Murderer Mone is only sorry that he got caught...
Family of Carstairs victim slate killer’s prison letters
A NOTORIOUS killer has spoken f or the f i rst time about the Carstairs prison escape which left three people dead.
Robert Mone, 67, broke out of the State Hospital with Thomas McCulloch in 1976, in a murderous rampage in which a nurse, patient and policeman were slaughtered and he stabbed a workman almost to death.
However, his account, given in letters from jail, seeks to blame his Nazi-obsessed accomplice for the violence, while criticising security measures at Carstairs.
Last night the son of Neil McLellan, the nurse killed with an axe at Carstairs, hit out at the ‘remorseless’ killer.
John McLellan, 59, said: ‘I have lived with the consequences of what happened since 1976. It has completely altered the life my mother and I would have had.
‘Mone is telling the story that he has been led along, that he was not the main player in this and is still inside. He has got to convince the parole board that he is safe to be released and that he is remorseful. But he is only sorry he got caught.’
In a series of letters set to be published today in a new book, Carstairs: Hospital of Horrors, Mone described the events of November 30, 1976, as a ‘nightmare of shattered dreams and grotesque maniacal butchery’.
McCulloch was sent to the State Hospital at Carstairs, Lanarkshire, in 1970 after trying to kill two hotel staff following a row over a sandwich.
Mone had been there for three years, after bursting into a girls’ needlework class at St John’s School in Dundee, where he raped one pupil, sexually assaulted another and shot dead their pregnant teacher, 26-year-old Nanette Hanson.
In 1976, the pair broke out of Carstairs armed with weapons including an axe, a sword and a garotte.
In his letters, published in the book by journalist David Leslie, Mone said they amassed the weapons using the cover of props for a Christmas drama production of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men.
McCulloch fashioned a rope ladder from stolen material and garottes from violin strings, while the pair also managed to get hold of an axe and three knives.
Mone used his job on the hospital’s in-house magazine to make fake identity cards and disguises, which included false moustaches and nurse outfits f rom the drama department.
The killer wrote: ‘All of the equipment was made or stolen under the very noses of the staff who were supposed to be ultra-vigilant.’
Speaking about a box McCulloch carried holding the rope ladder and weapons, Mone added: ‘Anyone carrying out the most cursory search would have uncovered everything.’
Throughout his letters, Mone has denied blame for the violence, even claiming he was lucky to escape being killed by McCulloch.
He also described the killing of 46-year-old nurse Mr McLellan in sickening detail, from the moment when he sprayed paint thinner into his eyes to disable him. Mone wrote: ‘I entered the office and immediately took out the disabling spray and squirted it in Neil’s face. He leapt to his feet and, as I grappled with him, we both stumbled into the corner, where I tried to pin him.’
He claimed Mr McLellan was ‘transfixed’, his eyes ‘ bulging in terror’ at McCulloch repeatedly hitting patient Iain Simpson with an axe behind him.
Mone then stabbed 40-year- old Mr Simpson with a garden fork before, he said, his accomplice ‘finished both men off ’.
PC George Taylor, 27, was killed after McCulloch and Mone got over the perimeter fence.
Two workmen whose car they hijacked were wounded, with Mone expressing ‘regret and shame’ only once in the extracts released so far, for stabbing and nearly killing one of them. The killers were eventually caught after holding a young family hostage in their own home. They were given life sentences and told they would die in jail.
However, triple axe murderer McCulloch was freed from prison two years ago, after 43 years behind bars. Mone was prepared for freedom from Glenochil jail, Clackmannanshire, in 2011, as he was nearing the end of his sentence, but the plan was delayed.
Mr McLellan and his mother Marion, now 87, have previously said their lives were ‘torn apart’ by the horrific crime. Mr McLellan, of Campbeltown, Argyll, now cares for his mother, who has suffered crippling depression since her husband’s death.
He said last night that he believed both men should have received the death penalty, adding: ‘ This account by Mone is not accurate. This is his memory of what happened.’
Both psychopaths were told they would die in jail, but European human rights laws mean a life sentence with no prospect of being freed is no longer legal.
Their sentences were changed to terms of 30 years, on completion of which they could apply to be released on parole.
Scotland’s parole board agreed to McCulloch’s f reedom, despite opposition from senior Scottish Government figures, i ncluding Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill. McCulloch was released f rom Castle Huntly open prison in Perthshire, to move into a flat in Dundee with his girlfriend.
Because Mone was detained under the Mental Health Act, he never stood trial for killing Mrs Hanson.
Mone and McCulloch were said to be gay lovers in Carstairs. The pair flaunted their affair, often holding hands and wearing matching red silk dressing gowns.
Mone once claimed: ‘I was so carried away with Thomas that if he’d told me to jump off a tall building and that I wouldn’t get injured, I’d have believed him. I just wanted to please him.’
Carstairs: Hospital for Horrors by David Leslie, published by Black & White Publishing, is available to buy from today, priced at £9.99 for the paperback.