Peter Thomas Anthony Manuel (15 March 1927 – 11 July 1958) was a Scottish serial killer known as the Beast of Birkenshaw and the Bedroom Killer who committed the murders of seven people across Lanarkshire, Scotland, between 1956 and 1958. He is also suspected of murdering two further victims—one in East Kilbride, Scotland and one in Edmundbyers, England—in 1956 and 1957 respectively.
Tried at the Glasgow High Court for the eight murders committed in Scotland, Manuel was convicted of seven of these crimes on 26 May 1958, with charges pertaining to his first alleged victim dismissed due to insufficient evidence. He did appeal his conviction, but his conviction was upheld on 24 June. He was hanged at HM Prison Barlinnie on 11 July.
Manuel became known as the "Beast of Birkenshaw" due to the name of the North Lanarkshire village where he lived at the time of his arrest and the proximity of his home to each of his known Scottish crime scenes; he became known as the "Bedroom Killer" because six of the seven victims he was convicted of killing were murdered in the bedrooms of their own homes.
Early life Peter Manuel was born in the Misericordia Hospital in the Bronx, New York City, on 15 March 1927, the second of three children born to Samuel and Bridget () Manuel. He had one older brother, James, and one younger sister, Theresa. The family were Scottish, and followed the Roman Catholic faith.
Manuel's parents were both working class; they had relocated from Scotland to the United States in the early 1920s in search of better employment—initially settling in New York, where Manuel's father worked in a department store. Shortly after Manuel's birth, the family relocated from New York to Detroit, Michigan, where Manuel's father found employment in a car factory and his mother employment as a domestic servant, although largely due to the Great Depression, the family relocated back to the United Kingdom in 1932. Initially, the family resided in Motherwell, although due to Samuel becoming unemployed in the mid-1930s, the family relocated to Coventry in the West Midlands of England.
Reportedly, Manuel was something of a misfit as a child, and his American accent and short stature occasionally made him a target for bullies. Although intelligent and an accomplished artist who aspired to become either a painter or an architect as a child, Manuel began committing crimes at an early age and developed a reputation as a troublesome child and a petty thief. The first crime Manuel is known to have committed occurred when he was nine years old, when he was arrested for breaking into a school. Shortly after his eleventh birthday, he stole the offertory from a local chapel. In October 1938, he appeared before a juvenile court for stealing from a shop. Five weeks later, Manuel committed his first known act of burglary, for which he was sent to an approved school in Suffolk.
Adolescence Between the ages of twelve and eighteen, Manuel was frequently arrested for criminal offences—almost always burglary, robbery or theft—for which he was incarcerated at approved schools, borstals and, ultimately, prison, although he is not known to have exhibited any physical or sexual violence in these offences until he was aged fifteen. As a result, Manuel spent the majority of his teenage years in both English and, later, Scottish detainment facilities—his family having relocated back to Scotland from Coventry in 1941 shortly after a German airstrike upon the city destroyed their home. The family initially relocated to Viewpark, North Lanarkshire before ultimately settling in the nearby village of Birkenshaw, where Manuel's father became a district councillor.
Manuel was unable to rejoin his family in Scotland as at the time of their relocation, he had been incarcerated for breaking into the house of a lone woman, whom he bludgeoned about the head with a hammer before stealing her purse. At the time of this offence, Manuel had absconded from borstal. Upon recapture, Manuel was detained at HM Prison Leeds. He was later transferred to an approved school in Yorkshire, from which he absconded in December 1942. Before his re-apprehension, he committed his first known sexual assault. In this instance, Manuel bludgeoned a housewife about the head with a blunt instrument before dragging her into woodland and attempting to rape her.
Following a brief period of employment at a fairground stall in Blackpool after his 1945 release from borstal, Manuel opted to relocate to Birkenshaw to live with his parents. He returned to Scotland in early 1946.
Relocation to Lanarkshire Within weeks of returning to Scotland in February 1946, Manuel was again arrested for breaking into a bungalow in the Sandyhills district of Glasgow. He would later be sentenced to one year's imprisonment after being convicted of fifteen separate charges of theft by housebreaking although while on bail for these offences, he beat and attempted to rape a pregnant woman in the presence of her three-year-old daughter in the Mount Vernon district of Glasgow. In separate instances days later, he sexually assaulted a young nurse and raped a housewife.
Shortly after being convicted of multiple charges of housebreaking, Manuel was separately prosecuted for the rape he had committed while on bail. His trial was held at the Glasgow High Court. Manuel conducted his own defence at trial, but was sentenced to serve eight years' imprisonment on 25 June 1946. He served the majority of this sentence at HM Prison Peterhead, but was released in the autumn of 1952 and moved back into his parents' home. He was again arrested and imprisoned for housebreaking in April 1953, but was released in February 1954. Although Manuel obtained employment with British Railways shortly after his release from prison, he soon resumed committing acts of housebreaking.
While incarcerated within various English and Scottish detainment facilities, Manuel became proficient in several manual trades including woodwork, joinery and French polishing; he would occasionally find legitimate employment in professions requiring these honed skills, although few of his employment roles lasted longer than a few weeks and he would invariably revert to criminal activities within weeks or months of his release from any detainment. Although a pathological liar and something of a loner, Manuel did establish several contacts within Glasgow's criminal underworld following his family's return to Scotland, some of whom he colluded with to commit burglaries. Despite feeling a sense of belonging within Glasgow's criminal fraternity, he was viewed by many criminals and work colleagues alike as little more than a small-time crook and a fantasist.
Engagement In the autumn of 1954, Manuel began dating a young bus conductress named Anna O'Hara, whom he met on the bus he took to work. Within months, and with the approval of O'Hara's parents, the two became engaged, with a wedding date set for 30 July 1955. Shortly before the wedding, O'Hara terminated their engagement upon being informed of Manuel's extensive history of criminal behaviour. Thereafter, Manuel is not known to have formed any serious relationships with women, and remained a bachelor living with his parents and older brother.
On the evening of what would have been Manuel's wedding day, he drank himself into a state of intoxication before attempting to rape and threatening to decapitate a 29-year-old woman at knifepoint in a rural field close to his parents' home. Fearing for her life, the woman did not resist the assault and attempted rape—at one point lying still with a knife to her throat after Manuel had forced her into woodland in response to a police search of the area following a resident reporting hearing a woman's screams.
The victim of this assault repeatedly conversed with Manuel throughout her ordeal, and eventually persuaded him to release her after falsely promising not to inform authorities. Days later, he was arrested and charged with rape. A psychological evaluation revealed him to be sane and fit to plead to the charge. He was brought to trial at the County Buildings in Airdrie in October that year. Manuel insisted on conducting his own defence, and successfully convinced the jury he and his victim had been lovers and that the charges had been brought out of spite following a heated argument. As such, the jury returned a verdict of not proven.
Murders Peter Manuel was convicted and executed for the murders of seven people, although he is strongly suspected of committing at least nine murders. Each of the murders for which he was executed were committed within a twenty-four mile () radius of the Scottish Lowlands and each within a travelling radius of his parents' Lanarkshire home. He is also suspected of committing one further murder within this geographical radius in January 1956, and a ninth murder in County Durham, England, in December 1957.
Anne Kneilands On the afternoon of 4 January 1956, a labourer discovered the bludgeoned and barefoot body of a blonde teenage girl lying face-down in a hollow known locally as Capelrig Copse in the Calderwood district of East Kilbride. The location was close to a golf course. Investigators discovered one of the victim's shoes embedded in the slope of a nearby ditch; the other was located on the other side of the ditch approximately seventy feet from her body. Footprints within the ditch where her shoes were located and across nearby fields—plus mud and human tissue located on barbed wire fences and a nearby gate—indicated the victim had been chased for at least 400 yards by her murderer before being caught by her assailant. Fragments of her skull and sections of brain tissue were located on the ground close to her body, indicating she had been felled by several blows to the head with a blunt instrument.
A post-mortem concluded the decedent had died at least thirty-six hours prior to the discovery of her body, and that she had died of extensive head injuries, with one particularly severe skull fracture having proved fatal. Although her undergarments were in disarray and her knickers missing, the girl had not been raped, although semen was discovered upon her clothing, indicating her murderer had ejaculated as he inflicted the injuries to her body.
The victim was quickly identified as Anne Kneilands, a 17-year-old machinist who was last seen alive by her siblings at 6:40 p.m. on 2 January walking from her home in the direction of a nearby farm where she intended to catch a bus to meet a young soldier she had begun dating several days previously with plans to attend a Hogmanay dance. Her boyfriend later informed police he had failed to keep their appointment, indicating Kneilands had been attacked as she returned home. Although door-to-door inquiries yielded no solid leads, a local man walking his dogs close to the golf course reported hearing a female "squeal cry ... 'Oh! Oh!'" shortly after 8:30 p.m. on the date of the murder, indicating Kneilands had likely died at this time.
At the time of this murder, Manuel was employed with the Scottish Gas Board, and had been performing maintenance work with colleagues at a nearby roadside. Manuel's foreman and colleagues had noted scratches on his nose and cheek on 3 January, which he had alternately claimed to have sustained either via his employment, or in a fight on New Year's Eve. Furthermore, police questioning of Manuel's employer revealed the scratches on Manuel's face were only evident after 2 January.
Questioning and release