Bible John (General Discussion)

[OneRound]

Here is an interesting photo of Joe Beattie in the incident room.
What is interesting is that there are some photo-fits of Bible John that I hadn't seen before.

Hi all,

Looking at the third and fifth photo-fits along from bottom left, I wonder if any elderly relatives of snooker player Steve Davis have ever been considered a suspect.

More seriously, this is an excellent thread and very helpful to a Bible John newbie like me who has known of the case for a long time but very little of the (ascertainable) details. As some here know, I regularly travel up the A6 thread but that stops short of Glasgow.

Anyway, I’m currently away but will listen intently to Audrey Gillian’s podcasts once back and see if I might join your discussions.

Best wishes,
OneRound

[cobalt]

Great to have you on board OR. Your contributions to A6 thread have helped make it what it is.

This Bible John thread is also of very good quality. Just seekers after justice and the truth. People who are not just using their heads but also their hearts.

[Ms Diddles]

Hi all,

Looking at the third and fifth photo-fits along from bottom left, I wonder if any elderly relatives of snooker player Steve Davis have ever been considered a suspect.

More seriously, this is an excellent thread and very helpful to a Bible John newbie like me who has known of the case for a long time but very little of the (ascertainable) details. As some here know, I regularly travel up the A6 thread but that stops short of Glasgow.

Anyway, I’m currently away but will listen intently to Audrey Gillian’s podcasts once back and see if I might join your discussions.

Best wishes,
OneRound

Welcome aboard OneRound!

I still need to re-listen to the podcasts myself as I have largely forgotten their content.

Thanks to Barn & Herlock for the reminders.

I think you'll find them interesting!

[Herlock Sholmes]

Karl Marx noted back in 1848 that Crime was a great contributor to the capitalist system in terms of finance and employment. The USA prison system has taken him at his word and now jails around 25% of the world prison population within its own borders. Others opposed to its regime are jailed elsewhere. No numbers available on that, although Julian Assange is perhaps the best known victim recently.

So Wilson and Harrison are in it for the money. Prestige as well I suppose. Wilson is a self-described 'governor' who as far as I can see was running a borstal before he branched out into becoming an expert on sexual deviants. Harrison was I think a dog handler for Kettering Police, before he proclaimed himself a 'detective' who had spoken with Reggie Kray, Ted Bundy and possibly Jack the Ripper in his imagination. Harrison's FBI links have been completely debunked. They are a pair of charlatans.

I'm sure we often pick up the wrong thread on this site but at least we are genuine seekers after the truth. That pair are bought men, selling books to credulous people with less grasp of reality than any of Bible John's victims. Ignore them, is my advice.

Well said.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi all,

Looking at the third and fifth photo-fits along from bottom left, I wonder if any elderly relatives of snooker player Steve Davis have ever been considered a suspect.

More seriously, this is an excellent thread and very helpful to a Bible John newbie like me who has known of the case for a long time but very little of the (ascertainable) details. As some here know, I regularly travel up the A6 thread but that stops short of Glasgow.

Anyway, I’m currently away but will listen intently to Audrey Gillian’s podcasts once back and see if I might join your discussions.

Best wishes,
OneRound

Hi OneRound,

It’s always good to hear your thoughts. That will be you and Cobalt from the A6. Who will be next? My money is on Moste.

btw, the transcripts for the podcasts are available but I have a feeling that they might have been taken via technology. Certainly not by someone that’s ever heard a Scottish accent.

[barnflatwyngarde]

Here is a link to a very interesting, if relatively brief at 25 minutes, documentary on Bible John.
What is particularly interesting that there are a few detectives who worked on the case talking about their experiences.

Also there is an interesting clip of Carmichael Lane, the scene of Pat Docker's murder, that shows that the body was located in a slight alcove next to a garage in the lane, this would give the killer a certain degree of privacy in which to commit the murder.

I think that this case requires lots of pulling together of little pieces of information wherever we can find them to try and understand it better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1OFEq1nvV8&t=1s

[barnflatwyngarde]

The outside of Jemima MacDonald's murder site.

[barnflatwyngarde]

inside shot of the derelict flat where Jemima MacDonald was murdered.

[barnflatwyngarde]

Police examining the embankment at Earl Street, the site of Helen Puttock's murder.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Nice one Barn.

[barnflatwyngarde]

Interesting extract from the book "The Real Taggarts: Glasgow's Post-War Crimebusters" by Andrew Ralston which appears to corroborate the claims made in Audrey Gillan's podcast that proper procedures were not followed in relation to ID parades, the logging of witness statements and "action 14" which Gillan's police sources indicate was in relation to the questioning of John McInnes.

The book was published in 2017, a full five years before Gillan's podcast.

It is distinctly possible that the sources are the same.

"The exhumation of McInnes was part of a wider review of the case which Strathclyde police set up in September 1995 and this found various anomalies in the original investigation. Documentation relating to a total of 5,031 actions taken at the time remained in the files, but no paperwork existed for action no. 14, an enquiry carried out in Lanarkshire on 2 November 1969 presumed to involve McInnes; there were conflicting opinions expressed by surviving officers as to who appeared in an identity parade around that time; the statement of a woman who regularly attended the Barrowland ballroom and claimed to know the identity of the killer was missing; the bite mark on Helen’s arm had not been intimated to members of the original enquiry team. In addition, while much emphasis had been placed on the description of the possible killer by Helen’s sister, who shared the cab journey with him, others who saw the man, such as the taxi driver and Barrowland stewards, do not seem to have been asked to view suspects in an identification parade or by photographs." (Page 230)

[Herlock Sholmes]

Interesting extract from the book "The Real Taggarts: Glasgow's Post-War Crimebusters" by Andrew Ralston which appears to corroborate the claims made in Audrey Gillan's podcast that proper procedures were not followed in relation to ID parades, the logging of witness statements and "action 14" which Gillan's police sources indicate was in relation to the questioning of John McInnes.

The book was published in 2017, a full five years before Gillan's podcast.

It is distinctly possible that the sources are the same.

"The exhumation of McInnes was part of a wider review of the case which Strathclyde police set up in September 1995 and this found various anomalies in the original investigation. Documentation relating to a total of 5,031 actions taken at the time remained in the files, but no paperwork existed for action no. 14, an enquiry carried out in Lanarkshire on 2 November 1969 presumed to involve McInnes; there were conflicting opinions expressed by surviving officers as to who appeared in an identity parade around that time; the statement of a woman who regularly attended the Barrowland ballroom and claimed to know the identity of the killer was missing; the bite mark on Helen’s arm had not been intimated to members of the original enquiry team. In addition, while much emphasis had been placed on the description of the possible killer by Helen’s sister, who shared the cab journey with him, others who saw the man, such as the taxi driver and Barrowland stewards, do not seem to have been asked to view suspects in an identification parade or by photographs." (Page 230)

Don’t you just love the word ‘anomalies’ Barn? Procedural or other types of human error, examples of corner-cutting or attempts to cover something up? I’m still finding it difficult not to conclude that the police (or certain members) were, at some level, trying to keep John Irvine McInnes out of the investigation. I’m also finding it difficult to believe that they would have allowed a man who had possibly killed three women to escape justice….if only because their own reputations were at stake.

[cobalt]

This is where the issue of a police 'cover up' hits a brick wall.

We now know that Joe Beattie led a senior team of Glasgow detectives down to Hamilton police station where John McInnes had been taken. If they were confident he was, or even might be their man, it made no sense not to charge him with murder. A Masonic handshake and a warning of 'Don't do it again Irvine -otherwise it's Barlinnie!' would be utterly worthless and not only to their own careers. What would have happened if McInnes had, despite his promises, struck again? Where would that leave Beattie and his fellow detectives? Especially if any hint of their 'deal' emerged in public.

If, following the McInnes interview, he had been sectioned and sent to Carstairs mental hospital then that could be interpreted as a way of police sweeping the embarrassment under the carpet. But I can't see how they could take the risk of him striking again (he was at large for a further ten years) without doing untold damage to their own careers and the reputation of Glasgow police.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I’ve wondered about other possibilities Cobalt but we just don’t know enough genuine facts to achieve any real levels of confidence. So..

a) The police could find nothing against McInnes apart from the card so they doubted his guilt or even believed him innocent (maybe even with a bit of ‘help’ from Jimmy McInnes) So they covered up to protect the McInnes name?

b) The found proof that McInnes was innocent and decided to keep the name out of the investigation to protect the family.

The problem with the b) is that when Jimmy was spoken to during the cold case investigation surely he’d have just told the detectives about the evidence proving his cousins innocence? Jimmy’s actions seemed to point to the fact that there was at least some suspicion about his cousin.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I keep coming back in my thoughts to the question ‘why was McInnes arrested?’ I realise that it was due to the Moylan’s card of course but the card itself couldn’t have identified John Irvine McInnes. What I mean by that is that it couldn’t have had his name on it or else the police wouldn’t have taken 2 days to get to him. So there must have been something else.

Could it simply have been that only x amount of Moylan’s workers would have had a card to give out and so the police had to work their way through those people eliminating them one at a time before they got to McInnes? This doesn’t seem likely according the the company boss who could only recall a very small number of his staff being spoken too and if this was the case then they would surely have got to Stonehouse in much less than two days.

Or is it more like that there was another factor which, along with the card, pointed to McInnes? I think Cobalt recently mentioned the two Moylan’s workers Thomas Murphy and Leonard Smith who were at a Glasgow furniture show together before heading to Sloane’s then the Barrowland. I also wondered if these two (or one of them) had mentioned spotting McInnes there that night. But, according to the podcast these two were never ‘asked’ about McInnes. I don’t know if the cold case detectives talked to these two or whether they were simply going on the records of the time but it does appear that the McInnes name hadn’t come up. Mickey Moylan could recall McInnes’s name being mentioned either so it looks, with what we have, that these two Moylan’s workers hadn’t seen McInnes at the Barrowland or in any way pointed a finger at him.

So the cold case detectives believe that the card led the police to Stonehouse but it seems to me that it was unlikely to have been the card alone. It seems unlikely to have been physical evidence therefore it looks like someone said something. But who was it and what did they say?