Will we ever know who the real Bible John killer was?

As I wrote last week, the facts of the case are simple and well known.

Between February 1968 and October 1969, three young women were brutally murdered in Glasgow.

There was strong evidence pointing to a serial killer – all three had been dancing at the Barrowland Ballroom and all three died by beating and strangulation.

Each woman was a brunette aged between 25 and 31 – I was wrong to write 32 last week.

Each was a mother and all three were menstruating at the time of their killing.

They were all escorted home late at night by their killer and murdered not far from their residences.

The killer also removed their handbags, which I consider very important as it points to the kind of man Bible John was.

That fine journalist Audrey Gillan put together a podcast series on the Bible John killings and I am indebted to her for exposing the dreadful misogyny of the Glasgow police in the late 1960s.

I also take her point that the families of Patricia Docker, Jemima MacDonald and Helen Puttock were the traumatised innocent victims of Bible John.

Last week, I dealt at length with the horrific murder of nurse Patricia Docker, 25, beaten and strangled to death not far from her home.

Estranged from her husband, she had gone dancing at the Barrowland Ballroom in the Gallowgate.

Her naked body was found the following morning outside a lock-up garage at Carmichael Place, Langside.

In the annals of serial killers, it is not unknown for such a murderer to stop his or her deadly activities for a while. So it was with Bible John.

He may have felt he had gotten away with murder as detectives reported a lack of progress in their inquiries into Patricia Docker’s killing but for whatever reason there is no evidence that he tried to murder any other woman until August 1969, some 18 months later.

His second victim, Jemima MacDonald, was recorded in the official police report as being 32, but her gravestone as erected by her family shows she was actually 31, having been born in Glasgow on October 18, 1937, not 1936 as stated by the police.

The thought occurs that if they could not get even such a basic fact right, what else did the police get wrong?

At the time, much was made in the press of the fact that Mima, as she was known, was unmarried but had three children by two different men.

Her daughter Elizabeth, then aged 11, was the child of her relationship with a Yugoslavian national in Liverpool, while her younger children, Andrew and Allan, were the sons of a Caribbean man then resident in Manchester.

Decades later, Gillan tracked him down and Eldridge “Bunny” Mottley paid Mima a warm tribute, telling Gillan: “I can see her walking up the road – and she never used to walk, she always used to be skipping and jumping.

"We instantly hit it off. It was as simple as that. She was always absolutely immaculate. She gave me two lovely sons and they have been a credit to me and to her.”

Mima and Mottley separated just over a year before her murder and she had returned to Glasgow to live in a ground-floor flat in a tenement at Mackeith Street in Bridgeton.

Her sister Margaret O’Brien lived in the same building and was happy to look after Mima’s children when she went to her favourite dance venue, which she did frequently.

On the night of August 16, 1969, Mima was dressed smartly as always and went into the city to call first at Betty’s Bar before moving on to the Barrowland.

Unlike Patricia Docker, there were witnesses to her visit to the latter and she was said to have entered with a man she had met at Betty’s Bar.

WITNESSES described him as tall, slim and aged 25-35 with fairish brown hair that had fair streaks. He was well spoken and clearly impressed Mima, who left with him shortly after midnight.

She was last seen approaching her home area of Bridgeton and sometime in the early hours of Sunday, August 17, she was raped, beaten, and strangled in a derelict empty ground-floor tenement flat just yards from her own room and kitchen in Mackeith Street.

Her underclothing had been disturbed and she had been strangled with one of her stockings.

It was not until the morning of Monday, August 18, that Mima’s fate was learned.

Tragically, it was her sister Margaret who found her after hearing about some children who were saying there was a body in the empty property.

Misogyny drips from the page of the police report: “She appeared to be extremely fond of male company and highly promiscuous … she was in receipt of public funds plus maintenance from the fathers of her children.”

Yet all were agreed that Mima was a good mother who cared greatly for her children. Her son Allan told Gillan for her podcast: “Nothing was ever explained to us. Well, not to me, anyway.

"That’s probably why you don’t think about it. I just get on with my life. So, you know, it’s something that happened. Mum died. Next minute we were living with my dad.”

Commenting on the police report, he said: “It’s as if she shouldn’t have been allowed to have a life because she was single and had children.

“We were looked after because we had family next door. I suppose, like any single parent with three tearaway kids round your ankles all day, you’ve got to have a release.

“If family were willing to look after them while she went out, there’s nothing wrong with that at all.“

Glasgow detectives and the crime reporters of the press were aware early on about the similarities between the murders of Patricia Docker and Jemima MacDonald but police played down all talk of a link.

As with the first murder there was no witness to the actual killing, although one woman reported hearing a female scream at around the presumed time of the murder.

Again, the police were baffled and some of those involved in the murder hunt maintained the women had been killed by different men.

Detectives decided to make the unprecedented step of issuing a portrait of the suspect based on the descriptions of the witnesses at Barrowland. It was the first time this had been done in a Scottish murder inquiry but it produced no real suspects.

When the body of 29-year-old Helen Puttock was found on the morning of November 1, 1969, there could be no doubt that Glasgow was the scene of serial killings.

Her body was found by a man walking his dog behind the tenement in Earl Street, Scotstoun, where Helen lived.

She had been partially stripped, beaten around the face and head, raped and strangled with one of her own stockings.

HELEN Gowans Puttock had married her husband George, then a lance corporal in the Royal Corps of Signals when they were both 24 in 1965. They had two sons, David and Michael, but after George was posted to West Germany, their relationship deteriorated and by early 1969 the marriage was effectively over.

Returning to Glasgow, Helen went to live with her mother and began to frequent the Barrowland with her sisters Patricia and Jean.

The police report unhelpfully notes “all three sisters are promiscuous and well known to a number of men who frequent the Ballroom”.

The casual misogyny indicates how the police thought of the women at the time but no one could have anticipated what happened next.

For Jean Gowans Langford had accompanied her sister for part of the way home in a taxi and gave evidence that Helen had been with a man who called himself John, who claimed to be teetotal, and who quoted from the Bible and made derogatory remarks about the women whom frequented the Barrowland.

The press had a field day and the name Bible John was coined to give an identity to the presumed killer.

Detective Superintendent Joe Beattie was already a legend in Glasgow before he took charge of the Bible John inquiry and he became obsessed with finding the killer.

He said: “I’m positive this man comes from Glasgow or nearby. I do not think he is a religious man but just has a normal, intelligent working knowledge of the Bible that he likes to air.”

Dozens of detectives worked round the clock to find Bible John, with Beattie saying he feared the killer would strike again. That helped to almost empty the dancefloors while Bible John became the ultimate bogeyman within his identikit portrait everywhere.

Despite thousands of interviews and years of enquiries, no-one has ever been charged with the three murders. Some so-called experts have even said there was no such person as Bible John.

Down the decades there have been numerous suspects. The body of John McInnes was exhumed for DNA analysis but it was inconclusive.

Serial killer Peter Tobin was a major suspect but one fact ruled him out – witnesses said Bible John was between 25-35, and Tobin was just 21 when Patricia Docker was murdered.

My own speculation based on examining the case many times over the years is that Bible John existed and was indeed a serial killer.

Furthermore, the evidence points to someone who was a woman-hating psychopath – an easy conclusion to make, you may say, but only with the benefit of hindsight.

For back in the late 1960s, the police and criminal justice system barely tolerated the idea that a man could be such a creature but now we all know such psychopaths are rather more common than we would like.

Those who dispute the existence of Bible John point to the fact that he raped two of the women but not Patricia Docker.

He left her totally naked but only partially stripped the other two. But all three were beaten and strangled and all three were menstruating at the time of their cruel deaths.

I have always thought there was one other common element to the trio’s murders that cannot be easily explained away, namely that Bible John took their handbags.

Robbery was not his motive, sexual deviancy was – the handbag evidence suggests he wanted to possess the women and dominate them.

Removing their handbags did just that but it is just my suggestion and I stress it is pure speculation.

Police Scotland always says the case remains open, but I very much doubt we will ever know who Bible John really was and anyone suspected of the crimes would now be in their 80s.

After all these years, we should be thinking more about his victims and their families rather than conduct what would be an ultimately fruitless hunt for Bible John.