Murder Maps

- For many centuries, Britain was a dangerous place.

It was a magnet for the very worst kind of people.

Jack the Ripper dominated the headlines,

but he wasn't the only killer around.

Murder was afoot,

and the fear of death was everywhere.

But police had their work cut out

to track the culprits down.

In this series, we'll be investigating

some of the country's most notorious and intriguing crimes.

Female defendant.

Sexual intrigue,

vicious murder, as well as the latest technology

fed the nation's insatiable desire

for gruesome stories of Britain's dark side.

In the parts of Scotland that were his hunting ground,

the name of Peter Manuel can still elicit a shudder.

He was, as Manuel described himself,

the foulest beast on earth.

Scotland's largest city

was once one of Europe's major ports.

During the Victorian era, its population exploded

due to its booming industries and abundance of jobs.

The two World Wars impacted greatly

on this once-magnificent metropolis, and by the 1950s,

it was a city down on its luck.

High unemployment, soaring crime, depravation, and poverty

would all take their toll on its inhabitants.

Everything about it was black,

so it was the ultimate noir city.

People were living in appalling housing,

all on top of one another.

There were no bathrooms, and houses were being chucked up,

you could actually kick your way through walls,

'cause the building standard was so low.

- Glasgow, at that time, was starting to undergo

a period of change in relation to housing,

slum clearance, tower blocks beginning to be built.

There'd still be some of the local communities

in and around Glasgow, who retained their own sense

of identity, and it was in one of those

that Peter Manuel lived with his parents.

- Peter Manuel met a girl named Anna O'Hara.

They were set to get married in the summer of 1955.

Everything seemed to be going well for the happy couple,

but all was not what it seemed.

She was what's known as a clippie,

which was a bus conductress.

She and her mother were treated to the charming side

of Peter's psychopathy.

And he was very attentive, he was a complete gentleman.

They were just about to get engaged,

and she started to receive anonymous letters

about Peter Manuel, saying you don't know

who you're engaged to.

You don't know this man, he has a terrible, dark past.

- She wanted him to go to confession

to make sure that he was on the road to respectability,

and when he wouldn't do so,

she refused to go through with the marriage.

The engagement was called off,

and it turns out that the letters were from Peter Manuel,

and he said later about it that he didn't know why

he had done that.

And I think there was a spark of decency in Peter Manuel.

He spent all his time amongst criminal types,

you know, there's lot of stories about him carousing

around Glasgow with wild people,

but he said later he really like that girl,

and he maybe knew deep down that things were gonna go

really badly wrong, and didn't want to implicate her in it.

- The same day that he was supposed to have gotten married,

he takes his revenge.

- Late that evening, 29-year-old Mary McLaughlin

was making her way home from a dance.

She had almost made it, when Peter Manuel rushed out

from the darkness and grabbed her.

He had a knife, and forced her over a barbed wire fence

into a field.

At knifepoint, he sexually assaulted her,

but instead of killing her, he eventually let her go.

Mary's screams for help were heard, however.

The police were called,

but despite searchers coming within yards of them,

Manuel and Mary were undiscovered.

He didn't kill Mary, however.

Her terror had been enough to satisfy him.

Eventually, he let her go.

Her ordeal had lasted hours, and it was far from over.

Mary went to the police and Manuel was arrested.

The charge of rape was brought against him.

A date for the trial was set, and without formal training

or actual knowledge of the legal system,

Manuel decided to defend himself.

Ladies, and gentlemen of the jury.

You've heard the fine words from my esteemed colleague

from the prosecution.

You've heard from my accuser,

and you've heard from the police.

Now, it's time for you to hear the truth.

Mary and I have been pals for a long time,

more than pals, in fact,

and it was earlier on the 30th that we met.

We were taking my dog for a walk.

We had a wee lovers' tiff.

We scuffled, and she cut her lip.

Now I'm not proud of myself,

and I said sorry right away,

and I say it again, to you, today.

Mary, I am sorry.

We made up, and I said let's go and take a look

at those snares, you know, for rabbits.

So we go to the field.

Now to get in, you have to clamber over some barbed wire,

and she got another wee cut.

She was really in the wars that night.

Anyway, there were no rabbits.

So we sat down, had a smoke,

and then we see this train coming, and suddenly Rusty,

that's my dog, he goes chasing after it like it's a wee cat.

I had to do something.

So I took out my knife, and I'm not denying I had it,

and I lobbed it in the other direction

to try and distract him.

That knife saved my dog.

And I'm not blaming Mary for this.

You know, you tell a tale and before you know it,

the fibs, they get bigger and bigger, and you cannot stop.

But I'm telling you,

I did not do this.

I think he chose to represent himself

because he was arrogant.

He's callous, he's cruel.

He likes to intimidate.

- It was obviously something he had fantasized about,

and thought about in the way that some of us

might fantasize about being on a chat show,

he fantasized about being a lawyer in court,

and doing a better job.

- Manuel believed he was better than the system,

and was certainly capable of taking on the system.

- he wee man against the world sort of thing,

and the jury warmed to it.

To the truth, for it shall set you free.

Ah.

You get your brains from your father.

Aye, I get my looks from my ma, though.

I didn't know you managed up there.

I'd be too frightened.

I told the truth, Ma.

You showed that girl what was what.

- Give us another blast of that, would you Dad?

Go on, then.

If ever I see that girl around here,

I'll be giving her a piece of my mind.

You cannot slander the Manuels and get away with it.

- Cheers! - Cheers.

- In his eyes, Manuel had proved his genius in court.

He was not like other men.

The rules did not apply to him.

Nobody could stop him now.

Manuel was born in New York in 1927,

but his father's attempt

at the American Dream was unsuccessful.

The family moved back across the Atlantic

when Manuel was just a child.

They settled permanently near Glasgow in 1945.

By then, the teenaged Peter Manuel had found

alternative accommodation of his own.

At the age of 16, he'd been sent to Borstal,

a corrective school for young delinquents.

Manuel had turned to crime early.

As the years went by,

he graduated to more and more serious offenses.

In 1946, he was arrested on 15 charges of house-breaking.

While on bail, paid for by his father,

Manuel then sexually assaulted three women

in less than a week.

Court and convicted of rape,

he was sentenced to nine years in jail.

Manuel had grown into a man with a fierce temper,

and a fiercer sense of his own superiority.

He was a fantasist, boasting to fellow prisoners

that he was a champion boxer, that his father was a mobster.

- He had a lot of time to fantasize

because he spent so much time sitting in cells.

- Manuel had gone to the American Consul in Glasgow.

He said he had something of grave importance

to American National Security.

To his amazement perhaps, they believed him.

He was flown to Ruislip, and the FBI interviewed him,

and said the man's a fantasist.

He told stories like he was on a plane

and the plane couldn't land, and he managed to land

the plane even though he'd never been in a plane,