Crime Junkie - SERIAL KILLER: Bible John

Episode Date: September 17, 2018

In the late 1960s, three women were murdered after attending the same nightclub. But aside from their location, all three women had something very specific in common. Was this thing they had in common the reason they were killed or was their killer, a man now known as Bible John, after them because they were frequenting a nightclub known for hookups and infidelity? It is now decades later and police are still looking for a red-haired man last seen with all three women. For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/serial-killer-bible-john/    

Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And I have a story for you today that I just recently learned about from watching a YouTuber. There is this girl named Georgia Marie who does midweek mysteries, kind of like we do here every week. She covers a different case, and she's actually from the UK. So often I hear stories from her that don't get covered here in the US or in a lot of the podcasts that I listen to. I know a lot of you listen to us at work, and don't worry, I won't tell your bosses. But after you listen to our show, while you're sitting at your desk or on your computer or on your phone, go to YouTube and check out Georgia Marie's channel. You can deep dive into her midweek mysteries for an extra fix of true crime. And one of the stories

you'll see when you're there to go check her out is that of a serial killer who I'd never known of, but whose crimes are well known in the UK, especially in Glasgow, Scotland, the largest city in Scotland, where the murders took place and are still unsolved. And the authorities to this day are still looking for a man that they've called Bible John. It took three murders before Bible John got his name. So when the first victim, Patricia, was found in February of 1968, people just chalked it up to the ever-growing crime rate of the area. No one realized that this was just the beginning of what was to come. Patricia was a 25-year-old nurse who had recently separated from her husband and was living at home with her parents and her

four-year-old son. Patricia normally worked nights, but on the night of February 22nd, she had the night off, so she wanted to go out with her friends. And Patricia told her family that she was going to the majestic ballroom that night. And truthfully, she may have gone there to start the night, but they closed at 10.30. Or she may have been lying to her family altogether, because what we know is that she ended up at a place called the Barrowland Ballroom. And she went for their over 25 nights. And this went on from 8 o'clock to midnight on Thursdays. And it was actually referred to as Grab a Granny Night. And to me, 25 is hardly a granny. I feel so old right now. Right. But the club had this reputation. They called it that because

on those nights, those Grab a Granny Nights, people would come, often married people, but they would come alone to dance and flirt and maybe even leave with people who weren't their significant others. Because of this reputation, that might have been why Patricia didn't mention the Barrowland to her mother when she left that night. There isn't a lot known about who Patricia was with that night or what men she met while at the Barrowland. But we do know she met someone and that that man took her life. The next morning, a 67-year-old man was taking a shortcut on a shortcut on his way to work when he saw something he thought was a mannequin. Of course, it's never a mannequin. When he approached the body, he actually touched it with his foot and he said it

felt like a block of ice, but he knew right away that it was a real body. Now, for some reason, he thought it was the body of a man, even though Patricia was completely nude and laying on her back face up. And I'm not sure how this mistake was made. And even this guy says he doesn't even know. I have to assume it was just part of the shock of the situation. Yeah, definitely. But however the misidentification happened, it would play heavily into how the case was investigated because this man called police about the body. And unfortunately, when he said, you know what, there's this naked man, police made a very negligent mistake. They made the assumption that this naked man was that of a homeless man who had maybe just succumbed to the elements.

So they were in no rush to get anyone out there. In fact, the first officers that actually showed up to the scene weren't the ones who were called or dispatched at all. They were just two traffic cops who happened to wander onto the crime scene as they were making their rounds. When investigators finally arrived, they realized that the scene wasn't anything like they had expected. Like I said, Patricia was completely nude, laying on her back with only a single shoe on. Rigor Mortis had already begun to set in, and it was clear that she had been beaten, raped, and strangled with some kind of ligature. At the time, they thought it could have possibly been a belt, but down the line, they were able to find that she was likely strangled with her own

stocking. Now this stocking, nor any of her other belongings were found anywhere near her, not her clothes, not her handbag, not anything inside of her handbag, but there was something left behind. Near Patricia's body was a used sanitary napkin that was likely her own, because the coroner determined that she had actually been on her period at the time of her death. Now the location of Patricia's body was in a street just yards away from her parents' home, and police assumed that she was likely attacked by somebody who had walked her home or given a ride home or was escorting her home in some way. Now there was a report of a woman screaming, leave me alone, the night of Patricia's murder, but there wasn't a sighting of Patricia with any

man who could have been her attacker. Nobody was identified. And though I've been calling her Patricia, keep in mind, no one even knows who she is at this point. She didn't have her ID on her. She had been so severely beaten that even people who worked with her at the same hospital where she was a nurse, where she would end up being brought in, didn't even recognize her. When her body was found and the papers reported on it, her dad had even read the description of this woman found. Knowing his daughter didn't come home, and he didn't even put it together, that it was his own daughter. Oh my god. I know. He said that, you know, I'm assuming again, you don't want to think the worst, but there's no way that your daughter who went out dancing is the one who was found

murdered and naked and beaten. They assume that she was just still with her nursing friends, and maybe she ended up staying at one of their friend's house, and it wasn't until they actually took her picture into the police station to file a missing persons report, that they were presented with the idea that the body found could have been their daughter, and they are then asked to identify her, which they were able to do immediately. Now that police know who Patricia is, they start to investigate her movements that night, and because she told her parents she was going to the majestic, that's where they did all of the investigating. And it took them weeks before they realized they were actually chasing down leads in

the wrong place, and by then any memory of anyone seeing Patricia with a man or even just at the barland was long lost in their distant memories. The most detailed recollection anyone would recall was that she had danced with a couple of men that night, and some people thought maybe one of these guys had red hair. Police did searches in nearby areas, hopefully trying to find Patricia's belongings. They were thinking maybe if we could find her clothes or her handbag or anything, this would give us some lead to go off of. They did end up trudging this river later, and they found her handbag, but it didn't give them any clues as to who her murderer was. And although this was a very gruesome crime, police really thought this was a one-off incident.

Like I mentioned before, crime in the area was high, and this poor girl, perhaps, they thought had just become a victim of a targeted attack or even a random attack, maybe something that was sexually motivated and things just went terribly wrong. But locals would start to question this when just 18 months later, another woman is found in an eerily similar way. On a Saturday night in August of 1969, 32-year-old Jemima left her three children with her sister so she could go have a night on the town. Unlike Jemima, most of her friends were married, so it wasn't strange for her to go to the dance clubs alone. What was strange was when Sunday morning came and went, and Jemima didn't come back to her

sister's house to pick up her kids. Her sister Margaret started to become worried, and even more so when she started to hear the neighborhood kids talk about the body that they found at an abandoned house that they would play at during the day. Now, this, to me, is a little crazy. This house was used by kids in the day, and at night, it was known as a spot where prostitutes would bring their johns and maybe where people would do drugs. So, A, let's not let kids play there. But B, if they're gonna play there and they see a body, is no one telling these kids what kinds of things they should be reporting to police? Because apparently this was just a rumor that these kids were talking about,

they found this body, they found this body, but no one went to the police at all. I feel like it's a little bit dark, but I now want to make sure all of my friends know to tell their kids what to do if they find a body. Yeah, and it's not something you think you like have to talk about, but you're like, holy crap, all these kids are running around telling everyone about a body that they found. And not telling the police. Yeah. Well, whatever happened, Margaret basically hears about this body, and she doesn't want to think the worst. But when Monday rolls around, and it's now been day two that her sister hasn't come back to fetch her kids, and still nobody's called the police about this body, Margaret decides to go see if these kids

were actually onto something real. Maybe they were making it up, but if there was a body, she needed to check. Margaret walks into the building. This building is less than 30 yards from her home. Oh my God. And there on the floor was what she assumed she said when she walked in to be a tailor's dummy. Or a mannequin. Or a mannequin. But again, you're going in looking for a body and you still assume it's a mannequin. I don't know how that's possible. But again, I have to think you're not wanting to find your sister. Your mind does play tricks on you and will tell you kind of what you want to see. But after only seconds, the recognition sets in. It's not a tailor's dummy. It's not a mannequin. It was Jemima. From the looks of her, she had been

beaten. She had been sexually assaulted. And she was strangled with her own stockings. Authorities were called in and they started taking stock of the scene. Jemima's clothes were still with her, but they were in disarray. Some of them were taken off. Some of them were in pieces. Some of them, like her underwear, were torn. But pretty much everything was accounted for. The only thing that wasn't accounted for was her handbag. Now, there was something very distinct at the scene that was similar to Patricia's crime scene. There was a sanitary napkin laying near Jemima's body and the medical examiner later determined that she too had been on her period at the time of her murder. When police start to search the area and question people, they find that she had started

the night at a bar just across the street from Borrowland. She was seen talking to a man with red hair. And according to witnesses, Jemima and this young man went to the Borrowland together. They danced for some time and they even left the club together. When they tried to get details from the witnesses, they said that he looked about 25 to 35. He was tall, likely over six feet, and he dressed very well in a blue suit with a white shirt. According to everyone they talked to, he wasn't a local guy or anyone who frequented that area on any kind of regular basis. Even though Glasgow was the largest city in Scotland, everything I read about Borrowland basically said they knew their regulars. They knew who was the usual crowd on these Thursday and Saturday nights,

these grab a granny nights. And this guy wasn't one of the usuals. The police were able to retrace Jemima and this red-haired man's steps based on some eyewitnesses. And it seems like they would have been walking for about 20 minutes before Jemima was attacked. Now, if you'll remember, Jemima was found just a short distance from her sister's home where they likely would have ended up that night to go back and get her kids. And Patricia was found just a short distance from her parents' house as well. So it seems whoever this man is, he was wooing these women all night and even playing the part of a gentleman offering to walk them home when somewhere on the way he would attack them. Just two nights after Jemima's murder, the band at the Borrowland actually stopped

all of the music and made an announcement about the police's investigation. It was known that people likely wouldn't want to be associated in the public with the Borrowland. So when they made this announcement, they basically were promised that anyone in the public who came forward would be kept anonymous if they had any information. We won't say you are here again because a lot of people were coming there without their spouses. But despite this promise, very few people actually came forward or provided any new information. Now I've been comparing Jemima and Patricia's cases already because there was a lot that was eerily similar. They were both seen at the Borrowland, both on these over 25 nights. Both had been raped, beaten, strangled with their own stockings. Both of

them were seen with a man with red hair. They were both found just yards from their final destinations those evenings and both had bags that were taken from the scene. And most of all, both were on their periods and sanitary napkins were left laying near their bodies. However, even with all of these similarities, it took the authorities 10 weeks to link the two cases together. Once they finally got their act together, they assemble a team and make a sketch based on the very limited witness sightings that they had. And this seems crazy to me, but this was the first ever sketch in a criminal investigation for the Scottish police. So why haven't they been using that before? We've been using it in the States for ages. Well, I guess they thought that it would open

up the floodgates for legal challenges once a suspect was finally identified. Which I guess is valid, but it's something that I never think about because like you said, I feel like we've been using these for so long here in the States. But all they're worrying was for nothing because when they released this sketch, there were no solid leads that end up coming in and they were just left waiting for the red haired man to strike again. The police wouldn't have to wait long because on October 30th of the same year, the red haired man would claim another victim. And this time, he would give the biggest clues to his identity. A 29 year old wife and mother of two named Helen had just moved back to Scotland from Germany. Her and her military husband had actually

been stationed over in Germany for some time. So when they moved back, they were actually living with Helen's mother for a short time to get settled. On the night of October 30th, Helen wanted to go out dancing with just the girls. So it was her sister and some neighborhood friends. And her husband, George, didn't love this. But she told him, listen, I used to do this all the time, and I'm going to be home tonight. But being protective as George was, he actually gave her a tensioning note. So that way she could catch a cab home, which would surely be safer than taking the bus, or at least he thought. Now Helen's sister Jean came to pick her up. And the two girls actually took the bus to the area near Barrowland. Now by this time, police had connected the murders of

Patricia and Jemima. So they had even been passing around little flyers in the area, warning women to be safe and to be on the lookout for a man resembling their sketch. Helen and Jean had both seen these flyers, but they weren't worried. They were going to stay out together. They were going to watch out for each other. And they thought that they would be safe in pairs. That night, the girls first went to a local tavern before heading to the Barrowland at 10pm. At some point while they're out, Helen and Jean meet up with two men, John and John, one with dark hair and one whose hair was red. Jean said that the two sisters presumed that they were fake names just since many of the men who came to the over 25 night were married or not wanting to use their real names.

And like what were the odds that both of their name was John, but the girls just went with it. They danced and they talked with these two Johns. And at some point in the night, there is somewhat of a scene made. Jean lost some money in a cigarette vending machine, and one of the Johns came to her aid and made a big scene with the club's manager until they basically came to the agreement that if John or Jean returned tomorrow when the machine's money was being emptied, the manager would give them a refund. By the end of the evening, dark hair John decided he was going to catch a bus home. So he left Jean, Helen and red hair John at the front of the barland to catch a cab. I'm not sure what the plan was for Jean, Helen and

John. If maybe this man said he lived near where they were going, or if he was just going to escort them home and then take a cab home. But they all get in this cab together. And when they do, red hair John gets much chattier, even giving his full name. But Jean's memory is a little bit fuzzy. She says that his name is possibly John Templeton or John Sempleson or maybe even John Emerson. He said he lived in a specific area of Glasgow called Castle Milk, and that he had a steady job, but he was unmarried. All through the cab ride, John kept touching this pin on his jacket lapel. But in a way that almost Jean thought it was to like hide it from them so they wouldn't see whatever it was. And she didn't. She couldn't describe what kind of pin it was, only that he

kept touching it and was covering it. He spoke in a way, she said, that reminded her of military personnel. Like he was kind of condescending and judgmental, but she said it could have just been like this very authoritative demeanor that he had. And from this, she assumed that he was either currently serving in the military or had in the past. She also said that he had this very specific watch that was common with men in the military. Now they talked a lot in the short cab ride, but something that stuck out to Jean was his talk of golf. John mentioned that he wasn't much for the game, but that he did have a cousin once who scored a hole in one. Somehow, some way, the conversation turned to religion. And John told both women that he had been brought up in a very

strict and religious home. But even with all of the rules he and his sisters, so we know he has sisters, could never be quite as good as his parents. And he made sure that Jean and Helen knew that his dad told him that places like the borough land were dens of iniquity and married women who frequented those places were adulterous. In their short ride, he managed to quote passages of scripture reference Moses. And when they talked about plans for New Year's Eve, he said, I don't dance on Hogmanay, I pray. Sorry, what's Hogmanay? Hogmanay is actually the Scottish New Year's. So while describing him later, Jean would say that this John was slim. He was about six feet tall, maybe 25 to 35 years in age, had blue green eyes and a distinct smile because one of his

two front teeth slightly overlapped the other. Now, to me, of course, I'm looking back on this, having the benefit of hindsight, all of this talk sounds kind of crazy and not like somebody that I would want to leave my sister alone in a cab with. But I don't know the tone of all of this that's being said. Like did he talk about adulterous women and these dens of iniquity in a way that was like, oh my God, you're never going to believe what my crazy dad thinks? Because obviously he was there, or was he being weird and creepy? Like, I go to these places, but I have all these thoughts about you women that go there too. But I don't know. Also, Jean could have been drunk, and this becomes kind of a point of contention later. But Jean swears that she was sober while other people who

were at the club say that she was inebriated. So how much of what she's remembering of these religious conversations are real? And the tone that he said them in, maybe she mistook it, I have no idea, but drunk or not, Jean is the first one to be dropped off at her home. And the plan, or at least the plan as far as Jean knew, would be for him to next drop off Helen. But Helen would never make it home. George tried waiting up for his wife, but by three in the morning, he'd fallen asleep. And when he wakes up later that same morning, Helen still wasn't home. What he would soon find out is that she was laying in a back garden, just a few houses down from where he was waiting up for her. She was found face down with her clothes disheveled and torn.

She had been beaten. She had been strangled with her own stocking. She'd been sexually assaulted. And the contents of her handbag were dumped around her, but the bag itself was gone and never found. And just like the other two women, Helen was on her period and her sanitary napkin was laying on the ground next to her. Oh my God. There was something new at this scene though, something I don't think anyone can fully explain. On Helen was a bite mark and the impression left on her confirmed Jean's description of a man with an overlapping front tooth. Now this time it didn't take 10 weeks for police to make the connection. They knew they had a serial killer on their hands, and this time they had the best lead yet, someone who was with the

victim and her killer the entire night. So they bring back in their sketch artist and they make an even better sketch for this man called John. And we'll post this picture on our website and on Instagram, but Britt, do you want to kind of describe for people what Jean said Bible John looked like? Sure. Like everyone said before, he has red hair. He has kind of shifty blue eyes, a pretty straight nose, defined jawline and chin and kind of thin lips. Yeah, he's like slim. He looks very clean cut. He doesn't look like anyone you would be scared of. So they take this sketch and they share it all throughout the UK and even overseas at different military bases, because remember Jean thought maybe he had some kind of military connections and apparently his

hair was very close cropped, which was unusual for the time. So they think maybe that this guy had some kind of connection to being a serviceman. So they're sharing it at all of these military bases. While circulating the picture, police also start publicly announcing that they're looking for a serial killer. They even released details of the conversation Jean had with him in the cab about his religious ramblings. And it is from this that the media dubbed him Bible John. Detectives tried everything to find this guy. They had a team of 16 people go undercover at the borough land. They checked all of the golf courses in the area looking for maybe that cousin who scored the hole in one. They visited barbers looking for somebody who would recognize this

super red hair cropped super short, but it's Scotland and it's not that weird for people to have red hair. They were checking with dentists seeing if anyone recognized this bite mark with the overlapping tooth. But with all of this, every single time they come up with nothing. The police even spent a considerable amount of time looking for the other John, the man that was with him that night who was actually talking to Jean while Bible John was talking to Helen. And this is something really strange to me. This second man never came forward. He was never identified. And surely he had to have seen what was going on in Glasgow. He had to have known the police were looking for his friend were likely looking for him. So why was he hiding? Was he hiding his

friend? Was he helping cover for him? Or was he someone from out of town? And to this day, we don't know the answer to any of that all said and done. The search for Bible John was Scotland's largest manhunt. But 50 years later, the sharply dressed red haired man still has never been identified. There have been suspects, though. Very soon after Helen's murder, a man giving the name of John Edgar was actually arrested outside of the borough land. But he ended up evading police by jumping through a plate glass window in a hospital. So for years, he was like a prime suspect. But many, many years later, after never being found, still being a prime suspect, this man ended up coming forward. And he said, you know, I'm tired of evading you guys. I'm

tired of hiding. He let them test his DNA because DNA was found at Helen's crime scene on her stockings. That was going to be my next question. Yeah, he actually ends up being cleared. At least one person in the police actually believed that Bible John was one of their own. In this theory that he offered, I guess he thinks both John's that night with Helen and Jean were both police officers. And that's why neither of them have come forward. That second John was also an officer and knows that he would be putting himself and his friend in danger if he gives up his friend. So it doesn't explain if this other John has something to do with it or if he suspects his friend or what. But he thinks that both of these guys are within the police force. And the officer who

puts forward this theory has actually written a book and says he even has the name of someone specifically that he believes is Bible John, but he can't come forward with it yet due to a lack of evidence. In 1996, the body of a furniture salesman named John was exhumed. It's very unclear how exactly they got to John, but in a roundabout way, it sounds like they kind of linked him in almost the same way they're closing all these cold cases in 2018. They connected the DNA found on Helen's stockings to somebody, possibly in this guy's family. And it wasn't a direct comparison to him. But then they kind of thought maybe he was a suspect and apparently he'd been on their list before. But however it was, they end up exhuming his body 16 years after he'd been buried. But when

they do the comparison, his sample either wasn't good enough because of how long he'd been in the ground or the sample from Helen's crime scene wasn't stored well. Again, I'm very unclear. There's no one that definitively says why it's not a match, but basically it comes back as inconclusive. I have to think it's something with this John's DNA sample because they would continue to use Helen's DNA sample or the sample found on her to compare other people with. And in fact, in 2004, they had another slew of suspects that they tested DNA against. And rumor has it that one man who had a prior offense in 2002 had his DNA taken and he was an 80% match, which makes a lot of people believe that somebody in the guy's family must be Bible John. But no subsequent testing was done.

Or at least they haven't said that it's been done. And there haven't been any new suspects that have come from that big roundup in 2004. Now the final suspect that everybody talks about, and if you Google this case, this guy's picture comes up every single time. It's a man named Peter Tobin. He's a serial killer that's convicted of three murders from 2007 to 2009. And during that time when he was killing and the murders that he was convicted for, he was in his early 60s. Now he's suspected of many more than just these three murders that he was convicted of. And many profilers say that it's unlikely that a man like him would start killing at such an old age. And likely he would have started in his early 20s. Now in his early 20s, in the 1960s, Peter was

actually living in the Glasgow area. And police say that his preferred alias at the time was John Semple, which is very close to some of the names that Jean recollected the man giving her. Yeah. Now another interesting reason everyone points to this Peter guy is he had one of his front teeth pulled. Now I don't know when he had it pulled, but a lot of people say he probably pulled it so that his bite mark wouldn't match the bite mark found on Helen. Yeah, that's kind of sketchy. Now Peter has never connected himself to the cases. I think personally it's a little bit crazy. His killings in 2009, 2008, 2007 weren't anything like Bible John. I feel like Bible John's was very, very specific, especially with the women all being on their periods. And that's the point

that sticks out to me all the time as well. A lot of people theorize that there was no Bible John or rather that there was, but maybe he was only the killer of Helen and maybe the other cases are each unrelated. And you know, this first one happened and someone read about it and recreated it. But I go back to the same thing. What are the odds all three of these women are on their periods and whoever is attacking them takes things, but leaves their sanitary napkins near the body. Like that is a very devious, very specific thing to me that I can't get past. And I kind of wonder because there were only these three cases and it seems as if he never struck again or he could have changed his MO. But if he didn't strike again, I almost wonder if he had been sexually assaulting

other women in the area who never came forward. And it was the fact that these three women were on their period that like enraged him and he ended up killing them because otherwise there's no reason for him to know that these women are on their periods. I don't think that's something that you go out and tell somebody. Well, and on top of that, I was thinking on a religious angle. It's very Old Testament to be not cool with that. Well, yeah, you're considered what like in Old Testament you were considered unclean. Right. Yeah. So if he is this religious fanatic like people think, it could have very much upset him. I just find it really unbelievable that either even one person would come across these three women and they both just happened to be on their periods

or that multiple copycats also found women who were, it just doesn't make sense. In my mind, I fully believe that there's a Bible, John, but I have no clue what could have happened to him. If he's still out there, is he in jail like this Peter Tobin guy, even if he's not Peter Tobin, or did he kill three women and maybe sexually assault others who never came forward? Because again, they were at the borough land, probably not with their husbands. It's not something you can go to the police for. You'd have to explain that you were walking alone, like somewhere with a man. Like there's so many questions and I don't think unless someone were to come forward 50 years later, it's one of those cases in the UK that might go cold, but I will constantly be googling.

If you guys want to see the sketch of Bible, John, you can visit our website crimejunkiepodcast.com or check it out on Instagram crimejunkiepodcast. You can also follow us on Twitter at crimejunkiepod and be sure to check out our Facebook discussion group. We will see you guys next week. This week's episode of crime junkie was written and hosted by me. All of our editing and sound production was done by David Flowers and all of our music, including our theme, comes from Justin Daniel. Crime junkie is an audio chuck production. So what do you think Chuck? Do you approve?