Notorious Killer Auctions Coat For Pudsey Bear

Dec 2 2007 By Derek Alexander

Notorious Carstairs Killer Bids To Sell Coat For Charity

CARSTAIRS killer Robert Mone wanted to auction his sheepskin coat for the BBC's Children In Need.

The 58-year-old murderer offered to sell the shabby jacket to fellow inmates and donate the proceeds to the charity telethon.

But no other cons wanted the coat, with one telling the Sunday Mail: "We know he's a crackpot but this was mad even for him."

Mone wore the coat in court when he was sentenced for murdering a police officer after he escaped from Carstairs State Hospital in 1976.

Bizarrely, Mone kept the coat and - 30 years later - was snapped wearing while on day release from jail last year.

He told cons at Shotts Prison, Lanarkshire, he wanted to help the BBC's annual Children In Need appeal last month when almost £1.7million was raised in Scotland.

One prison source said: "Mone's mind is gone. No one can believe he's training for freedom.

"He wanted to auction his big sheepskin and said he'd donate the proceeds to Children In Need.

"Everyone told him to shove it.

Nobody wanted his coat.

"He clearly thinks he's a celebrity.

He has some nerve trying to raise cash for Children In Need after what he did to those children in Dundee."

Mone was sent to Carstairs after he executed pregnant schoolteacher Nanette Hanson in her Dundee classroom in 1967.

The killer, then 19, terrorised her class of 14-year-olds and raped one of the pupils.

Mone killed PC George Taylor, 27, with a home-made axe when he went on he run from Carstairs with lover Thomas McCulloch.

The pair also butchered off-duty nursing officer Neil McLellan, 46, and patient Iain Simpson, 40.

Mone, who is preparing for freedom at Shotts, is being kept in the jail's Kerr House - a low supervision unit for prisoners soon to be released.

Kerr House holds around 52 inmates including some of Scotland's most notorious criminals.

'Beast of Ibrox' Dominic Devine is serving out the rest of his sentence in the facility.

He was sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty of four rapes in Glasgow between 1979 and 1987 and sources say he and Mone have become friends. The source added: "Mone and Devine are pals. They spend most of their time together and are rarely far apart.

"Mone is one of the strangest men I've ever met. All he does is clean a certain part of the floor all day.

"He'll go over and over the same section time and time again. If that's not strange, I don't know what is."

In October the Sunday Mail revealed prison letters from Mone boasting about having sex in prison.

He said he seduced a fellow inmate in the jail's chapel.

Mone also bragged about how he was regarded as a celebrity by other cons.

A spokesman for the Scottish Prison Service said: "We are not aware of any Shotts inmates raising money for Children In Need. We cannot comment on individual prisoners."

'He has some nerve after what he did to those children in Dundee' SHOTTS PRISONER

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