Investigation
The police made a determined effort to hunt for the killer, now nicknamed "Bible John", but although a number of suspects were questioned, no arrests were ever made, and no further victims have been attributed to him. All three victims had been strangled with their stockings, all were menstruating at the time and all three had sanitary napkins or tampons placed on or near the bodies. Their handbags were also missing.
In 1996, police exhumed the body of John Irvine McInnes, the cousin of one of the original suspects, from a Lanarkshire graveyard. McInnes, who had served in the Scots Guards, had committed suicide aged 41 in 1981. Police ran a DNA test and compared it with semen found on Helen Puttock's tights and announced it to be non conclusive.
Lord Mackay, then the Lord Advocate, said there was not enough evidence to link the murders with McInnes.
On 12 December 2004, police announced they were to DNA test a number of men in a further attempt to solve the case. This followed the discovery of an 80% match to a DNA sample taken at the site of a minor crime two years earlier.
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