Robert Mone

The Dundee school shooting was a 1967 incident at St John's Roman Catholic High School in Dundee, Scotland.

Shooting On 1 November 1967 British soldier Robert Mone, absent without leave from his army unit and after drinking for days, On 23 January 1968 Mone was found to be insane and sent to the State Hospital in Carstairs.

In 2017 a retired police officer claimed that a police sniper had Mone in his sights but was denied permission to shoot.

Victims and honours

Nanette Hanson engaged Mone in conversation and he asked for Marion Young to be brought to the school. Eventually, the two women persuaded him to let the girls go. Hanson and Young attempted to get him to surrender but about 90 minutes into the attack he told Hanson to close the blinds and then shot her in the back, fatally wounding her. Young survived.

Nanette Hanson Nanette Hanson (1941 – 1 November 1967) was a teacher at St John's RC High School. Hanson was born in 1941, in Bradford, Yorkshire, the daughter of George (a police superintendent) and Mary Hall. In May 1967 she married Guy Hanson in Bradford, and the couple moved to Dundee, where Nanette got a job teaching at St John's School. Hanson was pregnant with her first child at the time of her murder. The headmaster, Brother Bede, said: "Nanette is a heroine, a martyr who died for these children. It was due to her courage that a worse tragedy didn't follow." In 1971 the Albert Medal was replaced by the George Cross, although Hanson's post-nominal letters remain AM as the change was only made to GC for living recipients choosing that option. Her citation reads:

Mrs Hanson was taking a needlework class of twelve girls at St. John's School when a soldier, armed with a shot gun, entered the classroom, ordered her and the girls to barricade the doors, and then herded them into a small fitting room which adjoined. During the period that followed the man fired several blasts from the shot gun at the classroom door, on the other side of which the headmaster and members of the staff had gathered. Mrs Hanson was then brought out of the fitting room and showing complete calm, engaged the man in conversation, during which he expressed a wish to see a young nurse and agreed that if she could be brought the children would be set free. Mrs Hanson persuaded those outside to leave her to handle the situation; this despite the fact that the soldier had already once attempted to shoot her at point blank range and would have done so had the gun not misfired. The nurse had meanwhile been brought to the school, and quite voluntarily entered the room in an attempt to pacify the man and secure the release of the girls. This was eventually accomplished through the joint efforts of Mrs. Hanson and the nurse who were then left alone in the room with the man trying to persuade him to give himself up. Before he did so, however, he shot Mrs Hanson in the back killing her immediately.

In 2000, Hanson was one of 13 recipients of the Victoria or George Cross honoured in her home town of Bradford when a gallery was set up in their honour in City Hall.

Marion Young Marion Young (born 1949) was a student nurse in 1967. Young, 18 at the time, also attempted to talk down Mone and save the life of Nanette Hanson.

She was an acquaintance of Robert Mone's, who demanded that she be brought to the school. Young agreed to negotiate with Mone. His first words to her were: “You thought you were being a brave little girl? How did you know I wouldn’t blow your head off?”

For her actions at the school, Marion Young was awarded the George Medal at Buckingham Palace. 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. He had previously attended St John's RC High School where the murders occurred. Mone's father, Robert Christopher "Sonny" Mone, murdered his aunt and two other women in Dundee after his son's conviction. In 1983, years into his life sentence, Robert C. Mone was stabbed to death in Craiginches Prison by a fellow inmate. and stole his panda car. Hospital authorities took 40 minutes to raise the alarm.

Mone and McCulloch were apprehended near Carlisle in northern England, having changed to an Austin, after a high-speed chase down the A74. 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. In early 1977 Mone pleaded guilty to the murder of Taylor, and McCulloch to all three murders. They were imprisoned for life, with a recommendation from Lord Dunpark that they never be released, on 31 March. In May 1981, Mone mounted a rooftop protest over his conditions in HMP Perth. In 2007, when he was allowed out on day release He was sent back to high security in Glenochil Prison in 2008 following fears that he was planning another escape. McCulloch was released in 2013, but as of October 2023, Mone remained in Glenochil. While imprisoned, he has studied law and philosophy, and transcribed books into Braille. He is Scotland's longest-serving prisoner.