James Hanratty

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James Hanratty (born October 4, 1936 in Bromley , † April 4, 1962 in Bedford ) was one of the last people to be executed in Great Britain . Hanratty was the murder of Michael Gregsten and rape accused by Valerie Storie and, despite contradictory testimony to death by train convicted. His case sparked widespread UK public debate on the death penalty and has long been considered a miscarriage of justice . A DNA analysis carried out in 2002 confirmed his guilt with a relatively high degree of probability. Although the Court of Appeal of England and Wales ruled in May 2002 that Hanratty's guilt was unequivocally confirmed, his execution remains one of the most controversial decisions of the British judiciary.

The crime

On the night of August 22nd to 23rd, 1961, 36-year-old Michael Gregsten and his girlfriend Valerie Storie were kidnapped in their car. An armed man forced them to drive to Deadman's Hill, near the A6. There he shot Gregsten and raped Storie. The perpetrator then tried to kill her with five shots. Storie survived the attack, however, and was discovered during a traffic count the next morning. She remained paralyzed from the waist down after the incident.

The search for the culprit

The killer escaped in Gregstens Morris Minor . The vehicle was found abandoned the next day. A short time later, the murder weapon, which was hidden under the seats of a coach, also appeared. Via two matching cartridges that were found shortly afterwards in a hotel room, two people who had stayed there during the period in question were suspected of being the A6 killer. Both James Hanratty and the second suspect, Peter Louis Alphon, had criminal records. Alphon was soon acquitted of suspicion of being the killer, however. This decision was later repeatedly questioned because Alphon had no alibi . After Hanratty was declared a suspect, he called the police and told the investigating inspectors that he was innocent. After his arrest on October 11, 1961 in Blackpool , he was confronted with Valerie Storie, who only identified him as the perpetrator on the second round after Hanratty had to speak a few words. The fact that Storie only saw the perpetrator in the headlights of an oncoming car for a split second during the rape, and the fact that Hanratty's voice had no particular tone, always left doubts about the testimony of the main witness.

The procedure

The trial of Hanratty began on January 22, 1962 at Shire Hall, Bedford and ended after 21 days of trial on February 17. It was the longest murder trial in the UK to date. The circumstances of the act generated enormous media interest. Hanratty's fellow inmates were offered large sums of money by the yellow press for reports on the defendant. For example, inmate William Roy Langdale was called by the prosecution as a witness against Hanratty, who allegedly confessed to Langdale's murder. However, according to two prison guards, Langdale was exposed as a liar who had never had contact with Hanratty before. The defense was finally a Grace Jones from Rhyl ( Denbighshire have to make) identify who testified to Hanratty that in the period in question stayed in their pension, ie over 300 km from the crime scene .

The jury found Hanratty guilty of the murder of Michael Gregsten after eleven hours of deliberation, despite the controversial evidence . Judge Gorman subsequently pronounced the verdict: death by hanging .

The verdict sparked strong protests from opponents of the death penalty and more than 90,000 people signed a petition for Hanratty's pardon. Despite the countless pardons, the British Home Secretary Richard Austen Butler refused on March 9, 1962 to plead for the Queen's pardon for Hanratty. Hanratty stressed his innocence to the end. On the eve of his execution, he told his family members:

“I'm dying tomorrow but I'm innocent. Clear my name. "

“I will die tomorrow, but I am innocent. Wash my name in. "

On April 4, 1962, James Hanratty was executed in Bedford Prison.

Post-history

On March 22, 2001, Hanratty's remains were exhumed to be sampled for DNA comparison. The result of the investigation confirmed with a probability of 2.5 million to 1 that the DNA found in Valerie Stories underwear came from Hanratty. Thereupon the Court of Criminal Appeal ruled on May 10, 2002 that there was no basis for a subsequent pardon for Hanratty. However, his family emphasized that this DNA analysis does not constitute evidence of his guilt, as Hanratty's and Valerie Storie's clothes were transported in the same box during the trial. However, no third party DNA was found on the clothing. A re-investigation of the case is currently unlikely on the basis of these investigation results.

literature

  • Bob Woffind: Hanratty. The Final Verdict. Pan, 1999, ISBN 0330353012
  • Christian Heermann : The Strangler of Notting Hill - Great London Crimes. Verlag Das Neue Berlin, Berlin 1983, pp. 282-301
  • Paul Foot: Who Killed Hanratty? Penguin, 1988 (1971), ISBN 0-14-010954-4 (English, doubts Hanratty's perpetration, written before the DNA analysis)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Hanratty, James
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British murderer, one of the last people to be executed in Britain
DATE OF BIRTH 4th October 1936
PLACE OF BIRTH Bromley
DATE OF DEATH April 4th 1962
Place of death Bedford