John Brown

John Brown was found dying from gunshot wounds on the A706 on 3 January 1962 and died the following day in hospital.

He had been shot in the head and body.

The murder took place on the side of the Lanarkshire to Whitburn Road (A706) between Wilsontown and Breich, about 500 yards north of the boundary between Lanarkshire and Midlothian.

A 21-year-old man, a miner, was tried but acquitted after a not proven verdict was returned.

John Brown had been a master butcher and farmer from Stirlingshire with a shop at Bunessan, Main Street in Buchlyvie.

It was reported that he had been driving along the ice-bound A706, over 1,000 feet up the Gladsmuir Hills between Forth and Wast Calder, when he was flagged down by three men standing beside a car. He stopped and was going to their assistance when he was shot at least three times.

It was said that he had been stopped at about 3pm by the three men. They were described as:

• Between 20 and 30.
• Medium build and height.
• Wearing light coloured short raincoats.

John Brown was later found injured and taken to Bangour Hospital where he underwent an emergency operation, but died on the morning of 4 January 1962. Before he died, he gave three or four statements about the men involved in the incident.

John Brown had not been on a journey that he made regularly and it was thought that he had been heading to Fauldhouse to visit a relative.

It had been snowing around the time and the moors and road were described as snow-covered.

It was initially thought that he might have been shot by a mad man and mental institutions were checked for escapees.

After shooting him the men drove off with his two-tone blue and white Triumph Herald car, registration SWG 600, which was later found abandoned eight miles away at Whitburn. It was noted that apart from taking his car, John Brown had not been robbed and nor had the car been searched before it was abandoned.

The murder was described as motiveless.

Five shotgun cartridges were found at the scene.

It was later reported that a car fitting the description of one used by the murderers had been previously seen parked at the scene of the crime with one man in it and another standing in the road. The man seen standing in the road was described as:

• Between 20 and 35.
• About 5ft 10in tall.
• Wearing a dark overcoat.

It was reported that shortly before John Brown was shot that another car was flagged down by the men, but it didn't stop.

The police said they were interested in tracing anyone who owned a 12-bore single-barrel repeating shotgun that held five cartridges along with anyone that had been in licenced premises near the scene and seen two or three men with either a gun or a car. The police noted that the gun used in the crime was not common.

They said:

At the hospital, before his death, John Brown told his son that he had stopped to help some lads and that after having given them some assistance with their car, he was going back to his when they said it was a hold-up. After that he said:

The following morning after that John Brown underwent an emergency operation, but died at 9.35am.

Two men were initially arrested for his murder 36 hours after the crime, but one of them, a 24-year-old,  was discharged on 5 March 1962 and gave evidence for the Crown. However, it was claimed that his evidence was unreliable and that in part, his testimony was given in order to ensure his release.

At the trial at the High Court in Edinburgh following a four-day trial a jury of nine men and six women, following a retirement of an hour and a half, returned a majority verdict of not proven. There were 82 witnesses in the case and 61 productions, including two shotguns.

About 50 members of the public had queued outside in Parliament Square to obtain entry to the public benches at the trial, which were described as being well filled by the time the jurors were called.

The court heard evidence from the other man that had said that he had seen the man fire the shots that killed John Brown. However, the judge noted that his evidence had to be taken with special care with the judge noting that however reliable his evidence:

It was heard that the other man had given evidence that if accepted, overthrew John Brown's own evidence, as well as that of two other witnesses at the trial and that as such, if he could not be believed then the man on trial had to be acquitted.

When the judge addressed the jury he said:

The other man said that the accused man had spoken to him on several occasions about buying a gun and that he later bought a shotgun at Falkkirk, a five-shot repeater.

He said that on the day of the murder the accused man called on him in the forenoon and said that he had 30 cartridges and asked him to accompany him rabbit shooting in a field. He said that his car wouldn't start and the accused man put the weapon in the rear seat and helped to start it by pushing it. He said that they then drove off to Westerton via Breich cross roads and that when he tried to turn the car to return to Longridge that the engine started to splutter.

He said that whilst he worked under the bonnet that the accused man stopped another car, which then drove off and that the accused man told him that the driver had not had a spanner. However, he said that soon after a Triumph Herald drew up, the driver of which was John Brown, who offered the use of his tools.

After the shooting he said he panicked and drove off in his own car towards Breich crossroads and was overtaken along the way by the accused man driving the Triumph.

He said that he then ran out of petrol at Breich crossroads and whilst there was again passed by the accused man in the Triumph.

He said that after then refuelling he drove home to Longridge.

The driver of the first car that pulled up, a vehicle salesman, said that after attending Lanark Market on 3 January 1962, he was returning to Edinburgh and that just after crossing the Midlothian County boundary he saw a stationery car. He said:

He added that he felt that there had been another person present on the other side of the car.

He said that he later attended an identification parade at Saughton Prison eight days later but could not be sure of an identification. He said:

A number of other people saw the car on the side of the road including a 36-year-old dairymaid from Rusha Farm, a 57-year-old lorry driver from Polbeth and a 26-year-old driver's mate from Braehead. The diver's mate said that one of the man had been wearing a 'Robin Hood' hat, a soft white coloured hat with a dark feather.

They were also seen by a 53-year-old coal merchant from Braehead and a 26-year-old miner from Wester Green Wall Farm.

The 26-year-old miner said that he had passed the county boundary at about 3pm and saw two cars, one a green car and the other a Triumph Herald. He said they were about a yard or two apart and that the boot of the Triumph Herald had been open and the bonnet of the green car was up. He said that he also saw a man standing at the open bonnet of the green car and another man walking from the Triumph Herald to the green car.

The judge said that there were two chapters in the case, stating that the first was:

It was added that the real problem in the case was whether it had been proved beyond reasonable doubt that it had been the accused man that had done the shooting.

It was noted that the Crown case started with the other man, whose evidence it was stated had to be taken with consideration, in particular with the fact that up until a month earlier he had himself been included in the murder charge. The judge said:

As such, the judge noted that his evidence had to be treated with special care and that if it was rejected, then the man on trial had to be acquitted, noting that his evidence went against that given by the murdered man himself, John Brown.

The man on trial used a defence of alibi, saying that he was at home at the time. His special defence read:

His father and brother gave evidence to say that they had come into the house at 3.30pm to find the man there and some soup boiling.

The defence submitted that the man would not have been able to drive from the scene of the crime, at 2.55pm to 3.05pm to Redmill, a journey of 13 minutes, and to have then walked the 1.6 miles from Redmill Cottages to his own home and to have been there with soup on the boil at 3.30pm.

However, the prosecution stated that by their calculations the man could have been back at home by 3.20pm after having shot John Brown.

It was heard that John Brown had left Lanark sometime after 2.30pm, or at the worst for the defence at 2.35pm, on a journey in appalling conditions, which had taken everyone else who made it that day 25 to 30 minutes. As such, it was said that John Brown could not have been at the locus of the shooting before the earliest of 2.55pm. It was further submitted that the shooting must have occurred closer to 3pm and that in fact a witness heard the five shots fired at what they claimed to be 3.05pm.

The witness that heard the shots had been  a 45-year-old miner from Forth that had been out shooting foxes on the moors on the east side of the Firth-West Calder road. He said that he heard five shots from the north, which was the direction of the road and that they were all fired within half a minute. He said:

He said that he gave up then for the day as he thought that the shooting would have disturbed any foxes that might have been about. He estimated that he heard the shots at 3pm or shortly afterwards.

John Brown was discovered by a 27-year-old joiner from Longridge lying on the side of the road. He said that he drove past two vehicles first, the leading one which looked like a Triumph Herald and the other like a green van or car after which he saw a man lying at the side of the road. He said that he actually passed him before he realised it was a man and that he then went back with a lorry driver and found John Brown lying face down and parallel with the verge and a good deal of blood. He said that he then drove to Forth to fetch help and then returned and when he returned he saw three cartridges in the road lying near the man's cap.

During their investigation the police drove the route from the shooting to Redhill and timed it at 13 minutes. They further stated that it would have taken the man 20 to 25 minutes to have walked the 1.6 miles from Redhill to his house, which in total meant that the whole journey would have taken him 33 to 38 minutes, meaning that if the shooting had taken place at 3pm, he would not have arrived home until 3.33pm to 3.38pm.

However, it was conceded that two witnesses had seen the man on trial in the outskirts of Whitburn at about 3.15pm on the day of the shooting and that he was thought to have arrived at 3.07pm. The man had lived at 3 Union Road in Whitburn.

In his evidence the man on trial had said that he had got out of the other man's car at the crossroads and gone home and fiddled about in his house and made soup, etc. The defence noted that if his alibi had been a lie that he could thought up a better one, or even said that he had been with the other man at the time of the shooting and that it had been the other man that had pulled the trigger.

However, it was noted that he had said, that after the murder, he had later gone out in his car and that one of two places he visited was the scene of the crime, which the judge noted:

It was also noted that when the accused man was cautioned and charged with the theft of the car, he said:

However, it was noted that in his statements he had said that he had last seen the gun about 2.30pm when the other man left to go to Fauldhouse with it. As such, it was asked how he could have known that the gun had been in the cemetery. It was however noted that he had later said that the other man had told him that the gun, after having been used, had been mutilated and left in the cemetery. The judge commented:

It was further stated that when he had said he was sorry, that he claimed that he was sorry for not having told the police about the gun sooner. However, it was submitted that the key that broke down that explanation was the adjective 'whole', noting that that was his answer to the charge at the time, but that it was the murder that he had been thinking about.

The defence stated however, that what he had been saying that he was that he was sorry that he had known that the gun was in the bush and that the other man had had it on the afternoon of 3 January 1962 and that he had done nothing about it. The defence noted that if he had said, 'Yes, I did it, I am sorry about the whole thing now', that it would have been a different matter, but that he didn't say anything like that, and just that he was sorry that he hadn’t gone to the police earlier.

It was further noted that regardless of his alibi, there were no corroborative witnesses until 3.30pm when his relatives returned.

When the accused man took the stand, he repeatedly denied having had any involvement in the murder.

He said that he first heard of the murder on TV at 6pm on the day it occurred.

It was reported that there was also a dramatic scene when the accused man left the witness-box and donned a fawn-coloured raincoat and demonstrated with a shotgun for the benefit of the jury.

Regarding the gun, he said that his friend told him that it had been 'cut off' and that he had left it at the Old Cemetery in a bush.  The gun was later found in the bush at the cemetery at South Whitburn Church. Another part of the gun, the barrel, was found in a stream, White Burn, in Whitburn by a footbridge by a civil engineer equipped with a mine detecting device.

The gun had been a Savage 12-bore repeater shotgun of American manufacture. About 15 inches of the barrel had been sawn off and the butt had also been sawn off about 4 inches behind the grip. A senior lecturer in forensic medicine at Edinburgh University was given the gun parts and said that they all fitted together and were parts of the same gun.

The senior lecturer also examined John Brown's clothing, including a brown overcoat that had three ragged holes in the left chest, left shoulder and in the back and went on to say that following tests he determined that John Brown had been shot from a range of 2 yards to 3½ yards.

A 27-year-old oncost worker at Polkemmet Colliery, who lived in Longridge said that on the afternoon of 30 December 1961 that he saw the accused man with a repeater shotgun which he was admiring. He said that whilst they were at a farm the accused man told him that he had bought the gun and that he had always had a notion for a gun. He added that the accused man also had a packet of cartridges.

The 27-year-old oncost worker added that he saw the accused man and the other man involved on 3 January 1962 leave the other man's house and walk towards a car which he said they had difficulty starting. He noted that he saw no gun on that occasion.

Another loose end described a the trial was the time of the shooting. It was submitted that a sort of anchor in the matter of time was the fact that the other man had been seen by three witnesses at the Breich crossroads just two miles to the north of the spot where John Brown was shot, having at that time run out of petrol and having had an empty tin filled up by the petrol attendant at the crossroads. The petrol attendant said that the man had come into her filling station at just about 3pm. The time was also corroborated by three men that the man gave a lift to along with another man that came out of a public house there at 3pm.

With regard to the accused man, it was noted that he had been driving a 'hot car' and that he had arrived in Redmill at about 3.07pm and was seen just after that walking along the pavement by a couple from their car.

It was claimed that the evidence fitted him like a glove, that being the distance of 1½ miles from the place where the car was abandoned at 3.07pm, and him having walked half a mile to the point where he was seen at 3.15pm by the couple, meaning that he would have reached home by about 3.20pm.

However, it was noted that the accused man denied that the person the couple had seen at 3.15pm had been him.

Regarding the issue of a motive, it was said:

It was also noted that the accused man's house in Union Street was close to the cemetery where the gun was found, whilst the other man, who he claimed had told him he had put it there, had lived 1¾ miles away at 49 Northfield Crescent in Longridge. The prosecution said:

The defence noted that the gun however, was in the one bush at the cemetery where it shouldn't have been hidden, that being the one near the church gate and in the light, noting that if the accused man had hidden it he would have done so elsewhere and that the guns position suggested that it had been hidden there by a person not well acquainted with the area.

It was further heard that the accused man said that he had gone to look at the gun and after pulling it out, that he had put it back, but with the butt of the gun showing. It was said that if he had have been the murderer then he would not have left the butt of the gun showing.

It was also noted that the police searched his home and not a trace of the gun having been sawn up there was found on his hacksaw, or clothing or elsewhere.

The prosecution stated that they had built up a circumstantial case against the accused man, without the evidence of the other man, but that if they added the evidence of the other man then you had an actual eye witness to the murder.

When the defence addressed the jury, they submitted that it was enough for the jury to say to themselves that the other man may be lying and that if he was, then the accused man might be innocent.

The accused man was said to have received the verdict of not proven without emotion and to have then left the court through a side door without looking at the jury as he did so.

It was reported on Sunday 15 April 1962 that the gun used would not be returned to the accused man. A spokesman for the Crown Office in Edinburgh, said: