The starting point was the ‘near match’ between the DNA taken from the semen stain on Helen Puttock’s stocking and the samples donated by relatives of John Irvine McInnes (his sister Janet and his brother Hector) She asks whether, after the initial near match, the police asked for more samples from family members that matched the killers age range. Or did they not bother because they were so convinced that it was John Irvine McInnes?
When the DNA from Puttock was tested the police gave no details about those results except that they used phrases like “a direct hit” and “a match” so there was no way of determining the actual strength of the DNA relationship but as they clearly believed that they had found some shared patterns this could only have come from a ‘shared genetic inheritance.’ And a Judge doesn’t take a decision to order an exhumation lightly.
So JBM’s starting point is that if she went back through generations of McInnes ancestors she would eventually find one that the family had in common with Bible John but as Bible John’s identity is unknown that couldn’t be achieved. So she decided to start by tracing back the ancestors of JIM’s siblings and look for the name Templeton which is one of the possible names that Jeannie felt that he had used in the taxi when talking to Helen. They could then identify each branch and then trace them forward through time eventually getting to the generation which included the McInnes siblings and Bible John. These people could then be compared to what was known about Bible John. Because DNA science was in its infancy in 1996 the ‘match’ between Hector and Janet and the DNA from the stain on Puttock’s stocking was probably overstated.
JBM created a ‘Generational Ancestor Chart’ which differs from a family tree because it doesn’t use siblings; only parents, grandparents, great-grandparents etc to try and reach a point of shared ancestry with Bible John. Seven or eight generations is about as far as can usually be gone due to the incompleteness of the records going back in time. Arriving at the seventh generation JBM found a Margaret Hunter who married a John Templetoune. Whatever the odds are they appear remote that the name possibly/probably given by the killer appears within this group of 63 surnames all relating to the McInnes’s family. Margaret Templeton’s father was called John. Margaret’s brothers John and James both had sons called John. And many of their other sons also passed on the name John, so that moving down the ancestry lines the number of John’s will likely increase. So if she followed the lines of descendants there would be a good chance of there being a John Templeton (definitely connected by DNA to the McInnes’s family) who fit the age, description and possibly the profile of Bible John.
(I’m not convinced about her suggestion that the killer gave his real surname because of some sense of morality about lying by the way. She could be right but i tend to favour that he might have believed that only Helen had heard him say it and that she wouldn’t live to tell anyone.)
The first one she found was John Muir Templeton’s who was 36 in 1969 which was outside Jeannie’s range of 25-30 but he was included in the ‘possibles.’ She widened the age range as the killer might have looked your or older than he actually was then used a database called Scotland’s People to search for John Templeton’s born between 1931 and 1946 inclusive. The search revealed in total 32 John Templeton’s but this search couldn’t show if they were traceable back to the marriage of Margaret Hunter to John Templetoune. The 32 were just ‘possibles.’
Next was a process of elimination. Of the 32, 2 sadly didn’t make it to adulthood to the total came down to 30. One emigrated to Canada with no evidence of his ever returning to Scotland. He was also a motor mechanic at the time of the murders and so on the grounds that Jeannie said that John’s hands were clean and uncut and his nails looked well manicured the list was further reduced to 29. JBM decided not to risk eliminating potentials on the grounds of possibly having an accent from a different part of Scotland as it’s often impossible to know if someone from x might have spent years in y which affected his accent.
Next she used physical description including Jeannie of course, the man seen with Jemima MacDonald and Night Bus Man (if we have BS man and Parcelman in the ripper case we should have at least one other nickname in this case I think?
) So she next needed photographs (social media etc) plus published or oral descriptions of each of the 29 ‘possibles.’ She eliminated a John James Templeton’s but this from a photograph in Farm Ireland so that was 28. John Ferguson Templeton was a member of a bowling club and had photographs online so 27. John F Templeton was a Stirling County Cricketer then umpire. Photos of his retirement show him to have been too small…26. John Shepherd Templeton had dark brown hair so 25. John Templeton had receding hair…24. John Sim Templeton had a significant overbite and a distinct gap between his two front teeth…23. John Barrie Templeton was a sergeant in the Boy’s Brigade and had dark hair…22. John Donnachie Templeton also had dark brown hair leaving 21. John Andrew Templeton’s hair was receding 11 years before the Puttock murder. He also had big ears…20. John Brian Templeton’s died at 33 and was from Galashiels and so would have had a Borders accent. He also had dark hair..19. John Alexander Templeton had a small, round face and was described by his daughter as “my wee dad”…18. John James Templeton had dark hair..17. John Cunningham Templeton also had dark hair…leaving 16 without photographs.Five grew up on farms but JBM sensibly wouldn’t assume that this meant manual labour (which would show on the hands) because labourers might have been employed instead. Records show some of the farms hiring such so the sons may never have worked in farming. Three certainly had though. John Dunn Templeton was still working as a farmer after his father died in 1972…15. John Drennan Templeton and John Templeton were clearly lifelong farmers which JBM felt would have shown in their hands…13.
She then moved onto the question of foster homes and Scotstoun. Jeannie mentioned John talking about foster homes or foster children when she believed that he was just trying to change the subject of the conversation but when they passed through Scotstoun he’d recognised a block of flats on Kingsway. He said something about his father or a relative of his working there and that the site was once occupied by a children’s home. From what Jeannie could recall of the Bible quote the police had felt that he was paraphrasing a passage in Exodus about a mother abandoning her infant. The Kingsway flats that he’d pointed out had used to be Scotstoun House Children’s Home which had been demolished in 1962. The admittance records were closed to the public for a hundred years. JBM’s plan was to try and determine which of the remaining 13 John Te,-Elton’s grew up with their families and which might have ended up in care.
John Muir Templeton was found to still be in contact with his father in 1965 and was married and living in the next town. He also signed his fathers death certificate so JBM eliminated him…12 (personally, I’d have been reluctant to eliminate him with just that information.) John Templeton lived in the same village as his parents until they he passed away and was buried with them…11.
Another John Muir Templeton was difficult to evaluate but there was enough evidence for continuing close family ties to eliminate him…10. John Shearer Templeton’s names passed through three generations and there was evidence of close family bonds..9. John McCloy Templeton was named after his father and grandfather which shows a continuing family link. Evidence of a close family caused him to be eliminated…8. John Kerrigan Templeton was recalled online by friends as having a close relationship with his brother and so was also eliminated…7. John Templeton’s family have posted about him online and was clearly from a close family…6. John Stewart Templeton was clearly from quite a well-to-do family who received a good education and gained a medical degree..5.
Then for 2 of the remaining 5 JBM could find very little information and none that helped the process of elimination. The final 3 however might all have spent time in care but what follows is some real complicated genealogy stuff which is a headache to a non-genealogist like me so I’ll skip it. One of the five was eliminated after a discovered photo showed dark hair…4. Lots more genealogy with inconclusive results giving Templeton’s who couldn’t be conclusively eliminated or connected. Then….
John Templeton (1945-2015) Son of a single mother named Emma Dresser Johnston. There is no evidence that she ever married the father of her child William Templeton and there’s no way via the records to trace his family back to a link with the McInnes family but he was living in an area that BJ was familiar with and when he began school at the age of 5 he was living with a foster family. Registers show that he went to nearby Bankhead School and that his guardian was a Mrs Fransman of Dumbarton Road.
One thing that Jeannie remarked on from the taxi conversations was that fact that John claimed to have been an only child but then mentioned a sister before quickly moving the conversation on. John Templeton was an only child but did have a foster-sister. Templeton’s stepfather also got an STD in the early years of his marriage this could have meant that an attitude towards adultery or even of women passing on diseases might have been passed down to John from either of his foster parents. Pure conjecture of course but at least worthy of a mention I think.
Templeton served an apprenticeship to become a compositor or typesetter but Jeannie recalled John saying that he worked in a laboratory but JBM found film footage of compositors in white lab coats using microscopes and chemical baths so, in the processing stage at least, compositors could have been said to have worked, at least in part, in a laboratory. But, let’s face it, ego and the desire to impress might have led to a bit of exaggeration.
In the taxi Jeannie recalled some talk about the cost of public transport with John exhibiting some knowledge of the cost of transport north of the Clyde. Templeton had lived in the Scotstoun/ Knightsbridge areas since before that age of 5 until his early twenties. It’s also shown that he continued to live in Dumbarton Road until around a fortnight before Jemima MacDonald’s murder, when he’d got married and moved, which meant that his knowledge of local transport would have been up-to-date.
Another interesting point concerns Night Bus Man who was seen getting off the number 6 night bus at Gray Street. An assumption has been made that he was heading for the ferry and so might have lived south of the Clyde but JBM makes the point that this stop involved backtracking to the ferry which he could have avoided by getting off a stop or two earlier. She also points out, validly, that the ferrymen didn’t recall seeing anyone of that description. Surely they would have spotted such a dishevelled figure with a scratched face in the early hours - how many passengers would they have had at that time after all? At the time of Helen Puttock’s murder John Templeton was living in a rental apartment at Melrose Gardens, North Kelvinside with his wife. ‘John’ had alighted the bus at the closest possible stop to Templeton’s address leaving him just a 25 minute walk home. Templeton had met his wife June at the Majestic Ballroom. He didn’t smoke and very rarely drank.
(From a personal point of view it has to be asked…why didn’t June notice his scratched face on the night of the Puttock murder? It was in the early hours though and could he have left for work then claimed to have scratched himself at work. Or might he simply have told her he’d scratched his face on the way home..maybe a fall and such a trivial thing hadn’t registered over time with his wife? Why would it have?)
The police actually came to Templeton’s house to question him on the grounds of his name (as mentioned by Jeannie) and his connection to Scotstoun (Jeannie again) but why did this take them 6 months. They had the name and the Scotstoun mention immediately after the murder so why did detectives take 6 months to find a ‘John Templeton’ in Glasgow? Perhaps they had originally dismissed the suggestion that he’d given his real name and then, as they became more desperate, they were more willing to look into it?
The photograph of Templeton looks extremely close to the Patterson painting in my opinion (and JBM’s of course) But there were three issues. The photograph has the hair parted on the opposite side. Also the missing tooth, present in portrait and photograph were on opposite sides of his mouth. There was also talk of very slightly overlapping from upper-middle teeth. It’s impossible from the photo to detect this in Templeton but a dentist did say that one looked slightly wide than the other which might have given a slight overlap..but again it was on the wrong side. Three out of three on the wrong side. JBM wondered if the photo had been printed in reverse from the negative (which no longer exists) She asked June to picture John in front of her and asked what side he parted his hair on. Instead of the right to left in the photo she said that it was left to right. So…hair parted on the correct side, missing tooth on the correct side (and in exactly the location place btw) and tooth that might have slightly overlapped, on the correct side.
To sum up JBM’s case against:
Bible John used the name John Templeton
The name exists within the ancestors of McInnes’s siblings
He fits the age profile
Born and raised in Glasgow..so correct accent
The police suspected that BJ was a foster child and Templeton’s definitely was one
His foster family lived within walking distance of Scotstoun House Children’s Home which John identified during the taxi ride
Had one sibling, a sister, as Bible John had implied
Didn’t smoke and drank very little
Very polite
He was living in Scotstoun when the new transport schedules and fair prices were came out. Bible John was familiar with these
The apartment that he moved into with his wife was a short walk from the stop where Night Bus Man alighted.
The photograph was a close match to the Patterson portrait.
……
It might appear a huge coincidence that the guy that the Police were initially interested in (John Irvine McInnes) was connected by DNA to the actual killer but coincidences do happen. The one big question for me (and I suspect others) is about the Moylan’s card that put the police onto McInnes in the first place. It wouldn’t have had his name on so could Helen have just got hold of a Moylan’s card from somewhere and when the company was contacted by the police their description of him fitted McInnes? Maybe the two salesman had actually seen him at Barrowland that night? Maybe McInnes had been to Barrowland previously and had tried to chat Helen up and he’d given her the card?
But if we consider the above coincidence then we have to consider the other. What are the chances of someone tracking through the ancestral links, finding a Templetoune and then 32 John Templeton’s descending from him? She then eliminates them one by one and the one she is left with just happens to look almost exactly like the Patterson portrait. And not only that there are the other points listed above which match. And we have found, from info given on here, that he wasn’t liked at work by female colleagues. The word ‘misogynist’ was even mentioned.
Could Jill Bavin-Mizzi have discovered Bible John?
I won’t nail any colours to any masts yet but yes, I think that she could have.
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