by David Leslie
The youngster was raised in a happy household. She had not been handed to her new parents directly from the Rottenrow delivery room. They were allowed a handful of visits to begin the bonding process, to see whether they appeared comfortable with the baby, and it was soon clear they were overjoyed in her presence.
So, a few weeks after her birth she was carried to her new home to join her new parents’ other children. She remembers a very happy childhood in a house filled with laughter and love.
The mother and father, who had brought another human being in to be a part of their own lives so she might be spared loneliness, both worked so the family had a healthy income, a major proportion of which went on the children, who were spoiled but in a kindly sense. There were bedtime tales, outings, birthday parties, toys, games, friends, pretty clothes, fireworks and the annual call from Santa. Isobel had books and beads, dolls and dimples, a mother and a father to kiss her goodnight and to welcome her to each new day. She felt warm and protected and safe, unaware of the evils that lie in wait for the trusting and unwary. It was just as well: a deluge of horror was about to fall on the lives of so many innocents.
FOURTEEN
RESURRECTION
The police knew at least one maniac was still on the loose. Bible John – or however many other men might fall under the moniker – had last struck on Earl Street in October 1969. Then disappeared.
Faced with a situation in which a number of serious or violent crimes, clearly the work of the same serial offender, are followed by a long period of calm, detectives customarily make a number of reasonable assumptions. Each involves thankless routine checks intended to help answer the question: ‘Where has he (or, in a handful of cases, she) gone?’
Perhaps the target, in committing the last known offence, had been injured and would therefore lie low for a while to recuperate. (This was almost certainly the case after Bible John’s altercation with Helen Puttock, who would have left scratch marks on her assailant.) Another likely cause for sudden long periods when nothing is heard is that the miscreant is in prison. Detective teams therefore began poring over every spell of incarceration handed down after Helen’s killing. Perhaps the killer left the area completely, which meant the gathering of information from a raft of sources, particularly informants, on surprise disappearances. Or maybe he had died of natural causes, so a search of the register of birth, deaths and marriages would be required.
The many thousands of hours of dull, regulation checks threw up some names, but none could be linked sufficiently strongly to the murders to merit the men being arrested and charged. Among the names was John McInnes, who was questioned more than once, as his regular attendance at the Barrowland together with a certain similarity in appearance to the painting of the suspect put him in the spotlight. Indeed, the police asked him so often if he was Bible John that he used to make jokes about the fact in his local bar. He took part in identity parades, but Helen’s sister Jeannie failed to pick him out. Joe Beattie, known as ‘The Flea’ to colleagues because criminals never knew when they’d turn around and find him on their backs, was never convinced McInnes was the man, or one of the men, he sought.
Some of McInnes’s friends wondered if the laughs and gags hid his true feelings about being a suspect; around the time of the police inquiries, his marriage went through a bad patch. In 1972, he and his wife, Ella, would divorce.
So Hannah, possibly keeping to herself vital clues about Bible John, danced away the weekends at the Barrowland, often having her feet flattened by those of a plain-clothes cop not too subtly getting the conversation around to whether she had been there on any or all of the nights of the murders. She would never know it, but McInnes’s story would bear a strange similarity to her own.
Meanwhile, as her daughter learned to crawl, then walk, then pick up a few childish steps that she gaily practised with her parents and step-siblings, the detectives pounded on, their steps slowly losing the initial spring, before dragging. Bible John, it seemed, had vanished. Gradually, the thieves and muggers, fraudsters and thugs who had enjoyed a relatively easy time while their pursuers were off in search of a more deadly quarry found themselves once more being harried and cuffed as the murder squad diminished in numbers.
By late 1971, the dedicated team had been spread far and wide, although it would never capitulate. Occasionally, an arrest would throw up suspicion and a petty thief or drunk would find himself being asked where he had been on the nights of the murders. Two detectives who arrested a man caught arguing with a woman learned from her that his name was John and that he had picked her up at the Barrowland. They took him to a nearby police station, handcuffed him to a radiator and called Joe Beattie, who took one look and said ‘the nearest yet’ and ordered them to release him.
A beat policeman chased and caught a shadowy figure spotted relieving himself in a backstreet near the Barrowland. When the suspect grabbed a brick, the bobby thumped him over the head with his truncheon so hard that he needed hospital treatment. At Glasgow Royal Infirmary, a doctor ordered handcuffs to be removed from the patient, who promptly leapt through a first-floor window and disappeared into the night.
In each case, the man had given the same address. He would eventually be traced and made to stand in an identity parade along which Helen’s sister slowly walked, up and down, before announcing she had never seen any of those in the line-up before. The suspect was cleared and sent home to be the long-time butt of jokes from pals about being Bible John.
‘I hope they catch the bastard,’ he told them.
Among senior police there were those who would not be turned from a belief that all three women had died at the hands of the same man – the opposite view to that of Joe Beattie. Thus it was that suspects were measured in terms of all three deaths. If they were unable to provide suitable alibis for two of the nights when the killings took place, they were ruled out by being able to show they were somewhere else on the night of the third. This might have led to the murderer of one escaping capture because he could prove he did not kill the others.
Even the one-time spate of crank calls and good-faith tip-offs had almost dried up. The painting of Bible John had been circulated everywhere in the world where it was thought Scots might be seen and this resulted in a call from Hong Kong. The information was followed up but brought nothing.
The trail had not merely gone cold; time had blown over Bible John’s tracks. And so the years drifted on. By 1977, thoughts had turned to other headlines. In March, some Scots had watched in horror as two Boeing 747 airliners, belonging to KLM and Pan Am, collided at Los Rodeos Airport in Tenerife, killing 583 men, women and children. It still ranks as the world’s worst plane disaster. Weeks later, in bars and at workplaces, people enthused over the prolific exploits of Red Rum, who won the Grand National for an unprecedented third time. Then in June came what would initially be seen as Bible John’s resurrection.
Bakery worker Frances Barker, aged 37, a petite, respectable, fun-loving redhead, went for a night out in Glasgow with friends on 10 June and vanished. She had flagged down a taxi to take her home to her top-floor flat on Maryhill Road, but the alarm was raised when Frances, a good, conscientious worker, failed to turn up for her job at the City Bakeries. Police made their customary checks, and there were those among them who wondered whether her disappearance was down to Bible John. Those fears increased with the discovery of her body two weeks later. A farm worker spotted what seemed to be a bundle of old clothing in undergrowth near Glenboig, Lanarkshire, a few miles east of Glasgow. When he investigated, he had to fight back nausea. What he had found was a woman’s body. It would turn out to be that of Frances. Her hands had been tied behind her back, she had been strangled and her pants stuffed into her mouth. There were elements of the Bible John murders, but what made detectives sit up was the fact that, as with the earlier killings, the victim’s handbag had been stolen.
The net closed around dozens of known sex attackers, a normal move by police, aware tha
t this type of criminal is notoriously prone to repeat offending. Among those taken in for questioning was Thomas Ross Young, the man who gave a lift to young Pat McAdam before she disappeared. He was discovered hiding in the flat in Crow Road, Glasgow, belonging to his ex-wife, Annie. The detection team was convinced they had Frances’s killer, and enthusiastically – Young and some of his friends would later argue too enthusiastically – produced a damning piece of evidence they said had been found in a hiding hole at Annie’s flat. It was a powder compact that had been given to the dead woman by a local store in appreciation of her good and regular custom. How did it get there? The police said he could only have taken it from his victim. Young argued it had been planted. He was a sex fiend, of that there could be no doubt. But had he strangled Frances Barker? Was he the killer they called Bible John?
The latter was ruled out when it was learned Young had been in jail at the time of Patricia Docker’s death, but of the former, despite the father of four protesting his innocence, he was convicted and jailed for life. He was packed off in handcuffs to Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, bitterly complaining at the unfairness of the Glasgow High Court jury’s verdict in October that year. It is unlikely Young has ever heard of Hannah Martin or her daughter. But he has a part to play in their story.
In August 1977, a month after Young had been arrested, pretty Anna Kenny, aged 20, devoted to her family and they to her, had gone for a night out to the Hurdy Gurdy Club in Townhead, Glasgow. She was a woman who would tell her folks where she was going when she went out and at what time she should be expected home. Her parents began worrying when she was late because the Hurdy Gurdy was just a short taxi journey from her home in the Glasgow Gorbals. They then contacted friends in case she had decided on the spur of the moment to spend the night with a pal and had been unable to get a message home.
By the following morning, 6 August, the family was frantic and headed down to her workplace to see if she had turned up. She had not. The next step was the police.
The pattern seemed all too familiar: a pretty young woman, a night out, perhaps an invitation to see her home. Now there was no trace. She could be anywhere. Customers at the Hurdy Gurdy recalled seeing Anna but could not recall her leaving. It was as if she had been there one moment and was gone the next, though some of her friends believed they remembered her saying she was heading off to get a taxi to the Gorbals.
Searches were made of derelict buildings, wasteland, garages, industrial sites and even the Forth and Clyde Canal, despite it being in the opposite direction to the one she would have taken. But the hourly reports to her devastated family brought nothing. Other Scottish police forces were contacted and given a description of the missing woman, then counterparts in England, in the unlikely event of her having decided to quit Glasgow for good. They too, sadly, could not help. Anna, it would seem, had disappeared from the face of the earth.
Eight weeks later, while posters showing Anna’s face still hung in police stations throughout the city, and while music fans were continuing to mourn the death in August at his Graceland mansion of 42-year-old Elvis Presley, came further bad news.
Hilda McAulay, a divorced mother of two, was a regular at the Plaza Ballroom at Eglinton Toll in the centre of Glasgow. The 36 year old had been hoping her forays into the city dance halls might help her meet a new husband. On occasions, she had visited the Barrowland, where it is almost certain she would have known, by sight at least, Hannah Martin.
On the weekend night of 1 October, Hilda had been enjoying herself in the city but half an hour after midnight decided it was time to leave and headed home to Maryhill. Many of the thousand or so dancers had the same idea, and it was easy to lose touch with friends in the throng heading outside. So when her friends managed to make it through the door but could see no sign of her, they had no reason to think anything was amiss. Perhaps she’d been able to get a taxi right away, or someone had offered her a lift home.
Next morning, the body of a woman was found in bushes beside a caravan park in Langbank, Renfrewshire, 20 miles away and near a spot used by courting couples. She had been brutally attacked, undressed, strangled, tied up and her handbag stolen. It was a sickening sight, even to police officers and medical personnel accustomed to witnessing the results of violence. But this was different. The corpse had clearly, after a fierce struggle, been neatly arranged so that having been defiled the humiliation would continue after death. ‘You’d think somebody had laid her out to take a mucky photograph of her,’ one officer noted to colleagues.
As a result of her belongings having been stolen, there was nothing at the scene that could be used to identify her and so newspapers were asked to print a description. One of those who read it was Hilda’s mother, Martha, who broke down, then called the police.
It is doubtful whether neighbouring police forces sympathised with their colleagues in Glasgow over the fact that either Bible John had resurfaced or they were facing the nightmare scenario of having another sex killer on the loose. The last thing senior detectives wanted was advice from counterparts elsewhere, however well meant. This was Glasgow’s problem. But would it remain so?
Two weeks later, as detectives were still vainly trying to persuade the majority of the male dancers at the Plaza to come forward and identify themselves, Helen Scott and her friend, Christine Eadie, both 17, went out for a Saturday night at the World’s End public house on Edinburgh’s historic Royal Mile. Some witnesses would later remember simply seeing the girls in the crowded bar, others thought they had spotted them talking with two older men. One or two believed they had even seen the teenagers leaving with a couple of men. No one could be sure, but what was certain was that neither made it home.
The following day, Christine’s body was found 12 miles to the east of Edinburgh at Gosford Bay, Aberlady. Her clothes had been ripped from her, she had been battered and her panties stuffed into her mouth. She had then been tied up, raped and strangled. And her handbag was missing. It was an appalling discovery, but there was worse to come.
Six miles to the south of Aberlady, near Haddington, lay the body of Helen. This pretty youngster, not long out of school and hoping to become a children’s nurse, had too been beaten, stripped naked below the waist and her panties stuffed into her mouth, then tied up, raped and strangled. Like her friend, her handbag had been stolen.
One death was a near carbon copy of the other, except that the knots used to tie up the ligatures around the girls’ wrists and necks were different. There were obvious similarities with the murder of Hilda McAulay, but it would take a quarter of a century for anything to be done about that fact.
Now, it was the turn of detectives from Lothian and Borders Police to deal with terrible death. While they set to work trying to trace everyone who had been in the World’s End pub, 50 miles away in Glasgow Thomas Ross Young was standing trial for the slaying of Frances Barker.
If there was little action on a possible connection with Hilda’s death, the team investigating the World’s End murders, as they would come to be known, quickly wondered if there was a link to Glasgow in the shape of Jessie Martin’s friend Arthur Thompson.
Years earlier, the Godfather had invested in a holiday home at Seton Sands, close to the spot where Christine lay. If Arthur and his family, including his son, young ‘Fatboy’ Arthur – himself later to become a murder victim when he was shot dead outside the family house in Glasgow in 1991 – were not using the wooden chalet, friends with cause to keep their heads down and stay out of the limelight for a few days would frequently bunk down there, feeling safe because it was unlikely that the police in Edinburgh would know of them. But it was difficult for Arthur senior to stay out of the limelight. His trips to London and even to Ulster were well documented by Special Branch and a number of forces, and had even reached the files of MI5. While sudden death or murder might not be unknown to the Godfather, the killing of two innocent teenage girls was not for the likes of him. Young Arthur, on the other hand, might be a differen
t proposition, as far as the thinking of some police officers went.
At 18, he had a reputation as a hell raiser and bully. He was a young man who liked to show off and who was into drugs, and it was reasonable to speculate that he and a crony might have picked up the girls in or near the pub and taken them in the direction of Seton Sands, but then decided not to accept ‘No’ for an answer and simply gone berserk when the girls refused to cooperate.
Two detectives made the journey from Edinburgh to meet with the Godfather and were surprised by the polite reception he gave them. But it was quickly evident he and his son had cast-iron alibis for that weekend. There was no way they could have been involved in the killings and Arthur even pledged that should he hear anything that might help the inquiry, he would ensure it was passed on.
‘Nobody should be allowed to get away with doing that to those wee lassies,’ Arthur told the officers. ‘I’d string up the bastards who did it myself, if I caught them. What must their poor parents be going through?’ They were sentiments from the heart. Arthur had two daughters of his own, one of whom would die young from natural causes brought on by drug abuse, her supplier literally having to flee for his life from her outraged father.
The World’s End murders sent a chill through Scotland. Fathers insisted on accompanying their daughters everywhere, causing chaos with courting arrangements. But, like the Bible John saga, the police would realise early on that they were up against it. There were clues, but no one matched to them.
While officers continued their thankless task, seven weeks later on Friday, 2 December 1977, nurse Agnes Cooney set off for Glasgow from her aunt’s home in Coatbridge, Lanarkshire. She worked in a children’s home in Bellshill, the same town that was home to Hannah and Malcolm Martin. Twenty-three-year-old Agnes and a group of friends went out together most weekends, often ending with a party in someone’s house. They were a happy bunch, able to smile and joke and even crack the occasional gag about the murders. ‘Don’t get picked up by Bible John!’ they laughed.