Bible John: A New Suspect by Jill Bavin-Mizzi

[barnflatwyngarde]

Apologies for the double post. Delete if able to.

Herlock's second option:

This seems barely credible. Four police officers of a high rank were prepared to risk their reputations, if not their careers, in order to cover up for a serial killer? John McInnes was hardly someone special- he was actually convicted, for fraud I think- a few years later.

As a former trade union representative I have had first hand experience of cover ups, collusion and law bending in local authorities in Scotland. Senior positions in the police force, NHS and education are invariably filled by freemasons, an organisation with a very strong presence in the Lanarkshire area and one that has a duty to help 'a brother in distress.' However I cannot believe that obligation extends to covering up for a murderer, especially one who could have struck again. In the McInnes case, were he guilty, then he could have been quietly sectioned by a medical panel and incarcerated inside the state mental hospital at Carstairs.

There is another organisation which wielded great power in central Scotland at the time but I will leave that for my final post today.

Great post cobalt.
Yes, when you lay out what is involved in a major cover up, it does look like a bit of a stretch.
A cover up of this scale, involving murders, is a very, very risky undertaking indeed.

I think I know what organisation you refer to.
I will await your post with interest.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Great post cobalt.
Yes, when you lay out what is involved in a major cover up, it does look like a bit of a stretch.
A cover up of this scale, involving murders, is a very, very risky undertaking indeed.

I think I know what organisation you refer to.
I will await your post with interest.

Barn, a final piece of translation for you. It’s from the final episode Something Else Was Pursued and it’s at around 3.02. It’s the sentence just before the line…So that's familiar?

Cheers.

[cobalt]

Hi Barn,

I think you have with great weariness I am sure understood the organisation I referred to. More powerful than the Freemasons or even the local Labour Party in Hamilton. I am referring to the UK government. Who else could have exerted the authority to baulk a murder investigation which saw four senior detectives converge on Hamilton for a photo opportunity to snare Bible John only to be denied. He was not far off being 'bang to rights.' Not the local Labour Party I am sure.

Peter Manuel, probably Scotland's most notorious serial killer inside the country, had a father who was a local Labour councillor and they lived pretty close to John McInnes albeit Manuel's murders were a decade earlier. On several occasions Manuel senior gave alibis to his son- who he knew was a bad piece of work- which may have stalled investigations. Manuel himself was an adept burglar with a great capacity to wriggle in and out of properties so it may be Manuel senior was offering what he thought were genuine alibis. But Manuel senior's position as a local councillor may have made the police back off a little. Which reminds me of BJ's harangue at the cigarette machine: 'Who is the MP for this area!' What a strange thing to say. Or Jimmy McInnes puling rank. Was it Jimmy McInnes who was on Jeannie's ID parade?

Stonehouse, where John McInnes grew up, was a village of around 3,000 people which it remains to this day. However from the 1950s there had been plans to make the area a 'new town' to relieve the pressure on Glasgow housing shortage. The plan was for a new town of 35,000 people in Stonehouse. It met resistance from Glasgow politicians who felt the money should be better spent on regenerating Glasgow so the scheme was up in the air in the mid 1960s. Until a seismic event occurred which resonates to this day.

The Scottish National Party were a fringe group in 1967. Their members were well intentioned, educated professionals, coupled with a few disgruntled lairds, some eccentrics and the odd poet. They had no roots what so ever in the working class of Scotland. Then Hamilton happened.

Today that is very different. The SNP are now the natural party of government in Scotland and have recently sent 50 MPs to the UK government. But back then they had nothing- not a single MP- until, in a political tsunami, they won the Hamilton by-election in 1967. It was beyond belief. Hamilton was regarded as a Labour 'fiefdom.' The bookies were offering 10/1 against on the day of the vote. The modern SNP argue on many issues, but to a man and woman they all agree that the Hamilton by election, won by Winnie Ewing in 1967, was the genesis of the modern SNP. Not just the Labour Party, who had been humiliated, but all the other parties were terrified. There was a new force in the land.

Enter the Stonehouse New Town project, kept on the back burner for many a year. This was a way to see off the SNP challenge they thought. But it never took root and only around 10,00 houses were ever built, if that. But the last thing they needed was a serial killer from Stonehouse in 1969 to put the kybosh on the whole programme. Was it a question of 'Politics dear chap.' Or did McInnes have connections to the local Labour Party that would have damaged their reputation at the ballot box? Of course I have no idea but the Labour Party in Scotland were from my personal experience terrified by the SNP surge at that time.

Would the Scottish Labour Party, part of the UK Labour government, cover up a murder? Undoubtedly yes. But only in theory as far as state power exerts itself. This was not state murder, this was an individual hell bent on killing women and if he was an embarrassment to the status quo then the obvious place for him was Carstairs. They could not know when or if he would stop.

I'm at a loss really. I've considered police incompetence, police corruption, political interference and am still struggling to make a decentargument about the Hamilton affair. All responses are welcome.