Scotland
Bible John
Active from 1968 to 1969, Glasgow
DID YOU KNOW...
Dancing Fact
All three women had been at the Barrowland Ballroom
Biology Fact
All three women had been menstruating and had sanitary products thrown on her body
Murder Fact
All three women were strangled with her own stockings
THE DISPATCH
The Beginning
Glasgow’s iconic Barrowland Ballroom opened in 1934 and restored after a fire in 1960, the Barrowland is still operating. Performers included David Bowie, Oasis, U2, The Stranglers, The Clash, The Smiths, Foo Fighters, and Franz Ferdinand.
It’s also the place police speculate was a hunting ground for a serial killer. Bible John is the name given to the man whose murders in 1968 & 1969 stunned Scotland. He is believed to have killed three mothers after they had been dancing at Barrowland.
The Murders
Patricia Docker
- February 22, 1968
- Carmichael Lane, Glasgow
On February 22, 1968, auxiliary nurse Patricia Docker went to the Barrowland Ballroom for a few hours of fun. Docker then headed home. She was found murdered in the doorway of a garage on Carmichael Lane, just yards from her parent’s southside Glasgow home. Docker was suggesting with her parents while her husband, a member of the Royal Air Force, was stationed away from home.
The mother-of-one had been strangled, and her handbag, watch and clothes were missing. One nearby witness reported hearing a woman scream, “Leave me alone!” Docker was 25.
The laneway is no longer called Carmichael Lane on maps.
Jemima McDonald
- August 18, 1969
- MacKeith Street, Glasgow
Unmarried mother-of-three Jemima McDonald was last seen at the Barrowland Ballroom on August 18, 1969. She left the venue with a man, and was not seen alive again. Children found her battered body in a rundown tenement on MacKeith Street, in Glasgow. McDonald’s sister heard the rumour, and before police attended, she headed to MacKeith Street to search for her missing sister.
McDonald was found beaten and strangled. Her shoes and stockings lying beside her. She had been strangled with one of her own stockings. She was 32.
Authorities released an Identikit photo of the suspect based an witnesses at the Barrowland. The suspect was at least 6 feet tall and aged between 25-30.
Helen Puttock
- October 30, 1969
- Earl Street , Scotstoun, Glasgow
On October 30, 1969, mother-of-two Helen Puttock, 29, went out for a night on the town with her sister, Jean. The women left the Barrowland Ballroom with a man and got into a taxi. The taxi driver said the man, week called himself John, quoted frequently from the Old Testament. When her sister was dropped of at home Puttock and the man confined their taxi ride.
Puttock was found dead by a man walking his dog. Her body was found on Earl Street behind a tenement in Scotstoun, Glasgow. She was nude and had been beaten, raped. Like McDonald, she was also strangled to death with one of her stockings. Although her handbag was missing, it’s contents was scattered around Puttock’s body.
Police believe Puttock or up a fierce fight. Her feet were grass-stained and she had a deep bite wound in her thigh. Police suggested she had tried to scale a nearby railway embankment to escape her murderer.
Bible John Never Identified
Although authorities were already looking for the killer, their efforts increased after Puttock was murdered. In this case both her sister Jean and the taxi driver were witnesses. Jean gave police a detailed description of the killer, allowing police to produce the second widely circulated identikit “photograph” of the suspect.
More than 450 hairdressers in Glasgow were questioned about the photo, since Bible John had an unfashionable and therefore distinctive haircut. Dentists were contacted in an effort to match the bite mark on Puttock and the distinctive teeth described by witnesses.
Since John quoted from the Bible a couple of times while in the taxi with Puttock, police went to various churches in the hopes of identifying the killer. He had worn a stylish three-button suit so police inquired at tailor shops throughout Glasgow.
Theories abound as to who this murderer was. DNA testing in 1996 gave authorities a genetic fingerprint of the killer. John Irvine McInnis was exhumed to allow authorities to test his DNA. Serial killer Peter Tobin was considered a possible suspect by police in 2007.
No one has ever been charged for these crimes.
BOOKS
Books about or including Bible John
Scottish Murders by Judy Hamilton
Publisher : B & W Pub (April 9, 2009)
Language : English
Paperback : 192 pages
ISBN-10 : 1902407830
ISBN-13 : 978-1902407838
An anthology of Scotland’s worst and most infamous murders, this book contains 22 stories from Scotland’s bloodstained past. Dating back to the fifteenth century, we have the story of the gruesome Bean family, who terrorized and cannibalized victims in Galloway, the grim account of David Rizzio’s death, the murder of Marion Gilchrist, and trials of Oscar Slater, the crimes of the never-traced Bible John, and the World’s End Murders. These, and other chapters, make up the compelling accounts of grisly murders, told in a calm and straightforward manner by the author. Capital punishment, abolished in 1969 in Britain, is also discussed. Details of Scotland’s last execution for murder, in 1963 in Aberdeen, and last public execution in 1868 in Dumfries, highlight the much changed attitudes in British society today.
The author also explains how it was commonplace until the early 1830s for bodies of executed murderers to be given up for dissection. Such was the fate of William Burke’s corpse – the last body that he provided for Edinburgh’s surgeons was his own. And this detail is expanded upon in an excellent chapter on Burke and Hare. The author’s tone is reassuring with its matter-of-fact descriptions, and background detail that place the murders rmly in context. The book is now in its seventh printing. Judy Hamilton is a pseudonym, and the author has written several Scottish bestselling titles.
Dancing with the Devil: The Bible John Murders by Paul Harrison
Publisher : Vertical Editions (June 29, 2013)
Language : English
ISBN-10 : 1904091733
ISBN-13 : 978-1904091738
One of Scotland’s most notorious serial killers, scripture quoting Bible John, raped and murdered three women in the late 1960s after meeting them in Glasgow’s Barrowland Ballroom. Having never been caught, speculation has continued to the present day as to the killer’s identity and whether more recent rapes and murders can be attributed to the same man. Paul Harrison, a former police officer and one of the first in the UK to interact with the FBI on psychological criminal profiling, has been fascinated by the case for many years. In Dancing with the Devil he leads us on his voyage of discovery as he undertakes his own investigations into the crimes. The author relates his journey of over 30 years involving interviews with the witnesses, discussions with the police officers involved and meetings with a number of suspicious characters and combines his findings, together with his own expert analysis of the evidence, to draw conclusions as to the identity of the killer, Bible John.
Bible John’s Secret Daughter: Murder, Drugs and a Mother’s Secret Heartbreak by David Leslie
Publisher : Mainstream Publishing (July 24 2007)
Language : English
Paperback : 304 pages
ISBN-10 : 1845962281
ISBN-13 : 978-1845962289
There was one partner the pretty young women who danced away the 1960s in Glasgow’s Barrowlands were desperate to avoid: Bible John, so named because he quoted scripture to his victims. He was being hunted for three brutal unsolved sex murders, and each of his victims had been picked up after a night at the famous dance hall.
Police were still investigating the first terrifying murder when Hannah Martin was raped on her way home from the Barrowlands. When Bible John struck twice more, Hannah confided to friends that his description matched that of her own attacker.
The next shock came when Hannah discovered she was pregnant. Her distraught father banished her from the family home and forced her to give her child up for adoption. She would never see her daughter again, but in a bizarre twist three decades later, an investigation into the infamous World’s End murder would result in Hannah’s daughter discovering the identity of the mother she never knew. Tragically, the news came too late for them to be reunited, but it set her on a course to uncover the shocking secrets of her mother’s life.
Did Hannah know Bible John? What did Hannah Martin reveal of her baby’s father? How did she then become a member of a multimillion-pound drug-smuggling gang? Why, after expecting a huge bounty, did she die in poverty? The answers are all here in Bible John’s Secret Daughter.
The Face of Bible John: The search for a Scottish Serial Killer (Murder World: Scotland Book 5) by Steve MacGregor
Publisher : Independently published (Sept. 28 2018)
Language : English
Paperback : 133 pages
ISBN-10 : 1724124226
ISBN-13 : 978-1724124227
In the late 1960s, dance halls were still popular in Glasgow. At the Barrowland Ballroom in the Bridgeton area of the city, queues were long on Friday and Saturday nights and anything up to two thousand people would spend the evening dancing to music provided by the resident band.
Then, in February 1968, a woman who had spent the evening at the Barrowland Ballroom was found murdered. It seemed that she had met her killer while dancing but police were unable to find any clue as to his identity. In August 1969, another woman went dancing at the same ballroom and was seen leaving with a tall, slim, handsome young man. Her body was discovered the following day. The circumstances of the two murders were very similar and police began looking for a single killer. They even commissioned a local artist to produce a painting of the murderer based on witness descriptions.
In October 1969, it happened again. Another woman was murdered after meeting her killer at the Barrowland Ballroom. But this time, the killer was seen by a number of witnesses and one even shared a taxi with him and his victim. Surely, it was only a matter of time before this murderer, who newspapers had started calling Bible John, was caught?
Fifty years later, we still don’t know the identity of this serial killer. There have been many theories and a number of potential suspects. Police cold-case reviews have used new technologies in the search for Bible John and several promising new leads have been identified. None have led to an arrest.
How can this be? How can a murderer select and spend time with his victims in a crowded public place where he was seen by large numbers of people and yet escape detection? The artist’s depiction of the killer was also said to be a very good likeness, so we even know what he looked like.
This book is a fresh look at this fascinating case and an attempt to understand how Bible John managed to escape detection and has continued to elude investigators for fifty years.
VIDEOS & PODCASTS
Here are some videos on suspected serial killer Bible John.
THE STATS
Statistical table for Bible John
| Killer Name | Bible John |
| Killer AKA | Bible John |
| Gender | M |
| Suspected Only | Yes |
| Sentence | |
| Status | Alive or Unknown |
| Height | 183 |
| Killer Type | Anti-social/misogynist/hate, Sexual/Sadistic, Territorial |
| comment1 | repeatedly quoted from the Bible and to have condemned any form of adultery while in the company of his final victim |
| comment2 | Suspected to be Peter Tobin, among others, but they have DNA from Bible John, and there hasn't been a public announcement of a match |
| Total Dead Victims | 3 |
| Victim Gender | F |
| Victim Race | White |
| Victim Age | 25, 29, 32 |
| Victim Type | women with children, women dancing, strangers, menstruating women |
| Method of Killing | strangled |
| Weapon | their own stockings |
| Sex Assault | Yes |
| Stalking | Yes |
| Pose Bodies | Yes |
| Body - Left, Not Hidden | Yes |
Killer Rating
RESOURCES
- Aberdeen Evening Express, Aberdeen 24 Feb 1968 p. 1
- Aberdeen Evening Express, Aberdeen 26 Feb 1968 p. 7
- Aberdeen Evening Express Aberdeen 18 Aug 1969 p. 3
- Aberdeen Evening Express Aberdeen 21 Aug 1969 p. 3
- Aberdeen Evening Express Aberdeen 26 Aug 1969 p. 3
- Liverpool Echo, Lancashire, England 31 October 1969 p. 3
- Aberdeen Evening Express Aberdeen 1 Nov 1969 p. 11
- Aberdeen Evening Express Aberdeen 5 Nov 1969 p. 9
- The People, Glasgow, 21 Feb 1971
- Dundee Courier, Angus, Scotland 27 July 1996 p. 6
- Irish Independent, Dublin, Republic of Ireland, 15 November 2007 p. 40
- Paywalled Articles