Bible John (General Discussion)

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi Cobalt,

Yes, you’d have thought that this incident, which we know definitely occurred, would have provided the police with a good focal point for jogging memories. Asking if anyone saw the incident would have been an obvious step and perhaps it happened but there is just no record of it? Again the issue of men and women not wanting partners to know where they were probably came into play to some extent but might we have expected someone at least to come forward? Not everyone there was married. I wonder if the location of the machine might have limited the amount of people that might have witnessed the scene? If it was located up a corner or somewhere that you would only see on the way to the loo or the cloakroom?

If Jeannie was the worse for wear that night and although we can’t prove it I personally wouldn’t dismiss it, might this have affected her ability to ID Bible John? A few drinks before and a bottle sneaked in would have done the trick to get someone from merry to drunk and I’m betting that some blokes sneaked something in to perhaps loosen the inhibitions of their dance partners, so perhaps Castlemilk was carrying something? We know that people aren’t always good at identifying faces. I don’t know but I certainly don’t want to dismiss Jeannie just because the spectre of drink has been raised.

[Herlock Sholmes]

To clarify: We now have two completely contradictory accounts of the McInnes ID parade.

According to Stoddart (1980) a man from Stonehouse was traced to Harthill (McInnes we have to assume) and an ID parade took place around 5pm on the Sunday. {Where?} Jeannie Langford failed to pick anyone out.

Yet cold case detectives announced in an article in The Times newspaper (2022) that McInnes avoided an ID parade, was hidden away from sight in Hamilton while his two co-workers were put on parade in Partick and naturally enough were not identified by Jeannie Langford. On being shown a photo of McInnes, admittedly many years later, she said she had never seen him before.{I appreciate that last part is ambiguous.}

So it remains unclear whether McInnes was ever put on an ID parade before Jeannie, never mind the other half a dozen witnesses that might have clarified matters.

There was no reason for high ranking detectives to swoop on Stonehouse unless they were intending to seize clothing from the suspect - something they could have delegated to local police anyhow.{Was this ever done?} McInnes should have been driven to Partick and processed there.

Frustrating isn’t the word.

It’s impossible to envision such high ranking officers swarming over to Stonehouse on the ‘off chance’ or for some piece of bog standard police work that uniform could easily have accomplished. The problem is that it’s difficult to avoid the impression that, at some point or other, something dodgy went on.

[cobalt]

The exact wording from the cold case reported in The Times is:

''The original inquiry team said that she {Jeannie} had failed to pick anyone out, but it has now been established that McInnes was never included in an identity parade for her or for any other potentially important witnesses.''

I'm not sure how much faith to place in the wording in bold type. It seems there is no record of such an ID parade taking place but that is not quite the same thing as one never having taken place. The detectives working on the cold case acknowledged that paperwork was missing from the files, so I don't know how they could have 'established' what is claimed.

So far as I can gather two of the pieces of information that indicate McInnes was questioned in Hamilton on the Sunday (the police arriving at a relative's house, the Moyle's advertising card link) actually originate from his cousin Jimmy McInnes, the very man suspected of 'weeding' the files. Although I think there is paperwork to support the high ranking detectives heading off to Stonehouse.

Detectives like Muncie, Goodall, Dalglish and Beattie basked in their media image as crime busters so it's inconceivable they would have covered for a serial killer on the grounds of some personal friendship. Yet the failure to subject McInnes to an ID parade in front of a number of witnesses meant that he was never properly eliminated at the time, hence the later attempts at a DNA match.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I’ve got a small grey hardback notepad that I’ve used in the past to make notes on the podcast along with any other thoughts or points that I’ve come across in books (after which I tend to gather the relevant stuff on my tablet) Looking back to one of the pages concerning the cold case detectives and the idea that Jeannie hadn’t actually seen McInnes on an ID parade I see that I’ve written in underlined capitols HOW DO THEY KNOW THIS?