Allegations of a cover-up within the hunt for serial killer Bible John are being investigated. The transfer comes after a BBC podcast revealed claims from ex-officers, who reinvestigated the homicide of third sufferer 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 shut buddy and fellow cop James McInnes. On the time, Beattie was in command of the Bible John probe at Partick police workplace in Glasgow, which additionally seemed on the murders of Patricia Docker, 25, and Jemima MacDonald, 32.
Yesterday, Detective Chief Superintendent Laura Thomson from Police Scotland stated: “We're assessing the contents of a latest podcast in session with the Crown Workplace and Procurator Fiscal Service. The murders of Helen Puttock, Jemima McDonald and Patricia Docker stay unresolved. As with all unresolved instances, they're topic to evaluate and any new details about their deaths shall be investigated.”
Former detective Robert Johnstone, 86, spent greater than a yr on the case, working intently with CID boss Beattie. He stated: “There's something not proper right here. If anyone is claiming there's a cover-up, then we've to seek out out why. We additionally must ask why the case all of the sudden obtained dropped in 1996. That is an investigation that positively must be sorted as soon as and for all.”
Within the podcast Bible John: Creation of a Serial Killer by journalist Audrey Gillan, ex-Detective Chief Inspector Jim McEwan claimed his 1995 evaluate discovered proof that was neglected.
Mum-of-two Helen was murdered after sharing a taxi from Glasgow’s Barrowland ballroom to Scotstoun within the west of town with sister Jean Langford and a bible-quoting man they’d met. Jean left her sister within the cab with the stranger.
McEwan discovered proof McInnes – who killed himself in 1980 – was the person within the taxi. Each the cabbie and a bouncer picked him out of a photograph line-up in 1995.
A Procurator Fiscal instructed McEwan he would have granted an arrest warrant if McInnes had nonetheless been alive. McInnes’s physique was exhumed in 1996 so a DNA pattern might be examined towards proof. However there was no conclusive match.
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