Bible John: A New Suspect by Jill Bavin-Mizzi

[Herlock Sholmes]

Maybe I am going off track a bit (apologies but its a trait of mine) Herlock in his very good summary reminds me that the two first victims handbags were missing.
Herlock (earlier) points us to the fact that a handbag belonging to Helen was found a few days after her murder in Saltcoats.
Although there is mention of this handbag being lost or stolen sometime before her murder it has to been seen as odd and arousing some suspicion. When we consider the McInnes was quickly eliminated as a suspect and how a murderer would soon get rid of evidence. Is there a link.
It has been established that Helen did not have a handbag with her at the Barrowlands and suggested she didn't use a handbag much but this seems worthy of further thought.
Not sure where this takes us but have the police missed yet another clue in all of this
NW

It does seem a strange coincidence that not long after the murder a handbag belonging to Helen is found in Saltcoats. How were they so certain as to when she’d lost it? We can only assume family. Coincidence occur though. It’s certainly a curiosity.

[Herlock Sholmes]

"Early enquiries produced a suspect immediately; he fitted the description given by Jeannie, he had been at the Barrowland, he had been at the Barrowland on the Thursday, he was married but was known to frequent the dancing. Someone told the police of his identity and that he was believed to live in Stonehouse. On the Sunday preparations were made for an identification parade to be held at 11.00am, but it didn't take place until 5.00pm; the suspect had moved from Stonehouse and the police chased around Lanarkshire all day until he was finally traced at Newarthill, near Airdrie. But when he was paraded Jeannie failed to identify anyone on the parade."

…..

It’s interesting that Beattie doesn’t mention Hamilton police station when talking to Stoddart (perhaps not particularly surprising if he considered it an unimportant detail? Or perhaps Stoddart thought it unimportant and so omitted it?) More interesting for me is that he makes no mention of the Moylan’s card which surely has to be considered the vital clue by anyone’s assessment? I can only assume that this was because he didn’t want to provide the Press with the starting point of a trail to follow. Is this an example of him shielding the McInnes’s family?

The fact that there was a 6 hour delay in getting McInnes onto an ID parade is explained by the fact, as we had all assumed, that it took time for the police track him down…maybe after a few hints from Sandy. So a likely explanation imo is that while the junior officers set off to find McInnes, Beattie and his three colleagues went and waited at the nearby Hamilton Station. At this time Alexander Hannah was back at Patrick Marine. Obviously they couldn’t have expected him to remain there indefinitely, so at some point I suspect that someone like Jimmy McInnes called Hamilton station and told Beattie that Hannah wanted to go…perhaps to work and Beattie told him to let him go as they could call him back at some other time but then, when Jeannie failed to pick McInnes out, they never bothered calling him in or indeed the bouncers or the manager of the Barrowland. This placed all of his eggs in one Jeannie-shaped basket. What if Hannah, one of the bouncers and the club manager had all said “yes, that’s the man.” Was Jeannie’s evidence so strong and so infallible that she would have outweighed three contrary ones. And it’s worth saying I believe….three witnesses that hadn’t been drinking and who weren’t trying to process the violent death of a sister.

It also has to be pointed out for balance that when Hannah and the bouncer eventually ID’d McInnes from photographs it was 17 years after the event. It’s also worth mentioning that one officer in the case (was it Johnstone? I’m unsure) said that Jeannie had told him that she’d been drunk that night. Maybe Jeannie didn’t want to admit that she was drunk because she felt that it might have reflected badly on her and maybe her sister too given the standards of the time? Alcohol wasn’t available at the Barrowland but it was well known that women often sneaked some in their handbags (and I’m sure that men would have found a way too - were they searched before going in?) Maybe Castlemilk John had a some alcohol which he shared with her? We can’t call Jeannie a liar without evidence but it was hardly a huge lie. Perhaps she did have a few drinks and if so perhaps she wasn’t the most reliable of witnesses?

[Herlock Sholmes]

4. Helen Puttock Meets Bible John
Helen and her sister Jeannie met two friends, Marion Cadder and Jean O'Donnell at the Trader's Tavern at 9.00pm and left for the Barrowland Ballroom at 1.00pm.
The Trader's Tavern is 130 yards from the Barrowland.

Hi Barn,

Minor typo…that should read “….left for the Barrowland Ballroom at 10.00pm.”

[barnflatwyngarde]

Hi Barn,

Minor typo…that should read “….left for the Barrowland Ballroom at 10.00pm.”

That's not a minor typo, it's a major typo.

Thanks for spotting it Herlock.

[Herlock Sholmes]

That's not a minor typo, it's a major typo.

Thanks for spotting it Herlock.

No problem Barn. I’ve done some real howlers on here. It’s easily done.

[cobalt]

HS wrote:

when Jeannie failed to pick McInnes out, they never bothered calling him in or indeed the bouncers or the manager of the Barrowland. This placed all of his eggs in one Jeannie-shaped basket.

That is probably the explanation which makes most sense, although it also screams incompetent police investigation.

Here's a couple of scenarios.
1. McInnes and his two Moylans colleagues finish their furniture show duties and it's suggested since they are in the big smoke they spend a night out on the town. They are all smartly dressed in suits so look the part. McInnes, possibly a bit older and the only National Service 'veteran,' promises his two lads from the sticks that he will show them the city lights and how 'to pull a bird.' However they have their work the following morning (Friday) so have to catch a late night bus back to Hamilton. Inside the Barrowland the colleagues eventually split up from McInnes and don't see him before making their way back to the Hamilton area on a late bus.

The problem here is that McInnes, dishevelled and with scratches on his person, has to turn up for work on the Friday morning same as them and he can hardly not attract attention looking as described at 2am on the Friday morning. Surely to goodness the police checked when he arrived at work and in what state of repair?

2. McInnes, being a tight fisted type, agrees to a night out at the Barrowland but says he will meet up with his colleagues later after going to a relative for his early evening meal. The colleagues enter the Barrowland, handing put the odd Moylan card, but McInnes has second thoughts and catches a bus back to Hamilton instead where he is remembered leaving the Ship Inn at closing time (10pm in these dark, distant days) just when Helen Puttock meets up with BJ. Given his alibi witnesses the police lose all interest in McInnes.

[Herlock Sholmes]

HS wrote:

That is probably the explanation which makes most sense, although it also screams incompetent police investigation.

Here's a couple of scenarios.
1. McInnes and his two Moylans colleagues finish their furniture show duties and it's suggested since they are in the big smoke they spend a night out on the town. They are all smartly dressed in suits so look the part. McInnes, possibly a bit older and the only National Service 'veteran,' promises his two lads from the sticks that he will show them the city lights and how 'to pull a bird.' However they have their work the following morning (Friday) so have to catch a late night bus back to Hamilton. Inside the Barrowland the colleagues eventually split up from McInnes and don't see him before making their way back to the Hamilton area on a late bus.

The problem here is that McInnes, dishevelled and with scratches on his person, has to turn up for work on the Friday morning same as them and he can hardly not attract attention looking as described at 2am on the Friday morning. Surely to goodness the police checked when he arrived at work and in what state of repair?

2. McInnes, being a tight fisted type, agrees to a night out at the Barrowland but says he will meet up with his colleagues later after going to a relative for his early evening meal. The colleagues enter the Barrowland, handing put the odd Moylan card, but McInnes has second thoughts and catches a bus back to Hamilton instead where he is remembered leaving the Ship Inn at closing time (10pm in these dark, distant days) just when Helen Puttock meets up with BJ. Given his alibi witnesses the police lose all interest in McInnes.

Both suggestion are entirely possible and are as likely as any other scenarios that we might come up with. Your suggestion about the card is one that I was thinking about a few days ago.

Is it possible that Helen had been given a Moylan’s card either by some other guy that night, as you suggest, or even some other night?

And could she just kept it in her purse (perhaps forgetting that it was there) and it somehow got found at the scene? Against this is the fact that our dishevelled bus traveller was supposed to have paid his fair from a red purse which, if Helen’s, makes it harder to see how it had been dropped from that.

A more likely suggestion perhaps is that it was in the pocket of her ocelot coat (something that she only wore on nights out) So, a) perhaps someone (maybe Murphy, Smith or McInnes or another Moylan’s employee) had given it to her either that night (although you would think that someone would only hand a card to a girl he was chatting up after a period of time and Jeannie doesn’t mention Helen talking to anyone else that night.) So maybe Helen had been given the card by one of the three (or even some other Moylan’s employee) on a previous visit and had put the card into her coat pocket?

The other problem is that women, I believe, discarded their coats in the cloak room before going inside to ‘mingle’ so is it more likely that she was given it on the way out by someone who was taking her home? The other suggestion is that it was the card that Jeannie saw John showing Helen in the taxi. Did the killer give it to her to impress her, expecting to retrieve it at the crime scene but he forgot? Or that he looked but couldn’t find it in the dark?

[cobalt]

We are on tilling the same ground here HS and I hope it one day proves to be fertile. We need to know the following however:

Was McInnes in the Barrowland on the night of the Helen Puttock murder?
It's a crucial point in our putting him in the frame. We assume so, but the only evidence we have is Beattie's recollections from a decade after the crime. We simply do not know. Beattie could have been referring to a Moylans colleague resident in Stonehouse who was put on ID parade, difficult to find, and not identified. We can't assume Beattie is referring to McInnes; our only supporting evidence comes from his family members which is not good enough.

I'm still not convinced that McInnes was ever put on an ID parade in front of Jeannie. And if he was, and like Alphon in the A6 murder he was not picked out, his alibi should nonetheless have been hunted down to proving point. This does not appear to have happened in either case.

The Moylans card remains the Othello handkerchief of the murder. If not McInnes, then who? HS' comments on women's coats and cloakrooms are very convincing, so how did the card end up 12 miles away from the furniture warehouse in a part of west central Glasgow where the victim, reportedly impressed by the flash of a card at the Barrowlands, was found?

[OneRound]

Hi OneRound,

Its good to see you making an appearance

NW has already replied to your post but I’ll just add that as far as I can recall it was never actually stated who, if any, accompanied the four senior officers to Stonehouse ...
...

Hi Herlock and all - thanks to you and all for your responses and supportive comments; especially you, New Waterloo, too kind.

As far as anything is clear concerning the investigation of these murders, Joe Beattie and three other senior officers drove to Stonehouse seeking John McInnes. However, it not clear how many, if any, of their junior colleagues went with them.

Believing that they were on the cusp of getting their man, I take the point that Beattie and the other three would have been wary of spooking McInnes and so might not have wanted to storm in mob handed where they expected to find him. However, they would not have overlooked that a likely triple murderer might have turned violent and/or tried to escape. In addition, as mentioned earlier, interviews with family members and property searches would need to be promptly carried out once McInnes had been taken into custody. All this firmly points imo to a fairly sizeable number of junior officers being with the top four or at least lurking closely nearby.

Why then (as far as I know) was this never confirmed around the time or even in the intervening years by Stonehouse residents or others? Just maybe, things were not quite this way and Beattie plus his three colleagues never actually had a belief that McInnes was their man. Why not? Well, this is where my speculative stab (no bad taste pun intended) comes in. Although the name of John McInnes had undoubtedly come up in some way, I wonder if his police cousin Jimmy had strongly assured and virtually persuaded Beattie that John was incapable of murder. Beattie nonetheless realised that John McInnes would still need to be seen and spoken to before he could be ruled out. Consequently, partly as a favour to Jimmy, Beattie undertook to do this himself but insisted on being accompanied by three senior colleagues so as to pre-empt any future suggestions of a whitewash. IF the Stonehouse trip was made with the expectation of ruling John McInnes out, there would have been no need for the presence of any junior officers.

I am certainly not going to die in a ditch insisting that is what happened and why but the top four being accompanied by no junior officers (if that was the case) would appear to tally with John McInnes' alibi - whatever it was - being too readily accepted, the related at best half-hearted attempts to check from others on his possible involvement and the absence of documentation in police records.

Best wishes,
OneRound

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi Herlock and all - thanks to you and all for your responses and supportive comments; especially you, New Waterloo, too kind.

As far as anything is clear concerning the investigation of these murders, Joe Beattie and three other senior officers drove to Stonehouse seeking John McInnes. However, it not clear how many, if any, of their junior colleagues went with them.

Believing that they were on the cusp of getting their man, I take the point that Beattie and the other three would have been wary of spooking McInnes and so might not have wanted to storm in mob handed where they expected to find him. However, they would not have overlooked that a likely triple murderer might have turned violent and/or tried to escape. In addition, as mentioned earlier, interviews with family members and property searches would need to be promptly carried out once McInnes had been taken into custody. All this firmly points imo to a fairly sizeable number of junior officers being with the top four or at least lurking closely nearby.

Why then (as far as I know) was this never confirmed around the time or even in the intervening years by Stonehouse residents or others? Just maybe, things were not quite this way and Beattie plus his three colleagues never actually had a belief that McInnes was their man. Why not? Well, this is where my speculative stab (no bad taste pun intended) comes in. Although the name of John McInnes had undoubtedly come up in some way, I wonder if his police cousin Jimmy had strongly assured and virtually persuaded Beattie that John was incapable of murder. Beattie nonetheless realised that John McInnes would still need to be seen and spoken to before he could be ruled out. Consequently, partly as a favour to Jimmy, Beattie undertook to do this himself but insisted on being accompanied by three senior colleagues so as to pre-empt any future suggestions of a whitewash. IF the Stonehouse trip was made with the expectation of ruling John McInnes out, there would have been no need for the presence of any junior officers.

I am certainly not going to die in a ditch insisting that is what happened and why but the top four being accompanied by no junior officers (if that was the case) would appear to tally with John McInnes' alibi - whatever it was - being too readily accepted, the related at best half-hearted attempts to check from others on his possible involvement and the absence of documentation in police records.

Best wishes,
OneRound

Hi OneRound,

It’s a good suggestion and let’s face it, none of us know what exactly happened. Maybe it was something of a ‘delicate’ mission given the family links (I believe that there were three members of the McInnes’s family in the police force?) For my part though I think that the telling information is in what Charles Stoddart said after interviewing Joe Beattie: “On the Sunday preparations were made for an identification parade to be held at 11.00am, but it didn't take place until 5.00pm; the suspect had moved from Stonehouse and the police chased around Lanarkshire all day until he was finally traced at Newarthill, near Airdrie.”

It’s hard to imagine four such senior officers doing perhaps 4 or 5 hours of legwork around Lanarkshire trying to track down McInnes (when I say ‘track down’ I’m not implying that he was in any way on the run btw). Your point about no one mentioning any great police presence is a fair one but perhaps this was an example of them keeping this particular part of the investigation low key and discreet. I can perhaps imagine a plain clothes sergeant and Constable going to the door with the four senior officers and maybe a couple of other junior officers sitting in cars waiting?

What certainly makes me suspicious is that when Jim McEwan and Brian Hughes interviewed Joe Beattie in hospital in 1996 he recalled the trip over to Stonehouse but he couldn’t recall the name of the suspect. Really? How could it be the case that he and three other senior officers go over to Stonehouse to arrest and question his friend and colleague’s cousin, during the most high profile of cases, one that was the biggest of his career…and he couldn’t remember the suspects name? I don’t know what everyone else thinks but I struggle to accept that. I know that Beattie was in hospital at the time but the two detectives said that there was nothing wrong with his faculties (he had Crohn’s Disease) At the very least, for me, it shows that Beattie had been determined to keep the McInnes’s name out of it.

[Herlock Sholmes]

We are on tilling the same ground here HS and I hope it one day proves to be fertile. We need to know the following however:

Was McInnes in the Barrowland on the night of the Helen Puttock murder?
It's a crucial point in our putting him in the frame. We assume so, but the only evidence we have is Beattie's recollections from a decade after the crime. We simply do not know. Beattie could have been referring to a Moylans colleague resident in Stonehouse who was put on ID parade, difficult to find, and not identified. We can't assume Beattie is referring to McInnes; our only supporting evidence comes from his family members which is not good enough.

I'm still not convinced that McInnes was ever put on an ID parade in front of Jeannie. And if he was, and like Alphon in the A6 murder he was not picked out, his alibi should nonetheless have been hunted down to proving point. This does not appear to have happened in either case.

The Moylans card remains the Othello handkerchief of the murder. If not McInnes, then who? HS' comments on women's coats and cloakrooms are very convincing, so how did the card end up 12 miles away from the furniture warehouse in a part of west central Glasgow where the victim, reportedly impressed by the flash of a card at the Barrowlands, was found?

Something was bugging me about what Stoddart said after interviewing Beattie and I’ve just remembered what it was:

“On the Sunday preparations were made for an identification parade to be held at 11.00am, but it didn't take place until 5.00pm;”


And yet, in the podcast DC Brian Hughes said:

“ Now, this was quite significant as far as our inquiry was concerned because the date would have been Sunday, the 2nd of November, and they took him on the route at about two in the afternoon, I think it was, they took him. This goes back to this action when Joe Beattie and three others went out to Stonehouse because it appeared by looking at the statements that they went out round about at kind of morning time of the 2nd. Subsequently, at two o'clock in the afternoon on the Sunday, an identification parade was held where Jeannie viewed the people but didn't pick anybody out.”


Hughes and McEwan had seen the records but Stoddart hadn’t. He was only going on what Joe Beattie had told him (or wanted him to know perhaps?). So Beattie said that the ID parade was delayed because they had to track down McInnes’s and didn’t occur until 5.00. And yet, according to Hughes, going on police files, said that an ID parade in front of Jeannie took place at 2pm.

. I'm still not convinced that McInnes was ever put on an ID parade in front of Jeannie.

Neither am I Cobalt.

[New Waterloo]

Jeannie in the podcast (actress speaking words) seems pretty convincing to me. She states only one ID parade and I think she means official parade comprising a detained suspect at Partick. She says she welled up (about to cry) and that he fitted to description more than the others. We do not know if this was McInnes but although she doesn't positively ID the man she seems unsure of his hair colour.

What is very significant is that out of all the dozens and dozens of men who she looked at during casual ID procedures for many months. when the authorities said they were exhuming a body out of all those men she says that she thought it was the man she saw on this Partick ID. But discounts this as McInnes when she sees his photo in the paper stating he looks more like Castlemilk John.

Why isn't this ID in the police case records.

It could simply be that because it was negative it wasn't recorded.

If the man was arrested to be put on the ID parade it should be in custody records, or in officers note books but perhaps not in the investigation files held by the murder team and the later cold case team.

Perhaps it wasn't McInnes and that's why Beatty couldn't remember the name but perhaps it was Bible John!

NW

[barnflatwyngarde]

Something was bugging me about what Stoddart said after interviewing Beattie and I’ve just remembered what it was:

“On the Sunday preparations were made for an identification parade to be held at 11.00am, but it didn't take place until 5.00pm;”


And yet, in the podcast DC Brian Hughes said:

“ Now, this was quite significant as far as our inquiry was concerned because the date would have been Sunday, the 2nd of November, and they took him on the route at about two in the afternoon, I think it was, they took him. This goes back to this action when Joe Beattie and three others went out to Stonehouse because it appeared by looking at the statements that they went out round about at kind of morning time of the 2nd. Subsequently, at two o'clock in the afternoon on the Sunday, an identification parade was held where Jeannie viewed the people but didn't pick anybody out.”


Hughes and McEwan had seen the records but Stoddart hadn’t. He was only going on what Joe Beattie had told him (or wanted him to know perhaps?). So Beattie said that the ID parade was delayed because they had to track down McInnes’s and didn’t occur until 5.00. And yet, according to Hughes, going on police files, said that an ID parade in front of Jeannie took place at 2pm.



Neither am I Cobalt.

If the record of the ID lineup that McEwan and Hughes saw is an accurate representation of what happened, then Stoddart is wrong when he says the ID lineup took place a 5.00pm on the Sunday.

Stoddart tape recorded all his interviews with Beattie, so when he says that the ID lineup took place at 5.00pm on the Sunday, he is accurately reporting what Beattie told him.

Stoddart's book came out in 1979, a full ten years after the last murder, so I think it is fair to assume that Stoddart spoke to Beattie nine or ten years after the last murder.

I find it hard to believe that Joe Beattie remembered the exact time the Sunday ID lineup took place nine or ten years later.

Why would he not only remember that the ID lineup took place at 5.00pm on the Sunday, but also ensure through Stoddart that this important 5.00pm time entered the public record?

When Jeannie attended the 2.00pm interview at Partick Marine, John Irvine McInnes was at Hamilton Police Station, safely out the road.

Is it possible that John Irvine McInnes was brought to Partick Marine and was actually in the building at 5.00pm, long after the main witness had left the building?

The big story here is not the fact that Joe Beattie is lying, the big story here is why he is lying.

All I can think of is that Beattie was lying to protect the suspect that he and his three colleagues drove out to Lanarkshire to pick up.

That suspect was John Irvine McInnes.

Maybe it was because he was a relative of Beattie's old colleague Jimmy McInnes, or maybe there was some other pressing reason why John Irvine McInnes had to be shielded.

But shielded he was.