Stories about the A6 murder

misled by following familiar story lines: ‘The implicit invitation for jurors to participate in constructing facts, combined with the missing narrative components, can introduce bias and lead to error’ ( Griffi n, 2013 : 302). The story model is further critiqued because jurors may rely on pieces of evidence to off er meaning where there may not be any. Griffi n referred to Dershowitz (1996), who drew on the example of a man accused of murdering his wife having taken out a life insurance policy prior to her death. Although on the face of it, such an action appears incriminating, Dershowitz (1996: 100) pointed out that many people take out such policies and what has a mundane explanation can result in a prejudicial assessment of the facts: ‘Events are often simply meaningless, irrelevant to what comes next; events can be out of sequence, random, purely accidental, without purpose’. In other words, stories impose order on events, an order which may not have existed when they occurred. Indeed, Griffi n (2013 ) observed that each detail mentioned in a story has salience, but that real life is not like that and people often do not know the reasons for their actions nor are able to articulate their motives clearly. As a result, Griffi n argued, the integrity of juror decision- making may be compromised by their expectations that all evidence given at the trial will hold meaning when in fact it may not. In turn, ‘confi rmation bias’ may occur because jurors interpret evidence based on their existing beliefs and the juror’s ‘belief perseverance’ may occur when evidence is cast in doubt because it does not align with a juror’s pre- existing beliefs and expectations. Overall, then, while there is ample evidence that stories play an important role in trials and jurors’ decisions, they may work against the strict evaluation of evidence which is often proclaimed as an ideal.

Stories about the A6 murder

Griffi n (2013 : 296) cited an opinion from a US judge about a murder trial in which the defendant was found to be ‘guilty but mentally ill’. The judge commented that ‘a narrative richer than the “bare facts of his bizarre behavior” was necessary to eff ective representation’ for the defendant. This comment underscores the importance of providing contextual information through narrative which helps to explain the alleged actions of the defendant and make sense of the crime itself, whether it be a narrative of guilt or of innocence. What is interesting about Hanratty’s case is that he was convicted in the absence of a narrative which went beyond ‘the bare facts’ of his identifi cation as the murderer and the circumstantial evidence in support of that – in other words, in the absence of a narrative that would fi ll the ‘black hole’ identifi ed by Woffi nden (1997 : 176).

Indeed, part of the public concern caused by Hanratty’s conviction was that he had no violent history; by his own admission, he was a thief, not a rapist and murderer. There was simply no contextual information to demonstrate

how and why he turned into a ‘ruthless’ ( Foot, 1971 : 275) murderer. In cross- examination, Swanwick submitted to Hanratty that it was his ambition to be a stick- up man, that he ‘went to the Vienna Hotel to play with it [the gun] like a new toy’, and went out to use it for the fi rst time on 22 August ( Foot, 1971 : 284). Hanratty replied:

Well, is it not quite obvious if I did that I would not be looking for a car in a cornfi eld, as you put it to the court. I will be looking for some cash, a bank, a shop, something to that eff ect. I would not be looking for a car in a cornfi eld for some cash for a stick up. (Cross- examination of Hanratty, cited in Foot, 1971 : 284)

Hanratty’s response appears to provide a much more plausible view that makes sense of his traditional criminal activities and motivations. He underscored this further when Swanwick attempted to elicit evidence for his lack of regard for the homeowners he burgled:

Sir, I must put this point quite clear. I ain’t a man the court approved of as of good character, but I am not a murderer. This is a murder trial, not a housebreaking trial. (Cross- examination of Hanratty, cited in Foot, 1971 : 285)

Swanwick put other possible motives to Hanratty:

Swanwick: It may be that the predominant motive was that you wanted the girl; it may be that you wanted to practise a stick- up; it may be that you did not mind the money and the car? Hanratty: I had all the money I wanted. I give Mrs France £ 15 that day. If I wanted a woman I could have gone in the West End and had a woman for a fortnight. If I wanted a woman I could get one for a fortnight. (Cross- examination of Hanratty, cited in Foot, 1971 : 285)

Here, Hanratty highlighted the absence of the story connections required to make sense of the crime he was on trial for. If there had been behaviours preceding the crime, for example, sexual off ences such as voyeurism, indecent exposure or indecent assault, it might have provided a plausible connection to the later and more serious sexual off ence against Storie. To this end, Swanwick referred again to his desire to be a stick- up man, seemingly in an attempt to connect the pieces of evidence into a coherent story:

Swanwick: But is the diff erence this, that then you would not have had the thrill of holding them up with a gun? Hanratty: The man who committed this is a maniac and a savage. I know what you have proved here. I am not a man the court can approve of, but I am not a maniac of any kind. (Cross- examination of Hanratty, cited in Foot, 1971 : 285)

Again, Hanratty’s reply highlighted the absence of the connections between pieces of evidence that, when added together, would create a compelling story to make sense of how he could come to commit a crime that appeared to diverge so greatly from his traditional criminal activities.

For his part, as we have seen, Hanratty did not provide a credible story about his activities and whereabouts on 22 and 23 August, and his integrity was doubtlessly undermined by his inconsistency in the Liverpool/ Rhyl alibi. The failure of both the prosecution and defence to tell a credible story adding context to the evidence led some of Hanratty’s key supporters to off er narratives themselves, narratives that converted to a readily ‘recognizable plot’ ( Griffi n, 2013 : 311). An incomplete and implausible story about Hanratty suddenly appearing in a cornfi eld out of nowhere and randomly deciding to attack the victims spurred his supporters to reconstruct the story. They based it on a ‘confession’ by Peter Alphon in 1967 that he was the murderer, even though Alphon had been eliminated as a suspect during the police investigation.

It is important to read the alternative and reconstructed stories about what happened in the context of Alphon’s dubious confession to the crime. There was no compelling evidence to link Alphon to the crime and his confession was probably false. In Chapter 8 we will be examining the nature of false confessions in more depth and exploring the diff erent reasons for why they can and do occur. For example, some suspects, like Alphon, will falsely confess voluntarily, often to gain fame in a high- profi le case or because of mental illness ( Kassin and Gudjonsson, 2004 ). The study of false confessions is a relatively new area of research and the notion that a person could confess to a crime they did not commit has been deemed so counter- intuitive that this is perhaps why Alphon’s admissions were accepted as truth. Viewing Alphon as the person responsible for Gregsten’s murder implies a story in which he played the central character with a motivation for the crime, enabling the preceding and subsequent elements in the story to connect to one another in a plausible way. For example, the context of Alphon’s drifter lifestyle, unemployment and, indeed, his confession, makes subsequent events in the story more convincing, such as accepting payment to commit a crime and following Hanratty for the purposes of framing him. Added to this was Storie’s admission during cross- examination that she told a doctor

and Acott that there was a resemblance between Alphon and the man who attacked her ( Woffi nden, 1997 ).

Journalist Paul Foot focused on the relationship between Michael Gregsten and Valerie Storie. As Griffi n (2013 : 311) commented, a story containing an extramarital aff air provides a ‘recognizable plot’ that could serve as a likely motive for murder. Foot noted that Gregsten’s wife, Janet, was ‘irritated and depressed’ by his aff air with Storie ( Foot, 1971 : 25). Although Foot did not explicitly outline his theory (for risk of a libel claim), Miller (2001) submitted that the inference was clear: Janet Gregsten knew and paid Peter Alphon to threaten her husband and Storie so that their relationship would end. Foot constructed a story to demonstrate how Janet Gregsten and her brother- in- law, William Ewer, were directly involved in framing Hanratty for the crime. To support this claim, Foot referred to a newspaper article that was published two days after Hanratty’s conviction, reporting that Janet Gregsten claimed to have seen Hanratty walking into a launderette in the Swiss Cottage area of London eight days after her husband’s murder. She was with Ewer when she pointed out Hanratty and said that he matched the murderer’s description. At the time, Hanratty was not a suspect and, although Gregsten claimed she did not know who he was, she said she felt intuitively that it was him:

That’s the man. He fi ts the description. But it’s more than that. I’ve got an overpowering feeling that it’s him. ( Foot, 1971 : 50)

Foot (1971 : 51) drew on another newspaper article that referred to Ewer’s ‘miracle’ encounter with Hanratty in a caf é the following day. It is clear from Foot’s comments that he did not believe either Janet Gregsten or Ewer’s stories, arguing:

The articles presented a series of coincidences which would strain the credulity of the most gullible mystic. ( Foot, 1971 : 51)

Foot pointed out that, after speaking to the manager at the launderette, Janet Gregsten and Ewer learned that the man was called J. Ryan, which was the alias Hanratty often used. Ewer then saw Hanratty the next day in a caf é and followed him into a fl orist’s shop. The manager there told Ewer that the man had bought some fl owers for his mother: a Mrs Hanratty of 12 Sycamore Grove, Kingsbury. Foot theorised that both Janet Gregsten and Ewer knew precisely who Hanratty was and because the police had initially failed to identify him as a suspect, she intervened and pointed them in his direction. This, Foot suggested, was proof that Janet Gregsten and/ or Ewer were directly involved in framing Hanratty for the crime. For Foot

(1971 : 51), this meant that ‘Scotland Yard had Hanratty’s name and his alias long before they started to hunt him as the murderer’.

Jean Justice, who wrote Murder vs. Murder in 1964, suggested that the motive for the crime was not robbery but sex. Justice also theorised that Alphon was in fact the murderer and that he knew Hanratty. Like Foot, Justice came to believe that Alphon was the person responsible for the crime and in 1967 Alphon publicly confessed saying that he had been paid £ 5,000 by Janet Gregsten’s brother- in- law William Ewer to confront the victims in the cornfi eld:

Let’s say the mission was to see that they were separated. ... The mission was to see that the aff air was fi nished. ( Miller, 2001 : 69)

Alphon said that this could be proved by looking at his bank account, although he rapidly retracted his confession ( Miller, 2001 ).

In his book Hanratty: The Final Verdict, journalist Bob Woffi nden (1997) also argued that Alphon was the man responsible for the crime. However, he suggested that the theory that the crime was the result of trying to separate Gregsten and Storie was untenable because, for Woffi nden, the story was incomplete in the absence of the couple not having received warnings prior to being taken hostage and, therefore, a story about a family plot to end the relationship was not plausible. Instead, he referred to a conversation Alphon had with Jean Justice in which he advised him to seek a more banal motivation for the murder. To this end, Woffi nden’s narrative was one of love and passion that appeared to emerge following Janet Gregsten’s admission of an aff air after her husband’s death ( Miller, 2001 ). Although he did not name the man who was in love with Janet Gregsten, it seems that Woffi nden was referring to Ewer, her brother- in- law:

The motive in this case was the most ‘mundane’ and time honoured of all: the passion of a man for Janet Gregsten. He became more and more obsessed with her. She was demure, delightful, intelligent, articulate and wonderfully attractive. He yearned for her. Yet not only was she married, she resolutely refused to leave her husband, even though he treated her despicably. How unbearably frustrating for a would- be lover. ( Woffi nden, 1997 : 436)

According to Woffi nden’s theory, Janet Gregsten’s would- be lover got in touch with Alphon and gave him the gun. Woffi nden further theorised that Alphon was instructed to pretend to be Hanratty 5 but amid the confusion, Alphon, who was unstable anyway, became confused and that is why the intended crime went wrong. According to Woffi nden, the coincidence of

Alphon having stayed at the same hotel as Hanratty can be explained by the theory that Alphon followed him there.

Exercise 2:

What problems do you see with the stories presented by Foot, Justice and Woffi nden? How plausible do you think their narratives are? Consider the reasons for your answer.

Perhaps one of the more compelling narratives to explain the A6 murder can be found in Miller’s (2001) book Shadows of Deadman’s Hill: A New Analysis of the A6 Murder. Miller told a story that fi lls the gaps between pieces of evidence in a more coherent, consistent, plausible manner, consistent with jurors’ common sense and world knowledge. Miller began with presence (one of Bennett and Feldman’s (1981 ) requisites for establishing guilt), off ering an explanation as to why Hanratty might have feasibly placed himself in an unlikely location. For example, contrary to the popular conception that the cornfi eld was miles away from civilisation, it was in fact within walking distance to two railway stations. The cornfi eld was also near a small village where domestic burglaries had occurred previously. Miller therefore immediately provided the context to the crime by outlining Hanratty’s career as a professional housebreaker and other convictions for vehicle theft. He pointed out that Hanratty had spent time in several diff erent prisons and in the build- up to the crime he had burgled several houses. He referred to Woffi nden’s comments quoting Hanratty as saying ‘I always work on my own. I often change my area. I usually do night jobs. … All my jobs are big ones’ ( Woffi nden, 1997 : 89). Thus, for Miller, Hanratty wandering around Dorney Reach late at night was consistent with his previous criminal activities, especially since he had committed housebreakings in the Ruislip and Northwood areas nearby. Although there was no independent evidence that he was in the area around Dorney Reach, Miller argued that his whereabouts after his release from prison in March 1961 were often a mystery. He described Hanratty as ‘essentially a loner and an enigma’ and observed that ‘He wasn’t a member of a criminal gang. He came and went as he pleased. He emerged out of nowhere, socialised, then disappeared again. He was a solitary criminal. No one really knew what he was up to, where he was, how he spent his time’ ( Miller, 2001 : 85).

To explain Hanratty’s possession of a gun, Miller argued that he moved in criminal circles where it was easy to acquire such a weapon. He theorised that Hanratty reloaded the gun in the hotel room, perhaps test shooting beforehand, and that leaving the cartridges was symptomatic of his carelessness. He explained that Hanratty’s motive for possessing a gun

was his desire to move up from housebreaking to something bigger, such as armed robbery. In the past, Hanratty had either caught the bus or walked to carry out his housebreaking; however, to get away quickly after an armed robbery, a bus service would be too slow and thus, a train would be more eff ective, thereby explaining his presence in Dorney Reach, which was within walking distance of a mainline railway station ( Miller, 2001 ).

Far from being a premeditated crime, the abduction in the cornfi eld was a random event. He could not have known that the couple were in the cornfi eld; rather, he was walking down the lane when he suddenly came across them. Miller (2001 : 91; emphasis in the original) theorised:

The crime was the consequence of two unrelated, arbitrary events – Hanratty being on Marsh Lane at ten o’clock at night with a gun in his pocket, and Gregsten and Storie sitting in the Morris in the fi eld. The gunman acted on impulse .

Providing the context for the crime, Miller speculated that Hanratty did not have rape and murder on his mind, but ‘what followed all stemmed from Hanratty’s own damaged life and impoverished personality’ ( Miller, 2001 : 91). The randomness of the crime was refl ected in, and similar to, the random nature of Hanratty’s previous crimes, which were characterised by impulsiveness and short- term thinking. Miller (2001 : 93) thought that the crime began with no ‘rhyme or reason’ and that even Hanratty himself did not know what he wanted, but he was probably enjoying the new power of possessing a gun and using it to threaten his victims. Miller argued that Gregsten was shot because Hanratty felt threatened and reacted instinctively, again situating this within the landscape of his character – his ‘learning disabilities, not very bright, impulsive, indecisive, unable to think through the consequences of his actions’ ( Miller, 2001 : 107). Additionally, Miller proposed that the rape of Storie was motivated by his need to punish his victim for her continuous displays of defi ance while being held hostage. He argued that the rape could not have been planned since he could have committed it in the cornfi eld where they were isolated instead of on the lay- by. Similarly, Miller argued that, as well as silencing his victim, her shooting was also motivated by the desire to punish a woman who was not compliant – something Hanratty was not accustomed to.

We can see that, of the four stories that we have reviewed, three (those by Foot, Justice and Woffi nden) were developed to support the claim that there had been a miscarriage of justice and that Hanratty had been wrongfully convicted. They relied on information, such as Janet Gregsten’s depression and Alphon’s confession, and on speculation about Janet Gregsten’s and William Ewer’s amorous motivations, which were not introduced as evidence during the trial because Hanratty’s defence strategy was focused solely on