The Law Killers (17 page)

In the following days the city found itself in the midst of one of the largest murder hunts ever launched. Anyone with connections to the women were being questioned and every public house and betting shop in the area was visited by the detective teams.

Among those interviewed was the nephew of Miss Waugh – Robert Christopher ‘Sony’ Mone – the 52-year-old father of the St John’s and Carstairs killer. He was a small-time housebreaker and thug who had graduated from petty offences to serious assaults and prison sentences of up to five years, a detested figure in his neighbourhood, easily moved to violence after drink and indifferent to whether he struck men or women. Small and slight, like his son, he longed to be a big-shot among the Dundee criminal fraternity. He swaggered about town with his thumbs stuck into the cutaway pockets on his trousers and dyed his long straggly grey hair brown, wearing it in an obvious comb-over style in a failed attempt to look younger. He loved tattoos and had them on his arms, legs and torso. Across his chest he carried the initials ‘IHS’ – representing In His Service, a reference to the Devil. His prize exhibit, however, was the ‘TNT’ emblazoned on his penis.

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, remains one of Scotland’s longest serving prisoners. At the time of writing in 2009 he has been detained for almost 42 years.

His profile is that 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 includes 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.