Dead Men Walking

by Bill Wallace

  The gun turned up two days after the attack under the back seat of a 36A London bus. It was loaded again, but, having been carefully wiped clean, it revealed no fingerprints. Decades later, it would be used to provide DNA evidence. When an appeal went out to hotel and boarding house managers, asking them if they had seen any guests behaving strangely in recent days, they received a report from one who said one guest had not left his room for five days after 22 August, the day of the murder. The man was picked up, giving his name as Frederick Durrant, but on investigation he was revealed to be Peter L. Alphon. He provided an alibi for the night in question, however, and was released.

  Valerie Storie helped in the creation of an Identikit picture of the killer’s face, but a few days later she provided police officers with an entirely different description. It was not helpful.

  Then, on 7 September, a man claiming to be the A6 murderer, as the media were now calling him, attacked Meike Dalal in her Richmond home. On 23 September, she would identify him as Peter Alphon.

  Meanwhile, two cartridge cases were discovered in a room at the Maida Vale Hotel. They matched the bullets that had killed Michael Gregsten and wounded Valerie Storie. They also matched the bullets in the gun found on the bus. According to the hotel manager, William Nudds, the room’s last occupant had called himself James Ryan and that Ryan had asked where he could get on the 36A bus, the route on which the gun had been found. Peter Alphon had also stayed at the hotel, but in room 6 and not the one in the basement where the bullets had been found. Under questioning, Nudds changed his story, claiming that Alphon had actually been in the basement room and Ryan in number 6, but they had swapped rooms during the night.

  When police took the unusual step of naming Peter Alphon as a suspect in the murder of Michael Gregsten, Alphon gave himself up, but Valerie Storie failed to identify him as the killer. By this time, Nudds had yet again changed his statement, saying that what he had first said about James Ryan was true. He claimed that, realizing that Alphon was the main suspect, he wanted to assist the police in bringing him to justice.

  James Ryan was actually an alias of James Hanratty, a car thief and burglar. He rang the police and told them that as he had no alibi for the night of the murder, he had fled, but, he maintained, he was not the killer. Arrested eventually in Blackpool, he was identified by Valerie Storie in an identity parade – principally because of his cockney accent – and charged with the murder of Michael Gregsten and the rape and attempted murder of Valerie Storie.

  His trial opened in Bedfordshire on 22 January 1962 and Hanratty initially defended himself by claiming to have been in Liverpool on the day of the murder. He recalled handing his suitcase to an attendant with a withered arm at Liverpool Lime Street station’s left luggage counter. The man was introduced as a witness, but claimed never to have seen Hanratty. Unknown to the defence team, however, there was another man with a deformed hand working there and he did remember a man he thought might have been called something like ‘Ratty’. He was never brought forward by detectives. Doubt remained as to Hanratty’s whereabouts on the evening of the 22nd.

  Suddenly, however, he changed his alibi, saying he had actually been in Rhyl in North Wales that night, having travelled there to sell a stolen watch. It was a foolish move because at that point there really was no evidence linking him with the crime. A woman who ran a boarding house in Rhyl, recognised Hanratty and said he had stayed sometime during the week of 19 to 26 August, but her records were chaotic and little could be worked out from them. The prosecution accused the boarding house owner of merely lying to gain publicity for her establishment. Nonetheless, the defence lawyers established that Hanratty could have stayed there on the night in question.

  Valerie Storie’s testimony was, of course, critical. Seated in her wheelchair, she was still traumatised by the event and the questioning by the defence was, consequently, less rigorous than it perhaps might have been. She insisted that James Hanratty had killed Michael Gregsten but her belief was still based on nothing more than his cockney accent.

  The jury entered a unanimous verdict of guilty after retiring for nine and a half hours. James Hanratty was sentenced to death and, on 4 April 1962, he became the 8th last man to be hanged in Britain.

  Doubts lingered, however. Many still believe that Peter Alphon was the killer and one theory suggests that he confessed to a man called Jean Justice that he was paid £5,000 to end the affair between Gregsten and Storie. The gun went off entirely by accident, he claimed.

  On 22 August 1962, the anniversary of the murder, Alphon is reported to have visited Hanratty’s family and offered them compensation for their son’s death. They showed him the door. Then, in May 1967, he staged a press conference in which he confessed to the murder and spoke about the involvement of a man called Charles France who hated Hanratty for having an affair with his daughter.

  There is much to support the fact that Alphon was the A6 murderer. He resembled the Identikit pictures, even more than Hanratty; when stressed, he spoke with a cockney accent; he had no alibi; he had a motive and he was not a good driver. An investigative journalist proved also that Alphon did receive substantial cash payments between October 1961 and June 1962. But the police have continued to refuse to investigate Alphon’s alleged involvement.

  With the arrival of DNA testing, new hope arrived for James Hanratty’s supporters who over the years had even included Beatle John Lennon and his artist wife Yoko Ono, who made a short film about the case. However, comparing DNA taken from material used as evidence proved inconclusive. Finally, James Hanratty’s body was exhumed in 2001 in order to obtain DNA from it. It was compared with mucus found in the handkerchief in which the revolver had been wrapped before being left on the 36A bus, and with semen found on Valerie Storie’s underwear. DNA samples from both sources matched Hanratty’s, the first time evidence had been found linking him with the crime scene. Still, concerns remained about contamination of the materials used. Judges reviewing the case, however, regarded the contamination theory as ‘fanciful’. They concluded that James Hanratty had, in actual fact, been guilty of murder and rape.

  On the eve of his execution, James Hanratty told his family, ‘I’m dying tomorrow, but I’m innocent. Clear my name.’ They never let him down and even now they continue to fight on his behalf.

  Gary Gilmore

  ‘Let’s do it!’ he said, looking at the white screen where there were five holes through which poked the barrels of five rifles. Then to the priest who had given him the last rites, he said quietly in Latin the words for, ‘There will always be a father’. Suddenly the air was filled with the sound of gunshots and a few seconds later, his head slumped forwards. He raised his right hand slightly and let it drop as blood slowly seeped through his shirt, dripping onto the floor. A doctor approached, checked him and said that he was still alive, but within twenty seconds, he was dead. After an incredible months-long media circus, at 8.07 a.m. on 17 January 1977, Gary Mark Gilmore had at last got his wish and been executed.

  It was a miserable life, half of it spent behind bars, that he at last left behind.

  He was born in 1940 in Waco, Texas, to a couple who travelled around the western United States, his father selling advertising space, before settling finally in Portland, Oregon in 1952. His father had been a conman and much of the ad space he sold did not exist. He was also violent and abusive, especially where his son Gary was concerned. It created in the young boy a hatred and distrust of authority that would eventually turn him into a killer.

  Within a couple of years, Gary Gilmore’s long history of criminality had begun, with offences such as shoplifting, assault and car theft. At the age of fourteen, although he was a highly intelligent kid and a talented artist, he dropped out of high school and hitch-hiked to Texas. After a few months he returned to Portland where he resumed his criminal activity, starting a car-stealing ring with some acquaintances. He was soon under arrest, but his father hired a lawyer who got him off with a caution. If n
othing else, his father’s actions showed Gilmore that the legal system could be manipulated if you knew what you were doing. Two weeks later, however, he was in court again on another charge of stealing a car. This time, they were not so lenient. He was sent to the Maclaren Reform School for Boys for a year and spent the next few years in and out of jail until, at the age of eighteen, he was sent to the Oregon State Correctional Institution, again for car theft. Following his release, it was not long before he was back behind bars, now adding armed robbery to his substantial rap sheet. During this incarceration, however, his father Frank died and on hearing the news, Gilmore went mad, wrecking his prison cell and trying to kill himself with a broken light bulb, the first of numerous suicide attempts. He was not permitted to attend his father’s funeral and as a result became increasingly difficult to handle.

  Prolixin is an antipsychotic drug that is used in the treatment of psychoses, such as schizophrenia. They decided to give it to Gary Gilmore to try to calm him down and reduce the violence he was displaying towards both prison warders and other inmates. Prolixin reduced him to a shambling, drooling zombie and horrified his mother when she next visited him. Eventually she persuaded the authorities to stop prescribing the drug to him but he would never forget its dehumanizing effects.

  At twenty-four he was released from prison, but when he was arrested for robbing a man of just $11, the state of Oregon decided enough was enough. He was sentenced to fifteen years in Oregon State Penitentiary.

  Gilmore was a habitual rule-breaker in prison and spent a large proportion of his sentence in solitary confinement. He used this time to his advantage, however, reading voraciously and writing poetry. He also developed his artistic skills to such an extent that he began to win art competitions. The authorities looked approvingly on this aspect of his character and he was granted early release in 1972 so that he could attend art school at a Eugene college. Needless to say, however, he blew the opportunity. On registration day at the college, he was getting drunk in a bar.

  A month later, he was under arrest yet again for another armed robbery. In court, he made a moving plea for leniency. He explained how he had been in jail for all but two years since the age of fourteen:

  …you can keep a person locked up too long’ ... there is an appropriate time to release somebody or to give them a break…I stagnated in prison a long time and I have wasted most of my life. I want freedom and I realise that the only way to get it is to quit breaking the law…I’ve got problems and if you sentence me to additional time, I’m going to compound them.

  The judge was not listening, however. He sen-tenced him to nine years. Gilmore was furious and took his rage out on the prison authorities, becoming even more violent and trying on a number of occasions to end his life. When they threatened him with Prolixin again, he begged them to come up with an alternative. That alternative was the harsh regime of the maximum-security penitentiary at Marion in Illinois. He was allowed no family visits, but began a correspondence with a cousin, Brenda Nichol, who began working for his release, certain that a stable environment such as the one her family could offer him, would sort him out.

  In 1977, she met him at the airport in Provo, Utah. At the age of thirty-seven, he carried his entire worldly possessions in a tiny sports bag.

  They found him a job in his Uncle Vern Damico’s shoe repair shop and he also worked installing insulation in houses. But, after being institutionalised for so long, Gilmore found it hard to settle and began to drink heavily in the bars of Provo. He finally found a girlfriend, however. Nicole Barrett was an attractive nineteen-year-old who had already been married and divorced three times. He moved in with her in the town of Spanish Fork, near Provo but it was not always good between them, especially when he was drinking, which was most of the time. Nicole feared the violent side she knew he had and eventually she and her two children moved out.

  He searched everywhere for her, ranting to his cousin Brenda that he might kill her when he found her. She stayed out of sight, however, and he could not locate her.

  Gilmore’s blue Mustang that he had bought from a used car dealer was the bane of his life. It was always breaking down. On the dealer’s forecourt was a ten-year-old white Ford pickup truck that he really wanted but he still owed money on the Mustang and the dealer had no interest in selling him another one on credit. Deep in debt and determined to have the truck, he went about getting money the only way he knew how, by stealing it.

  On Monday 19 July 1976, he persuaded the used car dealer that he would be in a position to pay for the white pickup within a few weeks. The man warned him that if any payments were missed it would be immediately repossessed. They shook on it and Gilmore drove off in his new vehicle, heading for Nicole’s mother’s house but not finding his girlfriend there. Her younger sister April had always liked Gilmore and asked him if she could come for a ride in the truck.

  At around 10.30 p.m. that night, he stopped the truck and told April he had a phone call to make. He got out, leaving her in the truck. He walked around the corner out of her sight, towards a Sinclair petrol station. He noted that it was quiet and only the attendant, a young Mormon named Max Jensen, was there. Gilmore quickly walked into the building and pulled out a .22 Browning Automatic. He ordered Jensen to empty his pockets and then pushed him into the toilet where he told him to lie down with his arms under his body. Gilmore put the barrel of the gun to the terrified young man’s head and saying, ‘This one’s for me,’ and pulled the trigger. Putting the barrel to the man’s head again, he said, ‘This one’s for Nicole.’

  Blood pooling on the floor and some even getting on his trousers, he turned and left the petrol station, neglecting to pick up a wad of cash on the counter. He and April went to see the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and he dropped by his cousin Brenda’s house for a short time. She noticed that he was agitated and thought there was something wrong. He and April spent the night in a hotel.

  The next day, Tuesday 20 July, he had a problem with the pickup truck and took it to a garage near his Uncle Vern’s house. He left the truck to be repaired, saying there was something he had to do. Walking towards his uncle’s house, he saw the City Center Motel next door and had an idea. He went in.

  Twenty-five-year-old Ben Bushnell, manager of the motel, lived on the premises with his wife and their baby son. He was walking into the foyer as Gilmore walked through the door with his gun in his hand. Gilmore ordered him to hand over the cash box and then lie down on the floor. He shot him in the head as he lay there. Bushnell was not dead, although he was fatally wounded and as he lay there trying to move, his wife Debbie walked into the foyer. Gilmore ran out, removing the cash from the cash box and stowing the box under a bush as he went. A little further on he was doing the same with his gun when it went off, a bullet ripping into the fleshy bit of his left hand between the thumb and palm.

  Back at the garage he collected his truck, but the garage owner noticed he was bleeding. After Gilmore drove off, he heard about the shooting at the motel on a scanner he had and called the police, passing on the make, model and registration of Gilmore’s pickup.

  When Gilmore called Brenda and told her he had been shot and needed bandages and painkillers, she instead phoned the police, giving them her cousin’s location. Meanwhile, Ben Bushnell’s wife was being told that her husband had died.

  Gilmore was arrested outside Nicole’s mother’s house and the next day, when he asked his cousin why she had turned him in, she replied, ‘You commit a murder Monday, and commit a murder Tuesday. I wasn’t waiting for Wednesday to roll around.’

  At first, he denied having killed the two men, but his alibis did not stack up and his stash of stolen guns had been found. Eventually, he confessed, saying that if he had not been stopped, he would have carried on killing.

  At his October trial, the prosecution concentrated on the murder of Ben Bushnell, the one which provided the strongest case and the jury took just an hour and twenty minutes to find him guilty
of first degree murder. He was sentenced to death and was asked whether he wanted to be shot by a firing squad or hanged. He chose to be shot.

  Until a few months previously, death sentences were customarily commuted to life. No one had been executed in the United States since the US Supreme Court had declared capital punishment to be a cruel and unusual punishment in 1972. This had been overturned in July 1976 by the Supreme Court judges and execution was now permitted. Astonishingly, however, the authorities were reluctant to carry out the punishment, even though Gilmore insisted that he wanted to die, to the extent that he dismissed his defence team and would not even allow an appeal to be brought. He had to argue his case in front of the Utah Supreme Court, insisting that he did not wish to spend the remainder of his life on death row. ‘It’s been sanctioned by the courts,’ he said, ‘and I accept that.’

  His execution date, 15 November, came and went with protest groups and the American Civil Liberties Union trying to stop the execution. Gilmore became globally famous as his case raged on and he received thousands of letters, many from young women.

  Meanwhile, he and Nicole staged a joint attempt at suicide. She smuggled pills into the prison, hidden in a balloon in her vagina. The two swallowed them at the same time, but both survived and she was banned from visiting him.

  His story was sold to a film producer for $50,000 which Gilmore asked to be distributed amongst the family, some also going to the families of his two victims.

  Another execution date, 6 December, passed, after his mother requested a stay. Gilmore had been on a hunger strike and she said he did not know what he was doing. That stay of execution was overturned ten days later but when Gilmore learned he would have to wait another month to be executed, he tried to kill himself.