identify him. Nevertheless, he continued to be a prime suspect until, in 1981, he committed suicide.
In the 1960s, DNA fingerprinting was as yet undreamt of. But in 1996, DNA from the semen left on Helen Puttock’s clothes was compared to a sample taken from one of John M.’s siblings. The match was inconclusive. Nevertheless the police requested the exhumation of John M.’s body from a graveyard in Stonehouse, Lanarkshire.
The resulting publicity led to the harassment of John M.’s family. But when the test were completed it was found that the DNA did not match. Nor did his teeth match the bite-mark on her wrist. Jean said that she always knew that John M. was not the killer and she had repeatedly told Strathclyde Police they had the wrong man. John M. was reburied and his family finally left to grieve in peace.
But the investigation was still not over. In October 2000, Professor Ian Stephen, a leading criminal psychologist who is said to have inspired TV’s
According to the file Professor Stephen passed to the police, the suspect’s behaviour changed dramatically in the late 1960s when he increasingly went out alone at night and sometimes failed to return until the following day.
Professor Stephen told the BBC: “I would like to think that his name has already been considered and ruled out but I am not hopeful. The police were looking for a stereotype, a known sex offender at the time. The profile appears to fit that of Bible John. While the information is circumstantial I think the police have got to have a serious look at it.”
The Strathclyde Police said they would look at the new information.
In December 2004, DNA taken from a Glasgow crime scene two years earlier was an 80 percent match to the semen found on Helen’s clothing. Samples are still being collected from a number of suspects in their 50s and 60s and, in May 2005, a spokesman for the police said: “Science will solve these killings. We have no doubt of that.”
That October Strathclyde Police set up a new Unresolved Case Unit to re-examine the evidence in the Bible John Killings. They are using new processes to identify traces of evidence that previously could not be found.
“Now with the advent of DNA profiling, someone who’s just held something for a brief period, or held someone, you’re going to transfer your DNA,” said Dr Adrian Linacre, a lecturer in forensic science at Strathclyde University.
Throughout it all, the Barrowland Ballroom had soldiered on and now proudly proclaims that it is “the best rock venue in Scotland”.
Scotland—Glasgow’s Sex-Worker Slayings
The night of Friday 27 February 1998 was one of the coldest nights of the winter in Glasgow. While it was freezing outside, it was warm inside Base 75, the prostitutes’ drop-in centre in Robertson Street. Other women remembered 27-year-old Margo Lafferty being there that night. She was trying on a new suit she’d bought. It was pale blue with a mini-skirt and a lacy top. The consensus was that suited her, though one of the girls said that Margo had put on weight. She was broadly liked. Some remember her as a kind girl, one who would lend another girl money if she needed to buy a pair of tights from the all-night garage down by the river, though others say she was violent.
Base 75 closed at 11.30 p.m. and Margo went to work. Early on Saturday morning she was in one of the lanes that run off the main streets in the shopping and business area. There were security lights on the buildings, but prostitutes entertained their clients in the dark doorways there. That night, though, a monster was on the loose. In the morning Margo was found dead in a disused builders’ yard on West Street, then utilized as a car park. Her body was curled up in the foetal position, her blood soaking into the mud. She had suffered repeated blows to the head, which was then beaten against a wall. Then she had been strangled. She was naked. This was a telling detail. Margo was not a girl who undressed for her johns.
In her stomach were the remains of her last hurried meal—cheap white bread, the orange segment she had gulped down, a cherry from a can of fruit cocktail. There was mud all over her skin as the killer had dragged her naked body through the puddles in the carpark. This was particularly distressing for her mother, who remembered Margo as a scrupulously clean girl.
“When people hear the word ‘prostitute’ they think, ‘dirty midden’,” she said. “But Margo used to do my head in with her showers and baths. She’d have three or four a day. She was so very, very clean. When she had her own wee house you could have eaten a meal off the floor. She was very particular about herself and her environment.”
Margo had six brothers, though her younger brother Billy had been killed in a road accident at the age of 18. He had been left brain-dead in a coma when they had to switch off the ventilator. Her father had died when she was just a toddler. After a night of drinking, he had choked to death in his sleep. His death left the family struggling and her mother would go without food so the children could eat. But they were a happy family and the house was always full of the children’s friends—there would be as many as 14 for Sunday lunch.
The others remember Margo Lafferty as a carefree child, full of laughter and charming enough to wheedle sweets from the man on the ice-cream van when she had no money. As a young girl she had been soft-hearted, always ready to help a pal in trouble. Once she brought home a school friend who’d lost her mother. The girl stayed with the family for six years and whenever Margo got something the other girl got the same.
Margo’s older brother Monty, who assumed the role of father figure, treated his little sister like a princess, always buying her frilly things. But she was a tomboy, who would wear her trousers right up to the school gate before changing into the uniform skirt she hated. She could play football better than most boys and captained a local team.
“She was never ’feared of anybody or anything in her life,” her mother said. “She was the only one that would face up to Monty. The rest of them would never answer him back, but Margo would stand and confront him.”
Curiously for a girl of her calling, she was not interested in boys. Local lads were crazy about her, but when they came on to her she would reject them.
“I can’t be bothered with it, Ma,” she would tell her mother. “They’re too serious.”
The family lived in Barlanark, then a run-down estate riddled with drugs. Margo started sniffing glue, then moved on to harder things.
“She was a daring lassie,” said her mother. “She wasn’t scared to try anything once. If only she’d realized where it was going to end up.”
As addiction took hold, her life became increasingly chaotic. She would spend the night out with one “friend” after another, selling her body to buy drugs. One minute she would be the life and soul of the party, the next she would crashed out on the sofa.
One day, her mother came home to find Margo lying on her bedroom floor in a coma. Her face and lips were blue, and there was a syringe sticking out of her groin. Her mother pulled the needle out and slapped Margo’s face to get her breathing. It took a quarter of an hour to bring her round. When her mother explained what had happened, Margo called her a liar. Her mother said: “I’m sorry, Margo. I can’t take any more of this.”
“Fine, Ma,” Margo replied and left.
“I didn’t put her out of the house,” said her mother. “The lassie knew herself she couldn’t go on like that. It had got to the stage where you were ’feared to leave her in the house. You didn’t know what was going to be missing when you got back. I told her I would keep her, but I wasn’t knocking my pan in to keep her drug dealers.”
She knew that Margo could look after herself. Although only five foot, she was tough, aggressive and knew how to use her fists. Many of the other girls on the streets would turn to her when they needed physical protection.
