In Search of Bible John, Fred Dineage’s Murder Casebook, STV.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_John

Between 22 February 1968 – 31 October 1969, three Glasgow women that attended the dancing at the Barrowland Ballroom never made it home. Patricia Docker, Jemima MacDonald and Helen Puttock were raped and murdered.

We’ve become attuned to the nuances of serial killers through thousands of stories, books programmes and podcasts. This is the shortened version, originally shown in September 2011. David Hayman (who incidentally comes from Bridgeton and played Jimmy Boyle in A Sense of Freedom) presents the show.

He runs through the where and when of the victims. There’s some hokum acting and the staged victims are shown lying down on the job. Recreations are the poor man’s show and tell. Then the killings stopped. We know that doesn’t happen in real serial-killer life.

Hayman leads the viewers through a number of options. There was more than one killer. The killer left Glasgow, perhaps he was a soldier or a prisoner? Both options were explored. Hayman settles for the latter.

They hang their hat on serial killer Peter Tobin. Hayman recounts how Tobin told a detective he’d killed 48 women. Then cackled, prove it?

We now know that Tobin was a serial killer, but it was unlikely he was Bible John. We also know that forensic psychologist, David Wilson, came to the conclusion he was the serial killer, Bible John. But Tobin’s DNA cleared him of at least one of the killings. And he was away on honeymoon to Brighton when another was committed. So ceteris paribus, Tobin was not Bible John. The search goes on in a podcast near you, BBC Sounds.