It was Scotland’s biggest unsolved murder inquiry – the search for a serial killer who hunted women in Glasgow’s dance halls.
Investigative journalist Audrey Gillan set out to tell the story of three forgotten victims killed by the man known as Bible John in the 1960s. But what she found shatters the belief it was the work of a triple murderer.
Her BBC podcast has revealed claims of a police cover-up and incompetence that suggests Bible John was a myth created by senior officers and the media. Cops are studying the claims. Below, Audrey shares her thoughts on the latest developments.
When I started this, the idea was really just to tell the story of the women – Patricia Docker, Jemima MacDonald and Helen Puttock.
As a journalist, this was the story that I always wanted to return to. I’d broken the news in 1996 that the police were about to exhume the body of a man they thought could be Bible John.
That story was on the front pages of newspapers but, if you looked at the coverage, those three women who were killed were just a sidebar in this massive piece. I wanted to make amends for that. I wanted to make amends for really not knowing very much about them.
I wanted to bring colour to the story of them – what music they liked, what clothes they wore, what gave them joy, really. That was the start. I never imagined what I was doing would lead to the police looking again at the investigation.
I never imagined it would leave people, including myself, asking the question: ‘Was Bible John a myth?’ I tried not to be categorical about it.
I wanted people to listen to my podcast and make up their own minds. I’d always kept hold of the police notes that I’d had from 1996. During the pandemic I was living on a small island and got them out.
Reading them again, the misogyny jumped out at me and made me furious. The women who died were described in the notes as being promiscuous, fond of a good time or who liked to drink – just because they went to the dancing.
I wanted to speak to the people they left behind and look at the ripple effect of these tragedies. I wanted to look at the whole legend of Bible John – a chapter that seems to have haunted
Glasgow and certainly has been around all my life. Going through my old notebooks, I started seeing very different things – including this line that there was a parallel story running here, a cracker.
I had to try to persuade the police officers who I had spoken to in 1996 that they should speak to me again. I didn’t think I would get them to sit down and reveal to me what they meant by “the cracker”.
I’m so grateful that they did – and I’ve also had the families of the women who died telling me that they are so grateful too. In 1996 the “young me” believed these three women were killed by the same man and this man was Bible John.
I believed too that the man they were going to exhume – John Irvine McInnes – was likely to be the killer. I know now retired detective chief inspector Jim McEwan and detective Brian Hughes – who worked on the 1996 reinvestigation – believe McInnes was the man who left the Barrowland in the taxi with Helen on the night she died but they do not believe he was the man who killed her.
And in my head now I do not think Patricia, Jemima and Helen were killed by the same man. I’m not a detective – but there are too many discrepancies. What links them is the Barrowland ballroom. Aside from that, they were all strangled, they were all menstruating and they all died close to home.
But all that could be coincidental. There’s no real evidence of a link. Yes, they were all strangled but, when women are murdered, it’s often the case they are strangled.
There are other things you could say that make their murders look very different. Patricia was found naked and her clothes were nowhere to be found.
When Jemima was found, the two pairs of pants she had on were still up and fully intact – so it doesn’t look like there had been a sexual encounter. I think the idea of there being a serial killer was a creation – especially when you consider that years later the man who headed the 1969 investigation, Joe
Beattie, gave an interview where he said: “We never connected the deaths.” So you have to ask: “What were you doing then?”
The myth of Bible John – the name – came from the police press conferences. The police were in a panic as initially they did think they had a serial killer. They had a witness – Helen’s sister Jean. She described a man who called himself John and how in the taxi they shared home she thought he was quoting from the Bible.
A journalist on the phone to his news desk said: “I know what to call this guy – Bible John.”
If you listen in my podcast to the dramatisation of the interview Helen’s sister Jean gave to me, you realise even the Bible element wasn’t that much. It just all ballooned into this massive narrative – this man who was picking women off the edge of the dancefloor. I don’t think such a myth could be created today.
Murder investigations today rely on DNA and fingerprint evidence. They can remain unsolved but it’s different. A police officer would never say now: “If I see him, I’ll know it’s him” – which is what happened with Beattie in this case.
The officers in 1969 were too reliant on their eyewitness and, because of that, other things in the investigation weren’t done. It’s very difficult to see how it would be possible for the police to go back now and reinvestigate everything that happened. But good on them if they say they’re going to try.
What evidence can they look at? What evidence remains preserved? What police officers who were there are still alive? What witnesses are still alive? The shadow of Bible John has hung over Scotland for more than 50 years. Was it all just a bit of a legend that grew legs?
But we can never forget that three women were killed, families were broken apart and other lives ruined.
Bible John: Creation Of A Serial Killer is on BBC Sounds
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