Bible John (General Discussion)

[barnflatwyngarde]

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.

On the 2nd November, two days after Helen Puttock's body was found, four police officers went out to Stonehouse to interview John McInnes.

The officers were Det Supt Joe Beattie, Det Supt Tom Valentine, Det Insp William Campbell and Det Insp Tom Grant.

I don't know the exact make up of the original Bible John murder team, but if these four officers were in the team, then it is likely that these four policemen who went out to see John McInnes were the top ranking officers working on the case.

I personally think that there would be one Detective Superintendent leading the murder squad, and that man was Joe Beattie, so why was it necessary for Det Sup't Tom Valentine to tag along?

What was it about John McInnes that necessitated the four senior officers working the case to go and see him?

While these four officers were talking to John McInnes at Hamilton Police Station, suspicious in itself, Jeannie Langford was attending an ID parade at Partick Police Station.

So we are left with the scenario that while a viable suspect was in an ID parade at Partick, the top four senior officers were chatting to John McInnes at Hamilton, and after this incident, no mention of John McInnes was put on the case files.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I was thinking last night about the question of Pat Docker being naked when her body was discovered. As the killer took her clothes away this left us assuming that he must have had a car. A random killer might have carried a bag with him but not someone who had been to the Barrowland for a night of dancing so this suggests that the killer possibly/probably had a car/van. Naturally this has led us to question whether she killed by a different man to the one that killed MacDonald and Puttock, but is this really such an obstacle? There was an 18 month gap between the Docker and MacDonald murders so the killers own situation might have changed leaving him without a car, but perhaps we have another explanation that might not have been previously considered (unless I’ve missed, it which is possible)


On February 26th, Dalgleish made two appeals.

1. The driver of a Morris 100 Traveller which had stopped in Langside Avenue at the entrance to Queen’s Park late on Thursday 22nd. A young woman had got into the passenger street and the car had headed to Langside monument. They were never traced.
2. A white Ford consul which was seen turning into Overdale Street at 11.30pm that night. A man and a woman had driven slowly around the area.

Might the answer be simply that one of these cars was actually the killer’s and after this appeal he realised that his car had now become a liability? What if it was seen again at or near a future crime scene? So did he decide to leave the car at home if he couldn’t afford to get a new one?

[Herlock Sholmes]

I think Cobalt make a very important point about the fact that if there was evidence when they went to see McInnes he would have been charged. I don't think they could have made a joint decision not to. Madness not to.

I am going to a bit irritating again and return to the bite marks.

We are making a mistake by referring to the fact that McInnes had dentures fitted. Yes this is relevant in the later exhumation and later photographs when faces can change slightly do to the dentures.

If there were bite marks the police would have been aware of this very early. I cannot accept that the murder team were not aware of the bite marks as Beatty openly showed the teeth mold to the media.

I would suggest that maybe when they spoke with McInnes his teeth did not match the bite marks. I mean they could see his teeth when they spoke to him!

Doesnt mean he wasnt the killer though

NW

We know from the podcast that when questioned during the cold case investigation PC MacGill (who was one of the two first officers on the scene) couldn’t recall anything about a bite mark (although he was recovering from a stroke at the time which admitted had affected his memory) You make a good point though NW. Might it have been the case that Jean had unintentionally exaggerated how much the man’s front teeth overlapped? Whatever was the case though their priority would surely have been to get this man in front of Jean? The podcast suggests the possibility that Jean never actually saw McInnes ( I intend to look at this part again this afternoon) She saw a picture years later and said that it was very close but she didn’t think that it was him but the photograph was taken a few years after the murder. Hannah, when he saw it, said that the man looked older in it so maybe this is what made Jean reject it?

[New Waterloo]

I think Cobalt make a very important point about the fact that if there was evidence when they went to see McInnes he would have been charged. I don't think they could have made a joint decision not to. Madness not to.

I am going to a bit irritating again and return to the bite marks.

We are making a mistake by referring to the fact that McInnes had dentures fitted. Yes this is relevant in the later exhumation and later photographs when faces can change slightly do to the dentures.

If there were bite marks the police would have been aware of this very early. I cannot accept that the murder team were not aware of the bite marks as Beatty openly showed the teeth mold to the media.

I would suggest that maybe when they spoke with McInnes his teeth did not match the bite marks. I mean they could see his teeth when they spoke to him!

Doesnt mean he wasnt the killer though

NW

[cobalt]

The delay in tracking down the Moylans Furniture staff might have been as simple as it being the Sunday morning when the body and card were discovered. The police were very alert in tracking down the taxi driver, to their credit, but maybe it took till the Monday and the shop opened until they could establish who carried advertising cards. But like you, I feel there is something more as to why McInnes was of interest.

As to why McInnes was apparently eliminated from the enquiry in 1969 we simply do not know. It's a real puzzle since 25 years later the Scottish legal system went to great lengths to try and connect him to the same crime. Exhuming bodies is very correctly a last gasp type of justice and usually avoided. So we can be confident that it was the DNA link that authorised the exhumation rather than advertising cards or missing documents in police files.

So why did McInnes walk from police custody back in 1969? I would like to know more about the testimony of his fellow workers, Murphy and Smith. Did the three go as a group to the Barrowland after their afternoon sales pitch (I am guessing that McInnes was in attendance), or have a casual arrangement to meet up? Did they alibi McInnes to the effect that all three left the Barrowland having failed to 'pull a bird' and confirm McInnes boarding a bus back to Stonehouse? Did they admit to handing out a few of their cards in the course of the evening to impress the local 'talent.'

We don't know who Helen Puttock danced with that evening. Yes, she picked up an interested party in BJ, but who was she dancing with beforehand? She must have been there for at least two hours before leaving from what I can deduce. Women will go up and dance with a friend if no one is showing any interest, then on the dance floor have a brief jig with some guy and sometimes that's the end of it. Maybe she got a card from one of the Moylans' group who simply couldn't remember her when questioned. Maybe she danced with McInnes briefly, he was eliminated by police as a suspect, and the decision was made to keep his name out of it due to family connections.

[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?

[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.

[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]

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.

[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]

Nice one Barn.

[barnflatwyngarde]

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

[barnflatwyngarde]

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

[barnflatwyngarde]

The outside of Jemima MacDonald's murder site.

[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