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Murder at Deadmans Hill

Was the wrong man convicted in the A6 motorway case?
By David Cocksedge

THE INFAMOUS A6 MURDER was committed at Deadman's Hill, Bedfordshire on the night of 22-23 August 1961. It was a seemingly motiveless homicide of particular brutality. That evening, a gunman ambushed co-workers Michael Gregsten and Valerie Storie as they sat in a car parked by a cornfield at Dorney Reach, Buckinghamshire. Sitting in the back of the vehicle, he made them drive around rather aimlessly for a few hours before parking in a lay-by off the A6 motorway at around 3.30am. When Gregsten made a sudden move, the gunman shot him twice at close range, killing him instantly. He then made Storie get into the back of the car, where he raped her. After she helped him take Gregsten's body out of the car, the gunman shot her several times as she crouched by her lover's body. Leaving her for dead, the killer then drove off, and later abandoned the car at East Redbridge station. But at least three of the killer's .38 caliber bullets had missed Storie, and she amazingly survived to tell the tale in spite of being paralyzed in a wheelchair for the remainder of her life.

The first suspect was Peter Louis Alphon (30), an odd character who spent most of his time gambling at dog tracks. The murder weapon turned up on a London bus and two cartridge cases fired from it were found in room 24 of the Vienna hotel, at Maida Vale in London where Alphon had stayed on 21-23 August. But one James Francis ('Ginger') Hanratty (27) had also stayed there on 20-21 August, and when Valerie Storie picked him out in a crucial identity parade, police focus switched to this petty thief and housebreaker. Satisfied that they now had their man, Scotland Yard detectives amassed circumstantial evidence to implicate and eventually convict Hanratty.

Oddly, the prosecution presented not a shred of forensic evidence as it was alleged that the killer had used gloves, and then burned his bloodstained clothes after the crime. Hanratty, though a known thief, protested that he was no killer. But after a three-week trial he was found guilty and hanged at Bedford on 4 April 1962 in spite of a growing mass of evidence to prove that he had actually been in Rhyl, South Wales, at the time of the murder.

On 12 May 1967 Peter Alphon called a press conference in Paris and dramatically confessed to being the A6 murderer, stating that British Justice "should be dragged in the mud where it belongs". He described himself as "a Nazi", and said that he had been on a "messianic mission against indecency and immorality" in stalking Gregsten and Storie. He also said that Hanratty had been "expendable". Senior figures in the Metropolitan Police Force and British judiciary dismissed Alphon as a demented self-publicist; but there is much evidence to link him with the crime. For example: on 22-23 August 1961, he was out all night, and did not return to the Vienna hotel until just before noon.

Years later, it was discovered that around ?7,500 had been paid into Alphon's bank account soon after the murder. This was a considerable sum in those days, and Alphon was unemployed. Perhaps someone had paid him to kill Gregsten and Storie, or had he blackmailed this person after the crime? Alphon, (who was admittedly an habitual liar), hinted to the press that he had been a hired gun in this murderous affair; but Gregsten's widow Janet can be discounted as his accomplice as she was not wealthy and had no known association with him. Even if she had secretly met Alphon, how could she get access to such a sum of money anyway? Alphon later took journalists to the exact location of the murder scene on the A6 motorway, which had never been made public.

The police were never able to establish a motive for Hanratty. Alphon had little driving experience, was boastful and talkative, but prone to sudden rages, as Storie said the gunman had been. Hanratty, on the other hand, was an excellent driver, was shy around strangers, and had no criminal record of violent behavior. And witnesses at Redbridge, East London described a man closely resembling Alphon driving Gregsten's Morris Minor car very erratically at 7.10am on 23 August following the murder in Bedfordshire. It is chilling to speculate that if the gunman had succeeded in killing Storie as well as Gregsten, Hanratty would most likely still be alive today. It was Ms Storie's positive identification of this man as the killer that formed the main plank of the Crown's case against him.

Over 40 years later, and in spite of considerable evidence to suggest that the jury had arrived at an unsafe verdict, British Justice is still reluctant to admit that it could have been wrong, and sent an innocent man to the gallows.

(Research: 'Hanratty, The Final Verdict' by Bob Woffinden, Pan Books)

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