CITY SEARCH GLASGOW CRIME STORIES FOR RAPIST
Top detective launched hunt to catch the ‘Beast of Ibrox’
FOR almost a decade a violent sexual predator stalked Ibrox, attacking and raping women at random. In a half-mile square area in the shadow of its imposing football stadium, eight females were raped between 1979 and 1987.
Women of all ages were reluctant to go out on their own at night during that period for good reason.
If they did venture out in the dark they at least made sure a friend or male relative accompanied them.
The eighth rape in early 1987 would prove to be the most horrifying yet with the victim left for dead in freezing cold temperatures.
The level of violence and viciousness alerted the city’s top detective Joe Jackson who decided it was time that the ‘Beast of Ibrox’ was finally brought to justice.
He had just taken over as head of CID for the Govan division, the most violent and dangerous police beat in Scotland.
The latest victim, a young woman in her early 20s, had been attacked on Shieldhall Road in Ibrox late at night.
She had just stepped off a bus and was walking the short distance home when she was grabbed off the street and threatened with a knife.
The beast dragged the young woman 100 yards down a railway embankment and onto a disused railway line where he repeatedly attacked and raped her for between three and four hours.
There no-one could hear her cries and screams for help above the roar of the traffic from the nearby M8.
She was battered and bruised, her body covered in cuts and then abandoned half-naked in the freezing cold. During the sustained attack the woman had not only been raped repeatedly but he had also tried to strangle his victim.
Summoning her last reserves of energy, the traumatised victim staggered barefoot across a railway line and up the side of the embankment where she flagged down a police car on Paisley Road West.
When she arrived at the nearby Glasgow Southern General she was also suffering from hypothermia due to the time she had spent out in the plummeting temperatures in her torn clothes.
The police officer who drove the terrified woman to hospital, however, obtained a detailed description of the attacker.
He was about 30 and, crucially, had a beard.
Many of the previous victims had also described their attacker and yet Jackson’s predecessors had failed to bring him to justice.
Detective Superintendent Jackson took immediate steps to review all unsolved rapes on his patch, going back to 1979, and the previous seven rape victims were traced and reinterviewed.
The police also believed there were other victims who had been too frightened at the time to come forward.
Even more reason to get this fiend off the streets as quickly as possible.
A few days after the rape, Detective Supt Jackson decided to go public and reveal there was a serial rapist on the loose.
He said: “It’s a case that I remember very well as I had just taken over at Govan.
“There had been other rapes before I was there and they had been investigated but not linked.
“I could not understand this as you could clearly see a pattern from the previous incidents.
“I came to the conclusion very quickly that we had a serial rapist in the area.
“Because it was such a violent attack I also went on television warning women not to go out alone at night.”
However, at this point, the investigation hit an obstacle over the latest victim’s description of her attacker.
The cop in the car who questioned her immediately after the attack was told he had a beard.
But when she was interviewed by specialist officers from the Female and Child Unit, she made no mention of a beard.
The cop in the car, an ex-detective, insisted she said the rapist had facial hair.
From her statements an expert built a profile of a thin-faced man, going bald with crinkly hair at the sides, late 20s.
The chilling photofit – minus the beard – was issued to the public and he was immediately branded the Beast of Ibrox.
Finally the hunter had the hunted.
The police ploy worked and with information from a shocked public they arrested 31-year-old local man Dominic Devine.
Devine had recently been released from prison for the attempted rape of a female relative.
During his term in jail, no other rapes had been reported.
Jackson had Devine hauled in and discovered he was clean shaven.
The woman who had been raped three nights previously could not at first pick out Devine at an identity parade at London Road Police Office.
But a young woman who had also been threatened with a hammer and raped a year earlier on waste round on Helen Street in Ibrox had no problem picking Devine out at the same ID parade. All eight victims took part in identity parades over the next two days. become
Jackson added: “What struck me was that these women he had raped were still terrified to confront their attacker even in the safety of a police office and through the screen of a one-way mirror.
“They were in when they went as this guy had through the mill.
“However, they were very happy that he had been caught but probably wondered why it had taken so long.”
Jackson decided to charge Devine a terrible state to the parades really put them
with the previous year’s rape to get him off the streets.
At midnight he received a call from one of his detectives saying Devine, who was in a cell at Govan Police Office, wanted to talk.
During the subsequent interview with one of his most experienced officers, Devine admitted two other rapes.
The following day Jackson personally quizzed him regarding the five other rapes but he denied them all. A second parade was set up where Devine was identified by more victims.
Once again he received a call saying Devine wanted to clear the air.
He finally admitted his part in other rapes including the railway embankment attack.
But what about the beard? Devine did have one when raped the most recent victim.
He had, however, shaved it off – which is why the victim did not recognise him at first.
Jackson’s detectives were also able to find a recent photograph taken of Devine that crucially showed him with a beard at the time of the last attack.
At the High Court in Glasgow later that year, Devine was found guilty of four rapes, attempting to murder one victim and of another attempted rape.
The judge sentenced him to life in prison – then only the third man in Scottish legal history to be given life for rape.
In 2006, 19 years after being sent to jail, Devine was back in the news while on a parole programme at Saughton Prison, Edinburgh.
To help him prepare for life on the outside, he worked in local charity shops in Edinburgh five days a week.
But Devine was accused of smuggling drugs into Saughton and his release date was put back.
In 2010, it was then claimed he had been caught smuggling heroin into Shotts Prison, Lanarkshire, he and transferred to Peterhead. Little is known about Devine’s prison life after that.
He is thought to have been freed in July 2017, more than 30 years after his last rape, at the age of 61.
Jackson, who retired in 1992 after 32 years’ service, says the 1987 Devine investigation was one of the most satisfying cases he worked on.
He also put serial killer Angus Sinclair behind bars in 1982 and believes there are similarities between the two men.
Ironically, it was reported in 2008 that both had become friendly while in prison together.
He added: “Devine was a danger to all women particularly as he had tried to rape his own sister-in-law.
“Had we not arrested Devine and put him behind bars then I am convinced he may well have carried out further attacks.
“He was almost like Angus Sinclair, a serial rapist who would and could not stop. For all we knew Devine may have carried out other rapes which the victims were too frightened to report.
“At the time I looked at unsolved rapes across the whole of Glasgow, but the ones in Govan were the ones we were able to charge him.
“The most important thing was Dominic Devine had been taken off the streets and women were once again safe.”
MOURNERS are preparing for the funeral of superstar entertainer Sydney Devine tomorrow and one Glasgow fan is heartbroken her hero won’t get the send-off he deserves.
“If it hadn’t been for Covid, there would have been a massive turnout – people loved him,” says Pat Munro, who, along with her pal Lily Paterson, has followed the country singer and showman’s career for 45 years.
“Folk would have been lining the streets to pay their respects and he deserved that. He would have loved that.”
Last week, Times Past ran a special picture tribute to the man considered by some as Scotland’s greatest showman. Many readers got in touch to share their tributes but Pat has more reason than most to miss the man she first saw on stage as a twenty-something back in the 70s.
Over the years, Sydney had become a close friend, even attending the funeral of her son
Christopher in 2019.
“Chris took his own life at the end of 2019, and when I told Sydney, he was crying on the phone, and he and his wife Shirley came to the funeral to support us,” says Pat, who lives in Bothwell. “He didn’t have to do that. He was like that, always looked out for his fans and tried to help when he could.
“He had known Chris since he was a wee boy – I still have a photo of him with Chris and his brother Steven when they were around eight years old. He got Chris up on the stage with him once, which was amazing.”
Pat remembers the first time she saw Sydney on stage at the Pavilion Theatre in Glasgow.
“My mum, auntie and sister did a wee office cleaning job back in the 70s, and they’d put money away each week to save up to go and see him,” she recalls.
“This one night, one of them couldn’t make it, so I went in her place and that was that. I loved it.
“I was hooked, and from that point on, me and my friend Lily went to every gig, to every show – we did not miss one.
“Lily, who is from Craigend, went to see him with four generations of her family – her daughter, her grand-daughter and her great-granddaughter who is only nine all went to his concerts.”
She smiles: “Lots of people say they were his number one fans, but we didn’t just go and see him once a year at the Pavilion, we travelled all over Scotland to see him, we even went to London and Belfast.
“We always got front row seats, and we would even go and support him if he was opening a charity shop. He got to know us very well and used to point us out when he was on stage – he called us ‘The Fan Club’ – he knew we loved him.
“He sang the song Kelly for me, and The Old Rugged Cross for Lily.
“When he got his MBE we presented him with a gift in his dressing room – he was really touched by that. And we made him laugh because we all got t-shirts specially made for the occasion.”
She laughs:
“He always called
me hen, and when I pointed out I wasn’t a wee lassie any more and was only 10 years younger than him, he used to laugh and say I’d always be that young thing to him.”
Born in Cleland, Lanarkshire in 1940, Sydney died earlier this month at the age of 81.
Pat and Lily, and their friend Cathy, also a die-hard Sydney fan, got to know the star so well, they even received an invitation to his 60th birthday party.
“That was quite something,” smiles Pat. “We felt like we became Syd’s friends as well as his fans. He loved my husband David’s tablet, so whenever he made a batch he would send some down to him. “That’s the thing about Syd, he was a proper superstar but he was very ordinary too, very humble. “None of us can’t quite believe he’s gone. He’ll be sadly missed.”
Here at Times Past we would love to hear your memories of Sydney. Did you see him perform? Were you a devoted fan? Get in touch to share your photos and memories.