Scottish Murders: From Burke and Hare to Peter Tobin

By Judy Hamilton

Scotland's worst and most infamous murders: Includes accounts of the infamous Burke and Hare, cannibalistic Sawney Bean, child murderer Jessie King, still-unidentified Bible John and the present-day crimes of Peter Tobin.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Waverley Books
• Release date: Feb 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9781849340823

Book preview

Murder in Scotland

Scotland has a bloodstained past. Over the centuries, countless Scots have met a brutal end in battle or in full-scale war. Many hundreds of others have died at the hands of persecutors; so-called witches were hounded from their homes, tortured and put to the death on the most bizarre of charges. The Covenanters were persecuted in the name of the king on account of their religious beliefs. At times the full force of the law itself was almost indistinguishable from murder – the executioner dealt with many poor souls whose crimes would merit no more than a relatively light sentence in modern times. Housebreaking, horse-stealing and petty theft often carried the death penalty. Scotland was indeed a land of rough justice in centuries gone by.

There is always an outcry when crime statistics are published, but in spite of this, it cannot be denied that we live in safer times nowadays. We have a police force working with the benefit of sophisticated technology to hunt down the few perpetrators of serious, violent crime. We have the law on our side to protect us from persecution. Things are not perfect, but they are very much better than they were.

It is impossible to imagine a time when the streets of Scotland – or any other country – will be crime-free. Human beings are not robots. As much as human beings are capable of good, they are capable of evil.

There is no one answer to the question: ‘What makes one person take another’s life?’ Many murders are committed in the heat of the moment, in outbursts of uncontrollable fury or moments of crazed fear. They are not the result of endless planning and cold, slow, premeditation. When killings like this happen, the murderer may feel the need to kill for no more than a few moments. When the deed is done, the remorse is immediate. These are the killings that make some people say that everyone is capable of murder, given the right (or rather wrong) circumstances.

Some killings are acts of insanity, but the line between psychosis and psychopathic or sociopathic disorder has to be carefully drawn. The psychotic killer suffers from an illness that distorts his mind only for as long as he is ill. The psychotic killer can be treated. The psychotic killer is, in fact, a rare phenomenon. A person suffering from psychosis is much more likely to take his or her own life than the life of another. The behaviour of a psychopath, however, cannot be treated in the same way. A psychopath has a personality disorder and if he feels the need to kill once, he is likely to kill again. It is unlikely that his behaviour will change significantly, in spite of the best efforts of psychiatrists. Other killings are acts of retribution or revenge, often linked to other crimes. Gang warfare and drug-related crime have both left our streets spattered with the blood of their dead. Finally, murder is used as a means to an end. The end may be money, sexual gratification, power or freedom. The act of killing may be the end in itself.

But if the nature of murder remains horribly consistent, the nature of detection is changing. Recent advancements in the new technology of DNA analysis have not only improved the chances of linking a killer to the crime, but have also opened up the possibility that ‘cold cases’ can be re-investigated with a good chance of success.

DNA is the genetic code in every cell in your body, from skin to bone. Every individual (except identical twins) has a DNA profile that is unique. Killers leave behind traces of blood, semen, saliva and hair. When a suspect is arrested the police have the right to take a DNA sample, usually via a mouth swab. The sample is compared with the DNA collected at the murder scene and archived in the Scottish DNA Database, which is held at Dundee.

DNA has figured successfully in a number of recent Scottish murder trials, such as the 1991 murder of Vicky Hamilton by Peter Tobin (see page 182). And in 2009 DNA evidence led directly to the conviction of Marek Harcar for the rape and murder of Moira Jones in Glasgow’s Queen’s Park.

Many older unsolved Scottish murder cases are now being re-opened. Clothes stained with semen or blood, or hairs collected at the scene, are being re-examined. In some cases all the men in a local population are being asked to voluntarily come forward for DNA sampling, so that they can be eliminated from the enquiry. Sadly DNA profiling is sometimes unable to help, especially if the original samples have become degraded over time, or if they have been contaminated with DNA from other people. But despite this DNA profiling will undoubtedly assist in the identification of criminals from the past few decades, killers who thought that they had literally got away with murder.

This book relates some of the most famous (or infamous) murders in Scotland’s history. It cannot begin to tell them all. None of them is pleasant, but all of them are intriguing for different reasons. With the exception of three stories where the murders were not proven (the deaths at Ardlamont and Goatfell and the case of Madeleine Smith), the stories in this book tell of killings that were certainly premeditated. The story of Oscar Slater tells of a man who was innocent of a crime for which he was convicted, but the crime, whoever did it, had without doubt been carefully planned. The reasons for the killings in the stories that are told here vary considerably and will give the reader an idea of some of the circumstances and some of the motives that can drive a person to murder. Scotland is no exception to any other place in the world. Wherever you go, there will be someone, somewhere, who feels that death is the only answer. And in response to the actions of people like this, we will always ask: ‘Why?’

The Bean Family

Perhaps the most appalling and grisly tale told of murder in Scotland is that of the Bean family, who held the county of Galloway in the grip of terror in the fifteenth (or sixteenth) century. (It is worth noting that there is some debate as to whether the Bean family ever really existed, and the precise dating of events has become obscured over the years). The family’s catalogue of gruesome crimes continued for some twenty-five years unsolved and many others were to be wrongfully punished for crimes they did not commit before the Beans were finally brought to justice.

At the head of the clan was Sawney Bean. He came from East Lothian, a few miles from Edinburgh, the son of a hedger and ditcher. Any hopes his father might have had for his son to follow him in that profession, humble though it was, or indeed any dreams that he had for his son to make any honest livelihood at all, were swiftly dashed when Sawney ran away from home while still in his teens.

Sawney moved around for a while, finally settling in a remote part of Galloway. There, having joined up with a young woman who shared his desire to live a life free of responsibility or morality, he found himself a cave in which to dwell. Well hidden from the casual passer-by, virtually cut off at high tide, this bleak dwelling place was to suit his purposes perfectly.

Over the course of the next twenty-five years, the Bean family grew in numbers until Sawney and his wife had not only a good number of children but grandchildren as well – nobody knows exactly how many. As the family lived a life in hiding, isolated from general society, it has been assumed that the grandchildren were the products of incestuous relationships.

The family lived entirely by theft, murder and cannibalism. As time passed, people in the surrounding districts grew increasingly alarmed as one story after another of disappearing people was circulated. Locals, visitors and travellers – men, women and children alike – all were vanishing without trace. Alarm in the district spread farther afield, and the government sent men to spy around the area and investigate the crimes. Not only were people disappearing, but sometimes their butchered remains – discarded by the Beans – were found washed up in the shallows around the coast.

The government spies were ferocious rather than thorough in their investigations. Because many of the people who had disappeared had been travelling from one place to another, the most obvious suspects had to be innkeepers. As well as innkeepers, other travellers fell under suspicion. Anxious to get results in their search for the person or persons responsible, the government agents worked with a zeal that bordered on frenzy. They saw to it that several people were detained under suspicion, and some, in spite of insubstantial evidence against them and their own pleas of innocence, were executed. There was, naturally, a feeling of real and terrible fear in the district. When would the disappearances, the killings and the arrests stop? Innkeepers who had not yet felt the strong arm of the law on their shoulders shut up shop and left the area before they, too, came under suspicion. Families, fearing for their own safety, fled to start a new life elsewhere. Travellers with fewer places to stop for the night became more vulnerable: easy prey for the devious, bloodthirsty Bean family.

And devious they were. The Beans had kidnap and murder down to a fine art: so much so that they did not feel the need to confine themselves to killing one person at a time. Their large numbers meant that they had more than enough people to provide sentries to keep watch and assailants to carry out the killing. Their ghastly deeds multiplied unabated and still no one saw anything of the perpetrators. Such was the nerve of the hideous family that some of the government’s own men who had been sent to hunt them down fell into their clutches and disappeared.

In the end, it was not through the efforts of the government’s men but as a result of one man’s fortunate escape from the Beans that their appalling secret was revealed. The man was riding home from a local fair with his wife when they were set upon by a number of the Bean family. The man fought off his assailants bravely but had to witness his poor wife being dragged, screaming, to the ground before having her throat cut. No sooner had she been killed than several Bean women set about disembowelling her and drinking her blood. The man himself would undoubtedly have succumbed as well, for he was outnumbered by the Beans, but a crowd of locals, also returning from the fair, came along the road at that time. The Beans fled from the scene, heading for the safety of their cave.

When the approaching crowd found the man, saw his wife’s ravaged corpse and heard what he had to tell them, they saw to it that he was taken to Glasgow immediately, where he had to recount the whole traumatic tale to magistrates.

It was King James himself who led a force of men, some four hundred strong, to Galloway in search of the cannibals. They combed the beaches time and again for signs of human habitation. Finally, at low tide, they found the cave where the Bean family were hiding. It was a shock to find that other human beings should even contemplate living in such a dark and dank hole, but when the searchers advanced into the gloomy passageway of the cave, they found the Bean family, some forty-eight of them in all, surrounded by the booty from their robberies – jewellery, watches, clothing and trinkets – although to what purpose all this finery might serve a family who obviously lived like animals, no one could tell. Horrifying evidence of the family’s cannibalism was there for all to see: human parts, hung up to dry or pickled in brine, were all around the cave.

The members of the Bean family were apprehended, struggling furiously with their captors. They were taken to Edinburgh in chains, where, without trial, they were executed. The males were dismembered and left to exsanguinate. The females of the family, after being forced to watch their menfolk bleed to death, were burned at the stake. The treatment that the Beans received in the name of justice was inhuman, but it is perhaps understandable, given the inhuman manner in which they had lived. Their deaths brought an end to what is perhaps the most astonishing and ghastly story of serial killing in the history of Scottish crime.

David Rizzio and Lord Darnley

The story of the life of Mary Queen of Scots is one marked with tragedy at every turn. Her father, James V of Scotland, died only a few days after she was born. Mary was sent to France when she was barely five years old, betrothed to the young dauphin, whom she married in 1558. But by the age of eighteen, the young queen was a widow. By the age of twenty-five, her life had been changed twice by murder.

In 1559 the French dauphin died. In 1560 Mary of Guise, Mary’s mother, who had been acting as regent to the throne in Scotland after the death of James V, also died. Mary returned to Scotland in 1561 to take her place on the throne. The young queen, after arriving in Scotland to a great welcome, soon found that she was not popular with all her subjects. She was a Catholic, and many of the Scottish people, including some of the most powerful of Scotland’s nobility, had turned to Protestantism under the influence of John Knox and his followers and consequently saw her as a threat. Mary’s own half-brother, Lord James Stewart, Earl of Moray, who had taken control of the country from the death of Mary of Guise until the new queen’s return to Scotland, was a Protestant. Mary also had a powerful and determined opponent in Elizabeth I, who was quite determined that Mary should never get the chance to make any sort of claim on the English throne.

At the same time, powerful figures in the Catholic church in Scotland wanted to see Mary firmly established in the country and hoped that Queen Elizabeth I of England, to whose throne Mary was also heir, might be unseated from power. If not, they had to wait and hope that Elizabeth would produce no children of her own, so that Mary could succeed to the throne of England upon Elizabeth’s death. With Mary as queen of Scotland and England, the Catholic church would be able to regain all the power that it had lost in recent years. In the struggle between the two sides for power, Mary had precious few true allies on whom she could depend. Her short life must have been a remarkably lonely one.

After she arrived in Scotland, Mary soon realised that she would have to find a husband who, it was to be hoped, would provide her with an heir. In 1565 she remarried – whether or not she married for love is a matter of debate. Her new husband was Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, also her cousin. Darnley was a Catholic and, like his wife, a threat to the English throne.

Resentment against the young queen was always simmering below the surface. The Protestant lords had considerable power and influence and Mary’s position was never secure. Mary’s choice of husband was not popular with the nobles, especially Moray.

The marriage to Darnley was not a happy one. Within months of the wedding, Mary had become disenchanted with her new husband. He was outwardly quite a charmer; by all accounts he was an attractive man, accomplished at sport, but there was another less likeable side to him. As a husband, he proved to be uncaring, ill-tempered, selfish and inconsiderate. Mary was unaccustomed to Scottish court life after her years in France and she felt oppressed by the dislike that so many of her subjects so obviously felt for her. If she had hoped to find any solace or support in her marriage to Darnley, she was sorely disappointed.

In the midst of all this misery, one young man in the royal court had caught the attention of the young queen. He was David Rizzio, a young Italian whose skills as a musician were considerable. Mary needed someone to talk to and Rizzio fitted the bill. He was gifted, amusing and, coming from a foreign country, could identify with Mary’s sense of estrangement from the Scots. He soon became a close friend and confidant, and she appointed him to the elevated status of being her secretary. Rizzio’s position as the queen’s ‘right-hand man’ gave him power, and power made him dangerous.

Opponents of the Scottish queen grew more restive – what sort of influence was this young man having upon her? The threat of Catholic domination seemed to be ever closer. Some of the leading Scottish nobles – the ‘rebel lords’ – began to plot against Rizzio. They had to find a way to get rid of him.

The conspirators found themselves an unlikely ally in the queen’s own husband, Lord Darnley. His motives for joining the conspiracy were different from theirs. Darnley was, quite openly, jealous of Rizzio. Mary seemed to be far too close to him for comfort and there had been rumours that the relationship was more than a friendship. Although Darnley might not have been prepared to be the sort of husband Mary wanted, he certainly did not