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The remains of the Hogmanay meal are cold on the table. The bodies of the three members of the Smart family, lying in their beds, are just as cold.

Parents Peter and Doris and 11-year-old Michael had been shot in the head from close range by a Beretta pistol.

Holding the gun was Peter Manuel, Scotland's worst serial killer, the murderer of at least nine people in a blood-spattered two-year spree, although this is almost certainly an underestimate as there may well have been several others.

He was to go down for seven of the murders, he confessed to an eighth, although not convicted, and he was not tried for a ninth, because it occurred in England, in another jurisdiction.

But back to New Year's Day 1958 at 38 Sheepburn Road, Uddingston. Surprisingly the killer has not fled. No, he's tucking into the leftovers, feeding the cat and even opening the garage to check out the family car.

Over the next five days, Manuel will come and go from the house, opening and shutting curtains, driving the car around the area, spending some of the holiday money, brand new banknotes, which the Smarts have put away.

He even gives a lift to a police officer and, although the cop does not know it at the time, can't resist taunting him. Three days before Hogmanay, Isabelle Cooke had disappeared from her home in Mount Vernon and Manuel can't stop himself pointing out that the police are looking in the wrong place. And of course Manuel knew, because he had killed Isabelle and buried her.

(Image: Media Scotland)

The Manuel story, gruesome and shocking as it is, is also a massive indictment of the police investigation at the time, which could hardly have been more inept. Had it even been barely competent eight or more people would not have subsequently died.

Two years before, on January 2, 1956, it had begun. Manuel had a long record of sex crimes and now he had stalked and killed 17-year-old Anne Kneilands, raping her and bludgeoning her to death on East Kilbride golf course.

Harry Benson, the acclaimed photographer, was then a young snapper on the Hamilton Advertiser. He was sent to cover the murder scene and recalls one policeman saying, “This is the work of Peter Manuel.”

Manuel was working nearby on a gas pipe-laying squad plumbing in for the new town. He was 28 but his record of attacks on women was well known. He had been jailed at 16 for sexual assaults, serving nine years in Peterhead, with subsequent arrests for rape.

He was the obvious suspect, he had fresh scratches on his face (this was long before DNA evidence) which he claimed he got in a Hogmanay fight.

His home at 32 Fourth Avenue, Birkenshaw, near Uddingston, was searched but no evidence was found, his father alibied him and he was set free.

Next to die, in a foreshadowing of the Smart killings to come, were Marion Watt, her sister Margaret Brown and 17-year-old Vivienne Watt, all shot dead in their Burnside home. Manuel was out on bail for a nearby burglary at a colliery but investigators preferred Marion's husband William, who was away on a fishing holiday in Ardrishaig.

They wanted to believe that he had driven 90 miles during the night, faked a burglary, murdered his family and driven back. And they went to extraordinary lengths to stand it up, producing two 'witnesses' whose stories were so shaky they would fall apart at the most cursory examination.

Despite the fact that the level of petrol in Watt's car had not gone down, that there was no evidence of him filling up on his alleged murder mission, police searched the route for any hidden stash. There was none.

After two months, without producing any substantive piece of evidence, Watt was released, but remained the prime suspect. That is, until the Smart murders.

Just over a year later, in December 1957 Manuel almost certainly shot and killed taxi driver Sydney Dunn while searching for work in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Dunn's body was found on moorland in Northumberland but by then Manuel had returned to Glasgow.

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He was never tried for this murder as it was in a different jurisdiction – or perhaps the Crown believed that with the stack of other murders they had him anyway – although a button from his jacket was found in Dunn's taxi.

Isabelle Cooke, 17, was the next victim. She disappeared from her home in Carrick Drive, Mount Vernon (the same street Tam McGraw would later live in) on her way to a dance at Uddingston Grammar School. Manuel stalked, raped and strangled her and buried her in a nearby field. He would later lead officers to the spot to dig, telling them, “This is the place. In fact I think I'm standing on her.”

But it was the new banknotes stolen in the Smart killings which were finally to be his undoing – that and a tip-off – by spending them freely, particularly in pubs in Glasgow's east end.

Police traced the notes to the Smart murders, and after they arrested his father Manuel confessed to eight killings, but not the Watt murders - although he was subsequently to confess even to these.

His trial began on May 12, 1958. Explosive and revelatory and now pleading not guilty to all charges, he sacked his counsel and conducted his own defence and, although the judge conceded he was skilled at it, the evidence was so overwhelming that it took the jury less than three hours to convict him.

What they did not know was that mid-way through the trial, in a eight-stanza verse of poetic doggerel, Manuel had penned a confession to nine murders, including these verses:

I murdered Isabella (sic) Cook,

And young Anne Knielands too,

Shot the Watts and shot the Smarts,

And Sidney (sic) Dunn I slew.

I did these deeds without a doubt,

My guilt was found by law,

I'm Peter Anthony Manuel,

The Rat of Birkenshaw.

(Image: Media Scotland)

To back it up, he led detectives to the place at Burntbroom Farm, Uddingston, where Isabelle Cooke's half-naked body was recovered.

Manuel also took them to a spot on the River Clyde near the High Court where he said he had thrown the guns used in the shootings. In the river divers found the Webley revolver which had killed the Watts and the Beretta automatic used on the Smarts.

The term serial killer wasn't in currency in the late 1950s, neither were there profilers, or books and TV series recounting the crimes, so Manuel can lay claim to be one of the first.

His confessions, his overweening arrogance, scripting his starring role in his own courtroom drama, were clearly aimed at establishing a lasting infamy.

If the case had been tried today perhaps Manuel would have pleaded diminished responsibility and it might just have succeeded. There's little doubt that he was a psychopath, although evidence of his mental health was kept from the jury at the time.

Many believe that the true count of his murder rampage could have been as high as 19. Understandably there was no real outcry when the judge, Lord Cameron, donning the black cap, passed the sentence of death by hanging.

On Friday, July 11, 1958, hangman Harry Allen appeared at the door of the Barlinnie cell just before 8am. A priest was saying his last words and Peter Manuel then went smartly to the scaffold.

His hands were tied behind his back, a white hood placed over his head and the noose fitted round his neck. His last words were alleged to be: “Turn up the radio and I'll go quietly,” although that may be fanciful.

Scotland's Frankenstein, as he called himself, the Beast of Birkenshaw, died at at 8.05am.

Article first published on June 26, 2016.