Lennon & others wrong
On Dec. 11, 1969, Beatle John Lennon and Yoko Ono arrived at the Odeon theater in Kensington to attend the premiere of Ringo Starr’s movie, “The Magic Christian.” They stepped out of their Rolls-Royce and unfurled a banner that read, “BRITAIN MURDERED HANRATTY.”
The banner referred to James Hanratty who had been tried, convicted, and executed for murder seven years earlier. John and Yoko were just two of thousands of people who believed he did not commit the crime.
Lennon became interested in the case after a chance meeting with Hanratty’s parents, who convinced him that their son had been railroaded. John and Yoko took on the challenge of clearing his name.
Lennon has been dead for nearly 38 years and many of his causes have been forgotten. But controversy still swirls over the Hanratty case, and the question of whether Britain hanged an innocent man.
The murder that landed Hanratty, 25, on the gallows happened on Aug. 22, 1961. Michael Gregsten, 36, a research scientist, and Valerie Storie, 22, parked in a desolate cornfield near Dorney Reach, about 30 miles from London. The field was a favorite spot for lovers. Gregsten, an unhappily married man with two children, and Storie, his girlfriend, often used the place for their trysts.
They were there for about half an hour when there was a sharp knock on the window.
“This is a hold-up,” a stranger in a dark suit said. “I am a desperate man. … If you do as I tell you, you will be all right.” He lied. The stranger got into the back seat and forced the couple to drive him around. At around 1:30 a.m., he told Gregsten to pull into a rest stop off the A6 highway at a place called Deadman’s Hill. There he shot Gregsten twice in the back of the head, killing him instantly.
Storie screamed and asked why he shot Gregsten. The man replied, “Be quiet, I’m thinking.” Because of his Cockney accent, he pronounced the word in a distinctive manner. Instead of “thinking,” he said “finking.”
After forcing Storie to drag her lover’s corpse out of the car, the stranger raped and shot her five times. He took off in Gregsten’s car. A farm worker found Storie clinging to life a few hours later.
Miraculously, she survived although the bullets severed her spine and left her paralyzed. But she was able to talk about her ordeal and helped police create a sketch of the attacker.
Within a few days, police had the murder weapon. A bus driver found a .38-caliber revolver and boxes of ammunition covered with a handkerchief and stowed under a seat in his bus.
The car, dotted with bloodstains, turned up about 40 miles away.
Five days after the attack, a local hotel manager called about a lodger who was acting strange, staying inside his room for days. His name was Peter Alphon, an eccentric loner who lived on an inheritance and gambling. Police brought Alphon in for questioning but released him when Storie failed to pick him out of a lineup at her hospital bedside.
Distribution of the sketches drew attention to Hanratty, a known troublemaker who had been in and out of jail for seven years, primarily for car theft and housebreaking. His most recent prison stretch had ended in March.
Storie picked Hanratty out of a lineup, even though she had initially remembered a man with dark brown eyes. Hanratty’s eyes were blue. But his pronunciation of the phrase, “Be quiet, I’m thinking” matched the accent of the killer.
At Hanratty’s trial, which started on Jan. 22, 1962, Storie gave a powerful account of the crime. Hanratty offered two alibis, neither of which could be confirmed.
After a three-week trial, the longest in British history to that date, the jury found Hanratty guilty. The sentence was death.
He maintained his innocence to the end. His brother Michael recalled the condemned man said, “Clear my name” on the day before his hanging on April 4, 1962.
Hanratty’s family started a campaign to do just that. The case became a cause celebre, attracting highprofile supporters, like Lennon. Books and documentaries explored alternate theories, including evidence that pointed to Alphon.
Public outcry was loud and fueled by a movement to abolish capital punishment in Britain, which was ended in 1965 for murder cases.
In 1997, headlines declared, “Wrongly Hanged: Hanratty is found innocent.” New evidence had suggested that prosecutors had withheld evidence, and an investigation was about to start that would clear his name.
Then the age of DNA testing dawned. Semen from Storie’s panties was sent off for evaluation. Hanratty’s body was exhumed to get samples.
“DNA proves Hanratty guilt ‘beyond doubt,’ “was “The Telegraph” headline on May 11, 2002. Still, his supporters didn’t buy it. DNA was unreliable, they said, because the evidence may have been contaminated.
Throughout the decades of controversy, one person has had no doubts. “I identified the guilty man. I looked in his eyes, and he looked in mine,” said Storie when she learned of the DNA test results. Despite being confined to a wheelchair, she struggled to make a life for herself. She built a career as a government scientist and worked hard on behalf of the disabled until her death at 77 in 2016.
In an interview with the Daily Mail, she once said that both she and the Hanratty family served life sentences for the crime. “They have had over 40 years believing he was innocent and I have had more than 40 years knowing he wasn’t.”