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it has been over 50 years since a man known only as bible john terrorized the scottish city of
glasgow with a two-year-long killing spree the club known as the barolan ballroom was exclusive
hunting ground he picked up women danced with them and when the night was done he would take them
home and strangle them just meters from the safety of said home his crimes were followed by the
largest police operation in the history of glasgow over 100 detectives worked the case collecting
over 50 000 statements and questioning 5 000 suspects trying to identify the killer all of this
proved to be in vain bible john simply disappeared once his murder spree had ended never to be heard
from again who he was why he did what he did and why he stopped remain mysteries to this day
the year was 1968 in glasgow scotland patricia docker was a 25 year old auxiliary nurse who had
taken a young son and moved in with her parents while her husband was stationed at the royal air
force base near digby in lincolnshire england on february 22nd patricia decided that she wanted
to let her hair down a little things weren't going too well for her her relationship with her husband
was on the rocks and the couple had already talked about getting a divorce their job got pretty
intense as pat worked night shifts at one of the busiest hospitals in the city that was why for one
night she wanted to put all of her problems aside and enjoy some me time that thursday evening pat
had the day off so she left her four-year-old son in the care of his grandparents she dressed up in
one of her most fashionable outfits a yellow mini dress accessorized with a brown handbag
to match her shoes all of this was covered by a large duffle coat with a fur collar fashion
is nice and all that but this is still a winter's night in scotland once she was ready pat hit the
town for a night of dancing drinking and maybe even some casual flirting little did she know that
she would become involved in the largest manhunt in the city's history back then if you were young
and you were looking for a good time in glasgow you went to the majestic that's where pat's
parents thought she was going but it was not where she actually went she might have stopped there
originally but for reasons that remain unknown she ended up at the barrel and ballroom which was
hosting an over 25s night one dancehall is as good as another right well unfortunately for patricia
docker this dance hall was the hunting grounds for a violent predator and he was there that night
looking for prey munchie was inside the dancehall it becomes pretty much impossible to track pat's
movements as she became just another figure in the crowd vibing to the sounds of the swinging
60s she said hello to a few friends danced with a few people had a few drinks what you would expect
to happen on a night out but at one point she did meet a man he was in his mid to late 20s
well groomed with either reddish or light brown hair and handsome enough to catch pat's attention
the two talked a little danced a little and they left maryland together that was the last time that
anyone saw patricia docker alive the following morning a tablet maker named maurice goodman left
his house and was walking the short journey to the lock-up garage where he kept his car
when he suddenly came across a ghastly sight that would haunt him forever it was the body of
patricia docker partially naked beaten and bruised lying in the doorway of the garage goodman rushed
to call the cops and two detectives were soon on the scene the police pathologist arrived shortly
after them and provided the first clues of the investigation based on rigor mortis pat had been
murdered hours earlier most likely a short time after leaving the barylan ballroom she had been
hit in the face and head mercilessly although none of these injuries would have been life threatening
instead she was killed by strangulation most likely with a belt or pantyhose the murder weapon
was never recovered and neither were the rest of pat's clothes the medical examiner noted that pat
docker was menstruating at the time of her death although no importance was placed on that fact
yet police began canvassing the neighborhood but did not turn up any useful leads one neighbor
thought that they had a cry for help during the early hours of the morning but they didn't
bother to get up and check so that was a dead end police did id the body pretty fast does one of the
ambulance men recognize pat as a nurse who worked at the mernskirk hospital her parents were alerted
to the tragedy and her father made the official identification from then on it was slim pickings
for investigators the time they saved with the id they lost by making inquiries the majestic since
that was where they thought patricia docker went that night eventually they found out that
she ended up at the barylan ballroom instead and that she left with a young man who was most likely
her killer but that was about it nobody seemed to remember anything remarkable about him and
those who did might not have been too eager to talk you see the maryland was the kind of place
where many guests took off their wedding rings by accident and forgot that they were married for a
few hours which could potentially explain why pat docker and probably many others preferred to tell
their loved ones that they went somewhere else to spend their evening truth be told the crime
might not have been the police's highest priority at the time glasgow was quite a violent place back
then with a murder rate there was over double that of other big cities like edinburgh london police
thought this was a straightforward and isolated crime of passion a man picked up a woman at a club
and when she rebuffed his advances he attacked her they did not yet know that they were investigating
the first murder of the man who had become known as scotland's most notorious unidentified killer
so when leads dried up they moved on to another case that is until he struck again
almost a year and a half passed before the killer claimed another victim by this point
most of glasgow had quietly forgotten about the murder of patricia docker and nobody
suspected that the city had a vicious serial killer in its midst but then on august 16
1969 a familiar scenario occurred to remind everyone of the dangers that lurked within
the shadows of glasgow jemima mcdonald was a 32 year old mother of three who
liked to let loose every now and then just like pat dawker when the time came for a
little carousing she left her children with her sister and went to the maryland ballroom where
she was somewhat of a regular because of this several people spotted her in the dance hall
that night and they also noticed that she was getting very friendly with a guy whose description
matched that of pat docker's final companion a tall man in his late twenties early thirties slim
build well dressed well groomed he was sporting a blue suit and reddish hair winders also said that
he spoke with a glaswegian accent and overheard him making several biblical references which would
ultimately end up giving him his unique moniker in the press they even had a first name for him john
although it was most likely an alias it appeared that jemima macdonald was quite infatuated with a
new consort and the two left baryland together shortly after midnight the following morning
her sister margaret got worried when she saw that jemima had not returned home that night
her worry soon turned to panic when she heard the local scuttlebutt that some neighborhood
kids were going around telling everyone that they discovered a dead body in an abandoned tenement
building just yards from her house margaret went there to check if the rumor was true or
if kids were just being kids and her findings confirmed her worst fear the body was real
and it belonged to her sister jeremiah macdonald had been ferociously assaulted and then strangled
to death just like with patricia docker the body was found close to her home and her handbag was
missing although unlike the first victim jemima macdonald had not been stripped naked even though
the attack was eerily reminiscent of the one on patricia docker the police were not quite ready to
attribute them both to the same culprit since two different murderers frequenting the same nightclub
within a year and a half times ban would not have been unheard of that being said they also didn't
rule out the possibility so they stepped up their efforts to find him this time they sent undercover
officers to the dancehall they had one policewoman dress up as jemima mcdonald and retrace her last
known steps to see if it jogged anyone's memory they even released a sketch of the suspect to the
public which was a first for a scottish murder investigation since back then these were only
circulating among police organizations all of this effort turned up nothing police did not get
any closer towards catching their man although to be fair the culprit did not wait around too long
before he killed again all right we'll get back to our video in just a second but first here's
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this time only a couple of months had passed before the mysterious killer decided to paint
the town red once more it was october 31 1969 halloween night so unsurprisingly there were
quite a few parties taking place throughout glasgow many people hit the town to celebrate
and among them was helen partook a 29 year old mother of two her husband volunteered to stay
home with a kid so his wife could go out and enjoy a night out although he was a bit apprehensive by
that point the idea that there was a killer among them stalking the streets of glasgow at night put
some of the locals on edge but no need to worry though helen reassured her husband she was going
out accompanied by her sister jean and the two of them would look after each other so
with that mata settled helen got dressed up and went out her destination the maryland ballroom
according to jean she and helen paired off with two men who both introduced themselves as john and
spent most of the night dancing with them when it was time to go all four of them left together the
harmless john traveled on foot to a nearby bus station while the sisters and the evil john got
into a taxi together the following experience was either innocuous or sinister depending on who you
ask i mean in hindsight it was absolutely sinister the two sisters were sharing a ride with a serial
killer after all but according to one book on the subject that three of them spent the time
mostly talking about trivial things and when gene was the first to reach her destination she felt
like she was leaving helen in safe hands another book however paints a much darker picture and says
that john was morose even upset during the whole trip resenting gene's presence he spent the time
talking about the evils of dens of iniquity such as the parallel ballroom and chastised the women
of loose morals who frequented such places even so john's off-putting behavior wasn't enough
to raise any serious alarm bells so when gene got out of the cab and waved goodbye to helen
she had no idea that that would be the last time she'd see her sister alive helen puddik's body
was found the next morning by a man walking his dog she had been dumped in a courtyard once again
close to where she lived she had been strangled her clothes had been ripped and her handbag had
been taken like the previous two victims helen was menstruating at the time of her death police had
noticed this with the other women but thought it was simply a coincidence now however the
killer took time to make a clear reference to this fact by taking one of her sanitary pads
and placing it under her armpit could it be that this was some kind of trigger for him that
unleashed his murderous rage that wasn't the only difference between the crime scenes there were a
few other signs that as the killings continued the culprit was starting to get either more
careless or was losing his ability to control his violent urges he left a deep bite mark on
helen's body and also a semen stain on her clothes nowadays those would be viable forensic clues but
it was still the 1960s so there wasn't a lot that the police could do with them even so the
investigators preserved the evidence in the hopes that it would become more useful in the future
with three murders of similar victims who were all picked up in the same place most likely by
the same man there could be no more doubt glasgow had a serial killer on his hands the press picked
up on the murderer's habit of quoting scripture and gave him the notorious sobriquet bible john
that kicked the police investigation into high gear and with all hands on deck everyone was
hopeful that bible john would soon be behind bars after all he left plenty of witnesses
behind including helen's sister gene who had spent a whole cab ride with him and there were
other people who spotted him at baryland as well the official description provided by the police to
the press described bible john as a man of medium build around six feet tall 25 to 30 years of age
with short light reddish hair and blue gray eyes with one tooth in the upper right corner of the
mouth overlapping another tooth and sporting a military military-style watch investigators even
circulated a detailed color portrait of the killer made by an artist from the glasgow school of art
unsurprisingly the sketch opened the floodgates and the tip started pouring in at torrential
speed over 4 000 people contacted the police just in the days that followed claiming to know
someone who resembled the portrait eventually investigators began issuing special cards to
the innocent men who had been questioned and cleared of charges just so that they could
prove to their loved ones and co-workers that they weren't bible john a profile compiled by
a psychiatrist in 1970 described john as a sex killer appeared and acted like the sort of young
man that a mother would want her daughter to bring home he was good at hiding his evil side from
those close to him and on the exterior he appeared shy and harmless he was a loner who preferred solo
activities opting to go alone to the cinema over going out with a group to drink or watch a game
he possessed many of the traits often found in compulsive sex killers such as tidiness vanity
high intelligence effeminacy and a dislike of smoking drinking and vulgar language he probably
still lived with his mother who saw him as nothing but a sweet little boy even though he secretly
harbored a hatred of women which compelled him to exert his power over them and ultimately murdered
them for a while there was this belief that the killer attended clubs even when he didn't murder
anybody then on certain night something happened that triggered his compulsion to kill therefore 16
officers were assigned to dance duty every night they would go out undercover at the baryland and
other dancehalls and boogie until the wee hours of the morning in the hopes that they might run into
bible john on the dance floor another strange lead came from a witness who remembered having a casual
chat with a killer about golf where john mentioned that his cousin had recently scored a hole in one
this was all the info the police had to go on but they still reached out to all the
400-plus golf courses in scotland to see if anyone remembered such a feat being celebrated recently
cabbies and bus drivers in glasgow were all tracked down and questioned if they
recognized the portrait dentists were asked if any of them could identify bible john based on
the overlapping tooth an appeal was made to the armed forces since the killer's wristwatch and
short hairstyles suggested he could have been a military man one by one each lead was pursued
and one by one each lead had a dead end although at first police were hopeful that identifying and
catching bible john was only a matter of time that hope was dwindling with every passing day
it's probably not much of a spoiler to tell you that the police never caught bible john
the killer seemingly vanished after the murder of helen potter and was never heard from again
he became a boogeyman a distant memory of terror that once lurked in the shadow similar to other
notorious killers such as jack the ripper or the zodiac but although the bible john murders became
a cold case it was never officially closed obviously the 100 detectives who once worked
on the case were reassigned once the clues had dried up but they still pursued new leads whenever
they appeared helen's sister jean still came in whenever there was a new suspect to look at she
never publicly discussed her sister's murder but she was available whenever the police needed her
gene made around 250 such trips to the station but none of them ever ended with her pointing a finger
at a suspect and saying that's him that's the man that killed my sister there was some renewed zeal
for the investigation during the 1990s when dna analysis became the new forensic darling
glasgow police still had the semen samples from the putting murder but the samples on their own
would be useless without something to match them up against police wanted to test dna from one of
their strongest suspects a man known back then as simply john m who had committed suicide in 1980.
he seemed like a good fit he had a very strong resemblance to the bible john sketch and he used
to serve in the armed forces as part of the scots guard as the investigation continued through the
years he kept popping up on top of the suspect pile so in 1996 the police obtained an exclamation
order for his body the operation was supposed to be discreet but the name of the suspect leaked
out and all of a sudden the scottish press were all over it deeming john mcinnes to be bible john
before the results even came in on top of that the police were pressured to justify why exactly the
exclamation and dna test ended up costing over a million dollars and overall the whole thing
turned into one big pr nightmare then the coup de grace was delivered when the results came in
and they cleared john mcinnes of any involvement leaving crown investigators with a lot of egg on
their faces as they issued a very prolonged and public apology to the mcginnis family but the way
they bungled it so one of the main suspects in the case was off the table but even worse the debacle
had caused the authorities to be a lot more apprehensive about trying it again the sad reality
was that the murders of bible john had long been replaced by newer even more horrifying crimes so
it was a matter of allocating resources where they would be most effective that being said there were
rumblings around 2005 that glasgow police had collected dna samples from a new family in order
to match them that time however their name didn't get out since no public statements on the matter
were ever made we can only presume the results were negative but let's get to the main event
peter tobin if you are familiar with the bible john case at all then you know that name already
for the last 15 years or so he has been presented by many people as the best candidate to be
bible john let's start with the obvious here peter tobin is a convicted serial killer who murdered at
least three young women between 1991 and 2006 but since he was already in his mid-40s by the time he
committed his first known murder police suspected that there might be earlier victims thus operation
anagram was born in 2006 but the goal being to track tobin's movements as far back as possible
to see if there were links to any previous murders that's when the bible john connection popped
up since it was revealed that tobin lived near glasgow at the time of the baryland killings and
would have been in his mid-20s he moved to england the same year the murders stopped after marrying
for the first time furthermore tobin came from a strict religious family and his first wife once
said that he attacked her after becoming enraged because she was menstruating a lot of fingers
were starting to point in tobin's direction but dna couldn't help us anymore by the time of his
arrest the samples from the 1960s became too degraded to produce conclusive results to this
day plenty of people are still convinced that he is bible john however the detectives who worked on
operation anagram are not among them and they say that they've eliminated tobin as a suspect pretty
conclusively insisting that he wasn't in glasgow at the time of some of the murders so for now
bible john remains as elusive as ever so i'm not gonna ask if you enjoyed today's video but if you
enjoy this sort of crime content i actually have a entire show dedicated to true crime
it's called the casual criminalist we do a full extended super long episode all about bible john
which i'll link to on the screen now you can check out there'll be a link below as well
and well check it out please subscribe if you like it and thank you for watching
you