CASE STUDIES OF FAMOUS TRIALS
be dead as he kicked and prodded her body. Finally, he got into the Morris Minor and drove away.
The investigation From the first information that Storie gave to the police, they were able to issue the following description of the offender:
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man aged about 25 years, smooth face, big eyes, smartly dressed in a dark grey or black suit. When speaking says ‘fings’ instead of ‘things’. (Miller, 2001: 108) The Morris Minor was found abandoned later that evening near Redbridge underground station in Ilford, East London. Previously, two sightings of the car had also been made because of the way it was being erratically driven. John Skillett and Edward Blackhall were travelling in their car when a Morris Minor almost collided with them; they wound down the window and Skillett shouted at the driver who, they said, smiled back. They noted that the driver was heading in the direction of Redbridge underground station. Another witness, James Trower, said that he saw the car pass him close to where it was found abandoned in Avondale Crescent. He said that it caught his attention because he could hear the crunching of the gears. He claimed to have looked briefly at the driver (Miller, 2001). On the evening of 24 August, the day after the crimes, a bus cleaner found a fully loaded .38 revolver, wrapped in a handkerchief under the back seat on the top of a 36A London bus. The Metropolitan Police’s Forensic Science Laboratory identified it as the murder weapon. Two identikit pictures of the suspect were released, one based on Storie’s impressions, and the other on the information from the witnesses who saw the Morris Minor being driven erratically on the morning of 23 August. After that, the investigation largely stalled,3 until a couple of weeks later when two empty cartridge cases, identified as being from the murder weapon, were found in a room at the Vienna Hotel in Maida Vale, London. It was discovered that a man named Peter Alphon had stayed at the hotel on the night of the murder. Unemployed Alphon had already been interviewed by the police about the crimes when the manager of another London hotel, Alexandra Court, reported suspicious behaviour by a man resembling the photofit who was staying in the hotel. The manager said that the man had locked himself in his room for five days after the murder (Woffinden, 1997). However, this promising lead came to an end when Storie did not pick out Alphon in an identification parade (Miller, 2001). The police then discovered that a person by the name of ‘J Ryan’ had stayed at the Vienna Hotel on the night of 21/22 August. It was quickly found that 24
