Speaker 1: This episode contains disturbing images of murder. Parental discretion is advised.
Speaker 1: It's early in the evening of Thursday, February twenty second,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight. A few floors up a tenement flat
Speaker 1: in the south of Glasgow, twenty five year old Patricia
Speaker 1: Docker sat in front of her bedroom mirror. She applied
Speaker 1: the finishing touches to her look for the evening after
Speaker 1: a light dab of lipstick. She regarded her reflection, pleased
Speaker 1: with the favorite orange crocheted dress and her nicely curled hair.
Speaker 1: She couldn't help thinking she looked a little tired, though,
Speaker 1: but when wasn't she Between the long shifts working as
Speaker 1: a nurse at Glasgow's Victoria Infirmary and being a single
Speaker 1: mother to her four year old son, Sandy, it was
Speaker 1: hard for her to imagine a time when she wouldn't
Speaker 1: be tired. Only the year before, Patricia's marriage to her husband,
Speaker 1: a Royal Air Force technician, had broken down. The couple
Speaker 1: were living together with their son in Cyprus, where Patricia's
Speaker 1: husband was stationed. Now she was in Glasgow, back living
Speaker 1: with her parents, the sole career to her son. It
Speaker 1: had been a difficult transition but slowly, Patricia had got
Speaker 1: herself back on her feet. Things were starting to look up,
Speaker 1: and that night, as she sang her son to sleep,
Speaker 1: staring down at his sweet face, she felt a swell
Speaker 1: of love and hope for the future. Around eight pm,
Speaker 1: she said good night to her parents and headed out
Speaker 1: into the cold. Spotting a cab on the street, she
Speaker 1: asked the driver to take her to the Majestic Ballroom,
Speaker 1: where she'd arranged to meet some friends to attend an
Speaker 1: over twenty five's dance. One of them had met her
Speaker 1: husband at a similar event. Though meeting a future husband
Speaker 1: was far from the first thing on her mind, at
Speaker 1: the very least, she was looking forward to letting her
Speaker 1: hair down for the night. Inside the ballroom was packed
Speaker 1: a hot cauldron of noise and smoke. Men and women
Speaker 1: in sharp suits and colorful dresses threw each other about
Speaker 1: on the dance floor, sweat beating on their foreheads. Patricia
Speaker 1: spotted her friends quickly and headed over to join them,
Speaker 1: and for the next few hours they drank and danced,
Speaker 1: finding no end of suitors to accompany them on the
Speaker 1: dance floor. At some point, Patricia's friends noticed that Patricia
Speaker 1: was no longer with them. One remembered her saying something
Speaker 1: about moving on to the barrel Land Ballroom, a couple
Speaker 1: of miles east. They assumed she'd met someone good for her.
Speaker 1: They thought she deserved to have some fun after the
Speaker 1: terrible year she'd had. Early on the morning of February
Speaker 1: twenty third, nineteen sixty eight, a man left his house
Speaker 1: in the south side of Glasgow to walk to work.
Speaker 1: As he passed at garage only yards away from Patricia
Speaker 1: Docker's flat, he saw something strange out at the corner
Speaker 1: of his eye. At first, it looked like a discarded
Speaker 1: mannikin from a clothing shop. Then, with horror, he realized
Speaker 1: it was the naked body of a young woman. In shock,
Speaker 1: the man stumbled back to his house and phoned the police.
Speaker 1: Later that day, the body would be identified Patricia Docker.
Speaker 1: The police assumed she'd been raped, although there was no
Speaker 1: clear evidence to suggest this was the case. What was
Speaker 1: beyond doubt was that she'd been strangled to death barely
Speaker 1: a stone's throw from her home, while her parents and
Speaker 1: her four year old son slept soundly. Soon after officers
Speaker 1: arrived at the grisly scene, they began to search the
Speaker 1: surrounding area Hoping to find some clues as to who
Speaker 1: had murdered Patricia, They interviewed dozens of people who'd attended
Speaker 1: the dance at the Majestic Ballroom, including several young men
Speaker 1: who remembered dancing with Patricia that evening, but the encounters
Speaker 1: had all been brief and the men had alibis for
Speaker 1: the night. Nobody seemed exactly sure when Patricia had left,
Speaker 1: or whether she'd been alone at the time. The male
Speaker 1: officer writing the report on her death described Patricia dismissively
Speaker 1: as a rather spoiled woman who appeared to enjoy the
Speaker 1: company of men. Divorce had only been legal in the
Speaker 1: UK for a decade and still carried a heavy stigma.
Speaker 1: Divorced women in particular were shunned, and divorced single mothers
Speaker 1: all the more so, And despite it all, Patricia also
Speaker 1: had the gall to go out and enjoy herself at
Speaker 1: the end of a long week. The trail went cold
Speaker 1: soon after, and no arrests were made. The brutal murder
Speaker 1: made headlines and terrified Glasgow's residents. Just as scary as
Speaker 1: the crime itself was the reality that the killer was
Speaker 1: still on the loose. But as the months went by
Speaker 1: people began to move on. They chalked up what had
Speaker 1: happened to Patricia as a bizarre, tragic, one off, something
Speaker 1: that happens to people who don't know any better. Instead,
Speaker 1: it was the beginning of a nightmare that would haunt
Speaker 1: the city for decades to come. You're listening to Unexplained
Speaker 1: and I'm Richard McLain Smith. On the evening of Saturday,
Speaker 1: August sixteenth, nineteen sixty nine, Jemimah MacDonald left the house
Speaker 1: she shared with her sister on the East side of Glasgow.
Speaker 1: Jemima or Mima to her friends and family, was thirty
Speaker 1: two and a single mother to three children. She loved
Speaker 1: to dance, and that night she was going to the
Speaker 1: Barreland Ballroom, one of her favorite venues. She still had
Speaker 1: her curlers in when she left the house, and not
Speaker 1: by mistake. This was her trick. She'd keep them in
Speaker 1: until the last possible moment, concealing them under a headscarf
Speaker 1: until she arrived at her destination. Once there, she goes
Speaker 1: straight to the rest rooms and take them out, ensuring
Speaker 1: that her hair stayed bouncy or night. Saturday evenings were
Speaker 1: always lively at the ballroom, where a live band played
Speaker 1: the pop hits of the day. The following morning, Mima's sister, Margaret,
Speaker 1: found that Mima's bed was empty. After searching the rest
Speaker 1: of the house, she soon realized that Mima had never
Speaker 1: come home. Margaret tried not to panic. Maybe Jemimah had
Speaker 1: just spent the night at a friend's house, she thought.
Speaker 1: But deep down, Margaret knew this didn't make any sense.
Speaker 1: For one thing, the Barreland Ballroom could hardly be closer
Speaker 1: to their house. It was less than a mile away,
Speaker 1: and Mima had three children at home. Mima would never
Speaker 1: just go a war. At the very least, she would
Speaker 1: have called pulling on the first clothes she could find.
Speaker 1: Margaret hurried outside onto the street and began to walk.
Speaker 1: The morning sunlight was painfully bright in her eyes. She
Speaker 1: wandered toward the end of her street and took a
Speaker 1: right turn, heading north. She had a vague, half formed
Speaker 1: plan to walk to the ballroom, though it would surely
Speaker 1: be closed at this time, but she didn't know what
Speaker 1: else to do. As Margaret made her way to the
Speaker 1: Baryland Ballroom, she passed a derelict house in her neighborhood
Speaker 1: where she was startled by a sudden shriek. A group
Speaker 1: of children burst out of the house and hurled passed her,
Speaker 1: almost knocking her over in their haste to get away. Annoyed,
Speaker 1: Margaret was about to shout after them when she caught
Speaker 1: a snatch of the children's frantic conversation, did one of
Speaker 1: them just say a body? Margaret walked towards the abandoned house,
Speaker 1: her stomach coiling with dread. The front windows had all
Speaker 1: been smashed, and the front door, hanging off its hinges,
Speaker 1: rattled in the breeze. Margaret stepped inside the property, ignoring
Speaker 1: every instinct in her body telling her to turn back.
Speaker 1: It was cold and damp, and as she turned a
Speaker 1: corner into what would once have been a living room,
Speaker 1: she came upon a sight that would haunt her for
Speaker 1: the rest of her life. Her dear sister Mima was
Speaker 1: crumpled in the corner of the room, her open eyes
Speaker 1: staring blankly up at the dusty ceiling. Bruises covered her
Speaker 1: face and neck, and she was fully clothed except for
Speaker 1: her stockings, which were wrapped tightly around her pale throat.
Speaker 1: Eighteen months on from Patricia Docker's unsold murder, another young
Speaker 1: woman had died of violent death in Glasgow. Unlike Patricia,
Speaker 1: Jemima mac donald was confirmed to have been raped, but
Speaker 1: both had been beaten and strangled to death at the
Speaker 1: end of a night out. Their bodies found less than
Speaker 1: two miles apart. The only significant difference between the crimes
Speaker 1: was that Jemima's body was fully clothed, while her handbag
Speaker 1: and other possessions were missing. The male officer writing the
Speaker 1: report felt it pertinent note that Mima received benefits as
Speaker 1: a single mother, that she often frequented the dance halls
Speaker 1: of Glasgow, and that she quote appeared to be extremely
Speaker 1: fond of male company. Whatever judgments may have been made
Speaker 1: about Jemima's personal life, her murder could not just be
Speaker 1: swept under the carpet. The nightmarish story of Margaret discovering
Speaker 1: her own sister's body drew sympathetic press coverage across the country.
Speaker 1: The pressure to identify a suspect was intense. As the
Speaker 1: police began to piece together a picture of Mima's evening,
Speaker 1: They soon discovered that she'd last been seen at the
Speaker 1: Barreland Ballroom on Tuesday evening, three days after her disappearance.
Speaker 1: Punters at the ballroom were greeted by a startling sight.
Speaker 1: A crowd of some twenty uniformed police officers gathered at
Speaker 1: the entrance, each of them holding up a large photograph
Speaker 1: of Jemima's face. Some knew immediately who this young woman was.
Speaker 1: Others were confused, having missed the news, But soon enough
Speaker 1: everybody there was brought up to speed. Early in the evening,
Speaker 1: the music came to an abrupt halt. Then a detective
Speaker 1: stepped onto the stage at the front of the dance hall.
Speaker 1: He briefly recapped the known facts about Mima's death and
Speaker 1: urged anybody with information to come forward. In particular, he
Speaker 1: said they were eager to talk to any barrel and
Speaker 1: regulars in the crowd that had been roughly two thousand
Speaker 1: people at the ballroom on the night Jemima disappeared. Somebody
Speaker 1: had to have seen something. Over the next few days,
Speaker 1: numerous people came forward to tell the police that they
Speaker 1: remembered seeing Mima on that set Satday evening. Several of
Speaker 1: them had seen her leaving the ballroom around midnight accompanied
Speaker 1: by a man. Based on several of these eyewitness statements,
Speaker 1: the police put together a description of the man Mima
Speaker 1: had left with He was tall and slim, between twenty
Speaker 1: five and thirty five years old, with reddish hair. He'd
Speaker 1: been dressed in a smart blue suit, looking like a
Speaker 1: perfectly respectable young man. Nothing about him had rung alarm
Speaker 1: bells to anyone, including Jemima, who, by all accounts, had
Speaker 1: left with him willingly. The police also figured out roughly
Speaker 1: what route the couple had taken after leaving the ballroom,
Speaker 1: thanks to various bystanders who'd seen them together on the streets.
Speaker 1: They'd taken a short cut towards Mima's house, walking for
Speaker 1: about fifteen minutes until they reached a secluded lane. They
Speaker 1: believed the couple had spent some time in that lane
Speaker 1: winching Scottish slang for kissing before Mima was killed. But
Speaker 1: despite all of these details about Jemima's final moments and
Speaker 1: a solid description of the man who had almost certainly
Speaker 1: murdered her, the police was still no closer to finding
Speaker 1: their suspect. Soon they turned to more unorthodox methods. On Saturday,
Speaker 1: August twenty third, exactly a week after Jemimah MacDonald's murder,
Speaker 1: a woman was seen walking down the street wearing a
Speaker 1: black pinafore dress, high heels and a brown woolen coat,
Speaker 1: exactly what Jemima had worn on the night of her murder.
Speaker 1: The woman walked steadily from the Baryland Ballroom to the
Speaker 1: derelict house located on mc keith Street where Jemima was killed.
Speaker 1: To anyone who had seen Jemima on the final night
Speaker 1: of her life, it would have felt like seeing a ghost,
Speaker 1: and that was the point. The woman was, in fact
Speaker 1: a police officer orchestrating an elaborate re enactment in the
Speaker 1: hope of jogging anybody's memory about the time leading up
Speaker 1: to Jemima's death. Some witnesses did come forward with new information,
Speaker 1: but there was still nothing concrete, nothing they could use
Speaker 1: to identify a suspect, and the pressure was mounting because
Speaker 1: now investigators were confident that Patricia Docker and Jemima MacDonald
Speaker 1: had been killed by the same person. At the time,
Speaker 1: very few people used the phrase serial killer. It would
Speaker 1: be another five years before that term became widely known,
Speaker 1: when the FBI established its Behavioral Science Unit and pioneered
Speaker 1: the practice of criminal profiling. But though the terminology was new,
Speaker 1: the terrifying notion of a lone nightmarish monster stalking the
Speaker 1: streets was not. It was just over a decade since
Speaker 1: Glasgow was terrorized by the specter of Peter Manuel, a
Speaker 1: vicious murderer who'd killed at least seven people and is
Speaker 1: still known as Scotland's worst ever serial killer. Though Manuel
Speaker 1: was hanged in nineteen fifty eight, its crimes cast a
Speaker 1: shadow over the city and haunted its police force. They
Speaker 1: were determined to do whatever it took to stop this
Speaker 1: latest killer before he claimed any more victims, and so,
Speaker 1: for the first time in Scottish history, the police commissioned
Speaker 1: a facial composite sketch of their suspect based on the
Speaker 1: eyewitness descriptions. They printed this sketch onto thousands of leaflets
Speaker 1: and posters and distributed them all across the country. Their
Speaker 1: goal was twofold first and foremost. They wanted to cast
Speaker 1: as wide a net as possible, encouraging the wider public
Speaker 1: to come forward with any information about the suspect. But
Speaker 1: they also hoped that seeing his likeness on wanted posters
Speaker 1: would deter the killer from striking again, but it did
Speaker 1: no such thing. On the evening of October thirtieth, nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty nine, twenty nine year old Helen Puttock left her
Speaker 1: house with her older sister Jeanne. All day had been
Speaker 1: debating whether to go through with their night out. Three
Speaker 1: months after Jemima MacDonald's murder and unease had settled over
Speaker 1: the city and many women stopped going out after dark,
Speaker 1: but Helen and jean were determined not to let fear
Speaker 1: rule their lives. As long as they stuck together, they
Speaker 1: thought they'd be all right. Helen had recently split up
Speaker 1: with her husband, George, and although the breakup was her decision,
Speaker 1: it had been a hard few weeks. She was sorely
Speaker 1: in need of a night out, and there were few
Speaker 1: better places for it than the Barreland Ballroom. On that
Speaker 1: Thursday evening, the dance hall was once again packed with
Speaker 1: energy and excitement, and Helen soon began to forget her troubles.
Speaker 1: At some point, she told her sister she was heading
Speaker 1: off to buy some cigarettes. Finding a cigarette machine by
Speaker 1: the bar, she put in some coins and pressed the button,
Speaker 1: but the pack got stuck. Elen shook the machine as
Speaker 1: hard as she could, but the packet refused to drop.
Speaker 1: She was just about to give up when a young
Speaker 1: man asked if she needed help. The man was about
Speaker 1: her age, well dressed in a smart suit with a
Speaker 1: winning smile. After successfully unjamming the cigarette machine for her,
Speaker 1: he introduced himself as John. Ellen and John hit it
Speaker 1: off immediately. He was a good dancer and an even
Speaker 1: better conversationalist. He asked a lot of questions about her
Speaker 1: life and seemed genuinely interested in the answers. It had
Speaker 1: been a while since Helen had met anyone like him.
Speaker 1: After some more time dancing, Ellen and Jean decided to
Speaker 1: call it a night. Why don't they all get a
Speaker 1: cab back together, suggested John, since he was heading in
Speaker 1: the same direction, and so the trio left and piled
Speaker 1: into the back of a cab together. In the back
Speaker 1: of the cab, Ellen and Jean lit cigarettes as they
Speaker 1: moved west through the heart of the city. They listened
Speaker 1: with interest as John began to talk more about his
Speaker 1: own life. He told the sisters that he'd been raised
Speaker 1: by very strict, devoutly religious parents who'd put the fear
Speaker 1: of God in him from a young age. They certainly
Speaker 1: wouldn't have approved of their activities that night, he said,
Speaker 1: declaring that dance halls are dens of iniquity. He asked
Speaker 1: them if they knew what the Bible said about adulterous women.
Speaker 1: Ellen and Jean chuckled nervously. No, they said that they
Speaker 1: should be stoned to death, said John, all emotion suddenly
Speaker 1: gone from his face. Then, unprompted, he began to recite
Speaker 1: a passage from the Bible. The transformation was unnerving. As
Speaker 1: John spoke, his eyes took on a glazed appearance, and
Speaker 1: his voice changed, becoming deeper and more forceful. It was
Speaker 1: as if he'd suddenly been possessed, And then just like that,
Speaker 1: John snapped right back to his usual charming self. Though
Speaker 1: a little unnerved, Ellen and Jean laughed off his strange
Speaker 1: behavior as a joke. John called through to the driver
Speaker 1: and instructed him to drop Gene off first, since he
Speaker 1: and Helen were both going to the same neighborhood. A
Speaker 1: short time later, Jeane climbed out of the cab. She
Speaker 1: watched Helen wave goodbye through the window as the taxi
Speaker 1: pulled back out into the road and disappeared into the night.
Speaker 1: That last mental image of her sister would haunt her
Speaker 1: for the rest of her life. The next morning, a
Speaker 1: woman got up early to take out her rubbish in Scotsten,
Speaker 1: a neighborhood on the bank of the River Clyde. As
Speaker 1: she walked into the back court where the bins were stored,
Speaker 1: she stopped in her tracks. Helen Puttock was lying, fully
Speaker 1: clothed and face down on the ground. She'd been dead
Speaker 1: for hours. The woman's screams soon attracted a crowd of
Speaker 1: horrified passers. By the fact that it was Halloween made
Speaker 1: the night Marrish seen all the morm A cab. Helen
Speaker 1: had been raped, beaten, and then strangled to death. Glasgow's
Speaker 1: serial killer, it seemed, had struck again. When the police
Speaker 1: arrived at the scene, they were able to determine a
Speaker 1: few grim details about Helen's final moments. Grass stains on
Speaker 1: her feet showed that she had tried to escape her
Speaker 1: attacker by fleeing up the side of a railway embankment,
Speaker 1: and her injuries suggested she'd fought for her life. As
Speaker 1: the authorities began to look more closely at the three murders,
Speaker 1: they noticed another unnerving detail. All three women had been
Speaker 1: menstruating at the time they were killed. This might have
Speaker 1: seemed like a coincidence, except that a sanitary pad had
Speaker 1: been left close to each of the bodies, indicating that
Speaker 1: this was a twisted kind of signals for the killer.
Speaker 1: This time around, police were more optimistic about their chances
Speaker 1: of catching the killer. Unlike Patricia and Jemima, Helen hadn't
Speaker 1: gone out alone. Her sister Jean had been with her
Speaker 1: for almost the entire evening and was able to give
Speaker 1: a detailed description of the man. Helen had gone home with.
Speaker 1: Her description matched the profile the police already had from
Speaker 1: the Jemima MacDonald eyewitnesses, and with the additional information she provided,
Speaker 1: they produced a new and more accurate sketch of the
Speaker 1: suspect's face. Unfortunately, John had been evasive about where he
Speaker 1: lived or what kind of work he did, but the
Speaker 1: details he'd shared about his childhood at least gave them
Speaker 1: something to work with. That strange behavior in the taxi, meanwhile,
Speaker 1: would earn him the moniker Bible John. Over the next
Speaker 1: few months, the police arrested and interviewed dozens of potential
Speaker 1: suspects and followed up on hundreds of leads. Determined to
Speaker 1: leave no stone unturned, they also took some more unusual steps,
Speaker 1: like bringing in a psychic who was confident he could
Speaker 1: locate Bible John. This proved to be an empty promise.
Speaker 1: The police also hired a psychiatrist to produce one of
Speaker 1: the first ever criminal profiles, using the information from Gene
Speaker 1: about John's childhood and religious beliefs, along with clues that
Speaker 1: might point toward a preferred process in the way he
Speaker 1: committed his murders. But for all of this work, the
Speaker 1: investigation was ultimately fruitless. Nobody was ever charged for any
Speaker 1: of the three murders, and the case remains unsolved to
Speaker 1: this day. It's been widely speculated that Bible John is
Speaker 1: in fact Peter Tobin, a prolific killer who was convicted
Speaker 1: of killing three women in Glasgow during the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1: He would have been in his mid twenties during the
Speaker 1: Bible John murders and once boasted to a prison psychiatrist
Speaker 1: that he'd killed more than forty people. However, Tobin denied
Speaker 1: that he was Bible John, and no evidence was ever
Speaker 1: found linking him to Patricia's, Jemima's or Helen's murder. He
Speaker 1: died in prison in twenty twenty two. Another theory was
Speaker 1: that the killer was a man named John Irvin McInnis,
Speaker 1: and that his identity was deliberately covered up because McInnis
Speaker 1: was the cousin of a very senior police officer. In
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six, Helen Puttock's body was exhumed so forensic
Speaker 1: investigators could take a DNA sample from her tights and
Speaker 1: compare it to McInnis. Given all the advances in DNA technology,
Speaker 1: hopes were high, but the analysis was inconclusive. The sample
Speaker 1: was also compared against the DNA of a number of
Speaker 1: other high profile British killers, including Tobin, the Yorkshire Ripper,
Speaker 1: Peter Sutcliffe and Fred West. None of them were a match.
Speaker 1: Just recently, however, this cold case is warming up again
Speaker 1: in response to allegations of police corruption during the original investigation,
Speaker 1: which were made public in a BBC podcast titled Bible
Speaker 1: John Creation of a Serial Killer. Police Scotland announced in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two that it was taking a fresh look
Speaker 1: at the case. But for now, more than fifty years
Speaker 1: on from the tragic events, there remains no justice for
Speaker 1: Patricia Docker, Jemima MacDonald and Helen Puttock, and no closure
Speaker 1: for their families. This episode was written by Emma Dibden
Speaker 1: and Richard mclin Smith. Unexplained as an Avy Club Productions
Speaker 1: podcast created by Richard McClain Smith. All other elements of
Speaker 1: the podcast, including the music, are also produced by me
Speaker 1: Richard McClain smith. Unexplained. The book and audiobook, with stories
Speaker 1: never before featured on the show, is now available to
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