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Just for anyone that hasn’t read the book this is from Glasgow Crime Fighter: The Les Brown Story.
Brown was a Glasgow police officer and I have to admit that I haven’t read the whole book yet just the small Bible John content but having a quick skim it looks like a lively read and a trawl through some interesting Glasgow characters (perhaps none that you’d want accompanying you to a poetry reading though
) He writes:
Joe was of the opinion that Helen Puttock's sister was the key witness since she had spent time in Barrowland in the company of the man who killed her sister. I was not so sure that this was the right way to go. Instead, I thought we should be concentrating on women who may have been picked up by Bible John but not killed by him. However, Helen's sister was taken all over town and asked to be on the lookout for guys who looked like the man she shared a taxi with on the night of the murder. It didn't work.
Because of the poster and the press interest, it seemed, at times, that the whole of Glasgow was on the hunt for the killer. Occasionally, possible suspects were picked up but they were all eliminated. One of them was a man called John McInnes but Helen's sister did not pick him out at an identity parade and other witnesses who had the chance to pick him out also failed to finger him. He committed suicide in 1980 aged forty-one. The rumours about him lingered on till the late nineties and only then, after his body had been exhumed and DNA tests carried out, was it finally confirmed that he was not the infamous Bible John.
This puts some of the other ‘findings’ of the killer into context – including a couple of odd experiences I had myself. The Bible John case filled the minds of the police for years after the killings but life – or, in the case of the Serious Crime Squad, death – went on as usual.
Two years after the Puttock killing, a colleague and I were driving eastwards along Argyle Street when we spotted a man and a woman in heated discussion. For some reason, we decided to talk to them and we followed them into George Square. We separated them and I spoke to the woman who said she only knew her companion as John and he had just picked her up at the Barrowland. The man gave a name and address – 28 St Andrew's Street in the city centre, opposite the old police office. The woman was allowed to take the bus home. The man went to the Central with us. The address he had given us was false. Back at the office, I handcuffed him to a radiator – something he took badly. This time he gave an address in the Gorbals.
I went there, little thinking that my days at the Weirs plant in Cathcart would be brought back to me vividly. The man we had lifted stayed there with his elderly mother. She asked me right out if I thought her son was Bible John. I replied, ‘That's what we're looking at.’ The old woman said, ‘He could be – he regularly goes to the Barrowland.’ She went off to make a cup of tea and, as she did so, I had a look, as you do, at the photographs on the mantelpiece and got a shock – I recognised a man as Bob who had been an attendant in the power house at Weirs in my days there. When the mother returned I asked about Bob, her husband, and she told me he had accidentally gassed himself in the kitchen. I found it hard to believe. He had been in the Royal Navy and during his service he had been torpedoed twice so I just did not think he was the sort of man to do away with himself. Odd.
I headed back to the office and, on the way, one of those amusing incidents that could only happen in Glasgow occurred. When I reached the CID car in the street, I found a man in it. He was smelling strongly of whisky and he was trying to start the engine with a key. I opened the door and asked if there was any chance of a lift. ‘Sure, mate,’ he replied, saying that it wasn't, however, his car and he couldn't start it. ‘Here, I'll try my key,’ I said and he popped into the passenger's seat. I drove to the Central Police Office where he got the chance to sleep off his whisky!
I turned my attention back to the suspect and he asked how I had got on with his mother. I told him there had been no problem. I also said I thought he might be interested to know that I had once worked with his father. He had other things on his mind. ‘Do you think I'm Bible John?’ he asked. ‘That's up to you,’ I responded. ‘No, that's up to you, Mr Brown,’ was his reply. It was now 3 a.m. and I contacted Joe Beattie. Joe arrived looked him up and down and said that he ‘was the nearest yet’ but, according to Joe Beattie, he wasn't the serial killer.
I wonder, however, if another incident was more important. Many years later, in the nineties, I was having a chinwag with Detective Inspector Bryan McLaughlin when the subject came round to Bible John. Brian bowled me over by saying he thought he once had him in cuffs but he had escaped. Intrigued, I got him to tell me the tale.
On duty as a beat cop in the Barrowland area, Brian came upon a man urinating in the open in a nearby lane. Without warning, the man ran away and Brian gave chase. He caught up with the man in a backcourt and the man picked up a brick to strike him but Brian felled the guy with a blow from his baton. He hit him such a crack that he required medical attention and the mystery man was taken to the Royal Infirmary in handcuffs. The doctor insisted that he would not treat the man unless the cuffs were removed. Despite Brian telling him what would happen if the handcuffs were removed, they took them off anyway. And, just as Brian had predicted, the mystery man whacked the doctor and ran out the door. Brian thought that the guy would have made a good Bible John suspect. It gets stranger. I asked if he had got the man's name. He said that he had but it and the address he gave had turned out to be phoney. I asked what address he had given and I was stunned when he replied, ‘28 St Andrew's Street.’ It still makes me wonder what if …
Brown was a Glasgow police officer and I have to admit that I haven’t read the whole book yet just the small Bible John content but having a quick skim it looks like a lively read and a trawl through some interesting Glasgow characters (perhaps none that you’d want accompanying you to a poetry reading though
) He writes:Joe was of the opinion that Helen Puttock's sister was the key witness since she had spent time in Barrowland in the company of the man who killed her sister. I was not so sure that this was the right way to go. Instead, I thought we should be concentrating on women who may have been picked up by Bible John but not killed by him. However, Helen's sister was taken all over town and asked to be on the lookout for guys who looked like the man she shared a taxi with on the night of the murder. It didn't work.
Because of the poster and the press interest, it seemed, at times, that the whole of Glasgow was on the hunt for the killer. Occasionally, possible suspects were picked up but they were all eliminated. One of them was a man called John McInnes but Helen's sister did not pick him out at an identity parade and other witnesses who had the chance to pick him out also failed to finger him. He committed suicide in 1980 aged forty-one. The rumours about him lingered on till the late nineties and only then, after his body had been exhumed and DNA tests carried out, was it finally confirmed that he was not the infamous Bible John.
This puts some of the other ‘findings’ of the killer into context – including a couple of odd experiences I had myself. The Bible John case filled the minds of the police for years after the killings but life – or, in the case of the Serious Crime Squad, death – went on as usual.
Two years after the Puttock killing, a colleague and I were driving eastwards along Argyle Street when we spotted a man and a woman in heated discussion. For some reason, we decided to talk to them and we followed them into George Square. We separated them and I spoke to the woman who said she only knew her companion as John and he had just picked her up at the Barrowland. The man gave a name and address – 28 St Andrew's Street in the city centre, opposite the old police office. The woman was allowed to take the bus home. The man went to the Central with us. The address he had given us was false. Back at the office, I handcuffed him to a radiator – something he took badly. This time he gave an address in the Gorbals.
I went there, little thinking that my days at the Weirs plant in Cathcart would be brought back to me vividly. The man we had lifted stayed there with his elderly mother. She asked me right out if I thought her son was Bible John. I replied, ‘That's what we're looking at.’ The old woman said, ‘He could be – he regularly goes to the Barrowland.’ She went off to make a cup of tea and, as she did so, I had a look, as you do, at the photographs on the mantelpiece and got a shock – I recognised a man as Bob who had been an attendant in the power house at Weirs in my days there. When the mother returned I asked about Bob, her husband, and she told me he had accidentally gassed himself in the kitchen. I found it hard to believe. He had been in the Royal Navy and during his service he had been torpedoed twice so I just did not think he was the sort of man to do away with himself. Odd.
I headed back to the office and, on the way, one of those amusing incidents that could only happen in Glasgow occurred. When I reached the CID car in the street, I found a man in it. He was smelling strongly of whisky and he was trying to start the engine with a key. I opened the door and asked if there was any chance of a lift. ‘Sure, mate,’ he replied, saying that it wasn't, however, his car and he couldn't start it. ‘Here, I'll try my key,’ I said and he popped into the passenger's seat. I drove to the Central Police Office where he got the chance to sleep off his whisky!
I turned my attention back to the suspect and he asked how I had got on with his mother. I told him there had been no problem. I also said I thought he might be interested to know that I had once worked with his father. He had other things on his mind. ‘Do you think I'm Bible John?’ he asked. ‘That's up to you,’ I responded. ‘No, that's up to you, Mr Brown,’ was his reply. It was now 3 a.m. and I contacted Joe Beattie. Joe arrived looked him up and down and said that he ‘was the nearest yet’ but, according to Joe Beattie, he wasn't the serial killer.
I wonder, however, if another incident was more important. Many years later, in the nineties, I was having a chinwag with Detective Inspector Bryan McLaughlin when the subject came round to Bible John. Brian bowled me over by saying he thought he once had him in cuffs but he had escaped. Intrigued, I got him to tell me the tale.
On duty as a beat cop in the Barrowland area, Brian came upon a man urinating in the open in a nearby lane. Without warning, the man ran away and Brian gave chase. He caught up with the man in a backcourt and the man picked up a brick to strike him but Brian felled the guy with a blow from his baton. He hit him such a crack that he required medical attention and the mystery man was taken to the Royal Infirmary in handcuffs. The doctor insisted that he would not treat the man unless the cuffs were removed. Despite Brian telling him what would happen if the handcuffs were removed, they took them off anyway. And, just as Brian had predicted, the mystery man whacked the doctor and ran out the door. Brian thought that the guy would have made a good Bible John suspect. It gets stranger. I asked if he had got the man's name. He said that he had but it and the address he gave had turned out to be phoney. I asked what address he had given and I was stunned when he replied, ‘28 St Andrew's Street.’ It still makes me wonder what if …
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