James Hanratty James Hanratty James Hanratty (4 October 1936 – 4 April 1962), also known as the A6 Murderer, was a British criminal who was one of the final eight people in the UK to be executed before capital punishment was effectively abolished. He was hanged at Bedford Gaol on 4 April 1962, after being convicted of the murder of scientist Michael Gregsten, aged 36, who was shot dead in a car on the A6 at Deadman's Hill, near Clophill, Bedfordshire in August 1961. Gregsten's mistress, Valerie Storie, was raped, shot five times, and left paralysed. According to Storie, the couple were
Murder of Julia Martha Thomas convicted and sentenced to death after a jury of matrons rejected her last-minute attempt to avoid the death penalty by pleading pregnancy. She finally confessed to the murder the night before she was hanged, on 29 July at Wandsworth Prison. The case attracted huge public interest and was widely covered by the press in Great Britain and Ireland. Webster's behaviour after the crime and during the trial further increased the notoriety of the murder. Julia Martha Thomas was a former schoolteacher who had been twice widowed. Since the death of her second husband in 1873, she had lived on her