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
Bow cinema murder Bow cinema murder The Bow cinema murder occurred on 7 August 1934 in Bow Road, East London, where 19-year-old John Frederick Stockwell, an attendant at the Eastern Palace Cinema on that road, attacked his manager Dudley Henry Hoard with an axe. Stockwell was arrested by the police in Great Yarmouth four days later. He admitted at his subsequent trial that he had stolen £90 of the cinema's takings and attacked Hoard when the latter tried to stop him removing a suitcase in which it was hidden. Stockwell was found guilty of murder and sentenced to be hanged at Pentonville Prison,