They queued all day and all night, packed the galleries and hung on every word. Fifty years ago the trial of Peter Manuel gripped people across the country in a way no case has since. Steven Raeburn meets Allan Nicol, author of a new book that unlocks the secret of the most dramatic case in living memory.

The North Court of Glasgow’s High Court of Justiciary has always been an imposing crucible, perhaps the most sombre and striking judicial forum in the country. It has dispensed drama, justice, judicial incarceration and even death, yet remains curiously lacking in atmosphere and gravity, even during the most serious of trials. If you look around you during the most serious proceedings, the one thing that is prominently missing is perhaps the most crucial element of every court proceedings, indeed the very reason they take place openly. People. The public. Hoi polloi. The masses whose appetite for consuming public justice seems to have diminished in past generations. The empty chairs are a pointed reminder of the invisibility of most High Court proceedings these days, in stark contrast to the scene some 50 years ago, when throngs of fascinated citizens queued overnight to bear witness to the trial which could in all fairness be described by that most sensational -yet accurate- subtitle, the ‘trial of the century.’ The curious case of Peter Manuel.

Depending on where you live, people still shudder at his name. Seeing his face adorn the cover of Allan Nicol’s new analysis of the serial killer’s case and trial, the elderly man at the table behind me in the café where we meet volunteered that he remembered where he was the day Manuel’s execution was carried out within the walls of Barlinnie prison. Such is the power of his image alone.

In 1956, the melee both outside and in the court was equal only to the monstrousness of Manuel’s series of murders, which remain as hard to decipher today as they were when public justice was as much of a spectacle as the X Factor is now. The inverse relationship between mass media and court attendance merits some study and shouldn’t be simply dismissed. Men of Allan Nicol’s generation, including Donald Findlay QC, who provides a passionate foreword to Nicol’s analysis, were fascinated as youngsters by the case. Findlay says it was one of the reasons he chose a career in advocacy.

“It is the most important case that has ever appeared in Glasgow High Court, in terms of the impact it made on the people,” says Nicol over a coffee in Glasgow’s Trongate, a few steps away from where Manuel appeared as accused, and latterly in his own defence after hubristically dismissing his defence team and taking the reins himself.

“People of my vintage, when they appear in the North Court, just think about Manuel. It is the only case which has affected people so badly, and so much. It made an impact on law abiding citizens, the police and the general public.”

Over two fearful years in the 1950s, Peter Manuel killed at least eight people, during which time he pointedly contacted and courted the police, the families of the victims and even legendary advocate Lawrence Dowdall in order to share his special knowledge of the crimes and attempt to throw blame on a fantasy culprit. His crimes were methodical, yet contained elements of the surreal, the diligent, the incomprehensible and the bizarre. He killed an entire family, including a ten year old boy, yet returned to the scene of the crime for days to feed their cat. He appears to have modelled himself on gangsters and tough guys from the movies, yet was -despite his criminality- not even on the lowest rung of the professional underworld. He is still an enigma, yet he presents a puzzle that gives enough clues to its solution.

Peter Manuel’s killing spree and his actions afterwards are a product of their time that couldn‘t be replicated today. Since Hannibal Lecter, Cracker and CSI, the public perception of serial killers and the tactics used to profile them have become well known, and their behaviour and evasive tactics reflect that. Advances in DNA have ensured that a killer would need to do more than wear a pair of gloves. One suspects that if his acts of violence were to have occurred now, he would be caught and jailed far sooner than he ultimately was in the mid-20th century.

“They wouldn’t have had a clue what they had on their hands back then,” Nicol agrees.

“Why would anyone voluntarily offer information that could lead to them being hanged? That’s what he did when he contacted Dowdall and told him about the inside of the house and what the killer had done. His story changed constantly. Dowdall realised Manuel was much closer to the event than he was making out. That is impossible for us to understand.”

Manuel’s tough guy posturing is curious. Any child who ever dressed up as a pop star, or attends that new craze in the UK, the school “prom” is exhibiting the same traits that Peter Manuel, in his bizarre childishness, exhibited. What is the prom, except pure mimicry from American movies? Perhaps Manuel never evolved into maturity or self confidence that would have allowed him to transcend hero worship, and become his own man. In his book, Nicol avoids attempts to psychoanalyse Scotland’s most infamous serial killer (a badge of infamy that Peter Tobin may in due course come to challenge), but he does provide ample evidence of Manuel’s character, his obsessions and his motivations in his meticulous and legally slanted analysis that qualified readers will appreciate.

“I had a sneaking suspicion that Manuel’s particular perversion was that he just enjoyed killing,” Nicol observes.

“I was intrigued that he had actually been convicted of rape, which would have belonged to a different type of person. Looking back at the trial of 1946, it may be that he didn’t actually commit rape. In 1946 people still trod very carefully around sensibilities.”

Manuel’s criminality and assaults on women began before he progressed to murder, and whilst he appears to have gained momentary sexual conclusion from fear and terror, it seems likely that he was not a sexual predator in the way that is commonly understood. A re-examination of Manuel’s criminality is timely, given that the prevailing social climate at the time of the killings and trial may have led to a failure to fully report the facts and evidence.

In the pre-DNA/CCTV era, Peter Manuel undoubtedly believed himself less likely to be caught and capable of surviving on his wits and intellectual guile, which though misguided, was considerable, ultimately earning him judicial praise, as well as the noose from Lord Cameron. He appears to have possessed a massive ego, gaining evident satisfaction from positioning himself close to key figures investigating his crimes, and sailing quite deliberately close to the wind. Whatever his predilections, this aspect of his character is perhaps the oddest to comprehend.

“The thinking is that if you have a total psychopathic personality, then you don’t really care. But self preservation was big in his life,” Nicol points out.

“He wore gloves, never left fingerprints. He had a stash of clothes that he would go and commit crimes in, and then get changed and then come back home without any bloodstains. It is not as if he did what he did without regard for the consequences. He had the nous to realise that he didn’t want to be caught. He must have thought he was above capture.”

Peter Manuel’s life and background were not common, but unusual circumstances don’t themselves generate a psychopath. Even after studying the case in depth, Allan Nicol is not certain what factors came together to create such a unique and particular killer.
“I don’t think a serial killer is born. Maybe people are born with a propensity to it, but there are social factors. Quite often some sexual abuse, but there is no evidence for that in Manuel’s case” he says (Manuel’s close relationship with his father might be worth a fresh look, however).

“He was an intelligent man. He wrote letters like people don’t write anymore. He liked languages, he read law. Underneath it all, there was a sensitive person. You can see that in his drawings and sketches. He used to write short stories. He had a brilliant imagination. Had he been given a chance, I suspect he would have pursued a career at something in writing. Dare I say possibly journalism?

“There was a completely dark side to his character. He had a psychopathic tendency which social pressures exacerbated,” Nicol observes.

Manuel’s jurors were closeted in a hotel during the trial, had any phone calls monitored and newspapers excised of any reference of the case. In pre-internet days, that was probably enough to avoid exposure to outside information. These days jurors go home and have unrestricted access to information, and Nicol says it is unrealistic to expect them to be immune from it.

“Juries often go against the evidence, or what they are told by the judge or prosecution. People are much better informed than they ever were. Nowadays juries are just told to use their common sense, to not be influenced and that is all. I don’t think so. You don’t have jurors who are cut off from information in our society,” he says.

Given the concerns on precisely this point during the recent Peter Tobin trial, that is timely food for thought.