Britain’s top serial killer expert, Professor David Wilson, reveals the explosive evidence which has convinced him that serial killer Peter Tobin is dance hall fiend Bible John. He has been investigating Tobin for more than three years and says he would stake his credibility on Tobin being the notorious killer.

In exclusive extracts from his new book The Lost British Serial Killer, Wilson reveals why he believes Tobin committed the three brutal, unsolved murders in Glasgow that have been blamed on Bible John. And he describes the bombshell courtroom moment when he became certain that Tobin was guilty of the murders.

Wilson, professor of criminology at the Centre for Criminal Justice Policy and Research at Birmingham University, became convinced he was looking at Bible John during Tobin’s trial for the 1991 murder of teenager Dinah McNicol. Hitch-hiker David Tremlett was a reluctant witness, as police initially suspected he had murdered Dinah.

“He shared a hitched lift from Liphook Music Festival in Hampshire with her. She was sitting in the front of Tobin’s cab while he was in the back and he overheard a conversation where Tobin said to Dinah that the Cambridge Folk Festival was ‘more my style’. “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. He was trying to imply he was socially superior and that he could be trusted. This was the exactly the same type of conversation that witness Jeannie Williams had in the back of a Glasgow taxi all those years ago with Bible John. Jeannie recalled how the killer seemed to want to make out he was a cut above everyone else. He talked about how he didn’t support Celtic or Rangers, which was highly unusual in Glasgow, and how he didn’t drink at Hogmanay. He talked about his cousin’s hole-in-one at golf and it was exactly the same technique he was using.

“Tobin kept his head down and rarely made eye contact throughout the trial but he looked up at this statement and I thought, ‘You are looking up because you know the significance of that’. I looked around the court but no one else had picked up on it. Despite the decades between the conversations, the link, to me, was clear and I wanted to stand up and shout, ‘Peter Tobin is Bible John!’”

During his research for the book, Wilson visited the sites of the Bible John murders and interviewed witnesses and former detectives. The murders stopped when Tobin left Glasgow. His travels around Britain, raping and possibly murdering other women, could explain why the killings came to a sudden halt in 1969 after three deaths in less than two years.

Wilson first became interested in Tobin when he was convicted of murdering Angelika. The evil handyman hid her body under the floorboards of St Patrick ‘s Church in Anderston, Glasgow. Wilson said: “I was fascinated that a man in his sixties was capable of such a violent crime. I tracked down his first wife Margaret Mackintosh. Bible John was a sexual sadist and we have testimony from Margaret of Tobin’s sexual sadism. Jeannie gave a surname for John and she thought it was something like ‘Sempleson’ or ‘Templeton’. Tobin used the name John Semple. That is a striking piece of evidence that cannot be coincidental.”

The criminologist accepts there may never be definitive proof that Tobin is the infamous serial killer but he added: “I am as convinced as it’s able to be. As far as I am concerned the case is closed.”

Tobin, 63, will die in jail, having been convicted of murdering Scots schoolgirl Vicky Hamilton, Essex teenager Dinah and Polish student Angelika Kluk in Glasgow. He has since been linked with as many as 48 victims – and a special police operation has been set up to probe links between Tobin and a string of unsolved murders. We might never know the truth!

-article by Lynn Mcpherson rewritten and adapted by admin-

Bible John is a nickname of an unidentified serial killer who was operating in Glasgow, Scotland in the late 1960s.  It is unsure how many people he killed, but the police attributed three murders to him.

Although these murders didn’t seem to have the same MO, there were certain similarities between all three victims:

• All had spent the last night of their lives at the Barrowland Ballroom
• All three were strangled with their own nylons
• Each body was left in very close proximity to the victim’s home
• The handbags of all three were taken after the murder (possibly as souvenirs?)
• All three victims were menstruating

All three victims were seen leaving the Barrowland with a man of similar description, which the CID distributed to newspapers. A color portrait (the photo on the left) based on witnesses’ descriptions was created by a member of the Glasgow School of Art and widely circulated in the Glasgow area. A lot of people claimed to have seen or known the man although they have never found him…

The question remains: Could Peter Tobin (read the previous article) really be Bible John? Could Glasgow’s legendary murderer really have kept killing, taking lives almost 40 years after the Barrowland murders? And – four decades on – can the police really gather enough evidence to get a conviction?

The detectives investing the death of one of Tobin’s victims quickly realized that he was a potential serial killer. “He has done this before,” one investigator said after seeing mutilated remains of his victim. This was a murder carried out by tried-and-tested means.

Psychologists too were quick to realize that Tobin hadn’t begun killing in middle age. Ian Stephen, the Scottish criminal profiler who inspired the TV show Cracker, is sure Tobin has a history. “You don’t usually start being a serial killer in your forties or fifties,” he said yesterday. “You start fairly early on in your life.”

Like Bible John, Tobin was young, smart and handsome. And he liked the dancing. Tobin was said to be a regular at the Barrowland ballroom, where “John” picked up his three victims, Pat Docker, Mimi McDonald and Helen Puttock.

So how does the evidence stack up? First, his looks. Even today some believe the 62-year-old Tobin looks a bit like the straight-jawed twenty something shown in the Bible John portrait. But photos of a young Tobin reveal an even closer resemblance. His age also fits. Tobin would have been 21 at the time of the Bible John killings. He was already violent, having spent his youth in reform school, when the Barrowland murders took place. He was living in the Glasgow area when the first two women were found. Tobin and Bible John also share another habit: they are both thought to have kept mementos of their victims. Bible John stripped or partially stripped the girls he killed, taking it is believed, their handbags. Tobin too kept grisly souvenirs.

Can all this just be a coincidence or there is more to it? I guess, without any conclusive evidence, we will never know for sure.

-article written by David Leask rewritten and adapted by admin-

Police believe that Peter Tobin may be one of Britain’s most prolific serial killers, also known as Bible John. Following his conviction for murdering 15-year-old Vicky Hamilton, detectives believe that there is evidence to suggest he could have committed up to a dozen more murders.

Peter Tobin was convicted of drugging and sexually assaulting the 15-year-old schoolgirl Vicky Hamilton before cutting her body in half and burying her remains in the back garden of his house in Margate, Kent. He also put Vicky’s purse, near an Edinburgh bus station to lay a false trail for police. And it did work as no one ever suspected the girl was killed, they thought she ran away from home, until another investigation (the following case) linked Peter to both murders.

The 62-year-old man is already serving a life sentence for raping and murdering the 23-year-old Polish student Angelika Kluk and hiding her body in a Glasgow church.
A jury of 12 women and three men took less than two and a half hours to find him guilty of his second brutal, sexually motivated murder more than 17 years after the schoolgirl disappeared. Check out Peter Tobin trial: photo evidence, and an interesting video Peter Tobin guilty of murder

Police forces believe he could be found guilty for a number of other unsolved murders, and they have reopened the case files and examined a possible link to Peter Tobin. His movements around the country – he has lived in Bathgate, Paisley, Brighton, Margate and Portsmouth – place him in the right location to commit some of the murders. He has also become a prime suspect in the 40-year hunt for Bible John.

Former detective Joe Jackson, who investigated the 1960s slayings, said he suspected Tobin the moment he was arrested for Angelika Kluk’s killing in 2006.

He said: “I remember when Tobin got caught for the murder in the church. When I saw his photograph, I thought, ‘This is as near to Bible John as you are going to get. This looks a winner. He fitted the bill in every way and he had connections with religion. Looking at Tobin’s track record, he is someone who should be considered very, very carefully…

More about Bible John case and his similarity with Peter Tobin in the next post, coming tomorrow.

-article by James Matthews and Paul O’ Hare rewritten and adapted by admin-