Peter Manuel, Serial Killer

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.