New suspect in Bible John murders identified after being linked through DNA
16.06.2024 - 06:27
/ dailyrecord.co.uk
A new suspect in the Bible John murders has been identified for the first time after being linked to the cold case through DNA.
Former printer John Templeton has been named as the alleged killer of Helen Puttock, one of three woman murdered in Glasgow in the 60s.
Templeton, who died in 2015 aged 70, has been put in the frame after an investigation showed he shared a DNA profile and family connection to a former prime suspect, John Irvine McInnes.
And the author of a book investigating the 55-year-old case has uncovered other evidence that Templeton, quizzed by the original murder squad detectives, could be the killer.
Australian author Jill Bavin-Mizzi said: “I’m 100 per cent convinced John Templeton is Bible John. The circumstantial evidence is so weighty it would be a mathematical impossibility for it not to be Templeton.”
It would also mean the killer gave his real name and details to the only witness in the case, Jean Langford, Helen’s sister. Jill traced Templeton after looking at the ancestry of McInnes, identified as a suspect in 1996 after a cold case review.
The former soldier, from Stonehouse, Lanarkshire, who took his own life in 1980, had been interviewed about the murder of Helen, 29, in 1969 then was ruled out as a suspect.
But DNA later obtained from Helen’s clothes bore comparisons to samples provided by his siblings Jane and Hector. However, when McInnes’ body was exhumed from Stonehouse Cemetery in 1996 there was no conclusive match.
Australian experts confirmed DNA can pass through generations and an examination of the McInnes family tree led Jill to John Templeton, born in 1945.
Jill said: “The name John Templeton exists among the ancestors of Hector and Janet McInnes, siblings whose DNA samples share