Murderer Robert Mone silently sat drawing coffins on a piece of paper in the CID office after killing a pregnant teacher during a Dundee school siege.
Mone blasted Nanette Hanson to death with a shotgun after terrorising her needlework class and brutalising a girl pupil on November 1 1967 at St John’s High School.
The depth of Mone’s savagery after a prolonged ordeal ensured the events of that November day would become seared on the collective consciousness of the nation.
State of emergency was declared
Mone had been expelled from St John’s in 1964.
He decided to join the British Army and was posted to West Germany.
Mone was dressed in his Gordon Highlanders uniform and armed with a shotgun when he entered 26-year-old Mrs Hanson’s class of 11 girls aged between 14 and 15.
Six girls were ordered to move desks in front of the door to stop anyone coming in.
When the noise attracted attention, Mone fired a shot.
A state of emergency was declared and 1,000 pupils were evacuated as police surrounded the school.
Also on the scene were Detective Constable Jim Melville and his superior, Detective Sergeant George McLaren, both of Dundee City Police CID.
Marksman Tom Jowett had Mone in his sights but was ordered not to take the shot.
Also present were head teacher Brother Bede and, eventually, Mone’s own grandmother, who pleaded with him to stop.
Mone then asked to see a former acquaintance called Marion Young, an 18-year-old Dundee student nurse, whom he had met four years previously at a youth club.
She volunteered to go into the classroom and attempt to talk Mone out of murder.
The two women persuaded 19-year-old Mone to let the girls go, but, as Mrs Hanson lined up to leave, he told her: “Not you. You’re not going. I want you here”.
She was six months pregnant.
Mone could not look his victim in the face.
He asked her to turn away and shot her in the back at 4.30pm.
The sound of shots echoed sharply while police stood outside in the corridor.
DS McLaren told Mone that Brother Bede was coming in to give her the last rites.
Mone opened the door and DS McLaren burst in and handcuffed him.
Sadly, all efforts to revive Mrs Hanson were in vain.
Brother Bede said she died a heroine’s death for the sake of her pupils.
‘He didn’t seem to be bothered, at all…’
DS Melville helped to march the killer down the corridor outside the classroom.
He was taken from St John’s after the shooting, charged with murder and sex offences.
DS Melville later said: “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.
“The next day, at 8am, he sat opposite me and drew coffins on the piece of paper, never said a word.
“Cool, calm and collected; he didn’t seem to be bothered, at all.”
Afterwards, Miss Young was awarded the George Medal.
The newly married Mrs Hanson, who had only moved to the school in the summer, was awarded a posthumous Albert Medal (now called The George Cross).
When Mone was taken off the streets a pint of milk cost 10p, the average house price was £3,698, a Ford Cortina cost £699 and Harold Wilson was prime minister.
Mone appeared at Dundee High Court on January 23 the following year.
The proceedings lasted precisely 18 minutes.
That was as long as it took to decide he was unfit to plead on the grounds of his insanity, brought about by schizophrenia which had “developed insidiously over approximately two years”.
Mone was ordered to be detained without limit of time in the State Mental Hospital at Carstairs, where he proved to be an intelligent and talented writer.
He came close to winning a law degree with London University, was an admired playwright and, as editor of The State Observer, the hospital magazine, was given a camera and freedom to roam in search of news.
Carstairs murder rampage in 1976
Yet Mone’s unfettered barbarism was to continue.
Mone, together with fellow patient Thomas McCulloch, slaughtered their way out of Carstairs on November 30 1976, leaving a hideous trail of murderous destruction.
McCulloch was dangerous. He had rampaged through a Clydebank hotel, trying to kill two members staff, claiming they served him a sandwich with too little butter in it.
He was sent indefinitely to Carstairs in 1970.
The escape had been planned in meticulous detail over six months and the two killers had assembled a frightening array of weapons, as well as false beards and moustaches, a rope ladder and false identity papers bearing their photographs.
Nurse Neil McLellan, 46, and patient Iain Simpson, 40, died under ferocious axe blows.
Simpson even had his ears cut off.
They went on to kill a young policeman, George Taylor, 27, maimed two workmen and held a family hostage in their home before fleeing to England where they were arrested.
After they were recaptured, both were sent to mainstream prisons for security reasons by a judge who ruled they should remain in custody “for the rest of their natural lives”.
While in Perth, Mone complained that because of his A category, one way the authorities were able to keep him subdued was by turning him into a state junkie on a diet of sleeping pills.
Mone later erupted from his slumber.
He gave guards the slip while working in the prison laundry in May 1981 and escaped on to the roof to complain about his conditions, including a lack of privacy.
He shouted to people in a nearby scrapyard 100 yards away that he was Robert Mone, “top security prisoner”.
Moaning Mone bleated that on Saturdays and Sundays he was locked up for 23 hours out of 24 and for the rest of the week for 16 hours, and had to work the other eight.
“The light is on in my cell for 24 hours a day,” he shouted.
“I get no recreation, at all, and no privacy.”
Mone said he was constantly accompanied by two prison officers and even when he had visitors he saw them in a wire cage.
Mone said other inmates were unhappy about the conditions in Perth Prison where, among other complaints, the food was “terrible”.
He was eventually talked down from his perch by a prison officer after eight hours.
A reformed character?
Mone made the headlines again after a prison riot in October 1987.
Robert Raiker of Edinburgh, who was serving a life sentence, and other inmates took a warder hostage while they vented their frustration on the bricks and mortar.
Mone was shunted off to the hospital wing while the prisoners seized control, during which they trashed Mone’s cell, destroying his radio and books.
Mone later attempted to sue the then-Scottish Secretary, Malcolm Rifkind, for £120 in compensation for failing to safeguard his possessions.
There was a rehabilitation conference at the prison in 1992, at which Mone, who argued that he was now a reformed character, was one of the main speakers.
Mone’s topic was redemption through the value of victims being confronted by their assailants.
This was ironic, in that none of his own victims survived to confront him.
Mone attacked a fellow inmate in 1994
He got another six months added to his life sentence for dousing fellow prisoner Joseph Connor with a basin of scalding water after being spat on in 1994.
Connor then sued the Scottish Prison Service for £75,000 for what he said was their failure to prevent the attack but his claim was rejected at Perth Sheriff Court.
Sheriff James Tierney said there was no failure in duty as prison officers had no reason to believe Mone would carry out such an attack.
In a written judgment, he said: “Throughout his stay at Perth Prison, Robert Mone had been a well-behaved prisoner. He had twice been put on governor’s report for assaults on a prison officer.
“One of these involved throwing a piece of cake. The nature of the other is not known.
“In respect of each assault, he received a simple warning. This is indicative of a very low-level breach of discipline.”
Mone made the front pages again when he was taken to Perth Royal Infirmary in 1996 with chest and back wounds after being stabbed by a fellow inmate.
Mone’s category A was later reduced to B, meaning he was still regarded as a risk but several notches lower than a risk to national security.
He served most of his sentence at Perth before being transferred to Shotts and he became eligible for parole in 2002 under human rights legislation.
In 2007 Mone sparked outrage when he was allowed out for a day trip to Crieff where he spent time soaking up the sun among unwitting members of the public.
Prison guards watched over Mone as he took in the delights of one of the country’s most picturesque towns, with the views being in stark contrast to the austere prison environment he had been used to for the previous four decades.
The biggest mystery was why he was wearing a heavy, 30-year-old sheepskin coat on one of the warmest days of the summer when everyone else appeared to be in short sleeves.
It didn’t exactly make him inconspicuous, but maybe that was the idea.
He was later driven back to Shotts prison.
Mone was being lined up for a move to open conditions and then parole before being transferred from Shotts to Peterhead following a fight with another inmate.
His partner in crime, McCulloch, was released on licence in 2013 and set up home with a divorced mother-of-three in Dundee.
Aged 74, Mone is now in Glenochil prison.
He may never be allowed to return to society.
