THE BEAST OF BIRKENSHAW

so today's video is going to be another solved true crime case today's case has been a very very very highly requested one especially for my channel members so here we are today we are going to be talking about the scottish serial killer known as the beast of birkenshaw this man is known as scotland's most evil serial killer but that doesn't come without competition because scotland truly has so many serial killers peter turbin dennis nielsen robert black even ian brady one of the moore's murderers although he committed the murders in manchester he was originally from glasgow they just do have so many so today we are going to be talking about the beast of birkenshop and just to let you know this case is a two-parter this is part one you might be thinking part one's a little bit short that is because part two is gonna be like twice the size of this one there was no other way for me to split it up into two without part one being quite short compared to part two so part two will be coming in the next few days make sure you subscribe with notifications on so you don't miss when i upload part two of this case you guys know i'm getting really good at this now i promise it'll be up within like a few days i'm getting really good at uploading part twos really quickly anyway sorry but before we get into it i just want to thank our sponsors for making this video possible nordvpn nordvpn is a virtual private network service that i have personally used for years now to keep myself safe online a vpn makes it appear as though you're operating from a different ip address than you actually are and this acts as a barrier between you and all of your precious information and people on the other side potentially trying to access that information or hack you and this new ip address that you can operate under can be from over like 60 different countries nordvpn has to choose from and this comes with a load of benefits in itself you get to access the internet as though you're from that 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link which is nodvpn.com forward slash eleanor and use the code eleanor at checkout the link is down below in the description if you just want to click and go through there remember to use code eleanor thanks again to nordvpn for sponsoring this video now before we get into it i just want to give my usual disclaimer that i mean absolutely no disrespect to anyone that i talk about in this video this video is just for educational purposes and everything that i'm about to say is just information that i have found on the internet and i'm compiling into one video just a quick content warning before we get into this case both part one and two involve themes of sexual assault so if that is something that you don't want to watch right now something that you don't want to hear about feel free to click out of this video honestly look after yourself i'm sure i'll see you another time with a case that's a little bit more suitable for you but with all that being said let's just get into the case so this case takes place for the most part in scotland particularly in a place called lanarkshire in the 1950s on january 4th 1956 a man was out walking his dog quite early in the morning on what used to be east kilbride golf course i don't think that exists anymore but it did used to be quite a popular place with the locals this man was just walking his dog i think it was around 5 00 a.m when he got to the fifth hole of this golf course and he noticed something laying in the grass so he wandered over to have a look at this thing because he thought oh maybe someone's dropped a bag or left their bag from the day before when they were playing golf but as he got closer and closer to this object on the ground he realized it wasn't a bag at all this was actually the half-naked dead body of a young girl so this man called the police who rushed straight down to the scene and immediately it was very very clear that this young girl had been murdered there was blood everywhere she'd been savagely beaten her face was pretty much unrecognizable she'd been beaten that badly there was blood and brain matter just like spattered all over the ground her skull was fully caved in it seemed she'd been hit repeatedly with a very heavy object and it the most of the damage was to her face and her head so this young girl's body was transported to a mog where she was identified as seventeen-year-old ann neillins i think one of the saddest parts of this is that she wasn't even an adult yet she was 17 years old she'd literally just got her first job working in a factory and she was so excited about it as well she was excited to be entering the adult world getting her first job getting her first paychecks earning her own money she was excited about the future and what was to come and within one night all of that was ripped away from her a full autopsy was performed on ann neiland's and it was found that she was actually sexually assaulted as part of this attack which police had already theorized would be the outcome of the autopsy because she was found half naked and that is usually the case when a murder victim is found undressed from the crime scene it also seemed as though anne had been robbed her jewelry was missing her earrings of watch i think her purse was gone even her belt as well one of her shoes was missing as well which police found quite odd at first until they searched the surrounding areas and a few hundred meters away this shoe was found on one of the local roads and this suggested that maybe anne was being chased maybe she lost this shoe as she was literally running for her life and this shoe was actually relatively close to where one of anne's friends live and so a theory is that maybe she was trying to run to her friend's house to safety from whoever was chasing her but of course she never made it in time so police went to speak with anne's family of course to break the awful news to them but also to see if they knew anything where she was on the night that she was murdered and they said that they actually hadn't seen her in two days at this point on january 2nd anne had left the house in the evening to go to a dance at the local hall and she'd never returned home that same night her parents were a little bit worried because anne was actually going to meet adit she was going to meet a man that she'd actually met in town about a week prior and this was going to be their first date they were going to meet up and go to this dance and she was super excited about it she thought this guy was really nice but her family had never met him before so while they trusted their daughter's judgment of people they were also a little bit worried and now of course they were thinking that their suspicions were confirmed they were worried about her going out with this guy and now look what's happened how did she wind up from going to a dance to go and meet this guy and go and have a first date that should have been magical and happy to winding up murdered on a golf course two days later so of course this guy that she was going to meet was the prime suspect straight away as soon as police heard this story they tracked this guy down and brought him into the police station for an interview i don't know this guy's name at all because he was completely ruled out as a suspect pretty much straight away because it turned out that he actually hadn't gone to meet anne that night he hadn't seen her at all and that was because he'd actually stood her up he'd made these plans with her and then just never cancelled them and so she went and waited for him at this dance and he was nowhere to be seen which meant that this 17 year old girl was left alone and vulnerable when she was likely approached by her attacker had this guy turned up for the date or at least cancelled on her so that she wouldn't go and probably wouldn't have been targeted that night she wouldn't have been alone she would have been with a guy and so her killer wouldn't have approached her she would have probably still been alive so now police need a new suspect they ruled out the old one and they wanted to know who had approached anne on that night and done this to her so they made this short list of suspects in the area this was people with previous violent crimes people with previous sexual crimes men that lived in the area of the golf course or in the area of the dance hall that were out on the night of the murder anyone like that police called every single one of these men on this shortlist into the police station interviewed every single one of them and all of them were ruled out either from a confirmed alibi or just general lack of evidence police were left with very few leads in this case there was no evidence at the scene that pointed towards a killer of course there were no cameras in the 1950s there were no witnesses because this was in the middle of the night and it would actually be years until police finally solved this case until they finally found ann nelen's killer following this incident people in scotland and lanakshi specifically were terrified they were very very on edge because this was an innocent young girl just trying to go out to a dance when she was approached and brutally murdered in the most horrifying circumstances everyone feared that the person that was capable of doing this to ann nelens was probably already out there looking for their next victim and it wouldn't be long before this killer struck again within a matter of nine months this person killed again of course at the time they didn't know it was the same person police hadn't connected and nealon's murder with the murder that i'm about to talk about police were oblivious to the fact that they now had a serial killer on their hands because nine months later this person struck again and not only did they kill one person or two people they killed three people in one night a triple murder on the morning of september 18 1956 the what family housekeeper arrived at the house to find three women shot to death inside the victims were 45 year old watt her sister 41 year old margaret brown and marion's daughter 16 year old vivian watt it seemed that they'd all been shot in their sleep this person had broken into the house gone around each different room and shot each of them in the head as they slept in their own beds it seemed that was all the killer had done to marion and margaret who was sharing a bed but 16 year old vivian seemed to have been sexually assaulted her clothes were literally torn off of her body her bedroom was completely ransacked actually the whole home had been ransacked as part of this ordeal and it seemed that the murderer had also robbed the watt family jewelry was stolen money was stolen loads of different things that were worth money were stolen because the watt family was relatively wealthy and the most heartbreaking part of this particular murder was that 16 year old vivian didn't actually die straight away when she was shot in the head she survived all the way through to the next morning she must have been in agony just laying there bleeding in so much pain and also thinking about what had happened she must have heard those other gunshots of her mother and her auntie being murdered in their bedroom and then this guy came and did it to her and i bet she was just laying there thinking have they survived are they dead and sadly vivian did pass away before the housekeeper got there the following morning vivian and her mother marion lived in the house it was the watt family house and margaret brown marion's sister was just over to stay at the time because the husband of the family vivian's father his name was william watt he was actually out on a fishing trip at the time and so this made him prime suspect number one to the police because he what just so happened to be out on a fishing trip when his whole family was murdered of course they didn't know much about him or his situation or his family but immediately that sounds a little bit sketchy doesn't it and so they called him up they broke the horrible news to him and they asked him to come down to the police station for an interview and in his questioning police were picking up some kind of weird vibes from william watt it was kind of like he was being very unnatural kind of like everything that he was saying was rehearsed he didn't seem to fit the grieving husband grieving father character that they expected him to have so this only upped the suspicion against him they were already suspicious because he just happens to be a hundred miles away when all of his family are brutally murdered and he survives so police wanted to see some evidence that he was actually away on this fishing trip and he produced like ferry tickets to show that he'd been on one of those drive-on ferries and then he'd gone kind of across an ocean or whatever and he did have these ferry tickets and they were dated and they were stamped and you know this was proof that he had gotten on a ferry at some point but police weren't fully convinced that that was enough to say that he was definitely not in the area when the murders happened because police actually spoke with some of the ferry staff who said that they'd actually seen william watt twice that day going the exact same direction so he'd gone from his house to this other place twice in that same way immediately this looked bad for him why was he making the same journey twice in the same day this is a hundred mile journey as well it's not just a short quick trip like he'd got there realized he'd forgotten something come back and then gone back again it's a hundred miles you don't do that twice in one day it was as if he'd bought that first ticket and gone all the way there on that ferry just so that he would have the evidence and then he came back home to do something potentially the murder and then went back over to where he was fishing so that he could be seen there and then there would be witnesses that he was there you know what i mean there was also another man that came forward from the actual fishing place to say that he'd actually seen william heading back that way late at night again as well so he'd seen him twice so police decided to put william watt in an identity parade in a in a police lineup you know where they all stand there with the little with the little cards and witnesses come in and they point to which one they saw and both of these witnesses the ferry worker and the guy at the fishing place both successfully picked out william watt as the man that they saw going there twice in the same day and it was also around this point in the investigation that a potential motive for the murders became very clear and that was that william watt had been unfaithful to his wife marion throughout their whole marriage william watt had numerous affairs with so many different women behind his wife's back maybe he didn't want to be with his wife anymore maybe he wanted to be with one of his mistresses and the only way that he felt he could do that to avoid the stress of divorce and child payments and paying his wife some money in the divorce was just to kill them to kill his whole family run away with a mistress and start again so police at this point were pretty convinced that william watt was the murderer he'd killed his whole family and then used this whole fishing trip story as a fake alibi so police went down to his house and arrested him on suspicion of murdering his whole family pretty much and they took him back to the police station where they kept him in a holding cell for two months just while they collected all this evidence against him to be able to charge him and take him to trial but while william was in his holding cell his lawyer actually started receiving some letters from a man claiming that he knew william watt was innocent and the reason he knew he was innocent was because he knew who had really killed the watt family this man said that the real killer was actually in prison right now at the time of of all of this while william what was being held in a holding cell and the reason the guy writing the letter knew that was because he too had been in prison with this guy and this guy had told him everything about the murders of the watt family that he committed and what made these letters so believable because obviously you know if you're a lawyer and you're getting these letters you're gonna think this is just a hoax but the way that the lion knew that this couldn't have been a hoax was because this man was revealing certain things in this letter that the public just didn't know things like marion watt was shot twice that was never posted anywhere that was never in the newspaper that she was shot twice and the other ones were shot just once only the killer would know that or only someone that the killer had told would know that and so the lawyer really believed these letters that he was receiving from this man but i'll just pause that part of the story there for a second just to carry on with the case against william watt because as the lawyer was receiving all these letters and writing back to this man of course police had been working against william and gathering all this evidence but police realized that it was going to be a lot harder than what they'd originally expected because every single lead or every single avenue they looked into just fell through something just happened that meant that they couldn't use it as evidence so for example the man that worked on the ferry the man that identified william watt in an identity parade that looked like strong evidence didn't it but as police continued to talk with this man they brought him in for more interviews his story started changing he told the police that he had seen william watt driving onto the ferry in a very particular model and colour of car but when police looked into it they found that william didn't have that car he had a complete different model complete different colour so was it really william that this ferry worker had seen they also spoke with the concierge the guy on the reception desk at the hotel that william walk claimed to have stared at on the fishing trip and that man at the hotel said that he saw william check in for the night in the evening and he never left again for the rest of the night so if he had checked in and then gone back home to murder his whole family surely that person on the reception desk would have seen him leave i mean there is always the possibility that the receptionist could have been busy or in the back room at that particular time but i mean it's adding up police also decided to search the river that he was supposedly fishing in it was like a canal down the side of this hotel because they thought well if he did go and kill his family and then come straight back maybe he ditched some kind of evidence in this river maybe a weapon or clothing or just different pieces of evidence so they searched this canal and nothing they found nothing they also decided to have a look at william watts car because if he really had driven the 100 mile distance like three times if he'd gone there come back and then gone back again i know a lot of it was on ferry but he still would have used a lot of petrol for all those trips but it was found that he really hadn't used that much at all probably about the amount of one trip there and while there is the possibility that maybe he could have stopped off for fuel along the way he could have gone to a gas station and just filled up his tank so police decided to check in with every single gas station on his route there that day and none of them had any record of him coming in filling up his car that being said there is always the possibility that maybe he filled up his own tank maybe he had a jerry can of petrol and he just filled it up on the go himself or maybe he'd already thought about that ahead of time and he'd gone off the route to go to a different petrol station because he was thinking um police might check all the ones on the route i don't know who would think that far into it though i don't know well maybe someone that killed their family either way the evidence was just falling away by the second as well literally every strong piece of evidence they'd had against this man there was some kind of flaw in it but despite that police were still considering william the main suspect in this case i mean they weren't looking at anyone else no one else had a motive to kill william's family other than william but due to this rapidly dwindling amount of evidence against them police did have to release william from his holding cell because i mean he didn't look like he was the murderer anymore and this case was a very sensitive one for the time because i mean most people did believe that william watt was guilty but some people just couldn't get on board with it for obvious reasons because the evidence was shaky and the reason it was so sensitive was because due to the viciousness of this crime if william was found guilty of it he would be sentenced to death no questions asked he would be executed so police had to get this right if this man was executed over a miscarriage of justice there would be such an uproar so police made sure to take their time and make sure that they were getting the right guy for the crime but like i said they were certain that he was the killer so they thought that they were going to end up building this case up against him again and then they would re-arrest him when the time was right but for now they had to let him go and now that william watt was out of his holding cell of course remember this guy's family has all been murdered he was devastated he was grieving he was he was in so much pain and he wanted to find out who had done this to his family so bad and so for that reason he actually went to his lawyer and said that guy that was writing you all those letters can you please get me in touch with him i want to go and talk to him because he clearly knows something whether he himself that was writing the letters was the murderer or whether he genuinely knew the murderer in prison william what wanted to meet with this guy and find out exactly who had done this so the lawyer set up a meeting between william watt and the guy that wrote the letters and william went down to a local pub to go and talk to him and he knew just how dangerous this was he knew that he was risking his life going to this meeting because this was a potentially very very dangerous man they didn't know if he was the killer or if he was just friends with the killer he said he was just friends with the killer but i mean of course of course he's gonna say that if he was the killer he's not gonna be like yeah i did it so william goes down to this pub and he decides to put on a bit of a character because he knows he's meeting quite a tough guy and he doesn't want to come off as soft he wanted to seem a little bit intimidating and so he sits down in this pub opposite this man and he starts threatening him saying you better tell me what happened to my family or shit's gonna happen but this man that had written the letters he was very calm he was very relaxed he literally just sat there and just let william go on and on and on threatening him and then when william was finished this guy just said don't do that again you don't want to threaten me you don't want to threaten someone like me he was just eerily calm and confident and intimidating it was like he wasn't going to lose his call but when he did lose his call [ __ ] was going to go down so immediately william was a little bit scared i don't really know how the rest of this meeting went i mean and i think that says a lot in itself that it probably didn't go anywhere it probably didn't do much for the investigation because if it did i probably would have heard about it in my research um i don't think william watt really found out much from this meeting found out anything that he wanted to know anywhere anywhere the next murder to rock scotland happened over a year and a half after the last over a year and a half after the watts family murders in a place called uddingston in south lanarkshire this was in january of 1958 and honestly it's no wonder the police didn't connect these murders at the time because there was such a time gap between all of them and they were all happening in different areas i mean right now it probably doesn't seem it but as we go on you'll realize that they happened in so many different areas but finally this murder was the one that connected all the dots for police and they finally started connecting all these different murders and that was because this one was practically identical to the last one to the watts family murders again it was a family of three just like the watts family this time it was the smart family comprising of 42 year old mother doris 45 year old father peter and their son 10 year old michael smart the smart family were found murdered in their own home just a week into the new year and just like the watt family they'd all been murdered in their own beds in the middle of the night as they were sleeping they'd all been shot in the head and this was all really confusing to the police because what truly was the motives behind these murders because shooting people in the middle of the night when they're asleep in bed when they're not a threat what's the point they weren't putting up a fight they weren't trying to call the police or anything they were asleep they were doing nothing so other than just for the thrill of it why would someone murder these people when the smart family were found their bodies were taken for an autopsy and the pathologist immediately said that this family had been dead for a while this was not a recent murder they must have been dead for almost a week at this point the pathologist even pinpointed their murders to the early hours of the morning on new year's day so it had been almost a week i think they were found on the 6th of january it appeared that their house had been robbed of quite a few things so maybe that was a potential motive i mean there'd been some money stolen their car was stolen and weirdly enough their food was stolen around new year the smart family had made a meal for hogmanay which i think is like a scottish tradition around new year's i'm not too clued up on what that is i'm sorry i think it's just something that you have a special meal for and they'd had this meal and then put the leftovers back in the fridge and of course because they were murdered on new year's day literally in the early hours of the morning they wouldn't have had chance to eat all their leftovers yet somehow the leftovers were all over the fridge like the packets had been opened like tinfoil had been ripped off and plates had been left out on the side knives and forks out on the side as if they had been eating this whole time but of course they hadn't so who had so immediately at this point police connected the smart family murders and the what family murders so now they're not looking at william watt as a potential suspect anymore they're looking for a serial killer that is out there breaking into homes and murdering whole families while they sleep and police know that they need to act fast because this killer is just out on the loose and they probably would strike again so police decided to speak with all of the smart family's friends all of their family co-workers literally everyone that knew the smart family because they wanted to know their circumstances a little bit better was there anyone that might want to do this to them but most of their friends family co-workers all these people had alibis for that night because the family was murdered on new year's day so most people were out celebrating they were at parties they had people that could confirm their whereabouts but police did find something quite interesting from these interviews with all the smart family's friends and that was that the family were due to go on holiday literally on like new year's day or the day after and that's actually why their bodies weren't found for a full week after their murder because no one had heard from them for a week but they didn't expect to hear from them for a week because they knew they were going on holiday so no one was turning up at the house no one was ringing them because they didn't want to disturb them on their holiday and it wasn't until they were supposed to be arriving back home from this holiday on like the 5th or the 6th when all their friends family employers all started realizing that they weren't actually there and i think it was actually peter smart's employer that called the police and got the police to go and check on the home and that was when the bodies were found so a couple of things about the smart family was that they were pretty wealthy and everyone kind of knew it they had this really nice bungalow they had a lot of nice things they had a nice car they were you know they were well off they were well presented they always wore nice things the wife always had her hair done and so this was a symbol of wealth all of this you know looking good and proper and having nice things so that made them a potential target for a robbery maybe the smart family's killer thought that they would have a lot to rob at this time of year i mean it had just been christmas so there would probably be a lot of christmas presents in the house they were just about to go on holidays so maybe there was spending money or you know just different stuff for their holiday that this person thought that they could steal so that was their initial potential motive and so police decided to sit down and put together a timeline of events of the smart family's final movements on the last day that they were alive and because it was new year's eve they realized that the smart family hadn't really done much they'd just kind of been at home they were supposed to go to someone's house for a new year's eve party but they changed their mind last minute and decided to stay home as a family so they'd just been inside cooking eating celebrating together the only time that peter smart left the house all day was to go and get some cash out for their holiday that they were about to go on he went down to the bank he went down to the bank and drew out some brand new five pound nerds but these five pound notes were nowhere to be found in the whole house so it was clear that these new nerds had been stolen by the murderer and here police saw an opportunity because these five pound notes were brand new they would probably be in really great condition really like straight and flat and they also probably had the serial number on them so then if the killer that stole this money ever tried to spend it it would be easy to track it down and therefore track down the killer that was trying to spend them so an alert was sent out to pretty much every single business in scotland i don't know how they do this but it's crazy every single business in scotland saying look out for anyone purchasing anything with a very brand new five pound note and then check the serial number on it if you find this particular serial number get in contact with us we are coming right there because you've got a murderer in your hands and within a matter of days a man was found spending these five pound notes these brand new stolen five pound nuts in a pub in glasgow this was a man that never really had much money um he was quite a poor person and then all of a sudden he whacks out this wad of brand new five pound notes and everyone around him looked at him and thought that's not right and it was actually one of his friends that got rather suspicious of this and then looked at the serial number on one of these five pound nerds and realized that his friend was a murderer so he called the police and told the police this man's name and as soon as they heard it their jaws dropped because this man that was spending the five pound notes that now seemed to be the smart family's killer had actually been questioned in relation to every single one of the murders that i've talked about so far in this video they questioned him in relation to every single one but they thought he had a good alibi or there was no evidence every single time and so they'd just let him go time and time again and it seemed as though every time they let him go he just went out there and committed another murder and that wasn't even the extent of it because police were about to learn a lot more about this man he'd done a lot more than what they'd even expected this man had so many more secrets there were so many more victims that police weren't even aware of but that is where i'm gonna leave it for part one thank you so so much for watching this video part two will be up literally within the next few days so make sure you subscribe with my notifications on so you don't miss it thanks again to nordvpn for sponsoring this video remember they are very very kindly offering you guys a huge discount off of a two-year plan plus a bonus gift when you join up through my link which is nordvpn.com forward slash eleanor and use the code eleanor at checkout the link is down below in the description if you just want to click straight through there remember to use code eleanor thanks again nod vpn huge thank you to all of my channel members for helping me decide the cases that i cover especially my tier 2 members whose names are all on screen right now if you want to become a channel member you can just click the join button on a desktop or there'll be a link in the description of this video but yeah thank you so so much for watching if you enjoyed please leave a thumbs up down below that would really help me out if you want to subscribe you can do so right here 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Channel: Eleanor Neale

Views: 406,639

Rating: 4.9639626 out of 5

Keywords: eleanor, neale, eleanor neale, mystery, unsolved, true crime, solved, documentary, killer, murder, serial killer, buzzfeed, buzzfeed unsolved, podcast, true crime podcast, storytime, dateline, interview, news, peter manuel, the beast of birkenshaw, birkenshaw, scotland, lanarkshire, glasgow, anne kneilands, watt family, william watt, manuel, peter, smart family, michael smart, peter manuel documentary, dennis nilsen, peter tobin, robert black, trial, family, true crime daily, 2021, in plain sight

Id: KtBiI93CPwU

Length: 35min 11sec (2111 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 31 2021