Scotland's Missing Crime Files: The disappearance of devoted mum Arlene Fraser

This is another case that has always haunted me and inspired to write crime like Vile City. 

Tragic Arlene - was she killed by her husband Nat Fraser?

Pretty mum-of-two Arlene Fraser was just 33-years-old when she was last seen in the Scottish town of Elgin in 1998. Since that day she was never seen again.

Picture the scene in Arlene's house. It looked as if it'd been abandoned suddenly. 

The vacuum cleaner was still plugged in and the washing machine had been recently used.

Could Arlene have left and be living somewhere else?

This was a theory that was touted by Nat Fraser and his defence. 

If Arlene had left she hadn't been prepared.  

Her medication for Crohn's disease, her glasses and contact lenses were still in the house.

Would she really leave home without her children? 

Then there were her children. Would the devoted mum have left without them? Not by choice.

Just weeks before her disappearance, her violent husband Nat Fraser had throttled her for coming home late. He was sentenced to eighteen months for that assault but that only happened two years after the assault on his wife which was first treated as attempted murder. 

Had he been convicted sooner she might not have been killed.

Tragically, Arlene had been set to divorce her violent husband and start a new life. 

She was never given that chance.

What happened to Arlene?

Initially her disappearance was treated as a missing persons case. The detective in charge of the case, Detective Chief Inspector Peter Simpson said: "Something criminal has taken place here. Arlene has been the victim of a crime. I am of the opinion that she's dead. There's no indication that she's living somewhere else."

The police believe Nat Fraser paid someone to wipe his wife off the face of the earth. During the search for her, he was accused of not being interested in her whereabouts as if he already knew where she was.

In 2003, he was convicted of her murder and sentenced to 25 years in jail.

In 2011, he successfully challenged his conviction and it was quashed. But in 2012 in a new trial he was again convicted of Arlene's murder. In 2013, he lost yet another appeal. 

DOUBT 

So, why was there so much doubt over the husband's conviction?

There was no body and Nat Fraser did not commit the murder himself. 

The prosecution argued that Nat Fraser accused his wife of having a lover and decided that he wanted her dead to avoid giving her half his fortune. What's more Fraser was willing to pay someone £15, 000 to kill her.

Weeks before she vanished, Nat Fraser is alleged to have said to his wife: "If you are not going to live with me, you will not be living with anyone."

Chillingly that came true.

After she went missing, her son Jamie, who was only ten at the time, left a heartbreaking note for his mum. It read."Mother, where are u?"

He'd never get an answer to that question.

Arlene's body has never been found so her children and the rest of her family don't have a grave to visit. It's believed that her body was disposed off after she was murdered. Maybe even fed to pigs or burnt. 

What do Arlene's family think? 

Arlene's mother Isabelle Thompson spoke after Fraser's last appeal: "Hopefully we can get on with our lives, it's been never-ending."

In a shock documentary on Channel 4, in 2013 Arlene's daughter Natalie Fraser who was just five-years-old when her mum went missing, said she was "100 per cent" sure that her dad's friend Hector Dick and not her dad Nat Fraser, who was guilty of killed her mum. 

Hector had testified against her dad. 

Why would Hector Dick kill Arlene? 

Did he think he was doing a friend a favour? Or, did he fall for Arlene and get upset when she spurned his advances? 

There has been no evidence pointing to that.

All of the evidence points to Nat Fraser arranging the murder of his wife. 

Read about the documentary here

A review of Vile City by Scintilla - "I can't say enough about the protagonist who is a good man facing a lot of evil."

Thanks to the awesome @Scintilla_Info Scintilla.info for agreeing to be on my Blog Tour and for such an insightful review of Vile City (shown below).

Why not stop by her wonderful website?  

Vile City is available on Amazon and in all good book stores

Mystery: Detective in a Coma: Vile City, Detective in a Coma Book 1, Jennifer Lee Thomson

Blog Tour February 18, 2022

Detective Inspector Duncan Waddell has his hands full. A wave of burglaries in Glasgow has targeted the elderly. Two young women have gone missing, and a report has just come in about a third victim. He is training his new partner, DC Brian McKeith. He and his wife are raising their children. It is no wonder that he visits and talks often with his former partner.

His former partner, DC Stevie Campbell, is lying comatose in the hospital, with no sign that he will ever recover enough to wake up. Stabbed by a criminal with a broken bottle, he now lies inert, fed intravenously, turned regularly to prevent bedsores. Waddell visits him, shares details of cases with him, jokes with him and reads to him, hoping against hope that he can somehow hear him despite there being no evidence of this.

Until the day that Stevie sits up and talks to him! Except, no one else can see him. There is no medical sign that he ever moved, no one else heard him, and when the nurses come into the room to check on him he is as deep in his coma as ever. Only Duncan can hear him.

Did we mention how much pressure DI Waddell has been under?

Jennifer Lee Thomson’s plot is intense. Kidnapped women, sex trafficking, rape and other kinds of violence. The “Vile” part of the title Detective in a Coma: Vile City definitely lives up to its placement. Waddell tries very hard to shelter his family from the ugliness he sees every day. When he comes home, though, he has to take a long, hot shower to wash away both the grime on his body and the darkness in his spirit before he can trust himself to spend time with his children and his wife. It is a perilous internal struggle, one that he has mastered but which takes an awful toll on him.

 "DI Waddell is committed to bringing in some light where he can."

I cannot say enough about Thomson’s painting of this protagonist. He is a good man facing a lot of evil but determined to make a difference. He loves and protects his family, he visits and talks with his fallen friend, and he manages to see the positives in DC McKeith despite an occasionally intense desire to kick him back to handing out parking tickets. Glasgow seems to have many dark corners. DI Waddell is committed to bringing in some light where he can.

You can read an extract here 

Buy it on Amazon here

Book 2 in the series that was once called Cannibal City will be out soon under the new name of Butcher City. Also from Diamond Books. 

You can see more of their titles at https://diamondbooks.co.uk/library/ and on Twitter @diamond_crime

Vile City (Detective in a Coma book 1) is on tour

Together with it's stars DI Duncan Waddell and Shelley Craig, Vile City is going on tour thanks to the wonderful Random Things Tours. 

Here's the schedule - 

Perhaps you can stop by? We'd love to see you 😍

Vile City is available on Kindle and in paperback -

Amazon UK

Amazon.com 

~About Vile City~

Vile City tells the parallel stories of snatched Shelley Craig and DI Waddell who'll do anything to find her. 

It's the first book in the Detective in a Coma series. 

Here's the blurb - 

DI Duncan Waddell is on the brink of a nervous breakdown – he thinks his best pal DC Stevie Campbell, who’s been in a coma since he was attacked by a suspect, is talking to him.

When office worker Shelley rushes to her boyfriend’s aid after he is attacked, she is abducted. She wakes up in a strange room with no memory of how she got there.

On the case, Waddell finds himself in a desperate race against time to uncover the truth behind the abduction.

To do this, he and his team must delve into the seedy underbelly of Scotland’s swingers’ scene and a world where women are tricked into the sex business and traded like cattle.

This is where Shelley is kidnapped

You can read an extract here 

Buy it on Amazon here

Book 2 in the series that was once called Cannibal City will be out soon under the new name of Butcher City. Also from Diamond Books. 

You can see more of their titles at https://diamondbooks.co.uk/library/ and on Twitter @diamond_crime

Delighted to appear in Mystery People

This month I'm excited to be featured in the Mystery People newsletter, the publication "for writers and readers of mystery" talking about my former island life. 

You can read more about them here

The real Wolf Creek murders - the one who got away

 

For some people this is more than something to watch *

If like me you do a lot of research into unexplained deaths that usually involve murderers and serial killers, there are 2 words that constantly come up - 

Hitchhiker and backpacker 

I would say those what are only second to sex worker when it comes to how often they come up. You're more likely to become a victim it seems if either of those three words or all of them can be applied to you. 

Too often hitchhiker's and backpackers are the one being targeted by evil men with murder and often rape on their mind. Of course there are a few women who feature in that mix - usually women who have committed unspeakable crimes with their male partners. 

On a few occasions these women have even been the instigators behind the violence as has been suggested in the case of Rose West. 

The movie and subsequent TV show Wolf Creek, is something we can choose to watch or not. But in the case of eight young people (and quite possibly many more) who were backpacking around Australia at different times, it became a terrifying reality that resulted in all but one of their horrific deaths at the hands of a cowardly psychopath called Ivan Milat. 

The cowardly serial killer

He would stab his victims in the back to paralyze them before raping and stabbing or shooting them brutally to death as they lay there helpless as babies. 

It's hard to think of a more cowardly way to kill people. But that's the one thing that unites all serial killers - cowardice. 

Seven young people are known to have died at his hands, most of them who were hitchhiking and backpacking in pairs because they thought it was safer. 

December 1989 - April 1992 

The lives that were stolen by a sadist

Seven backpackers who were also hitchhiking, went missing during these dates. Most were in pairs. Their bodies were all discovered at different times in Belanglo State Forest, which is south-west of Sydney. 

Best friends Deborah Everist and James Gibson (both Australian and 19), disappeared in December 1989. They had travelled from their home city of Melbourne and planned to attend a conservation festival. They never made it. 

Simone Schmidl (from Germany and aged 20), disappeared in January 1991. Apart from the one who got away who we'll find about later, Simone was the only one who was travelling alone. She was planning to meet up with her mum who was coming over from Germany. Her mum never saw her again. She was known to her friends as Simi. 

Childhood sweethearts Gabor Neugebauer, 21 and Anja Habschied 20 (both from Germany), disappeared in January 1992. Friends say that Gabor was strong and it would have taken a lot to subdue him but police believe terrified that his girlfriend would be hurt he had complied with his killer who had promised to let them go as serial killers often do to get people's compliance. 

Caroline Clarke, 21, Joanne Walters, 22 (both from the UK), disappeared in April 1992. They had met and become friends whilst they had been backpacking. The only consolation to their families was they were together when they died. 

All of these people with their whole life ahead of them, had two things in common - they had all stayed in Sydney backpacker's hostels and that had started the horrendous chain of events that would lead to their deaths In a forest far away from help. 

Escape from a killer 

The guy who got away

Someone as pathetic as this killer doesn't deserve to have his name remembered. So instead I would like to concentrate on the one who got away. A man whose testimony and ID of the killer ensured the beast was caged at last.

Paul Onions from the West Midlands in the UK should have been the 8th victim (at least that the police know of). Instead, he was the one who got away.

He was backpacking around Australia when he met a man he thought was a nice, ordinary bloke but that man was a serial killer. He accepted a lift and it almost cost him his life. 

The stranger started fidgeting about in the car and when he came out with a gun and then some rope, Mr Onions wasn't paralyzed by fear. He was jolted into action, undoing his seatbelt he leapt out of the car under gunfire. He would probably have been done for for one thing as a bullet could stop Usain Bolt -  a car just happened to be passing by and he jumped inside. 

Without the car being there and the woman inside wth her children helping him it's doubtful he would still have been alive. But Mr onions is still deserving of our respect and admiration for not losing his head and saving his own life by getting out of that car. 

Brave Mr Onions was probably not the only one who got away. Australian police also believe that the serial killer claimed more victims that they have still to find.

Paul Onions was in court to testify against the man who tried to kill him and was there when he was sentenced to life for the 7 other murders and for his own attempted murder. 

We will never know how many people died at the hands of the sneering killer because he died in hospital of cancer and didn't reveal anymore about the ones he killed. 

Did he have an accomplice?

There have been suggestions that Milat did not act alone and that he had an accomplice - possibly even a family member. Could ge be part of the first known serial killer family?

We'll never know as Milat is dead and surely if there's any justice at all, he will be rotting in hell. 

*NOTE - Wolf Creek is very, very loosley based on the murders and should not be treated as an reinactment. 

WHO TOOK OFFICE WORKER SHELLEY CRAIG? Read an extract from Vile City (Volume 1 Detective in a Coma)

#VileCity #detectiveinaComa

#crimethriller #tartannoir 

*****Get the book HERE ***

DI Duncan Waddell is on the brink of a nervous breakdown – he thinks his best pal DC Stevie Campbell, who’s been in a coma since he was attacked by a suspect, is talking to him.

When office worker Shelley ruses to her boyfriend’s aid after he is attacked, she is abducted. She wakes up in a strange room with no memory of how she got there.

On the case, Waddell finds himself in a desperate race against time to uncover the truth behind the abduction.

To do this, he and his team must delve into the seedy underbelly of Scotland’s swingers’ scene and a world where women are tricked into the sex business and traded like cattle.

Vile City is out now, published by Diamond Books in paperback and eBook. 

You can buy it by clicking here

 

~ Read an extract ~

Chapter 1

Stuart was hiding something. Shelley could tell. She was always the one who’d had to wake him because he could block out the shrill of the alarm clock. Nowadays, he was up before her, grabbing the mail whilst she slept. And he’d started making breakfast – nothing much, just tea and toast, more than he’d ever made her in their near three years together.

When she’d ask him if anything was wrong, he’d shrug his shoulders, give her a wee smile and say everything was fine. She knew he was lying because his face went even paler, making his freckles stand out as if they’d been drawn in by a kid with a coloured pencil. She never pushed it, maybe because deep down she was worried that he’d tell her he’d met someone else.

The No.76 bus was empty when they clambered on board – one of the benefits of working until eleven at night in a call centre, was that there was no need to scoot past a sea of legs and become a contortionist to get on and off a bus.

Their cold breath filled the air with ghosts as they walked towards Waterstones, Shelley pausing to peek at the new crime fiction releases showcased in the illuminated windows, whilst Stuart fidgeted with his watch. He was always footering about with something since he’d given up cigarettes and it drove her mad, but at least it didn’t fill his lungs with tar and make the house smell like an overflowing ashtray.

“I need to have a pee,” he announced, as they came to the dimly lit lane off Mitchell Street that reeked of eau de Glasgow: decomposing takeaway, urine and other bodily fluids.

She groaned. “Can’t you wait until we get home, Stuart?” She knew she’d pronounced his name “Stew-art” as she always did when she was annoyed with him. She couldn’t help it.

What made men think it was okay to urinate in public?

Stuart looked pained. “Sorry, I can’t. Too much coffee tonight.”

She let him walk on ahead of her and whilst he scooted down the alley, she stood outside the amusement arcade, pretending to look in so she wouldn’t be mistaken for a prostitute. It’d happened to her once when she’d got off the bus alone. Stuart hadn’t been working that night.

Five minutes later, she was so cold she couldn’t feel her nose and Stuart still wasn’t back.

She turned the corner to look for him, fully expecting to see him ambling back towards her with that jaunty walk that always made her smile. He wasn’t there.

Where was he?

Anger welled up in her chest. Had he started smoking again? He swore he wouldn’t.

There was one way to find out.

She headed down the alley. The sole light was provided from some nearby buildings, so visibility was poor.

She’d walked a few steps when she spotted a bundle of rags on the ground. Was someone sleeping there?

She moved closer, squinting into the dim light. Stuart was lying motionless on the ground. He must have tripped and knocked himself out as he hit the concrete.

She ran to him, calling out his name, the squeezing in her chest waning slightly when she knelt and heard him groan.

She pulled her mobile phone from her bag to call for an ambulance.

She didn’t make it to the third digit. A gloved hand clamped across her mouth and nose, cutting off her airways. The phone fell from her grasp, clattering onto the cobbles. Terror gripped her and she couldn’t breathe.

As she struggled, her assailant pressed his mouth to her ear. He was so close that it occurred to her that if anyone saw them, they would think he was her boyfriend whispering sweet nothings in her ear.

“Your man’s been given a strong sedative. He’ll wake up with a sore head and nothing more. If you scream, I’ll kick him several times in the head and he’ll never get up again. Do you understand?”

The voice was cold and emotionless She didn’t recognise it and there was an accent. Not from around here.

She nodded under his hand. Then did something he didn’t expect. Backheeled him in the groin.

There was a satisfying yelp as he released her.

She ran, arms pumping away like Usain Bolt, down towards the café at the end of the alley and safety.

She’d almost made it when he grabbed her arm and hauled her back. An electric shock shot from her elbow to her shoulder as she tried to pull herself free. He was too strong.

He dragged her towards him.

Before she could scream, he punched her in the face and she went down with a thud, jarring every bone in her body, momentarily stunning her.

As she fought to get up, he punched her in the back, and she fell again.

The last thing she saw was the pavement rushing towards her before she blacked out...

Why the Vile City title isn't a slur on Glasgow

Since Vile City was published I've had a few people tell me that they love Glasgow and thought the title was having a go at the fair city. What's more the thought of someone picking a fight with Glasgow had

Nothing could be further from the truth.

I lived in the city for well over a decade and came to think of it as home. The people are the friendliest in Scotland and if the Scottish parliament had been located in the best place it would be Glasgow not Edinburgh.

Vile City, a former winner of the Scottish Association of Writers Pitlochry Quaich for a crime novel is so named for one reason and it's nothing to do with the city its based in.

The crimes described in the book namely the abduction of women, are truly vile.

The City in the title is important too as the next 3 books in the series which will be out soon -

Cannibal City - A killer is stalking Glasgow men, killing them and eating their livers.

Vigilante City -
When Douglas John MacDonald stands trial for the rape and murder of schoolgirl Kylie Donovan, everybody expects him to be convicted.
When he walks free there's a public outcry, but not everybody is content to just get angry.
When MacDonald is later found murdered with his pinkie removed just like his 15-year-old victim, the police think it's an isolated incident, but more murders follow and they begin to realise they're on the trail of a vigilante killer.

Romeo City - Dating is quite literally murder.
When Dennis McCombe is found with his throat slit from ear to ear in a bath in an empty house with the words Where's my beloved? written on the bath, the police realise this is no ordinary murder.
A serial killer is on the loose and she’s targeting the desperately dateless in Glasgow on blind dates - and she's just only got started. How else is she going to find her beloved?

Stay tuned and ask yourself - Is Inspector Duncan Waddell going crazy or us his best friend and colleague Stevie who's in a coma, really talking to him?

Who killed schoolgirl Caroline Glachan? - BREAKING NEWS - 3 arrests - Could the case have finally been solved?

UPDATED: - November 25th, 2021 -

2 MEN AND A WOMAN HELD IN CUSTODY CHARGED WITH CAROLINE'S MURDER 
Donna Brand, Andrew Kelly and Robert O'Brien are alleged to have killed Caroline Glachan more than 25 years ago. 

When they allgedly murdered the 14 year-old schoolgirl, they would have been 17, 16 and 18. A postmortem on vivacious Caroline showed she was alive when she was dumped in the water. 

I never knew Caroline but I often think about her and the terror she suffered in her final moments. It makes me both sad and angry so imagine how those who loved her feel?

Hopefully, Caroline and her family will finally get justice at last. 

Read more here 

Caroline had her life stolen from her 

Twenty-two long years ago, on Sunday 25 August 1996, 14-year-old schoolgirl Caroline Glachan was found dead on the water’s edge of the River Leven near Bonhill, Dunbartonshire in Scotland.

One of the last people to see Caroline alive was her friend Joanne Menzies. Caroline left Joanne and a group of friends at some shops just before midnight. She was going to meet her boyfriend in nearby Renton which was a mile away.

She never made it. She took a shortcut through the woods.

What happened next nobody knows.  

Where the teen's lifeless body was found

She was found dead on the banks of the River Leven in Dunbartonshire. She'd been badly beaten and possibly drowned. It wasn't clear if she was dead or alive when she'd ended up in the water. She could have been unconscious.

The ambitious teenager with a feisty attitude, never made it to fifteen as her life was snatched away.

A killer among us? 

Caroline's mother and Police in Scotland believe the answer to who killed Caroline lies within the local community. Could the killer of the teen be walking amongst them?

Caroline's murder was featured on TV true crime show Crimewatch two years ago, where her mum Mrs McKeich spoke in heartbreaking detail of how she found out her daughter was dead on her 40th birthday.

For her life didn't begin at forty, she said, it ended. She'd lost her only child.

"There's two questions I need answered - who and why."

Could this be the man who killed her?

After her murder, police released a photo of a man in a dark green hooded top who was seen by a taxi driver walking near Caroline as she made her way along Dillichip Loan around 12.15am on Sunday, August 25, 1996. The man was described as having sharp features.

He was asked to come forward.  The call was never answered.

Was this man her killer?

How watching bad movies can improve your writing

 

What just happened?

I just finished watching possibly one of the worst movies I have ever seen, The Wilding on Netflix. 

The characters were completely unfleshed out and cardboard cutouts and because of that and other issues I found myself not caring about what happened to them. Strangely though, I still couldn't stop watching. 

The movie seemed perfect for me. A great cast. The story was an interesting one: a family struggle to adapt back to normal family life after the daughter leaves psychiatric care.

What could and should have been a taut and twisty thriller, turned into a big hot mess. 

So what went wrong?

Give characters character

1. There were too many characters for starters and too many of them were being treated like main characters without any characterisation going on to tell me who those people were. This meant I didn't care what happened to them. 

What that taught me about writing a novel - every character has got to earn the right to be in your novel. Make them all interesting especially your main characters. Novels hinge on the main characters just as movies do. Make them weak and ruin your novel. 

~Choose your main character carefully~

Lisbeth Salander - now that's what you call
a great lead character. 

2. The main character in the movie who had the most screen time was the most uninteresting one of the lot. Not because they were a bad actor but because the writing/direction/editing or all three was a complete mess. 

Especially when it came to the editing which looked like an Andrex puppy have been allowed to run about with the film. Hey, I do know a lot of it's done digitally these days, but you get my drift.

What that taught me about writing a novel - Make sure your main character is the most interesting person in the novel. This is especially important if your main character is going to be in a series of books like my DI Duncan Waddell in my Detective in a Coma series. They have to possess enough depth to make people read on. 

Is that really the end?

3. An extremely confusing ending that made me think someone had cut the last 5 to 10 minutes off of the film. Either that or it was the first episode of a series. It wasn't. 

What that taught me about writing a novel - You don't need to have everything sewn up at the end of a novel but your ending has to be a clear and satisfying one. 

You don't want people to be setting scratching the heads and say "Where's the rest of the novel?"

Movies and novels are a completely different form but they do have things in common. Just as you can learn things from reading what you consider to be bad novels, you can also do the same when you're watching bad movies.

And everyone thinks I just watch Netflix so I don't have to write:)

Why we need flawed characters in fiction like DI Duncan Waddell star of the Detective in a Coma books

DI Waddell is no Mark wahlberg 

I'm currently working on a new crime novel. It's a police procedural and the main character is an amazing human being both physically and mentally. They have no bias. 

Handsome and charming, they run ultra marathons and raise wads of money for charities in any free time they have. 

Their partner is very supportive of their job and they have an amazing family. 

Thankfully, I am lying and I am not writing a book with the person I described as a the lead character because I hate them already.

Let's face it, who wants to read about perfect, unflawed characters like the one I just described? 

I know I wouldn't. 

How boring would that be? 

The reason is simple - someone who's the perfect human being would be so boring to read about. For one thing, how do you have conflict in a story with a character like that? Well, they're perfect so how would they possibly get into any conflict with anyone? 

And, they would solve the crime within the first two pages.

perfect is boring 

When I am reading, I like my main characters with loads of imperfections and conflicts. That's how I came up with DI Duncan Waddell. He's a decent man, relatively good at his job but he has problems. Not the least of which is that his friend and colleague Stevie Campbell, who was attacked by a suspect he was trying to apprehend and ended up left in a coma is talking to him. 

And only to him, leaving Waddell to wonder if he's losing his mind. 

He has other problems too. He eats too much junk food so has a paunch on him. If someone were to play him in a movie it definitely would not be someone like Mr chiselled abs Mark Wahlberg.

He consumes way too much sugar, so is a borderline diabetic and that's why his wife Isobel is trying to force him to eat healthier. 

He loves Glasgow, the city where he lives and works, but is fast coming to despise because of of the sick and twisted crimes comes across. Hence the name of the first installment featuring him is Vile City. 

Sometimes he even hates his job so much that he disappears into the nearest quiet place to have a swig of whiskey and wishes he had become a history professor as he is a Scottish history buff.

Waddell is flawed and human. 

I hope that is why readers will like him. 

~ Vile City, the revamped first book in the Detective in a coma series is out soon from Diamond Books

Why not what come and meet him? You may like him. ~

Stop victim shaming and blaming women. It's time some men changed.

 

The last time I went running I passed a group of men and one shouted that I had a fat backside whilst another commented in very graphic terms on my chest. 

This isn't unusual. Women get sexually harassed all the time, whenever they go out, whether just walking to work or running in the park. 

But my be able to hear those men shouting things at me is my own fault. How dare I think I can go out and exercise as a woman alone without a man keeping me company? And, what was I thinking of not wearing a pair of headphones or earphones so I could listen to music on my MP3 player?

It's your fault if you don't wear earphones and your fault if you do

What the hell was I thinking of? If I had been listening to music I wouldn't have heard the comments. 

Clearly this is my fault. I asked for those comments. I invited them by virtue of the fact I wasn't listening to music. I'm stupid and stupid women deserve to have those types of comments aimed at them. 

But hey, wait a moment. Isn't it advised by the police not to wear earphones so you can be fully aware of your surroundings? At least that's the spiel women and girls hear all the time. 

It's just another form of victim blaming or shaming the female of the sexes has to constantly put up with.

Maybe instead of blaming women and girls for lewd comments, sexual harassment and unwanted touching and worse in the case of Sarah Everard, it's time that some men (not every man behaves like this) looked at how they behave. 

Bite back those comments you have no right to make and tell your sons to do the same.

Women and girls should have the right to leave their homes for exercise, enjoyment or work, or any damn reason without having to to wrestle with the dilemma of whether to to wear earphones and then being blamed no matter what they decide to do. 

Truth is always stranger than fiction - Bible John - Glasgow's unsolved murders

The killer they could never catch

Who was Bible John? 

In Vile City, my first Detective in a Coma novel, a serial killer is going around Glasgow abducting and killing young women. The press have dubbed this killer the Glasgow Grabber.

In real life, Glasgow's most notorious serial killer is a man who has never been caught. Someone who's nickname even today, sends terror throughout the city.

A good looking, well dressed, soft spoken man who was given the name Bible John because he said his name was John and he quoted from the bible.

He's believed to have murdered three women in Glasgow between 1968 and 1969 that he'd met at the city's Barrowland ballroom. All three victims - nurse Patricia Docker, mum of three Jemima McDonald and Helen Puttock - were raped and strangled with their own stockings and their handbags were taken.

They saw his face 

What makes Bible John so unusual is that he shared a taxi with one of his victims (his 3rd and last know victim), Helen Puttock and her sister Jean and happily chatted away to them. Jean also invited another man to share the cab with them too (despite appeals, he never came forward). That left two people - the sister and the taxi driver - who could have identified him.

It was because of that taxi ride that the police managed to get so much information on the killer, including developing a psychological profile and a photofit. By all accounts, Bible John was an extremely polite and easy going companion.

The sister Jean got off at her stop, leaving tragic Helen Puttock alone with Bible John.

Poor Helen was found raped, beaten and strangled in the garden of her own flat the next morning. She'd put up a fight and there were grass stains on her feet showing that she'd tried to run. Her handbag was missing and police think her killer took it as a trophy.

A man was later spotted with his face covered in scratches and in a rumpled state on a bus heading into the city centre. Whenever that was Bible John or not, it’s impossible to tell.

Was Bible John's motive misogyny? 

One facet of the crimes that shocked Glasgow were that all three women were menstruating at the time they were brutally murdered, suggesting a hint of misogyny to the murders. Or was it a case of he wanted to have sex with the women, but saw them as unclean? 

Who knows what goes inside the head of such a warped individual? 

Bible John has never been found. Like other infamous killers who escaped justice, theories abound about Bible John's whereabouts and his identity. but the one person who may have been able to identify him, tragic Helen Puttock's sister Jean, has long since passed away.

One belief is that the well spoken man who recited from the bible, may have gone overseas to work as a missionary which would explain why the murders abruptly stopped. Could he have carried on his killing spree undetected abroad, perhaps in Africa?

There are other theories such as that Bible John joined the army or was a police officer (apparently the way he was dressed was the way members of Her Majesty's Constabulary dressed at the time).

Is evil convucted killer Peter Tobin Bible John?

A young Peter Tobin next to a photofit of Bible John 

Evil killer Peter Tobin, who has been convicted of three murders and who is believed to behind many more, has also been linked to the killings as there are those who think he resembles the Bible John photofit.  The name Helen Puttock's sister said Bible John gave them was also similar to one of Tobin's known aliases.

However the man who probably knows him best and who brought him to justice, retired DCI David Swindle believes there's no evidence to link Tobin with the crime. 

Tobin's victims were all very different from Bible John's who murdered grown women.

The children the coward killed 

Tobin's victims could be described almost as children - Vicky Hamilton, 15, Dinah MacNicol, 18 and Angelika Kluk who although she was 23 looked much younger and was living a long way away from her Polish homeland when Tobin who was working as a caretaker at the church where she was staying raped and murdered her.

Bible John was also described as well-spoken and well dressed, two things weasel-faced Tobin could never be described as. 

It seems like we'll never know the true identity of the monster who held Glasgow in a grip of terror and destroyed three families' lives forever.

You'll need to read Vile City to find out if DI Waddell and his team catch the man they are after, the man dubbed the Glasgow Grabber.