Haunted by Hungerford

[faceless]

Monstrous: Michael Ryan (left)
Haunted by Hungerford
by NATASHA COURTENAY-SMITH
10th August 2007

A few weeks ago in a Hungerford pub, conversation turned to a certain Michael Ryan, who lived and died in the sleepy Berkshire town 20 years ago this month. Even after so many years, the locals standing at the bar found themselves contemplating the same impossible questions. One woman present that evening was 41-year-old Lyn Thompson, a mother-of-three who has lived in the town all her life. As she puts it: "I don't think we'll ever know the answers, but that doesn't stop any of us from asking ourselves and each other time and time again: how could he have done what he did?"

Michael Ryan is, of course, the unemployed labourer who, in August 1987, left his home in Hungerford and set out for Savernake Forest, a nearby beauty spot. There, just before midday, he produced an arsenal of weapons, including a 9mm Italian Beretta pistol, a Chinese-manufactured assault rifle and a semi-automatic rifle, and shot 33-year-old nurse Susan Godfrey, who was picnicking with her small children, Hannah, then four, and James, two.

It marked the start of a seven-hour massacre in which Ryan - 27 at the time - killed 16 people, including his neighbours, a police officer and his own mother, and injured 15 others. At 6.52pm, after barricading himself in the John O'Gaunt school, which he had attended as a child, he killed himself. At once, his monstrous acts entered the annals of criminal history and ensured that the name Hungerford now sits alongside Lockerbie and Dunblane in the nation's consciousness, inextricably identified with horror. The killing spree paved the way for changes in the firearms laws. Now, a few days before the 20th anniversary of that terrible day, the residents of Hungerford are steeling themselves for the renewed feelings of anguish and fury which such a milestone will inevitably bring.

Of all the town's residents, Lyn Thompson probably knew Michael Ryan the best. He was her next-door neighbour, and during the shootings he started a fire which gutted both their houses. "I always thought he was a strange man," says Lyn. "A few months before his rampage I asked if I could have the old swing that was sitting doing nothing in his back garden. I was a young mum without much money and I knew my children would love it. He looked at me with blank eyes, simply said: "No," then walked off. "His mother was lovely but she'd spoiled him. His father had died in 1984 after a long battle with cancer and he was an only child. "I thought it was better for her that he shot her, too. If she'd lived, the shame would probably have killed her anyway."

Today, Hungerford appears to have recovered. On market day, the high street is bustling and residents are sitting outside cafes in the enjoying the sunshine. Daily life in this middle England town drifts along to the rhythm of school fetes, coffee mornings, the pony club and dog walking. Should you hope to find a large memorial on the high street to those who lost their lives, you would not be in luck. Instead, it is discreetly placed next to the town's football ground, away from the town centre.

The neat terraced cottages of South View, where Michael Ryan lived, look like ideal family homes. Over the years, the entrance to this road had been widened and four new flats have been built to replace the houses he burned down. But they are in keeping with the original design and it is hard to imagine now that anything significant ever happened here.

Yet so close-knit is the community here that almost everyone in this town knows someone who was affected by the shootings. For instance, the town's mayor Peter Harries, who will be hosting the town's official memorial service on August 19, is the father of Carl Harries, a young soldier who was commended by the coroner for his bravery on that tragic afternoon. Now 41, Carl is serving as an Army captain in Basra. His mum Shirley Harries, 61, says: "Carl came face-toface with Michael Ryan. He's since said all he remembers was a "blank face, semi-smiling". "Carl ducked through a hedge, then spent the afternoon running from one victim to another, calming people and administering first-aid. He helped get 22-year-old Sandra Hill out of her car after she'd been shot in the head. Sadly, she died in his arms. He also resuscitated Ian Playle and tried to save the lives of Jack and Myrtle Gibb"

Trevor Wainwright, 53, was the local policeman at the time of the massacre and continued to serve in Hungerford Police until six years ago. His father and one of his colleagues were killed by Ryan: his mother was shot but survived. Now a tax inspector who still lives in Hungerford with his wife Ruby, 43, a housewife, and their 14-year-old son Daniel, Trevor still finds it impossible not to dwell on the past. "A few days after the shootings, I woke to the front page headline: PC Signed Own Father's Death Warrant. I took one look at it, and burst into tears," he says, his voice trembling. "The story was in reference to the fact that a few months before the massacre I'd dealt with a variation to Michael Ryan's firearms certificate. "The bitter irony that he'd used his guns to kill my father and colleague hit me as soon as I heard about his rampage. And there it was being bandied about in the Press. '"The thought of how I felt on that day still brings tears to my eyes."

At the time, Trevor had been the local bobby for 15 years and was familiar with most people in the town, including Ryan. He is still baffled as to why he "flipped". "I often passed him walking his dog on Hungerford Common," he recalls. "Although our dogs would run about together, he never really said much. <[>"He had a reputation for being a bit of a loner. But if you'd asked me to make a list of the people in the town who I thought were in the slightest bit capable of doing what Michael Ryan did, his name wouldn't have been on it."

Ryan was a victim of bullying and was an under-achiever who was overly protected by his mother. He was a fantasist who told his family he had a girlfriend he was due to marry, but who proved to be nonexistent. He claimed to various acquaintances that he had a private pilot's license, ran a gun shop and had taken a trip on the Orient Express, all of which were shown to be lies. He invested in a military camouflage jacket and told people he'd once been a member of the 2nd Parachute Regiment, another lie. Ryan had spent his spare time at Savernake and had boasted to colleagues of creeping up on picnic parties without them knowing.

Shortly before the killings he acquired three semi-automatic guns, quit his job and joined the Tunnel Rifle and Pistol Club in Devizes. On the day of the shootings, Trevor was enjoying a day off and cutting a friend's lawn in a nearby village. He was told about the rampage by a friend who'd seen it on the news and immediately returned to Hungerford. "I arrived to see residents cowering behind bushes on the common and to hear Ryan's gun going off in the distance," he says. "I'll never forget the smell of gunpowder, which lingered heavily in the air. I went to the police station to work and one of my colleagues said my father was dead and my mother was in hospital. A friend took me to Princess Margaret Hospital in Swindon where I waited in the corridor, watching as other victims arrived.

"It was carnage. Some had been shot in their cars, others as they passed Ryan in the street; some were alive, some dead. It was an hour before I heard Mum was going to be fine. Dad, I was later told, died instantly. He was still sitting dead in his car, which had now become a crime scene. Thankfully, someone had put a blanket over his head."

In those bleak early days, it played on Trevor's mind that not only had he signed Ryan's gun licence, but he'd also changed the date his own parents, who lived in Kent, were due to visit. Moving their visit to a day later than originally planned meant they drove straight into Ryan's path. Trevor's colleague, PC Roger Brereton, the first officer at the scene, also lost his life. 'The day a newspaper printed that cruel headline was one of the darkest days of my life. My mother helped put things in perspective. Despite having lost her husband and undergone treatment for bullet wounds to her breast and fingers, she phoned me from her hospital bed as soon as she saw it. "You pull yourself together and get down here to visit," she said. "When I got there, we cried together. The whole event was just one of those awful twists of fate, a totally random event. I picked myself up as best I could and I was back at work within a few weeks."

Three months after the shootings, by which point a few people were beginning to move away from the area because of what happened, Trevor's mother moved into town. "She knew she wouldn't be alone with her grief there,' says Trevor. "She coped admirably. For many years, images of Dad slumped dead at the wheel of his car continued to pop up unexpectedly on television. I see the shootings as a part of Hungerford's history and I don't think it would be right to brush it under the carpet. There is a memorial service planned for this month, which I will be attending."

His sentiments are shared by housewife Sylvia Pascoe, 52. At the time, she was a St John Ambulance worker and was awarded the Life Saving Medal of the Order of St John for saving her then 14-year-old neighbour, Lisa Mildenhall. Lisa was shot in South View in front of her house at a range of five metres. After hearing gun shots, she had run outside and saw Ryan. Her sister Marie, then 13, ducked for cover but Lisa froze and was shot four times. Sylvia, who still lives in Hungerford with her retired husband John, says: "I don't believe the massacre should ever be forgotten or not spoken about, even in decades to come."

At 12.55pm on the day of the shootings, Sylvia, who still lives in South View, doing the housework in her dressing-gown when she heard the sound of breaking glass. "My son Robert burst through the back door saying our neighbour Lisa had been hurt," she recalls. "I ran out and into next door's kitchen where Lisa was slumped, bleeding profusely." In the 45 minutes it took for the ambulance to arrive, Sylvia stemmed Lisa's bleeding.

Later, she'd discover that as well as the bullet wound to her leg, Lisa had also been shot in the hip and twice in her groin. "The first ambulance couldn't get to us because Michael Ryan was outside pointing his gun at them," she says. "Two paramedics finally reached us by jumping over the garden fence."

While Lisa was taken to hospital, Sylvia joined her neighbours and huddled upstairs in a bedroom for four hours. Her children later told her they'd come face-to-face with Ryan while playing in front of the house. He'd stood pointing a gun at them with a band of bullets strung around his chest before opening fire. Thankfully, none of them were hit. During the hours they were huddled upstairs, Ryan continued on his rampage. Among others, he killed his neighbour Ken Clements, PC Brereton, his mother Dorothy when she pleaded with him to stop shooting, Francis Butler, shot while walking his dog, and Douglas Wainwright, George White and Eric Vardy, all shot while driving past.

"Around 4pm, a police marksman called out to us from a field opposite, telling us to run from the house," recalls Sylvia. Bodies littered the street and blood-stained cars were abandoned. We had to dodge around Mrs Ryan's body, as well as that of our other neighbours. We headed towards the line of police at the bottom of the road and were ushered into a shop for safety. We stayed there all night, and at 2am I remember looking out to see police carrying away my neighbours in body bags. All I felt was total shock. In the weeks following the shootings I remember noticing that the town had gone strangely quiet and it was five days before the birds began to sing again. For years, whenever I said where I was from, people would immediately start talking about Michael Ryan. That has stopped now. Although essentially the children and I were fine, what happened really affected my husband. He felt very guilty that he hadn't been there to protect us."

Even deeper scars are evident at a petrol station in nearby Marlborough, which was Ryan's second port of call. Owner Zubair Dean knew Ryan as one of his regular customers. Shortly after killing Susan Godfrey, Ryan drove into the petrol station and fired at Zubair's then wife Kakoub, who was serving that day. Although the gun did not go off and Kakoub escaped unhurt, the mental trauma left her unable to work again. The couple have now divorced and it is obvious the shootings and his wife's resulting ill health played a significant role in the breakdown of their marriage.

The mayor of Hungerford at the time, Ron Tarry, is now 81. Just as he did then, he is taking it upon himself to speak to the Press in order to shield those who don't want attention as the anniversary approaches. When he became mayor in the spring of 1987, he'd expected the usual round of rotary lunches, garden parties and children's fetes. Instead, Ron, who lives in Hungerford with his wife Beryl, 78, in the same bungalow he's lived in for 40 years, found himself trying to hold together a traumatised community. He says: "The events of that day still live with us all. How could anyone who was here ever forget what happened on that terrible day?"

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I remember this massacre as clearly as if it happened yesterday. There was a similar scenario which happened in Glasgow a few days after, though that guy 'only' killed 3 people (strangers) before killing himself and it's not something that got much press coverage.

[luke]

i remember this as well faceless, we was coming back from holiday that day, we lived in wiltshire and wasn't far from all this going on - listening on the radio as we drove back ...

[faceless]

today is the 20th anniversary -

here's the BBC report from the day

[pirtybirdy]

Wow! I don't recall ever hearing about that story. That year was the year I graduated high school, and I know I was almost never home or in front of the television. I must have missed that bit of news. What a tragedy. I really would like to know what goes through people's minds when they go on these rampages or killing sprees. Most often they kill themselves at the end, or police kill them. Most times you hear these people were loners. I wish the shooters could be saved before they kill others and themselves. The mind is a complicated organ. Bless all those who were traumatized by this situation. I hope many have been able to be healed by time.

[Skylace]