Robert Mone

Mone was born in Dundee and grew up with his parents and two sisters. He was bullied by his father and claims to have been raped by a family friend when he was 12. He became depressed when his grandfather died and lived with his grandmother for a while.[1] In 1964, he was expelled from St John's High School. He then joined the Gordon Highlanders and served in the British Army of the Rhine in Germany.[2]

On 1 November 1967 Mone, who was absent without leave from his army unit, and had been drinking for days,[1] entered a girls' needlework class at St John's wearing his uniform and armed with a shotgun.[3] He held the 14- and 15-year-old pupils and their pregnant teacher, Nanette Hanson, captive for 90 minutes. He requested that an acquaintance - 18-year-old nurse Marion Young - be brought to the school. During the standoff, Mone raped one girl, sexually assaulted another, and shot at both women, but the gun misfired.[2][4] Police brought Mone's grandmother who unsuccessfully asked him to stop. In 2017 a retired police officer claimed that a police sniper had Mone in his sights but was denied permission to shoot.[5] Young and Hanson persuaded Mone to release the girls, but before giving himself up he shot Hanson in the back. She later died in hospital.[6] On 23 January 1968 Mone was found to be insane and sent to the State Hospital in Carstairs.[7][8] Young was awarded the George Medal and Hanson was posthumously awarded the Albert Medal.[9] Mone's motive is assumed to be revenge for his expulsion from the school.[10]

On 30 November 1976, Mone broke out of Carstairs with his lover and fellow patient Thomas McCulloch, who had shot and wounded two employees at a restaurant in a dispute about getting too little butter for his roll. The two had planned the escape for six months and had assembled a rope ladder, weapons, fake ID and cash.[11] They killed another patient, Ian Simpson, and a nursing officer, Neil McLellan,[8] then climbed a barbed wire fence. They then killed a police officer, Constable George Taylor[12] and stole his panda car.[13] Hospital authorities took 40 minutes to raise the alarm.[14] Mone and McCulloch were captured near Carlisle in northern England, having changed to an Austin, after a high-speed chase down the A74.[14] Four Scottish police vehicles were joined by reinforcements from Cumbria Constabulary, and they forced the fugitives onto a slip road of the M6 motorway where they crashed. Despite the police presence, they tried to seize a car that had stopped at the crash, before being restrained by police, three of whom were awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal.[14][15]

In early 1977 Mone pleaded guilty to the murder of Taylor, and McCulloch to all three murders.[16] They were imprisoned for life, with a recommendation from Lord Dunpark that they never be released, on 31 March.[17] In May 1981, Mone mounted a rooftop protest at his conditions in HMP Perth.[8]

Mone's father, Robert Christopher "Sonny" Mone, murdered his aunt and two other women in Dundee after his son's conviction. In 1983, 3+1⁄2 years into his life sentence, Robert Mone was stabbed to death in Craiginches Prison by a fellow inmate.[8]

Mone had six months added to his sentence in 1995 for assaulting a fellow prisoner. In 2002 his sentence was reduced to 25 years under the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).[18] In 2007, when he was allowed out on day release[18] survivors of the 1967 incident, and politicians Jim McGovern and David McLetchie, argued that Mone should never be released, with McLetchie saying that the ECHR had "crippled the justice system".[19] He was sent back to high security in Glenochil Prison in 2008 following fears that he was planning another escape.[20] McCulloch was released in 2013, but Mone remains in prison.[21] While there, he has studied law and philosophy, and transcribed books into Braille.[3] He is Scotland's longest-serving prisoner.[20]

• Sharon Carr – British murderer who repeatedly stabbed a pupil at her school in 1994
• List of attacks related to secondary schools
• List of serial killers in the United Kingdom
• List of serial killers by number of victims

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