It took just 66 seconds to end life of notorious serial killer Peter Manuel
HANGED AT BARLINNIE
Brown, 42, Isabelle Cooke, 17, Peter Smart, 45, Doris Smart, 42, and Michael Smart, 10.
Manuel, however, only went to the gallows at Barlinnie Prison convicted of seven murders. The case against him for Anne Kneilands was dropped due to insufficient evidence. It is also believed he was responsible for many more killings.
On January 2, 1956, Anne Kneilands left her home in East Kilbride to go on a date but the teenager never got there.
Her body was found two days later on a golf course in East Kilbride. Her head had been split open and police established she had been running in terror from her attacker.
Nine months later, vicious Manuel struck again at the home in High Burnside, Rutherglen, of master baker William Watt.
Mr Watt had gone on a fishing holiday to Lochgilphead, but his wife Marion, 45, their daughter Vivienne, 16, and Mrs Watt’s sister Margaret Brown were still at home. Manuel broke in and shot all three as they slept.
Manuel, however, was not the chief suspect for the triple killing – it was Mr Watt. The family man even spent 67 days locked up in Barlinnie while police investigated.
Manuel was also soon in Barlinnie serving a sentence for housebreaking. When he was released in November 1957 he travelled to Newcastle to look for work, and he killed taxi driver Sydney Dunn. His responsibility for this death was determined by a coroner’s jury after Manuel was hanged. When he returned to Glasgow just before Christmas, the pace of his killings quickened.
On December 28, Isabelle Cooke left her house in Mount Vernon to meet her boyfriend in Uddingston. She was Manuel’s next victim and originally the Evening Times reported on her as a missing woman until her body was discovered.
It was actually Manuel who led police to the spot near Uddingston where he had buried her, he told them: “I think she is here. I think I’m standing on her now.”
He struck again on January 1, 1958 when he broke into a house in Sheepburn Road, Uddingston, occupied by Peter Smart, his wife Doris and their son Michael.