Killers - The Most Barbaric Murderers of Our Time (17 page)

‘The facts of his case ultimately will confirm that Richard is a wrongly convicted man,’ she said. ‘I believe fervently that his innocence will be proven to the world.’

Nevertheless, Richard Ramirez remains on death row.

Chapter 14

Hungerford

Name: Michael Ryan

Nationality: English

Number of victims: 16 killed

Favoured method of killing: shooting

Final note: shot himself in his school

Reign of terror: 20 August 1987

On 20 August 1987, 33-year-old Susan Godfrey took her two children for a picnic in Savernake Forest, 10 miles from the drowsy village of Hungerford in Berkshire. It was around 12.30 p.m. They had finished eating and Mrs Godfrey was strapping four-year-old Hannah and two-year-old James into the back of the family car when a man dressed in black appeared.

Incongruously for the Berkshire countryside, he was carrying a Chinese-made AK47 – a Kalashnikov assault rifle more usually seen in the hands of Third World guerrillas. He took the car keys from the dashboard of the black Nissan and forced Mrs Godfrey to come with him. Less than a hundred yards from the car he emptied the entire magazine of the Kalashnikov – 15 high-velocity rounds – into her back at point-blank range. The children were later found wandering the forest.

There seems to have been no motive for this savage murder. Mrs Godfrey was not sexually assaulted and there seems to have been no connection between her and her murderer – 27-year-old Michael Ryan – before her death. There is no evidence that Ryan had trailed the family. He had been in the forest, armed, since the mid-morning. The police could only speculate that she had surprised him during target practice. A local boy had heard a burst of semi-automatic fire from the forest at around 10.30 that morning.

But one senseless act of violence was not enough for the lonely and deluded Ryan. He drove his D-registered Vauxhall Astra back down the A4 towards his home in Hungerford.

Hungerford is an ancient market town with a population of less than five thousand. The broad main street is dominated by the Bear Hotel and the redbrick clock-tower that tolls out the hours with a long, flat note. Hungerford was granted a charter by John of Gaunt, whose name is commemorated by a pub in the town and the secondary school Michael Ryan attended. The charter allows the owner of three cottages the freedom of the town. This brings with it grazing and fishing rights – the nearby River Kennet is well stocked with trout and grayling. The owner also has to hold office on ‘Tutty’ (Tithing) Day and act as ale-taster, Constable and Tutty Man, parading through the streets in morning dress, kissing maidens and throwing oranges and pennies to the children.

The summer in Hungerford is quiet and still, though in August the sky is occasionally darkened by smoke from the burning stubble. The redbrick villas of the old town are a symbol of stability in the changing English countryside. The only lurking sense of fear emanates from the dark Victorian mental asylum that stands across the cattle grid on the Common. On the back road from Hungerford to Lambourn there is a monument half-buried in the hedgerow. It commemorates the death of two policemen who were murdered there by a gang of robbers in 1870. It was Hungerford’s only previous experience of public slaughter.

On the way back to Hungerford, Ryan stopped at the Golden Arrow filling station in Froxfield, Wiltshire. It was 12.45 p.m. The cashier, mother-of-three Kabaub Dean, recognised Ryan. He stopped there for petrol every other day, normally paying by credit card but never passing the time of day.

Today was somehow different. Mrs Dean noticed Ryan was hanging around nervously. He appeared to be waiting for another customer to leave. Then she saw him fiddling about with something in the boot of his car. Suddenly he pulled a gun out and started shooting at her. The glass window of her booth shattered and she was showered with glass. She dived for cover.

Ryan approached as she lay helpless under the counter. She begged for her life as he stood over her. Coldly he took aim and – at point-blank range – he pulled the trigger.

Mrs Dean heard the click of an empty gun chamber. Ryan had run out of ammunition. He pulled the trigger again and again. Mrs Dean heard four or five clicks. Then Ryan walked back to his car and drove away.

His next stop was Number Four South View in Hungerford where he lived with his mother. There he had built up a fearsome arsenal. In a steel cabinet bolted to the wall of the house he kept at least one shotgun, two rifles, the 7.62mm Kalashnikov, three handguns including a 9mm pistol and an American-made M-l carbine and 50 rounds of ammunition which he had bought for £150 at the Wiltshire Shooting Centre just eight days before the incident.

Ryan had joined the shooting centre only three weeks before that. There he was known as ‘polite’ and ‘unremarkable’. Those who got to know him better found him articulate, especially about his favourite subject – guns. He could reel off a detailed history of the M-l and its use in World War Two and the Korean War. He had been practising with the M-l on the club’s shooting range the day before the massacre.

Little is known about what occurred between Ryan and his mother when he got home. But it is known that less than twenty minutes after the shooting at the petrol station, Ryan shot his mother. Her body was found lying in the road outside the house. Ryan then set the house on fire. The blaze quickly spread to the three adjoining houses in the terrace.

A neighbour, Jack Gibbs, was the next to die. He was in the kitchen of his home when Ryan began his murderous assault. Sixty-six-year-old Mr Gibbs threw himself across his 63-year-old, wheelchair-bound wife, Myrtle Gibbs, to protect her from the burst of semi-automatic fire from Ryan’s Kalashnikov. Four high-powered bullets passed through his body, fatally wounding his wife. She died in Princess Margaret Hospital, Swindon, the next day.

Then Ryan shot neighbours Sheila Mason and her 70-year-old father Roland as they rushed from their home at Number Six. He gunned down 84-year-old retired shopkeeper Abdur Khan who used to wander the streets of Hungerford from his home in Fairview Road, talking to anyone he met.

Ryan shot at passing cars, killing George White from Newbury who happened to be driving through Hungerford. Ian Playle, the 34-year-old chief clerk of West Berkshire Magistrates’ Court, was driving down the A338 through the village with his wife Elizabeth, his six-year-old son Mark and their 18-month-old baby daughter Elizabeth when Ryan sprayed their car with bullets. Mr Playle was hit several times and died later at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.

As Ryan roamed the village where he had lived his entire life the death toll mounted. Ken Clements was killed as he walked down a footpath at the end of South View. Douglas Wainwright and his wife were shot in their car on Priory Avenue. Taxi-driver Marcus Barnard was on his way home to his wife and month-old baby when he was shot. Eric Vardy was also found dead in his car in Priory Road.

Ryan’s last victim was Sandra Hill. She was also shot in her car on Priory Road. She was rushed to the local doctor’s surgery, but it was too late. She died shortly after arrival.

In less than an hour and a half, Ryan’s murderous rampage left 14 dead and 15 wounded. But the police would soon be closing in on the quiet Berkshire village whose name would soon be synonymous with mindless murder.

At 12.40 p.m. Mrs Kabaub Dean, the cashier at the Golden Arrow service station, had called the police. But she thought the shooting incident was just a robbery until much later when she heard about the bloodletting in Hungerford on the radio. Five minutes after her call the Wiltshire police alerted the neighbouring Thames Valley force assuming that Ryan would have moved into their jurisdiction.

At 12.47 p.m. the Thames Valley police got their first 999 call from Hungerford. The caller reported a shooting in South View, the street where Ryan lived with his mother. Shortly after 1 p.m. Police Constable Roger Brereton arrived in South View. At 1.05 p.m. he radioed the message: ‘Eighteen. One-oh-nine. One-oh-nine.’ It was the code for ‘urgent assistance required, I have been shot’. No more was heard from him. His body was later recovered from his police car near Ryan’s house. He had been shot in the back. He left a wife and two teenage sons.

By 2 p.m. the killing had stopped. Then the caretaker at John O’Gaunt Secondary School reported seeing a man enter the school building at around 1.52 p.m.

Michael Ryan had attended the school ten years before. It had done little for him academically. He had remained in the C-stream for pupils of below average achievement. The headmaster David Lee could not recall him. Lyn Rowlands, who had been classmates with Ryan at Hungerford County Primary School and John O’Gaunt Secondary School, said that he never seemed a very happy child. He was always on his own, always on the sidelines. Other children would try to include him in their games, but he was always moody and sulky. Eventually people left him to his own devices. But she did not remember him ever being nasty in any way. He was not the kind of boy who got involved in fights. He was very introverted and ‘a bit of a mystery’.

Another of his schoolmates, Andy Purfitt, told much the same story – that Ryan was a loner. He never mixed with anyone and did not play football with the other boys. But Purfitt remembers that Ryan was picked on by the other children a lot. As if to compensate for this bullying, Ryan developed an interest in guns. Even at the age of 12, he used to fire a .l77 air gun at the cows in the fields behind the house, a neighbour recalled. Later, he went out at nights shooting rabbits. One night he met a man who was much bigger than him. The man got a bit stroppy, so Michael pulled a gun out of his pocket and pointed it at the man. The man turned on his heels and ran.

‘That just goes to prove the power of the gun,’ Ryan boasted.

He collected ceremonial swords, military badges and medals, and military magazines. School friends say he preferred guns to girls. When he left school, one of the first things he did was get a small-arms licence.

During his last year at school, Ryan hardly ever turned up for classes. He left with no qualifications and drifted through a number of labouring jobs. Now, after his murderous rampage through his home town, Michael Ryan was back at school and – as ever – alone. The Chief Constable of the Thames Valley police, Colin Smith, claimed that prompt action by armed police officers prevented Ryan from killing more people than he did. But it was not until 5 p.m. that the police confirmed that Ryan was in the school. They surrounded it.

The local police admitted that they did know Ryan, but only in the way that most of the inhabitants of a quiet, friendly market town know each other. He had no criminal record. A local constable had visited Ryan’s home in South View in June, just two months before the massacre, when Ryan had applied to have his licence extended to cover the 7.62 calibre automatic rifle. Ryan already had a firearms licence and, when he registered his new Kalashnikov, the police had checked on the house to make sure that the gun was stored securely. The officer they sent was Police Constable Trevor Wainwright. Wainwright said of Ryan: ‘From local knowledge I knew he was not a yob or mixed with yobs. He was not a villain and I knew he did not have a criminal record. He was a loner but you could not hold that against him. The checks were very thorough.’

The young police officer had checked that the cabinet where Ryan kept the weapons was secure, then approved the extension of his licence and forwarded it to the headquarters of Thames Valley Police. In doing so, he had sealed the fate of his own parents, who were later shot by Ryan while they were on their way to visit their son.

While Michael Ryan was holed up in his old school, the children of his first victim, James and Hannah Godfrey, had been found. Apparently, despite witnessing the horrific murder of their mother, they had been tired and had had a little nap. When they awoke, they had gone to look for help.

They met Mrs Myra Rose, herself a grandmother, who was taking a stroll in the forest. She saw the two children coming down a hill towards her. The little boy was wearing a Thomas-the-Tank-Engine T-shirt and his sister had her hair tied back with a pink headband. Two-year-old James grabbed Mrs Rose’s hand and refused to let go. Hannah, who was four, acted as spokesperson.

‘A man in black shot my mummy,’ she said. ‘He has taken the car keys. James and me cannot drive a car and we are going home. We are tired.’

Seventy-five-year-old Mrs Rose lived in Bournemouth and was visiting friends in nearby Marlborough when she decided to go for a walk alone in the Savernake Forest. She found what the children were telling her hard to believe.

‘It was such a horrific story for a little girl to tell,’ Mrs Rose said, ‘I did not know whether to believe it. The children were not crying.’

She was confused about what to do, but then she bumped into another family in the forest and told them what the children had said. One of them went to call the police and Mrs Rose sat down with the children to tell them stories.

‘I don’t think the youngsters really understood what had happened to their mother,’ she told the newspapers later. ‘James would not leave my side and I wanted to stay with the children.’

When the police came, they quickly found the bullet-riddled body of Susan Godfrey. Soon they were mounting a huge search of the 4,500-acre forest with teams of tracker dogs in case its glades contained the bodies of any further victims of Michael Ryan.

Talking to the police at John O’Gaunt School, Ryan appeared lucid and reasonable. He expressed no regret for killing Mrs Godfrey, nor any other of his victims. Only the murder of his mother seemed to trouble him.

Michael Ryan was thought of as a mummy’s boy. Born when his mother Dorothy, a canteen lady, was 33, he was an only child and she lavished all her attention on him. A friend of the family described Ryan as a ‘spoilt little wimp’. It was said: ‘He got everything he wanted from his mother.’ She would buy him a new car every year.

Ryan’s father, Alfred, was a council building inspector and was also attentive. Michael was devoted to him. When he died in 1985, two years before his son made the name Ryan notorious, Michael seemed to go to pieces. ‘He was his life, you see,’ said Michael’s uncle Leslie Ryan. ‘When he went, Michael seemed to go.’