October 11th, 1961, James Hanratty was arrested for murder and rape. He was found guilty for the murder of a 36 year old scientist Michael Gregsten in August 22nd 1961. Gregsten was found shot dead in a car on the A6 in Deadman’s Hill, Bedfordshire, and his girlfriend Valerie Storie was raped, shot 5 times and left paralysed, miraculously she survived (INNOCENT, 2016). In 1962, April 4th at Bedford Gaol, Hanratty was hanged to death for being proved guilty.
22nd August, 1961, Gregsten and Valerie were together in his car at Dorney Reach, making love, when a stranger had tapped on his car window (Blanco, J.I.). Gregsten opened his car window and was held at gunpoint. Both Gregsten and Valerie were forced to drive in different areas before stopping
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The first person on the scene was a police officer who was handed a census form. The police officer had taken Valerie’s statement of what she could remember at that moment. The document went missing and was never to be seen again. Before she undertook surgery at Bedford Hospital she had given another statement to the police later that morning.
August 24th, 1961, a black revolver gun was found under the back seat of 36A bus in London wrapped in a handkerchief (Richard Clark, 1995). Years later the handkerchief had provided DNA evidence, which will be discussed later on in the report (A B Cryer, 2009). The gun was most likely to be used at the time of Gregsten’s murder. It was fully loaded with no traces of fingerprints.
The police had put out an appeal to boarding house keepers in order to allow anyone to report suspicious people who may be useful to the case. A hotel owner had reported about a man who had locked himself in his room for five days after the murder had taken place. The police went to find this man, and he claimed his name was Frederick Durrant, which later they had discovered this was false (Blanco, J.I.). His name was essentially Peter Alphon. 22nd August Alphon claimed to be with his mother, and on the 23rd August he said he was in a hotel in Maida Vale called the ‘Vienna’ (James Hanratty, no date). The information given