Dear Professor Death

Dear Professor Death,

I recently heard the story of James Hanratty, who was hanged for the murder of Michael Gregston in 1962. I heard he was convicted only on the shaky identification of Gregston’s lover, and that she identified him not by his face, but by how he pronounced a single word. Can this be true? It hardly seems to be enough evidence to hang a man.

Appalled in Houston

Dear Appalled,

The A6 murder was a troublesome London case. Gregston and his lover were car-jacked in a cornfield at gunpoint in August of ’61. They drove slowly through London suburbs until they reached Dead Man’s Hill, where Gregston was shot and killed and Storie raped, then shot repeatedly and left to die.

Paralyzed from the waist down, Storie, who had one very brief glimpse of the assailant’s face, picked the wrong man out of the first identification parade. At the second parade, she asked the men to speak a sentence spoken by the killer. “Be quiet, will you, I am thinking.” The killer pronounced “thinking” as “finking,” – as did Hanratty.

Despite spending six hours in Gregston’s car, there were no fibers, hairs, or fingerprints that matched Hanratty’s, who volunteered samples and received the all clear.

Hanratty claimed he was 250 miles away in a B & B in Rhyl and the landlady corroborated, but her testimony was dismissed on a technicality. (More than a dozen witnesses came forward to support the landlady’s testimony after Hanratty was hanged.)

Cartridges from the gun used to kill Gregston were found in the hotel room where Hanratty stayed under an alias the night before the murder. The guest who stayed there after the murder, Peter Alphon, claimed he killed Gregston. Alphon also claimed he was paid £5,000 to scare Storie into leaving Gregston alone because she was breaking up his marriage – and even had proof he received the money.

Storie failed to ID  Alphon in the first lineup, which took place in the hospital right after Storie was taken off the critical list, and she had misgivings about the second lineup. Both Alphon and Hanratty pronounced “thinking” as “finking.” Further circumstantial evidence was presented by a man whose wife messed around with Hanratty. The man committed suicide before Hanratty was hanged, throwing doubt on his evidence.

Many people felt Hanratty was convicted and hanged unjustly because of the lack of hard evidence. However, tests conducted forty years later, in 2002, proved Hanratty’s guilt. Semen on Storie’s panties and mucus on a handkerchief wrapped around the murder weapon matched Hanratty’s DNA. It appears Scotland Yard executed the right man even though they didn’t have the hard evidence they needed at the time.