Sony Mone also had much greater claim to what he saw as fame. He revelled in the notoriety of being the father of the man who had terrorised a Dundee school and had then burst his way out of a high-security mental hospital leaving a trail of butchered victims. Night after night, in city pubs, he would ramble on about his affection for the son he referred to as ‘the Carstairs Killer’ and spoke longingly of his desire to be with him in prison.
Significantly, when members of the murder squad visited the Vennel public house in Hilltown, just round the corner from the scene of the triple-slaughter, they learned that on the day of the murders Mone had been a customer, and a troublesome one. He had become intoxicated and had started to shout and swear, threatening violence to anyone who complained. Throughout it all, he boasted he would become more famous than his son …
When he was questioned about his movements on 29 December, Mone readily admitted that he had been in the murder apartment, having gone there with someone he referred to as ‘Billy Rebel’ but whose actual name was Stewart Hutton. The two had met up in a pub and had gone to the house with a carry-out because Hutton knew Mrs Simpson as a drinking acquaintance. Mone added that Catherine Millar was another drinking companion of Mrs Simpson. The booze session, he said, had gone on to mid-afternoon when the carry-out had been consumed, after which he departed to get fresh supplies.
The 22-year-old Hutton told an identical story – except that it was he who had gone for the alcohol and that at no time had Miss Waugh been in the flat. The younger man explained he had a ‘strange feeling’ about the atmosphere in the house and did not want to return. Instead, he had spent the money he had been given for the drink in a betting shop, at one point collecting £8 when he picked a winner. Checks at the betting shop later revealed that Hutton had spoken the truth. He was also satisfactorily alibi-ed for the remainder of the day.
Police were now convinced that Mone was the man they had been hunting. He had placed himself in the flat at the crucial time, was known to be violent towards women and, probably most important of all, had boasted he would be more famous than his double-killer son. The theory was that he had first beaten and strangled Mrs Millar and Mrs Simpson, then went along the corridor to bring his aunt to the scene so that she could become his third victim – one more than his crazed son had achieved. He would thus be more famous. The hypothesis, though probably accurate, lacked just one essential ingredient for a conviction – evidence.
Throughout the days following the grim discovery of the bodies, Mone was questioned at length on several occasions. He never admitted to the murders. But nor did he deny them. With typical swagger, he indicated he knew more than he was saying, hinting that he would disclose precisely what at some future discussion. During one session with Detective Inspector William Hart, he said he no longer cared for the ‘jungle outside’ and talked of being with ‘someone he loved’ in prison.
‘All I live for is to be in there with him,’ he said. ‘If I was there, I would see he gets everything that’s going – pills, booze, anything, the lot.’
Every time he was interviewed, police looked to see if he wore a ring with a prominent face. He didn’t. Then they had a major breakthrough. Other enquiries revealed that Mone did indeed have such a ring, a silver band with a large jade stone, which had great sentimental significance. It had previously belonged to Robert Junior who had gifted it to his father because he was prohibited from wearing it in Perth Prison after being transferred there from Carstairs. All they had to do was find it and try to match it with the wound on the cheek of Miss Waugh. A special search warrant, detailing the description of the ring and its importance to the case, was issued and Detective Inspector Hart began the hunt to recover it. He searched Mone’s and his sister’s house and even travelled to Glasgow, where Mone’s estranged wife lived, to check her home. All attempts to find the ring drew a blank, however.
While the murder squad urgently strove to build a case, their suspect took a trip out of town, going to Perth Prison to visit the son with whom he had become so obsessed. The events in ‘No-man’s Land’ on the evening of 29 December doubtless figured prominently in their conversation.
Meanwhile, conversations between the police, the Procurator Fiscal in Dundee and Crown Counsel in Edinburgh in mid-January arrived at the mutually agreed conclusion that investigations by that stage had established a case ‘of sorts’, but a borderline one. Then, on the morning of 18 January, two weeks after the discovery of the strangled and beaten bodies of the three women, Detective Chief Inspector Fotheringham received the call he had been waiting for. Although the evidence was thin, Crown prosecutors felt the public interest was so great that an attempt to convict the prime suspect had to be made. A warrant was issued for the arrest of Sony Mone. Almost unbelievably, when the chief inspector arrested him later that day in the street near his home in Glen Prosen Terrace, Mone was wearing the ring police had devoted so much time searching for.
The silver-and-jade keepsake that had been passed from killer son to father formed the linchpin of the trial. The day before the arrest, forensic scientists had removed a triangle-shaped piece of skin from the cheek of Miss Waugh which bore the unusual wound and made a cast and resin model. They did the same after receiving the ring.
Five months later, at the High Court in Dundee, the jury heard how the model of the cheek displayed a wedge-shaped puncture with four small abrasions below and a tiny oval depression alongside – marks which corresponded to the pattern and shape of the ring. More crucially, the ring bore traces of blood group A – the same grouping as Miss Waugh and Mrs Millar.
One of the trial witnesses was the accused man’s daughter, Rose Ann, who, through her tears, told the court that her father had loaned her the ring the previous year but had asked for it back after a short time. ‘My dad said it was useful in a fight,’ she said.
The jury decided Mone’s guilt after seventy-five minutes. Passing a life sentence, Lord Robertson told him, ‘You have been convicted of what I can only describe as a terrible crime. In view of the enormity of the crime, I shall make a recommendation to the Secretary of State that you serve a minimum of fifteen years.’
Mone listened without a flicker of emotion, looked at the judge, and responded, ‘Would you mind back-dating it?’ Then, with typical aggression, he struggled with the police constable taking him down to the cells, dug him in the ribs and shouted, ‘Get your hands off.’
Three and a half years later, in Aberdeen’s Craiginches Prison, Sony Mone was stabbed to death by a fellow inmate wielding two knives. He had been loathed inside prison as much as outside and preyed on the youngest inmates to satisfy his perverted sexual appetite. He intimidated them with his physical fitness and showed off by hanging by his feet from a beam ten feet above concrete with his arms folded. His killer described him as ‘probably the most obnoxious person in the country’. No one was particularly surprised at Robert ‘Sony’ Mone’s violent end. Even fewer cared.
In August 1989, Stewart ‘Billy Rebel’ Hutton, who had been with Mone in the murder flat ten years earlier, also met a violent death when he was killed in the street in London, a Dutchman being charged with the incident.
A few years earlier, in 1981, the name of Mone had again been linked with trouble. Rose Ann Mone, sister of a double-killer and daughter of a triple-murderer, appeared in court, aged 17, charged with attempted murder after attacking another girl with a knife and bottle. The charge was reduced to severe assault and she was sent to a young offenders’ institution for three years.
Robert Mone Junior, whose fateful visit to his old school that November afternoon in 1967 sparked off a chain of events that left eight people dead, has the profile of the classic psychopath. With above average intelligence, he was abandoned by his mother at the age of two, then terrorised by his bullying father. When he was twelve, a local man – a family friend in his 50s – raped him and, along with other males, continued to abuse him for two years. He under-achieved and by the time he was
expelled from St John’s Secondary School at the age of 14, he was well on his way to developing the schizophrenia that was to dictate his life. A teacher described having him as a pupil as being similar to sharing the room with a live hand grenade.
The teenager who was to go on to become one of his home town’s most notorious killers moved to London as a 15-year-old where he was reunited with his mother, who had by this time remarried. They did not bond in the way Mone had hoped and he soon moved into a flat of his own, embarking on a lifestyle of heavy drinking and homosexual affairs. At one stage, he entered into a relationship with a man in his 50s, living with him for a time in an apartment in Kensington. On another occasion, Mone claimed to have been drugged and forced to participate in a pornographic film with several men. His excessive drinking led to bouts of clinical depression, causing him to attempt suicide with a drugs overdose. Eventually, he tired of the London scene and joined the army.
When he returned home on leave from his unit in Minden, Germany, in November 1967, he knew he was on the brink of a gross act which would cost a life, either his own or that of someone else. He had no clear idea of what would happen but was aware he wanted to put himself into a position of power. He also knew within himself that he would never return to the army. When passing through London he bought a shotgun and ammunition, then in Dundee he booked into a hotel where he kept the gun, though for some of the time he lived at his grandmother’s. During his leave he drank excessively and became depressed. He argued with his father one night at a club and uplifted the gun with the intention of shooting him and only his grandmother stopped him from pulling the trigger. He even tried to commit suicide again by taking an overdose of sleeping pills.
On the wretched day he returned to St John’s, he had been AWOL for one day. When he awoke that morning he knew there would be a siege, but did not know why. He was also aware in the back of his mind that someone was going to die but had no idea who.
In an unauthorised prison interview with the Daily Record, Mone says Mrs Hanson’s needlework class was chosen at random.
I can remember seeing her looking at me and being shocked. She was so calm. She spoke to me about my life and asked me about the Army and talked to me about various things.
I wasn’t frightening her and soon I was beginning to feel that she was disarming me. That made me feel worse.
Mone recounted how entering the room with the gun had made him feel powerful for the first time in his life but Mrs Hanson had taken that from him by being gentle, strong and decent.
She was a beautiful person but I had made up my mind and things were getting to the stage that if I didn’t do something I would have failed again.
He said that when it came to the shooting he couldn’t even look her in the face and asked her to close the curtain because her back would be turned.
During his time in custody, Mone developed academically, going on to pass A-level exams and studying for a law degree. But he continued to resent authority. In the early years of his incarceration he took part in a roof-top demonstration. Later, he sued the Scottish Secretary for compensation after some of his property was damaged in a prison riot. On another occasion, he sought to take a case to the European Commission on Human Rights in Strasbourg because he had been kept in his cell for practically 24 hours a day, for 10 months, turning him into a ‘state-induced junkie’ because of the sleeping tablets he was prescribed. In 1995, he had six months added to his sentence for attacking a fellow inmate with boiling water. Seven years later, he used Human Rights legislation to have his minimum term of imprisonment fixed at 25 years. At the same time, he adopted the name James Smith as part of his preparation for his hoped-for release. Today, he writes poetry and studies philosophy. Part of his work duties have included transcribing books into braille.
In 2006, the Parole Board indicated he should begin the process of training for possible freedom. A year later, he was photographed on a day trip out of Perth Prison to Crieff. Other outings followed to venues such as the Scottish Parliament and the Burrell Collection in Glasgow.
Throughout the period of his long detention, Mone – or James Smith as he may now like to think of himself – has had a number of sexual relationships with fellow prisoners. In a letter to one who was 30 years his junior, he even confessed to having seduced an inmate in the chapel of Shotts Prison. He also wrote of his dream of moving to England after his release where his notoriety would not precede him, hopefully finding work in an office.
At the same time as Mone was making his plans, the man who butchered his way out of the state hospital with him in the Carstairs bloodbath was also en route to training for freedom. Thomas McCulloch, his one-time gay lover, had appealed to the European Court of Human Rights at the same time as his co-escapee and had his minimum sentence fixed at 30 years.
Despite having been described by Lord Dunpark as an incurable psychopath, and having had a longer minimum tariff imposed, McCulloch fared better in his quest for freedom. In 2007, he was permitted day release from Greenock Prison to work as a road sweeper. Then, in early 2009, he was moved out of secure accommodation and transferred to the open prison Noranside, near Forfar. Later the same year, after almost 40 years behind bars, he was housed temporarily in a flat provided for prisoners training for eventual release in his native Dumbarton. Recalling the experience of spending his first night free from the presence of guards and locked doors, McCulloch related how he had not gone to bed but had sat at a window in the flat gazing in wonderment out into the street. Ironically, the house was located in Risk Street and when local residents learned the identity of their new neighbour they protested. He was transferred to another flat in the town but hounded out of there by other angry householders and was returned to Noranside.
Bizarrely, during his subsequent spell in the open prison, the man who used an axe to hack three people to death in the bloody rampage at Carstairs was allowed out of the jail to take a course at an Aberdeenshire nature reserve on how to chop down trees. He was even presented with a certificate for his achievements in honing his skills, the photograph of the presentation proudly appearing in the prison magazine The Gallery.
When Noranside was closed down, McCulloch was transferred to the open prison at Castle Huntly near Dundee. He continued to enjoy outings, frequently going shopping and sight-seeing in the city and surrounding area.
On one of more than 100 excursions, he made the acquaintance of a 48-year-old, twice-divorced Dundee grandmother who had approached him in the belief he was actually his fellow Carstairs escapee Robert Mone. The pair began a relationship and shared time on numerous other outings and in a flat in Dundee. They were even photographed outside a jeweller’s shop after she bought him a ring for his wedding finger. At the end of 2012, McCulloch made a sixth request to the Parole Board for permanent release and finally received the answer he longed for. He was told that after 43 years locked up he would be permitted back into the community under licence. Five months later, amid a barrage of Press publicity, he was driven out of the jail and into Dundee, apparently to move into the flat of his lady friend. Ironically, McCulloch’s new accommodation was situated only a mile or two from the school where Mone had begun his own criminal career with a gun. Aged 65, wearing a smart suit, collar and tie, trilby, and sporting a neatly-trimmed goatee beard, the small figure with the genial countenance bore no resemblance to the image most people might have of a man who once in his life had shot two people over a row about a sandwich and later broke his way out of an institution for the criminally insane, killing three people with an axe in the process.
All this must have been received with a mixture of envy and resentment by the St John’s school killer. While McCulloch enjoyed his new life back in the community, Mone remained detained in a secure prison despite having been eligible for parole five years before McCulloch. In setting McCulloch’s fixed term at 30 years before consideration for parole, and Mone’s at 25 years, the European Court of Human Rights had clearly taken into
account that the former had been convicted of the murder of the three people killed in the Carstairs bloodbath compared to Mone’s one, the police officer. The one-time soldier’s conduct in prison and the perceived risk he might be to the public have obviously been major factors in his continuing detention.
During his time inside, he has been held in virtually all of Scotland’s closed penal establishments. When McCulloch was driven out of Castle Huntly to freedom, Mone was confined at Glenochil Prison, where he was a privileged ‘passman’, trusted to move throughout the jail cleaning offices and toilets and earning £13 a week, much to the displeasure of some more poorly paid inmates.
At the time of writing (2013), Mone remains one of Britain’s longest serving prisoners, having spent almost 46 years in custody. He has told others sharing his various institutions that he yearns for an existence where no-one knows him. In addition to his earlier hopes of moving to freedom in England, he has expressed an interest in settling in a quiet location such as Oban. He also continues to be permitted trips out of prison. A recent outing was to the National Museum of Scotland.
Reflecting on the St John’s siege and his feelings towards his father, Mone once said, ‘I wished I had killed him. If I had, seven lives would have been saved. The three he killed, the three at Carstairs, plus Nanette Hanson.’
He did not seem to consider that the same result might have been achieved had he not made such a poor job of trying to take his own life in the days before he so fatefully re-visited his former school that grey All Saints Day.
11
THE BODY IN THE BAGS
It was the practice of Sergeant Ronald Fyffe to exercise his dogs up to five times a day. As the man in charge of Tayside Police’s dog section, he led by example and his Alsatians, Dirk and Tyke, weren’t just the fittest in the force but also the most highly trained. And they had the most interesting canine playground in the city – the wooded slopes of the Law, the proud landmark that watches over Dundee and its citizens, which was just a short walk from the policeman’s home.
The Lawkillers Page 13
