Allegations of a cover-up in the hunt for serial killer Bible John are being investigated. The move comes after a BBC podcast revealed claims from ex-officers, who reinvestigated the murder of third victim Helen Puttock, who was killed in October 1969.
They claimed prime suspect John Irvine McInnes was ignored by police chief Joe Beattie as he was the cousin of his close friend and fellow cop James McInnes. At the time, Beattie was in charge of the Bible John probe at Partick police office in Glasgow, which also looked at the murders of Patricia Docker, 25, and Jemima MacDonald, 32.
Yesterday, Detective Chief Superintendent Laura Thomson from 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. As with all unresolved cases, they are subject to review and any new information about their deaths will be investigated.”
Former detective Robert Johnstone, 86, spent more than a year on the case, working closely with CID boss Beattie. He said: “There is something not right here. If somebody is claiming there is a cover-up, then we have to find out why. We also have to ask why the case suddenly got dropped in 1996. This is an investigation that definitely needs to be sorted once and for all.”
In the podcast Bible John: Creation of a Serial Killer by journalist Audrey Gillan, ex-Detective Chief Inspector Jim McEwan claimed his 1995 review found evidence that was overlooked.
Mum-of-two Helen was murdered after sharing a taxi from Glasgow’s Barrowland ballroom to Scotstoun in the west of the city with sister Jean Langford and a bible-quoting man they’d met. Jean left her sister in the cab with the stranger.
McEwan found evidence McInnes – who killed himself in 1980 – was the man in the taxi. Both the cabbie and a bouncer picked him out of a photo line-up in 1995.
A Procurator Fiscal told McEwan he would have granted an arrest warrant if McInnes had still been alive. McInnes’s body was exhumed in 1996 so a DNA sample could be tested against evidence. But there was no conclusive match.
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