobin's profile
has been compared against that.
There is nothing to indicate
that Peter Tobin
was involved in these cases.
When you look back
at the time of Bible John,
you realise the fascinating
complexity of it all
and how it has lasted
through the years,
and in particular,
to me as a writer,
I'm interested how it has
spawned so many theories.
In the Gallowgate
where the Barras was,
you crossed the road and there
was this big bit of land.
And there's a lot of things
with skips
out there for people
to dump rubbish.
And it seems at one time
they found a body.
And everybody says
that's one of Bible John's bodies.
I don't know if there was a lot
of maybe poor lassies that he done
that were never discovered,
you know.
That's the way it was in these days.
I was particularly interested
in the connection
of the Gloucester killer
Frederick West,
who had lived in Glasgow
during that period.
I've got my own theory
as to who it was,
and that was the Yorkshire Ripper.
I am not satisfied
that the same person
was involved in these three cases.
We can't definitively rule out
these being quite separate offences,
these being particular attacks
on particular individuals
that came out of
particular relationships.
But from what we do know,
and we don't know very much,
but from what we do know,
they look to me
to be too consistent
to be anything other than
the work of the same man.
The question is, of course,
why he stops,
and we find that offenders
do stop for all sorts of reasons.
They stop because they're arrested
for some other crime
and spend time in prison.
It could have been
that he'd moved around,
or was in the Army and got shipped
off abroad or something like that.
At that time it was
old-style policing.
They didn't have DNA.
They didn't have CCTV.
They didn't have forensic science
techniques that they have nowadays.
So it is very unfair
to go back and be critical
of what police officers
were trying to do many years ago.
I would hope, and I really,
you know, really hope someday
someone will be caught.
But the chances of that
are very slim.
I mean, I'm not getting
any younger,
and I would just love...to
find out the truth
and find that somebody
was punished for the hurt,
the heartache, that they've caused
for me and my family.
It hangs over Glasgow,
the Bible John story,
mainly because
he's never been found.
If we had an identity for this guy,
if it's one guy,
we could then parcel it up
and put it away.
But an undiscovered killer
becomes a permanence - part of
the folklore of the city.
Well, we've got to this
almost finished stage now,
got the overlapping teeth.
And we have to remember this
was done as a result of
at least three we know about,
girls who didn't ever make it home
after dancing with this chap.
These stories live on for a reason.
They sink into people's minds
and into their social lives,
into their understanding of the time
that they've lived through,
and those basic questions
about human nature.
How can you kill?
How can a society harbour a killer?
Does the media encourage
or hinder the killer?
All these questions
are still persisting,
and we have to keep going back
to them.
That's why we have to keep
thinking about it.
John... If your name is John.
John, if you're out there now,
watching and listening,
maybe it's time to come in
out of the glare.
The police want to talk to you,
wherever you are.
You should know that.
was in a state of flux.
People were living
in awful conditions.
People still hadn't recovered
from the war.
So there was a kind of evangelism
ridding the city
of its famous slums.
# Out of the land of shadows
and darkness
# We were returning towards
the morning light... #
It wasn't just changing, it changed,
it could not be understated.
It was real physical alteration
in the fabric of the city.
There was no thought
about community.
They just chucked the people out
and left them to get on with it.
The old way of working class life
was being swept away overnight.
Emptiness and absolute dislocation.
Everything Glasgow knew was
being taken away.
And that was stitched into further
anxiety about this man
who seemed to be on the rampage.
It's been Scotland's most
enduring murder mystery.
Three women were killed
after meeting a man
at this Glasgow dance hall.
He quoted the scriptures, leading
to his nickname...
The notorious serial killer,
Bible John.
There was something about these
particular killings
that got under the skin.
I mean, this was somebody patrolling
dance halls and picking up victims
at random and killing them.
The notion of this kind
of sadistic sexual murderer
just really wasn't around
at that point in our history.
It was the biggest
murder investigation
of its kind in Scotland.
The investigators were suddenly
trying to work out
how it is, that three times this
man was able to kill and slip away.
They say time's a healer,
but it never does heal.
It's still a vivid memory.
It was the third of the
Bible John killings
that really brought this invisible
man and this myth really into focus.
The big thing was the third one,
it was relentless.
When I began investigating
the Bible John murders,
I was commissioned by the Sunday
Times to go and track down some
of the people who had been centrally
involved in the case.
And a critical witness
was Jeannie Williams,
who was Helen Puttock's sister.
Jeannie was a very
impressive witness.
She remembered that they decided
to go out dancing.
And Helen was married and her
husband, who was in the army,
was on leave at home at the time.
Yeah, I just was at home
with the boys
and obviously put them to bed,
and her mum said to me,
you know, "For goodness' sake,
"don't worry, it's natural and just
something she likes to do."
And so in the end,
I actually fell asleep.
They headed off to the Barrowland,
and the place was, as usual,
heaving with dancers on the floor.
There were others around the edges,
sort of eyeing up the talent,
as it were.
And I think it was Jeannie who
first picked up a dancing partner,
who was a very good dancer,
called John.
And then Jeannie noticed a man
who was, she said,
"A cut above the others."
He seemed well turned out,
short hair cut.
Very smartly dressed
in a brown suit.
He came along and asked
Helen to dance.
They spent the evening dancing,
and then they all four
left together.
And as they were leaving,
there was a problem
with the cigarette machine.
They'd put the money in and
cigarettes wouldn't come out.
This character, John, suddenly got
absolutely enraged by this,
and she noticed his cold anger.
He turned to them and said, "These
places are dens of iniquity."
Jeannie took in all the detail
of his appearance.
One thing she noted was that his two
front teeth were crossed,
and he had a missing tooth
at the back.
Now that was obviously
a very important detail.
The night was cold and dry, and the
news vendors with the first
editions of the morning papers
were on the verge of quitting
the corners as the streets emptied.
They walked out, they caught a taxi,
the other John went off and caught
a bus, leaving the three
of them together.
That's Jeannie, Helen
and this man, John.
They shared the taxi because in
those days, taxis were expensive.
They talked a bit about him
and his life, although he was,
she remembered, rather withdrawn.
And then at one stage, she asked,
"Do you support Celtic or Rangers?"
And he said he was agnostic.
And Jeannie didn't know
what agnostic meant.
And she said, "Does that mean
you're an atheist?"
And he then quoted something
from the Bible.
Now, she couldn't remember
what the exact quotation was.
And then he insisted that Jeannie
get out of the taxi
near her home.
And that was the last that Jeannie
ever saw of her sister, Helen.
At 7:25, the next morning, a black
Labrador dog being taken for
an early morning walk by his owner
found the body
of Helen Puttock in this
backcourt at 95 Earl Street.
She had been beaten and strangled.
She was lying face downwards
at an angle to a wall.
Her clothes badly displaced.
There were signs that at one stage
she might have tried to escape
from her attacker, run up that
embankment and been dragged back.
The murder hunt began.
Police combed the back court
and the railway embankment.
They traced the taxi and the driver.
In charge of the police inquiries
in this case, a man who handled nine
successful murder investigations
last year alone,
former RAF pilot now Detective
Superintendent, Joseph Beattie.
Will you see to that
before tomorrow?
Joe Beattie was the absolutely
classic Glasgow detective.
Meticulous in his search for detail.
The following day, Joe Beattie
took me into the bedroom.
And the first question he asked me
was, "did you hit her?"
And I said, "No."
And he then stripped me
and completely...
..went over my body to make sure
I had no scratch marks
or anything like that on my body.
And then he said,
"I'm ever so sorry, son.
"I didn't think for one minute
it was you,
"but it's something I had to do."
In these days, I'm still just
a very young detective.
But even the worst detective
could have put it together
that these three could be linked.
They might not have been,
but you've got to look at it.
That's really when it all blew up.
You know, everything, you know,
went into overdrive.
Police believe there are
similarities in the killing
of Mrs Puttock and the deaths of
two other women in the past year.
Nurse Patricia Docker was
discovered dead
in Langside a year ago.
And mother of three
Miss Jemima McDonald was found dead
in Bridgeton three months ago.
There were so similar.
On each occasion they had all
been at the Barrowland.
The three of them were murdered
by strangulation.
On each occasion, an article
of clothing was removed.
The three of them, raped.
On each occasion the women
were menstruating.
Three in a oner, you know,
a serial killer on the loose,
just shocked people.
There was immediate speculation
that he was some kind
of sexual deviant.
Some speculation that he'd had
an issue with women
who were menstruating and had turned
against women for that reason.
There was nothing different
about them, they were just women,
poor unfortunate lambs
who were led to the slaughter
by this guy.
This was the condition
in which the body was found.
Helen had been knocked unconscious
and strangled
with one of her stockings.
Her face was bruised and from
the grass and broken dock leaves
stuck to her feet and her neck,
it was clear
she'd put up a fierce struggle.
There were signs she'd tried to
escape from her killer,
by scrambling up
the railway embankment
that ran along the back of the
gardens behind the close.
She'd been caught, struck with some
heavy instrument on the head...
..and dragged back along the grass
before she'd succumbed.
The evidence is perfectly plain.
Helen Puttock is on her way
home to her husband and children,
and is raped and killed.
She fought.
Her body gives clear evidence
that there was
a considerable brutal
and painful struggle.
I know how strong she was.
I know what a fighter she was.
I knew straight away, you know, from
what Joe Beattie told me, that...
..it was a maniac.
But then it was very, very difficult
to know exactly what to do,
because the two boys, they were
very young at the time.
Helen was absolutely devoted to
them, and they loved her to bits.
David was five and Michael
was 18 months old.
So obviously at that age there was
no way I could tell them
that their mum has been strangled.
And so I actually told them, well,
I told David because Michael
was too young to understand anyway,
that his mum had been hit by a bus
and she had been killed.
But that was just a white lie
because I just couldn't bring
myself to tell them the actual
truth at that time.
Well, what happened was, when
Michael was seven
on his way home from school, one
of his friends from down the road,
she suddenly said to Michael,
"Do you know your mum was murdered?"
And that's how he found out.
He was really anti-me because I had
actually told them
a lie that, you know, she had been
run down by a bus.
And in fact...
..at one stage, he even, more or
less, accused me of doing it,
which was very hurtful to me.
Because, Michael...
..thought that...
..I lied to him, and that maybe
I was involved.
We'd more or less become
estranged for about 20 years.
And so it was just sad...
..when I was told that he had died.
All through his life, he actually
felt that society owed him a debt
because of what it had done
to his mum.
Now, the police would like to talk
to this man because they feel
he could give them vital
assistance in their inquiries.
He may have reasons of his own
for not coming forward,
but the police will exercise
the maximum discretion
if he will only talk to them.
Joe Beattie was under
tremendous pressure.
Working first thing in the morning,
last thing at night.
I was a young detective constable,
working at Drumchapel at that time,
nothing to do with the Bible
John inquiry.
But they decided to get all the
detectives in and see,
did anyone have any suggestions?
Jeannie had told police that
the suspect had mentioned
details about his life, maybe his
job or where he lived,
and she just couldn't remember
what it was,
and it was really important
to find out.
And I thought, that's an ideal
person to be hypnotised
so that we could find out what did
he say and what he didn't say.
So I raised my hand and said,
what about hypnotism?
And immediately everybody burst
out laughing and said,
"Who are you, you idiot?"
So I was ordered to away back and
hide in Drumchapel, out the road.
But a few days later,
I got a phone call
from Chief Superintendent Beattie
to say he wanted to see me.
And when I went down to see him,
he said, "That was quite
a good idea you had."
So the police asked a hypnotist
to put her under hypnosis,
to see if the subconscious would
come out, and she could recall.
We got more information about what
the suspect had said.
She remembered he asked
the women, were they married?
And they said...they both said yes.
And he said, "Oh, you know what
happens to the adulterous wife,
"did you read it in the Bible?"
"No, I never saw that."
"She gets stoned to death."
He's quite well spoken with
a Glasgow accent.
He was said to be between 25 and 30,
light auburn, reddish hair
brushed to the right.
He may have marks on his face
or hands of recent origin.
The suspect was five foot ten
and he had overlapping teeth.
He smoked Embassy cigarettes.
Everything was known about this guy.
He may speak of having had a strict
religious upbringing,
and make reference to the Bible.
The press will look at things
from their own perspective.
They'll say, "I need someone
to hang this on..."
..and you need a name.
It is thought that his Christian
name may be John.
Newspapers dubbed him Bible John.
And that's really what sort of
linked all three things together
in the minds of the public,
Bible John, it was the same man.
He was the same killer.
Police hunting the dancehall killer
have been flooded with calls
from people who think they know
the mysterious Bible John.
With him quoting all this
Bible carry on,
I think he was a bit of a fanatic.
He had something against women,
you know, because they were...
They hadn't the right to go out
and enjoy theirselves.
You know, they should be staying
in their house with their family.
They obviously thought
it was quite chilling.
A Bible-quoting monster,
picking up women from dance halls
and killing them.
Is it really the case that the man
that you are searching
for as the killer could
strike again?
There's a possibility
he may, yes.
The search goes on.
Somewhere there may be two
plainclothes men
waiting for a door to open.
Somewhere a telephone may be ringing
in a police office.
Marine, murder and Beattie.
For Joe, Jeannie Williams was an
absolutely critical witness,
particularly her physical
description of Bible John.
Every word that the victim's sister
said was gospel to him.
What the police do is decide,
using Jean's testimony
in particular, to produce
a portrait.
Into the scene, Mr Lennox Paterson,
registrar of Glasgow School of Art.
I did manage to get an impression
of a type of person, rather
like a handsome ladies' man.
And I did try to prevent
an expression.
It may be that he can change
his expression
and his tune to suit company.
The face of Bible John.
Murder Squad detectives last night
issued this artist's impression
of a man they wish to interview in
connection with the killing
of Mrs Helen Puttock.
When it first came out, it was such
a striking poster.
People, it caught their eye.
It was used and used and used.
And it was taken around newsagents
and was taken to dentists,
it was taken to doctors.
It looked as if he was on leave
from the Army,
short back and sides.
Clean complexion, blue eyes.
And that's what they looked
at, you know,
just a perfectly straight up,
handsome chap.
It was in the papers
and on the television,
and you were a bit,
you know, frightened.
It seemed so good, the artist's
impression, that it was just
a question of time before somebody
said, "I know him."
It's a very able artist at work.
And Jeannie, the victim's sister,
when she saw the drawing, she said,
"Give that man a medal."
It was so closely resembling
what she could recall.
I've been doing it now
for about 35 years,
I think, something like that.
And it is always fascinating
how much people can recall.
The poor, bewildered witness arrives
with a fuzzy picture in their head,
maybe, of what their attacker
looked like.
As it is, it's from their head
into my head, down my arm
and onto the paper.
It is important that any detail
that the witness recalls,
it should be included.
One of the aspects of the poster
that is seldom mentioned,
is that Bible John was said to have
had crooked teeth.
They were very obvious
and very significant.
You don't see that in the poster.
So at the moment,
what I'm trying to do
is make a copy of his drawing...
..but open the mouth to depict
these teeth.
You live very close to it.
In fact, they say that you carry
a plastic replica
of the teeth of the man you're
anxious to...?
No, no, this is quite untrue.
We do have a plastic replica
of the teeth.
Here's the plastic replica of the
teeth, but they're not carried
by me or any of the other officers.
I think with witnesses, one
of the things you need to do
is to find out every
possible detail,
in as gentle a fashion as you can.
Because, after all, you're taking
them back to the scene
of something horrific.
We couldn't think of it
in our worst nightmares,
the sort of things
that I've heard about.
It's a process called cognitive
interview technique,
giving them the chance to perhaps
find new memories that they
didn't even know they had.
Lennox Paterson, he had not
had the advantage
of working for the police before,
as I have.
At the time, they were
taking a leap in the dark.
They didn't know
what was going to happen.
The League of Red-Headed Men
is bigger than any police force.
The special investigation,
branches of the Armed Forces
and the British Transport Police
helped to spread the net.
And all through the city streets,
the foot slogging goes on.
It was the biggest murder inquiry
Scotland has ever, ever seen.
Hundreds of detectives were involved
and 50,000 police statements
were taken.
Right, gentlemen, the situation
is still the same.
He's out there and we're in here.
The guys who worked there,
they were absolutely dedicated
to what they were doing.
I mean, Joe Beattie, for instance,
he would work his backside off.
He has...a definite hairstyle.
Police took the step of interviewing
all barbers in Glasgow
to see if they had any customers
with that colour of hair.
His teeth were described,
the suit he wore.
Yes. It's a most unusual suit.
They went round tailors in Glasgow,
with photographs of the suspect,
asking if he'd bought
a suit from them.
Was the killer a service man?
He'd been abroad.
Perhaps could have been a seaman.
Police said he was polite,
well-spoken,
and might make reference
to the Bible.
Could even have been a priest.
Then there was a story,
he could have been a monk.
They were suddenly raiding every
church and every Sunday service
in the land, looking for some
gibbering religious fanatic.
Let us pray.
He may well have quoted
the Bible, but it seems to me
it could have been quoting
the Bible as a joke,
or in passing.
If you were brought up at that time,
you'd be able to spout
bits and pieces of the Bible,
Old and New Testament,
because everybody did
religious instruction.
It may even have contributed
to a lot of misnomers
around that killer.
It might have thrown
the scent a little bit.
Now, of course, that grows
out of the west coast of Scotland's
particular anxieties at that time.
This is a place of sectarianism.
This is a place of Catholics
and Protestants -
of a great deal of anxiety
about where you belong
on the religious spectrum.
That's the Glasgow of the period.
But the papers needed
an identity for this killer,
and so they jumped on it.
He became a bit of a bogeyman,
I suppose, in Glasgow,
because, you know, mothers would
tell their kids if they were bad,
"You just be careful, otherwise
Bible John will get you."
Weans all around Scotland were
frightened of Bible John,
and they didn't even understand
what Bible John was.
He was the Freddy Krueger
of his day.
Murder is the most compelling
crime of all.
Most of us are students
of this grisly subject.
At this point
in our social history,
the notion of the sadistic
sexual murderer just didn't exist,
and I think a lot of people
would have found it really quite
frightening because they were being
faced with a really very
unusual type of individual
that they possibly didn't even know
existed at this point.
What's the murderer like?
What is he really like?
Well, I can't think, reading
about some of the terrible murders
that are committed,
that they're human.
I don't think they can be human.
Yeah.
I mean, this is
a classic misunderstanding
of what a murderer
is actually like -
this notion of this superhuman
monster just doesn't ring true.
Typically, they're
inadequate individuals.
Typically, they're people
who are living out
some kind of
"I'm the victim" narrative,
or perhaps some great heroic story.
To the criminologist, the victim
is part of the equation.
Terence Morris of the
London School of Economics.
You see, it's very difficult
for people in our society to see
the victim as anything
except the total innocent.
This is simply not the case.
I mean, obviously, that kind
of attitude is not something
that...is accepted these days.
One has got to recognise
that certain victims behave,
for a variety of reasons,
in a way which precipitates
their own death.
I think in that time it was
possible to judge women,
especially working class women,
for having been out.
"What's a woman doing out on a
Thursday when they've got kids?",
people would say.
Almost as if they were somehow part
of the darkness that enveloped them.
This is a horrific thing.
The idea that by somebody putting
themselves in a vulnerable situation
or finding themselves
in a vulnerable situation,
they somehow precipitated a murder.
It is ridiculous.
It is inaccurate.
These days, what we know
is that predatory offenders
like Bible John would have picked
up on that vulnerability,
and that's how their vulnerability
played into the equation.
Not that it was in some way
their fault, what happened.
Understand the murder inquiry is now
five months old this weekend,
has anything special been happening
this weekend
being a holiday weekend?
Well, I would say this is the first
day that the men have had off
since the murder inquiry started.
Does the fact arise that
you still have a lot to do?
I mean, are you, in fact,
now at the dry and desperate stage?
No, we're anything
but dry and desperate.
In fact, I would say that we have
at least half a dozen good tricks
up our sleeve that we can
and will use
if we don't get the phone call
or information we're seeking.
But we're far, far
from being dry and desperate.
Certainly what we did
on that enquiry,
we did as much as we could,
but probably in the wrong direction.
On lots of occasions
I felt that.
The police tried something new.
Something entirely new in Scotland.
Photofit.
It is an assembly of five
different facial parts,
pieced together from the evidence
of witnesses.
Photofit, a system devised
by a man living in England,
going under the name of
Jacques Penry,
who was not even a policeman.
Jacques Penry
was a very good salesman.
When he was on his uppers
at an earlier time,
he sold Bibles from door to door,
and made a great success of it.
It is my business to detect
and analyse facial characteristics.
He liked to describe
himself as a face expert.
But he had no academic
or scientific background at all,
and he really made his living
out of his wits.
I would like you
to observe for yourselves
the vast difference between
two young girls of opposite type.
Number one is aggressive,
determined,
practical, and much
of the motor type...
Penry had a belief
that you could
infer people's character
from their physical appearance.
It's like a long, angular nose
was clearly of someone
who had artistic temperament.
These two distinct profiles
represent opposite natures.
Now, here are the two young
ladies in question.
Ruth is number one
and Joan, number two.
It comes across in a very smooth
and convincing way.
Suppose that you were in the
presence of somebody you disliked
and they said something disagreeable
about you in the presence of others.
What would you do?
I'd be furious.
And how would you behave
in similar circumstances, Joan?
I think I should blush.
But it was through that
that he got the idea of constructing
a face from the component parts
and the way in which you could
change the appearance of a face
by taking out one set of eyes and
putting in a different set of eyes.
Crooks beware, the Home Office
now has a new system
of criminal identification.
Photofit.
Said to be even more accurate than
the line-drawn identikit process
currently used by the police.
The inventor,
Mr Penry of Tunbridge Wells,
introduces the new technique.
Well, Photofit was launched
at a grand reception
at the Savoy Hotel in London,
and it was taken up
enthusiastically by all
but one of the British
regional police forces.
The real face of Bible John.
Police hunting Bible John,
the man wanted in connection
with three murders,
issued this remarkable
picture yesterday.
People saw "Bible John" everywhere.
"He's Bible John", it said,
and women would be looking
everywhere.
Their brothers, their uncles,
their old boyfriends, thinking,
"Could that be Bible John?".
My mother, I mean, she grew
up round there and she went
to the Barrowland,
and she describes to this day
the eyes of that man, and what
he meant, and how we feared him.
And I appeal to everyone,
if you think you know this man,
contact your nearest
police station immediately.
Bible John here has his hair
as it was seen that night.
If he changes style slightly,
in keeping with modern trends,
it would be to grow it
a bit longer.
Maybe on a Georgie Best idea...
The police very rarely issue
to the public
sketches or composites,
because they inevitably
create enormous amounts
of publicity.
Most of these are for internal use,
thumbed up on bulletin boards.
But, of course,
in the Bible John murders,
there was an appetite
for any information.
Up and down the city streets,
in and out of the eagle,
the Nags Head, the buses,
the blue trains, the ballrooms,
always showing the picture.
Oh, yes?
I think the Photofit
was almost too good
because it produced hundreds,
literally hundreds,
of wrong leads, and took up
an awful lot of police time.
As notifications continue to come
in by telephone from other parts
of the country, detectives
on the murder squad have already
covered about 50,000 miles
in Glasgow and the surrounding area.
And of course, the docks, to check
out the crews of the ships
that were berthed there
at the time of the murder.
The scope of the inquiry
is enormous.
People were imagining this killer.
It's hard to over-describe really
the native fear that
that can engender,
especially in a particular area
where the murder
have been happening.
The city went into a
kind of fearful lockdown.
The quest impinges
on the life of ordinary people
nearly everywhere.
A man on a taxi journey to Edinburgh
innocently quotes the Bible
to the driver,
and finds himself deposited at
police headquarters as a suspect.
Another man, tired of being teased
for looking like Bible John,
assaults his wife.
That's how deep the fear
and the paranoia went.
Day in, day out, something new.
Faces in the busy streets
being studied closely.
Anybody who looked
a wee bit like that picture
was getting brought in, you know,
and we were interviewing them,
seeing them, talk to them,
bringing them in.
It does in many ways, I think,
provide a very...
..problematic distraction
for the police.
Lots of times, you know,
people would phone up
and say it was their next door
neighbour and stuff like that.
You know, just to wind them up,
you know?
In talking to approximately
40,000 people so far,
the police have been given
the names of men who resemble
the description of Bible John,
and some of these men have been
picked up more than once.
Beattie came in.
And he's, you know, commenting,
"You're a real likeness".
You know, calls everybody "son",
sort of style, you know?
That didn't cheer you up though?
No, not at the time, it didn't.
I mean, I can talk about it now but
at the time I was getting worked up.
There was so many of them
that the police started to issue
cards that said
"I am not Bible John."
If you were cleared,
you got one of these cards.
There was even one policeman who
was a dead ringer for Bible John,
who was called in.
He eventually became
an Assistant Chief Constable,
and he did look like Bible John,
but it wasn't him.
I think that one of the biggest
problems with the Bible John...
..theory
is the reliance on that image.
But having said that, the police
need to keep that story going
so that the public remember,
so to bring it back
we used to arrange
identification parades,
and the story would be out again.
Whenever anybody was hauled in
as a possible suspect,
the first thing Joe Beattie
would do is look at their teeth,
and almost immediately,
if the teeth weren't right,
he'd say, "Well,
that's very unlikely."
Now, I've no doubt,
there was this witness
tried her best in every way
to help us with this because
her sister was murdered.
But it isn't good just to base it
on the one person.
People see...
..things that they are,
in some ways,
conditioned to see - any legal
or crime historian knows that
witness testimony, with the best
will in the world,
is...not necessarily
particularly accurate.
Entering the scene
in the spring of this year
came a mysterious figure,
an elderly Dutchman who calls
himself a paragnost,
a man of psychic powers, who has
used them to help police in Europe
and America with murder cases.
Gerard Croiset, he had helped
police to solve a number of
really unusual cases
by clutching a bit of clothing
from the victim, or whatever,
and I got a book on him
from the library,
read up on him and I thought,
"You know, I wonder if we could get
him over to do Bible John."
60-year-old Gerard Croiset
is a puzzling man.
From his home in Utrecht, he looks
at photographs and offers clues
he says will solve
the mystery or the crime.
Nobody knows whether
he really is clairvoyant,
or whether it's just a lot
of luck,
but he's built up
quite a reputation.
"Croiset gives lead in hunt
for Bible John.
"World-famous Dutch
clairvoyant Gerard Croiset
"last night looked into the past
"and compiled a detailed dossier
to help Glasgow detectives
"track down Bible John.
What were his psychic
prognostications? What?
Well, he confirmed certain things
that the police had in mind.
For instance, on a map of Glasgow -
a large scale map of Glasgow -
he delineated an area where
he claimed the suspect lived,
and this area has,
for a long time,
been thought by police to be
the area where the man does live.
He started sketching things,
and he sketched an old engine
and old cars,
a road, and a hill
with greenery on it.
I recognised roughly
where it was.
It was Bellahouston Park
on the Paisley Road West,
and we actually found
an old engine
and rusty cars.
He described the man as
having a military bearing
with his chest puffed out
and shoulders back.
The police had never revealed
publicly that, you know,
that the suspect had carried
himself in this manner.
Well, I didn't disregard
or dismiss Croiset.
There's a book being written
about Croiset,
and Croiset's public service
has been excellent in this book.
Joe Beattie was quite excited
about it, and he got his detectives
to do door-to-door inquiries
all round the areas
where we thought this might be.
Well, when you checked over
this area this man represented,
did you, in fact, find any
possible suspects in there?
We have had several suspects
from this area and, of course,
we have screened them possibly
closer than we would normally.
Of course, they've come up negative,
but we're still hoping.
Actually, the police have often
been quite drawn to psychics,
although it's all pretty bogus.
I mean, obviously I did it to help
boost the circulation
of the newspaper,
to get me big stories.
But as a crime reporter, I felt
in a way it was my moral duty,
you know, to get as much publicity,
and the more publicity it was
given, the more people came forward.
Joe Beattie, not surprisingly,
was obsessed by this case.
He went to great lengths
to try and build up
a picture of Bible John.
Since February 1968,
police have hunted the man
known as Bible John.
But today there is a new urgency.
"An urgency sparked
by a psychiatrist called in
"to give them an insight into
Bible John's personality.
"His report made grim reading."
From recollection, it was actually
Joe Beattie that handed me
Dr Brittain's treatise
on sadistic sexual murderers,
and asked me if I'd like to do
a story on it, which I did.
I was happy do it because it kept
the inquiry alive
for the police at a time
when it was, you know,
beginning to flounder a bit.
Dr Robert Brittain was an
experienced forensic psychiatrist.
In other words, he was a doctor
who specialised in working with
what used to be called
"the criminally insane".
Dr Brittain
had impressive credentials.
He had worked at Broadmoor,
then onto Carstairs,
both special hospitals,
where he would have been
exposed to a number
of these types of individuals.
Joe Beattie realised that there was
something he didn't understand
about the type of individuals
that he was investigating,
so he went to Dr Brittain
for insight.
"The seeds of his abnormalities
would seem to be planted
"at a very early age, and
a careful history will often show
"clear evidence of some
manifestations of his perversions,
"even before puberty.
"He can be prim, proper,
even prudish,
"avoiding profanities himself, and
condemning obscenity, vulgarity,
"or impropriety in others.
"He condemns sexual conversations
and deplores blue stories."
That approach to Dr Brittain,
a psychiatrist,
would have been really quite
forward-thinking at that stage
in our social history.
"The method of killing
is almost always asphyxia,
"and a gag may
occasionally be employed."
It looks very much as if she may
have been strangled, doesn't it?
"Such men will sometimes explain
that shooting
"is too sudden a way
of killing the victim.
"For their pleasure
will be ended too quickly."
Tiny haemorrhages in the eyes,
as one sees with strangling.
"The sight of suffering
can excite him further,
"and his brutality can be increased
by the helplessness
"and fear of his victim."
The detail and the insights
and the understanding
that Dr Brittain shows,
before even the FBI was beginning
its profiling activities in America,
that was really quite remarkable.
'Detective Superintendent
Joe Beattie said yesterday...
'We are treating the doctor's
report very seriously.
'We have never wanted to put
the public into a panic,
'but we cannot exclude
the possibility
'that this man may strike again.
'The psychiatrist's report
underlines this.'
When you create a picture
of somebody who is really bizarre,
who gets sexual excitement
out of hurting others,
then that raises the intrigue
and the anxiety, of course.
And if you can say a serial killer
is just like anybody else,
wandering around the streets,
that makes people very anxious.
Is he an unusual character
living behind commonplace
conventional facade, or what is he?
I would say that this man
is possibly a loner.
He lives, I would think,
with a relative,
is a personable man, good looking.
He possibly occupies
some place in society
where he has a little authority.
"These people read,
study and collect books
"which relate in some way
to their perversion.
"Some are fiction.
"Some are not.
"But it is sufficient, however,
to say that they commonly relate
"to some of the following..."
Such a man, such
a superficially clean cut,
upstanding figure, must have
some kind of social contacts.
Yes, he does have social contacts.
They are aware of him,
but unfortunately
they are eliminating him in their
mind because of this clean-cutness
that you speak of.
The idea that there
could be some gentle,
withdrawn, almost shy individual,
who, beneath that facade,
could be capable of this
kind of sadistic sexual activity
would have been something I think
the general public would have found
really quite alarming.
Making available these sorts
of reports from experts
about the nature of the individual
who the police are looking for
is potentially very dangerous
and inappropriate.
If the expert has got it wrong,
that can be very misleading,
and there are plenty of cases
where the profile has been made
publicly available, and that
has meant the actual offender
has gone unnoticed, unexplored,
because the police, or in fact
other individuals have thought,
"Oh, no, it can't be him
because it doesn't fit the profile."
What Dr Brittain doesn't give us
are facts and figures,
are probabilities, are percentages,
or any empirical data about the type
of individual he's describing.
Nonetheless, it's an account
that would be useful
in terms of extending
investigators' understanding of the
type of individual
that they may be looking for,
particularly
at that point in our history.
It was a great story to do,
and it showed how the police
were trying absolutely everything
to get to the bottom of the story,
and identify the killer.
What does your own particular sixth
sense as an experienced detective
officer tell you -
is he still about, or is he gone?
I would feel he's still about.
Joe Beattie was determined
to get to the bottom of it.
Unfortunately,
that wasn't to be the case.
Joe had explored
every avenue he could,
and tried everything he could,
and it just got to the situation,
there was nothing left to do.
Joe Beattie, to the end of his days,
still regretted that
that was the case.
He calls it "the one that got away".
Well, I was drawn to the
Bible John murders back in 1996.
There'd been renewed interest
in the case.
They reckon
they might have a suspect,
and they've begun
digging up a corpse.
Police in Strathclyde say
they're close to confirming
the identity of a serial killer
known as Bible John,
who committed a series of murders
a quarter of a century ago...
'By the time dawn broke over
Stonehouse Cemetery,
'police had already prepared the way
for the exhumation of John McInnes
'from the grave where he's been
buried since his suicide
'16 years ago.'
He was an ex-army type.
He'd been at the Barrowland,
and they were going to dig up his
body and do some DNA tests on it.
DNA testing, genetic fingerprinting,
which matched samples from
Helen Puttock's clothing
with swabs from a member
of the suspected killer's family.
Jeannie Williams
never thought that John McInnes
was the right man.
She'd seen him in identity parades.
She didn't get that
jolt of recognition
that she would have expected.
And Joe Beattie agreed,
he didn't think McInnes
was the right man, either.
'Strathclyde Police received
a report last week from experts
'showing there is no match between
John McInnes' genetic fingerprint
'and semen stains found on the
tights of one of his victims,
'Helen Puttock,
who was strangled in 1969.'
Victims deserve answers.
I was a detective superintendent
of Strathclyde Police.
I was in the police
for 34 years.
In 2007, I was the
detective superintendent
running an operation
called Operation Anagram,
regarding a serial killer,
Peter Tobin.
'They have searched for nine days
here, using pickaxes, radar,
'and even their bare hands at times,
all in a vain search for bodies.
'Police suspect Tobin,
who's from Renfrewshire,
'of killing many young women,
and they still do.'
We researched any potential links
between Peter Tobin and
the so-called Bible John.
Peter Tobin,
with the first two murders,
was in Brighton.
He got married.
The artist's impression
that was compiled,
it shows that the suspect
had red hair.
We have photographs
of Peter Tobin in the '60s
and Tobin,
his hair is not like that.
There was DNA found on
Helen Puttock's tights.
One thing for sure, that DNA
is not Peter Tobin's,
because Peter Tobin's profile
has been compared against that.
There is nothing to indicate
that Peter Tobin
was involved in these cases.
When you look back
at the time of Bible John,
you realise the fascinating
complexity of it all
and how it has lasted
through the years,
and in particular,
to me as a writer,
I'm interested how it has
spawned so many theories.
In the Gallowgate
where the Barras was,
you crossed the road and there
was this big bit of land.
And there's a lot of things
with skips
out there for people
to dump rubbish.
And it seems at one time
they found a body.
And everybody says
that's one of Bible John's bodies.
I don't know if there was a lot
of maybe poor lassies that he done
that were never discovered,
you know.
That's the way it was in these days.
I was particularly interested
in the connection
of the Gloucester killer
Frederick West,
who had lived in Glasgow
during that period.
I've got my own theory
as to who it was,
and that was the Yorkshire Ripper.
I am not satisfied
that the same person
was involved in these three cases.
We can't definitively rule out
these being quite separate offences,
these being particular attacks
on particular individuals
that came out of
particular relationships.
But from what we do know,
and we don't know very much,
but from what we do know,
they look to me
to be too consistent
to be anything other than
the work of the same man.
The question is, of course,
why he stops,
and we find that offenders
do stop for all sorts of reasons.
They stop because they're arrested
for some other crime
and spend time in prison.
It could have been
that he'd moved around,
or was in the Army and got shipped
off abroad or something like that.
At that time it was
old-style policing.
They didn't have DNA.
They didn't have CCTV.
They didn't have forensic science
techniques that they have nowadays.
So it is very unfair
to go back and be critical
of what police officers
were trying to do many years ago.
I would hope, and I really,
you know, really hope someday
someone will be caught.
But the chances of that
are very slim.
I mean, I'm not getting
any younger,
and I would just love...to
find out the truth
and find that somebody
was punished for the hurt,
the heartache, that they've caused
for me and my family.
It hangs over Glasgow,
the Bible John story,
mainly because
he's never been found.
If we had an identity for this guy,
if it's one guy,
we could then parcel it up
and put it away.
But an undiscovered killer
becomes a permanence - part of
the folklore of the city.
Well, we've got to this
almost finished stage now,
got the overlapping teeth.
And we have to remember this
was done as a result of
at least three we know about,
girls who didn't ever make it home
after dancing with this chap.
These stories live on for a reason.
They sink into people's minds
and into their social lives,
into their understanding of the time
that they've lived through,
and those basic questions
about human nature.
How can you kill?
How can a society harbour a killer?
Does the media encourage
or hinder the killer?
All these questions
are still persisting,
and we have to keep going back
to them.
That's why we have to keep
thinking about it.
John... If your name is John.
John, if you're out there now,
watching and listening,
maybe it's time to come in
out of the glare.
The police want to talk to you,
wherever you are.
You should know that.