Peter Manuel, Serial Killer

by HectorMacleod (Author), Malcolm Mc Leod (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2010

  $7.93

  Peter Manuel was an icy-eyed psychopath and sexual predator, a petty thief and a relentless liar given to violent and uncontrollable rages. His unprecedented crimes presented the Scottish police and public with a new sort of criminal: the ruthless serial killer. Manuel was hanged at the age of thirty-one and convicted of seven murders, but suspected of many more. He slew many of his victims as they lay sleeping in bed, while others were picked up in lonely places and strangled or savagely beaten to death. Right up to his final arrest, he played a taunting game with the police, mocking their bungling attempts to trap him and continuing to kill with impunity - that is until he was trapped by his own vanity and arrogance. This definitive biography recounts Manuel's chilling story from his birth in the USA to the moment the hangman's rope snapped his spine in Glasgow's notorious Barlinnie Prison.

• Used

  Paperback
  2009

  $24.17

  Peter Manuel's name still sends a shiver down the spine of a generation in Scotland. Fifty years after he was hanged in Barlinnie prison, the memory of this American-born killer is still fresh in the minds of those who lived through the terrible years of his murderous rampage in the suburbs of Glasgow. Branded the 'Beast of Birkenshaw', Manuel used the cover of darkness and the skills he had learned as a housebreaker to avoid detection. He jeered at the police as they bungled their investigation, until finally he was trapped by his own vanity and arrogance. Manuel was charged with eight murders but is reputed to have committed many more. His roller-coaster trial in Glasgow High Court, billed as the 'trial of the century', was headline news across the world and enthralled an astonished nation as evidence of his terrible crimes unfolded. He implicated major underworld figures in the case and revealed Glasgow's sinister gangster subculture in the process. Manuel was a sexual predator and psychopath, and his crimes confronted the police and the Scottish public with a new type of criminal: the serial killer. He was convicted of seven murders and sentenced to death, aged thirty-one. This definitive and groundbreaking biography tells his chilling story.