Former police inspector Jim Melville said fellow officers could have killed Robert Mone out of rage as he was handcuffed and brought into custody in St John’s RC High School.
The retired officer said he “never felt afraid” of the killer as he entered the classroom to arrest the soldier following Mrs Hanson’s death.
Walking down the corridor outside the classroom, officers threw punches and kicked the handcuffed Mone as Mr Melville transported him to a police van.
He said: “I got a few smacks in the face going down that corridor with him, carrying him down the corridor from cops who wanted to have a shot at him, who wanted to punch him, kick him.
“If you’d left him to the cops, he’d have been dead now , they would have murdered him you know.
“We took him out down through the corridor, lined with cops, into the car and down to headquarters. He never said a word. He was peaceful, very calm.”
Other than missing the opportunity to shoot Mone, Mr Melville said there was little else the force could have done differently in their handling of the incident.
He added: “As long as he had girls, he was the king. He was in possession.”
Mr Melville also recalled the last time he came face-to-face with Mone, in the CID office the morning after the shooting.
He said: “The next day, at 8am, we used to have to fill in forms for the prisoners. We would bring them from the cells up to the CID office to fill out their forms.
“He sat opposite me and drew coffins on the piece of paper, never said a word. Cool, calm and collected, didn’t seem to be bothered at all.”
An abusive past and a bloody future
Robert Mone has previously claimed that traumas experienced during his Dundee childhood are what made him into a murderer.
His mother left him at the age of two and he was raised by his father, Sonny, who subjected him to constant bullying. He was also allegedly raped by a man, a family friend from Lochee, at the age of 12.
Around this time Mone began to suffer depression following the death of his grandfather, and moved to live with his grandmother Mary.
He is said to have been drinking heavily in the run up to the St John’s shooting, and to have come close to killing his own father when the pair quarrelled just days before the incident.
He was also spotted getting into a taxi with a shotgun 14 days before the murder, and was even questioned by police.
