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It is a bright but bitterly cold morning. Breath is clouding at the mouth, feet are being stamped to keep the blood flowing, gloved hands wrapped together.

Across from the watchers, behind a police line, a polythene tent, crusted in ice, stands at the edge of the graveyard at the top of the hill above Stonehouse, and from it the sounds howl of a pneumatic drill gouging at the frozen earth.

This is the exhumation which, it's hoped, will confirm the identity of Glasgow's most famous and mysterious serial killer, Bible John.

Spin back almost 30 years from February 1996 to the Barrowland ballroom in Glasgow. It's the late 60s, not so much swinging as reeling in Glasgow, where three young women who were picked up here have been murdered and the killer has left a signature, which leaves little doubt that all were killed by the same man.

The three were raped, all were strangled with their stockings, all three were menstruating at the time and all had sanitary towels or tampons left on, or near, their bodies. And all three women's handbags are missing, the contents discarded near them.

It was the third murder, of 29-year-old Helen Puttock, which gave rise to the killer's soubriquet, Bible John. She had gone to the dance hall with her sister Jean, they picked up two men who both called themselves John. One of the men, Castlemilk John, walked to George Square to get a bus home, leaving the sisters, and the killer, to hail a taxi.

It was the last day of October 1969, with a new decade looming, and on the journey to drop Jean off in Knightswood, what little we know about the murderer came out. He was religious. He told the women, “I don't drink at Hogmanay. I pray.” He quoted his father as saying that dance halls are “dens of iniquity”.

Next morning Helen's battered body was found in the back garden of her flat at Earl Street, Scotstoun.

She had been raped and strangled, the contents of her handbag had been scattered nearby, but the bag itself was missing. Perhaps the killer took it as a trophy? Remember, this is before profilers and psychologists strayed onto the stage.

Grass stains on Helen's feet indicated that there was a struggle in which she tried to escape her killer. She also had a deep bite mark on her leg.

The last possible sighting of the killer, if it was him, was around 1.30am. He is described as a well-dressed young man matching Jean's description, apparently in a dishevelled state, heading for the Clyde ferry.

The evidence is flimsy but the bite mark is important. As is the semen found on Helen's tights. This is well before DNA testing so there was no way to properly make use of the evidence, and it languished in a police locker for almost three decades.

On the first two murders there was even less to go on. Patricia Docker, a 25-year-old nurse, was found naked in a lane yards from her home in Langside Place by a man on his way to work. Her clothes and handbag were missing.

The night before, February 23, 1968, she had been at an over-25s night at the Barrowland.

Some 18 months later, on August 15, 1969, Jemima McDonald, a 32-year-old mother of three, also spent the night dancing at the Barrowland.

Next day, Saturday, Jemima's sister Margaret heard rumours in the area that young children were seen leaving an old tenement building in Mackeith Street in Bridgeton talking about 'the body'.

By Monday morning she was so concerned that she visited the old building, where she found Jemima's battered body. She had been strangled, raped and beaten to death.

But unlike Patricia Docker, Jemima was fully clothed when her body was found. Witnesses said that they had seen her leaving the dance hall at midnight with a tall, slim young man with red hair.

(Image: Media Scotland)

It is difficult now to imagine how gripped and fearful Glasgow was at the time. Crowds at the Barrowland dropped substantially, young women tended not to go out, or if they did they ensured they had plenty of company, and didn't go home alone with men.

And then, for the first time in a Scottish murder hunt, the press were given an identikit picture of the suspect.

That was followed by another identikit, painted using Jean Puttock's description, and it quickly became one of the most famous portraits in Scotland.

The legend of Bible John wasn't just born, it had a face to accompany it.

And then? Nothing. No further murders. 50,000 witness statements lay in the files, over 1000 suspects had been interviewed, the 100 plus detectives who had been on the case, who had even perfected their dance moves on the floor of the Barrowland mingling in plainclothes, were reassigned.

(Image: Media Scotland)

Until this freezing February morning when the remains of John Irvine McInnes, the cousin of one of the original suspects, is exhumed from the graveyard.

McInnes, a former squaddie in the Scots Guards, had committed suicide aged 41 in 1980.

As there is now a DNA test, police want to compare it with the semen found on Helen Puttock's tights. The officers are supremely confident that at last they have Bible John.

After a 10-day wait as the test is carried out, the result comes back. It is inconclusive.

But, like all great and ghastly legends, it was not the end. In May 2007 Peter Tobin was convicted of murdering 23-year-old Polish student Angelika Kluk. Her mutilated body was found hidden under the floor of St Patrick's Roman Catholic church in Anderston. She had been beaten, raped and stabbed.

Tobin was working as the church handyman and had taken the name Pat McLaughlin because he was still on the violent and sex offenders register after convictions in 1994 for rape and assault.

(Image: REUTERS/Strathclyde Police)

His likeness to the identikit, his modus operandi, his lifestyle and his interest in religion sparked something with the now-retired detective Joe Jackson, who was one of the first officers at the scene after Pat Docker was found in the back lane.

Similarly, Professor David Wilson, a criminologist, was struck by two key aspects of Kluk's murder.

Tobin was then in his 60s, an unusually late start on a killing career. And he had hidden the body and run to London, suggesting that this was not the work of a neophyte murderer.

Then there were the uncanny parallels. All three of Tobin's former wives gave accounts of being raped and beaten by him. There were also strong facial similarities between the Bible John painting and Tobin when he was in his early 20s. Tobin had also met his first wife at the Barrowland and left Glasgow the same year as the killings ended.

Ian Stephen, the Scottish criminal profiler who inspired the TV show Cracker, is also sure that Tobin, even if he is not Bible John, had a history of murder. "You don't usually start being a serial killer in your 40s or 50s, you start fairly early on in your life."

And he had. A further police investigation into Tobin's history found the skeletal remains of a further two young women, who had gone missing in 1991, at his former home in Margate.

(Image: Media Scotland)

He was convicted of killing the two; Vicky Hamilton, who had lived near a house in Bathgate where Tobin stayed, and Dinah McNicol, an 18-year-old sixth form schoolgirl who had been hitchhiking from a music festival.

Nine more murders were linked, unsuccessfully, to Tobin and in jail he's said to have claimed dozens, but then that's just what psychopaths do.

So was Peter Tobin Bible John? Detectives fruitlessly tried to compare his DNA with the semen from Helen Puttock's tights but were unable to, because the evidence had been badly stored and had deteriorated over the years.

More than likely the identity of the serial killer Bible John will never be known for sure - but one thing is certain, his legend will never die.