Read Online Bible John's Secret Daughter by David Leslie - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: David Leslie
Tags: True Crime
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think it’s a very good painting of the man.’
The men and women of the division began attending the city dance halls en masse, complaining that skipping around the floors required a considerably higher output of energy than pounding the beat. It was just as well from the point of view of hall owners that the police turned out in force because custom dropped off dramatically. Women were too scared of meeting Bible John, while men were terrified of being accused of being the mass murderer. Some with a passing resemblance to the suspect were questioned so often and cleared that they were eventually issued with cards declaring they were not the killer.
Everyone, it seemed, had his or her own theory as to who the killer could be. One suggestion was that the police should examine closely the Hell’s Angels during their monthly forays into Glasgow in search of a rammy and in some cases a woman, preferably willing but on the odd occasion likely to have her protestations ignored. It was pointed out that the mysterious murderer seemed capable of vanishing into thin air after each of his crimes, just as the bikers would disappear south when their night’s jolly was at an end. Could Bible John be a biker?
Likewise people wondered if he had travelled from afar to the Barrowland simply to select a victim when the mood took him. Then, once the evil deed was done, hotfooted it until the next time. What, then, did he get up to in between the slayings?
In the middle of what was now a triple-murder inquiry, the morale of the hunters was further lowered by an announcement that while homicide rates in England and Wales were up by 20 per cent, Scotland had seen an astonishing rise of 165.5 per cent. Who knew what the explanation for this was, but with Bible John on the loose there seemed every likelihood that the differential would increase even further.
The police called on nearly 700 dentists in the Glasgow area, asking each to check their records and see whether any of their patients had a dental pattern that matched Bible John’s. Not all were happy at what they considered an intrusion into patient confidentiality, but the detectives were convinced the oddly shaped teeth of their quarry were a giveaway. A man could hide what was in his mind, he could cover scratches on his body, but without using some home-made device to rip out a tooth or two he could not avoid showing his incisors each time he opened his mouth.
This last request produced some unfortunate results when men already overly conscious of their appearance found themselves at the sharp end of a police investigation in which a handful who were tall and thin had to account for their movements on the nights of the murders. In one especially memorable case, a young man who had recently joined the Glasgow police was sitting at home about to tuck into breakfast after a particularly cold and galling nightshift pounding the city streets. Colleagues he did not recognise hauled him off to be questioned on the grounds that they had been told by his dentist that his teeth had a likeness to those of the killer. By the time he returned home, his breakfast was cold and the hot-water bottle a kind mother had placed in his bed equally chilly.
And then there was the State Hospital in Carstairs, Lanarkshire. This establishment, steeped in mystery, held at the time, and still does so today, men and women deemed a potential danger because of their mental conditions. They were classed as patients rather than inmates but that made no difference to the public perception. Not all had committed crimes, but the majority had shown imagination in devising methods of inflicting pain and misery. There were killers of children, beasts who tortured and murdered, deranged teenagers, sickening paedophiles. Whenever a particularly awful crime was carried out and there was no obvious culprit, the word ‘Carstairs’ would be mentioned. People wondered: had the killer been a patient?
Everyone had his or
The men and women of the division began attending the city dance halls en masse, complaining that skipping around the floors required a considerably higher output of energy than pounding the beat. It was just as well from the point of view of hall owners that the police turned out in force because custom dropped off dramatically. Women were too scared of meeting Bible John, while men were terrified of being accused of being the mass murderer. Some with a passing resemblance to the suspect were questioned so often and cleared that they were eventually issued with cards declaring they were not the killer.
Everyone, it seemed, had his or her own theory as to who the killer could be. One suggestion was that the police should examine closely the Hell’s Angels during their monthly forays into Glasgow in search of a rammy and in some cases a woman, preferably willing but on the odd occasion likely to have her protestations ignored. It was pointed out that the mysterious murderer seemed capable of vanishing into thin air after each of his crimes, just as the bikers would disappear south when their night’s jolly was at an end. Could Bible John be a biker?
Likewise people wondered if he had travelled from afar to the Barrowland simply to select a victim when the mood took him. Then, once the evil deed was done, hotfooted it until the next time. What, then, did he get up to in between the slayings?
In the middle of what was now a triple-murder inquiry, the morale of the hunters was further lowered by an announcement that while homicide rates in England and Wales were up by 20 per cent, Scotland had seen an astonishing rise of 165.5 per cent. Who knew what the explanation for this was, but with Bible John on the loose there seemed every likelihood that the differential would increase even further.
The police called on nearly 700 dentists in the Glasgow area, asking each to check their records and see whether any of their patients had a dental pattern that matched Bible John’s. Not all were happy at what they considered an intrusion into patient confidentiality, but the detectives were convinced the oddly shaped teeth of their quarry were a giveaway. A man could hide what was in his mind, he could cover scratches on his body, but without using some home-made device to rip out a tooth or two he could not avoid showing his incisors each time he opened his mouth.
This last request produced some unfortunate results when men already overly conscious of their appearance found themselves at the sharp end of a police investigation in which a handful who were tall and thin had to account for their movements on the nights of the murders. In one especially memorable case, a young man who had recently joined the Glasgow police was sitting at home about to tuck into breakfast after a particularly cold and galling nightshift pounding the city streets. Colleagues he did not recognise hauled him off to be questioned on the grounds that they had been told by his dentist that his teeth had a likeness to those of the killer. By the time he returned home, his breakfast was cold and the hot-water bottle a kind mother had placed in his bed equally chilly.
And then there was the State Hospital in Carstairs, Lanarkshire. This establishment, steeped in mystery, held at the time, and still does so today, men and women deemed a potential danger because of their mental conditions. They were classed as patients rather than inmates but that made no difference to the public perception. Not all had committed crimes, but the majority had shown imagination in devising methods of inflicting pain and misery. There were killers of children, beasts who tortured and murdered, deranged teenagers, sickening paedophiles. Whenever a particularly awful crime was carried out and there was no obvious culprit, the word ‘Carstairs’ would be mentioned. People wondered: had the killer been a patient?
Everyone had his or
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