BBC podcast prompts police to look again at case of serial killer Bible John
A podcast that investigated the unsolved murders of three Glasgow women in the 1960s has prompted police to re-examine the case of Scotland’s most notorious serial killer, known as Bible John.
The BBC series Bible John: Creation of the Serial Killer, created by the former Guardian journalist Audrey Gillan, focused on three women who were all killed after nights out at Glasgow’s Barrowland Ballroom.
The series claimed that police chiefs at the time covered up the identity of Bible John, the man believed to be their murderer, and alleged that he was John Irvine McInnes, the cousin of a senior police officer, whose name was always kept out of official records.
Family members of the murdered women – Helen Puttock, Jemima MacDonald and Patricia Docker – say they have been contacted by Police Scotland as a result of the podcast.
“When the police officer phoned and said they were going to reinvestigate, that was a bit of a bombshell,” said Jemima MacDonald’s youngest son, Allan Mottley. “I never imagined that they would get to this and that they would relook at it all.
“I am not expecting that much, to be honest. They might openly admit these murders were not investigated properly in the first place and we might get an apology over the way they were investigated.”
The initial investigation was one of the largest ever inquiries in Scottish history, with police interviewing 7,000 people, taking 4,000 statements and putting out notorious photofits of the suspected killer, who was known as Bible John due to him quoting scripture during a taxi journey with Puttock and her sister before she was murdered. No arrests were ever made.
The body of John Irvine McInnes – who died by suicide in the 1980s – was exhumed in 1995 in relation to the investigation, with DNA analysis against a sample taken from Puttock’s tights coming back inconclusive. The podcast spoke to officers involved in the 1995 investigation who said they were certain that McInnes was Bible John.
A spokesperson for Police Scotland said: “We are assessing the contents of a recent podcast in consultation with the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service. The murders of Helen Puttock, Jemima McDonald and Patricia Docker remain unresolved, however, as with all unresolved cases, they are subject to review and any new information about their deaths will be investigated.”