Scotland S Serial Killers

Cannibals, necrophiles, spree killers, axe wielding maniacs, violent thieves, gunmen, child killers, arsonists, deadly suave conmen, medical professional killers, graverobbers. Here are the worst and most dangerous serial killers ever to come out of Scotland. Find out more about some of Scotland's worst and most notorious murderers in Scotland's Serial Killers.

In the late 1960s, dance halls were still popular in Glasgow. At the Barrowland Ballroom in the Bridgeton area of the city, queues were long on Friday and Saturday nights and anything up to two thousand people would spend the evening dancing to music provided by the resident band. Then, in February 1968, a woman who had spent the evening at the Barrowland Ballroom was found murdered. It seemed that she had met her killer while dancing but police were unable to find any clue as to his identity. In August 1969, another woman went dancing at the same ballroom and was seen leaving with a tall, slim, handsome young man. Her body was discovered the following day. The circumstances of the two murders were very similar and police began looking for a single killer. They even commissioned a local artist to produce a painting of the murderer based on witness descriptions. In October 1969, it happened again. Another woman was murdered after meeting her killer at the Barrowland Ballroom. But this time, the killer was seen by a number of witnesses and one even shared a taxi with him and his victim. Surely, it was only a matter of time before this murderer, who newspapers had started calling Bible John, was caught? Fifty years later, we still don't know the identity of this serial killer. There have been many theories and a number of potential suspects. Police cold-case reviews have used new technologies in the search for Bible John and several promising new leads have been identified. None have led to an arrest. How can this be? How can a murderer select and spend time with his victims in a crowded public place where he was seen by large numbers of people and yet escape detection? The artist's depiction of the killer was also said to be a very good likeness, so we even know what he looked like. This book is a fresh look at this fascinating case and an attempt to understand how Bible John managed to escape detection and has continued to elude investigators for fifty years.

The true story behind the notorious serial killer Peter Manuel, and Detective William Muncie's quest to bring him to justice, recently dramatised in the major ITV drama In Plain Sight. In a two-year killing spree, Peter Manuel terrorised a city. As the people of Glasgow held their breath and anxiously awaited news, Peter Manuel killed Anne Kneilands, Marion Watt, her daughter Vivienne and her sister Margaret, Isabelle Cooke and the Smart family - all in cold blood. But what drove him to commit such barbaric crimes? And could the police have caught him sooner? MANUEL: Portrait of a Serial Killer tells the full story from his birth in the USA and his love of gangster movies to his life of crime that would ultimately end on the gallows after one of the most sensational trials in legal history. Revealing new facts about the case and the myths that surround it, this is the definitive account of one of the most notorious criminals in history - Peter Manuel, serial killer.

KILLERS, CROOKS AND CONS chronicles the astonishing crimes that horrified 20th-century Scotland. Taking each decade in turn, Reg McKay tells the true tales of the crimes that shook the nation, often the world. And these crimes will shock you still. From serial killers to armed mobsters and poisoners to cops who killed, KILLERS, CROOKS AND CONS takes you from Glasgow to Edinburgh, Aberdeen to Dundee and from the Highlands to the Borders. As well as well-known cases like the world's first serial killer Peter Manuel who was hanged for the murder of seven people, wealthy landowner Max Garvie whose kinky parties led to his murder and the strange case of the death of SNP activist Willie McRae, Reg McKay tells the story of many of Scotland's less well-known but equally fascinating cases - including a police showdown with armed members of the IRA, the murder of a wealthy socialite and a committed Christian who went to extraordinary lengths to cover up his part in the brutal murder of his wife. KILLERS, CROOKS AND CONS is Scotland's very own criminal record from a century of shame.

The chilling true-crime story of the Victorian era’s deadliest doctor “When a doctor does go wrong, he is the first of criminals,” Sherlock Holmes observed during one of his most puzzling murder investigations. Incredibly, at the time the words of the world’s most famous fictional detective appeared in print in the Strand Magazine, a real-life Canadian doctor was stalking and murdering women in London’s downtrodden Lambeth neighbourhood. Dr. Thomas Neill Cream had been a suspect in the deaths of two women in Canada, and had killed as many as four people in Chicago before he arrived in London in 1891 and began using pills laced with strychnine to kill prostitutes. The Lambeth Poisoner, as he was dubbed in the press, became one of the most prolific serial killers in history. In this fascinating book, Dean Jobb reveals how bungled investigations, corrupt officials and failed prosecutions allowed Cream to evade detection or freed him to kill, again and again. The first complete account of Dr. Cream’s crimes and his many victims explores how the stifling morality and hypocrisy of the Victorian era allowed this monster to poison vulnerable and desperate women, many of whom had turned to him for medical help. It offers an inside account of Scotland Yard’s desperate search for a killer as brazen and efficient as Jack the Ripper.

A comprehensive reference guide to male and female serial killers from throughout world history. The World Encyclopedia of Serial Killers is the most comprehensive set of its kind in the history of true crime publishing. Written and compiled by Susan Hall, the four-volume set has more than 1600 entries of male and female serial killers from around the world. Defined by the FBI as a person who murders 3 or more people over a period of time with a hiatus of weeks or months between murders, serial killers have walked among us from the dawn of time as these books will demonstrate. While the entries to these volumes will continue to grow—the FBI estimates that there are at least fifty serial killers operating in the United States at any given time—The World Encyclopedia of Serial Killers is as complete as possible through the end of 2017. The series continues with Volume Three, M-S. The entries include the Machete Murderer Juan Vallejo Corona, Maranhão Boy Mutilator Francisco das Chagas, Night Stalker Richard Ramirez, Rostov Ripper Andrei Romanovych Chikatilo, and Genesee River Killer Arthur John Shawcross. You will find these killers and approximately 475 others in this third book in the series of The World Encyclopedia of Serial Killers.

Peter Manuel was an icy-eyed psychopath and sexual predator, a petty thief and a relentless liar given to violent and uncontrollable rages. His unprecedented crimes presented the Scottish police and public with a new sort of criminal: the ruthless serial killer. Manuel was hanged at the age of thirty-one and convicted of seven murders, but suspected of many more. He slew many of his victims as they lay sleeping in bed, while others were picked up in lonely places and strangled or savagely beaten to death. Right up to his final arrest, he played a taunting game with the police, mocking their bungling attempts to trap him and continuing to kill with impunity - that is until he was trapped by his own vanity and arrogance. This definitive definitive biography recounts Manuel's chilling story from his birth in the USA to the moment the hangman's rope snapped his spine in Glasgow's notorious Barlinnie Prison.

In 1994, Robert Black was convicted of the kidnapping, sexual assault and murder of three young girls, and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum tariff of thirty-five years; in 2011 he was convicted of a fourth such killing. He died in HMP Maghaberry, Northern Ireland, in January 2016, aged sixty-eight, unmourned, and entirely unrepentant of his repellent crimes. These bald facts, horrific as they are, do not begin to scratch the surface of the truth about Robert Black, a Scottish-born serial killer who undoubtedly committed further murders for which he was never tried, both in this country and on the Continent. In this ground-breaking account, Robert Giles, who has spent years tracing the killer's movements and sifting through all the evidence, including transcripts of the trials, convincingly argues that Black was an habitual serial killer over many years, and quite certainly responsible for more than the four child murders for which he was convicted. Co-written with Chris Clark, a former police intelligence officer whose tireless work into the Yorkshire Ripper produced convincing new evidence of other murders that went unnoticed or unrecorded, The Face of Evil shows once and for all that Robert Black was a serial killer whose crimes went far beyond what is generally believed. In doing so, it paints a portrait of human cruelty at its worst.