Savage killed at least eight

In April 1955, Anne O'Hara jilted her intended, Peter Manuel, 27, a laborer from a village near Glasgow, Scotland. Her rejection may have been what turned him into the “Beast of Birkenshaw,” a rapist and serial killer who murdered at least eight people, and perhaps as many as 18.

O'Hara met Manuel shortly after his release from one of the many prison sentences he served since starting his criminal career at around age 10.

He was born in New York City in 1927, the youngest son of a Scottish immigrant couple. A few years after the start of the Great Depression, the family returned to Scotland.

Peter was a clever boy, but he was always in trouble. Bullies tormented him because of his American accent and would later get some of the blame, at least in Manuel's mind, for his life of crime.

Injuries may have contributed to his abnormal behavior. During a World War II German bombing raid, a piece of shrapnel whacked him in the head. Later, while working on a railroad track, an electric shock almost killed him.

Burglary was the most common of his youthful offenses until he was 15, when he broke into the home of one of his teachers and beat the man's wife. In 1946, a rape landed him in jail for six years.

By 1953, Manuel had served his time and seemed to be trying to go straight. He had a job, apartment, car, and a fiancée. Her jilting him was such a devastating blow that he vowed to take revenge on women, wrote C.L. Swinney in his book, “The Beast of Birkenshaw.”

The day O'Hara dumped him Manuel went out and grabbed a girl, Mary McLaughlan, who looked like his ex. He tried to rape her at knifepoint and threatened to cut off her head. She somehow managed to get away.

On Jan. 2, 1956, Anne Kneilands, 17, of East Kilbride, was walking home from a friend's house along a path through a golf course. A man walking his dog found her body the next day. Her skull had been smashed.

A known sex offender, Manuel was high on the persons-of-interest list. He also had scratches on his face.

Detectives were certain they had their killer. But then Samuel Manuel, Peter's father, insisted that his son had been at home with his family at the time of the killing.

Nine months later, the area was rocked by another horror. On Sept. 17, Marion Watt, 45, her daughter Vivienne, 17, and Mrs. Watt's sister, Margaret Brown, 41, had settled into bed for the night in the Watts' home in Burnside.

The next morning, the family's housekeeper found the corpses of the two older women, and the teenager clinging to life. She died within hours. All had been shot in the head. There were signs that Vivienne had been sexually assaulted.

William Watt, a baker, was away on a fishing trip when his wife, child, and sister-in-law were killed. Police arrested him after witnesses said they saw him near his home at the time of the murders. Watt remained locked up for months while detectives tried to gather proof of his guilt. All leads fell apart and he was freed.

There were no more murders until Dec. 8, 1957, when taxi driver Sydney Dunn, 36, was found in a field, his throat cut and a bullet in his head. Then Isabelle Cooke, a 17-year-old beauty, vanished as she was walking to a dance. Police found her underwear in a field, but no sign of a body.

Among the searchers looking for Cooke was Peter Manuel. He was fresh out of prison after serving about a year for robbery. His incarceration had coincided with the region's murder-free period.

Manuel even offered to drive a constable around on the search. The constable did not know that the helpful young man was Cooke's killer and that he had wiped out an entire family - Peter and Doris Smart and their son, Michael, 10 a few days earlier.

After killing the Smarts, Manuel decided to hang out in their home. He ate their food, watched their TV, fed their cat, and slept in the couple's bed, pushing the bloody bodies aside.

After about a week, he snatched some new banknotes and fled in the family car. The money would turn out to be his undoing.

Shortly after newspapers splashed details of the Smart killings on their front pages, a bartender noticed that one noisy patron was buying rounds of drinks with new bank notes. The man seemed strange, so the bartender called police.

The patron was Manuel, and the bank notes were traced to Smart. It led to Manuel's arrest.

In custody, Manuel confessed to eight “crimes of homicide” and led police to a field where he said Cooke was buried. “Where is Isabelle?” a detective asked him after a long hike. “I am standing on her now,” Manuel replied.

He defended himself at his trial, which started on May 12, 1958. It took two and a half hours for the jury to find him guilty of seven murders. There was not enough evidence for a conviction in the Kneilands case.

“Turn up the radio, and I'll go quietly,” were his last words before he died on the gallows in July. He admitted to 10 additional killings while waiting for his execution.

Sixty years after his death, crime experts still ponder what created this monster. Was it a woman's rejection, bullying, a head injury, or insanity?

But most sum up the cause succinctly - pure evil.