Forensic Science: A6 Murder - Case Study Example

Michael was shot twice in the head causing him an instant death. In line with Stories testimony, the gunman claimed he had shot Michael since Michael had alarmed him by turning so speedily. The man then raped Storie prior to firing five shots at her and leaving her to die. She was found by Sydney Burton, a farm laborer, at 06:45 in the morning. He rushed to the road and saw John Kerr, a student taking a road census, who flagged down two vehicles while screaming at them to find an ambulance. Storie survived the ordeal, but she was paralyzed from her waist down for as long as she lived.

An identikit photo was created from the description of Storie, but as this contrasted with other descriptions given by other eyewitnesses, two photos were issued. For the meantime, the police found two .38 cartridge from a guesthouse room occupied by Mr. Ryan (a code-named later discovered to have been adopted by James Hanratty) on the material night prior to the murder. Nevertheless, the hotel room had also housed one Peter Alphon.  The police took the rare step of publicly labeling Alphon as a suspect in the murder.

Alphon consequently turned himself into the police, and he was put on an intensive interrogation. Storie failed to identify him in an identity parade, something that saw Alphon freed four days later. The law enforces then shifted their efforts to finding Hanratty, a car thief, and burglar, who was also facing another jail sentence for stealing. When kinfolk members, lawyers, and journalists, began to probe into the case, certain discrepancies arose together with the viewpoint that a guiltless man might have been hanged.

  To complicate the issue further, Alphon admitted to murdering the deceased, although he later pulled out this confession. Hanratty's family advocated tirelessly for years for a post-mortem, upholding that he was never in the scene of a crime.