'James Hanratty <i>was</i> my attacker'

A woman raped and left paralysed in the "A6 murder" 40 years ago will tonight tell how she was never in any doubt that James Hanratty was the killer.

Since that time Valerie Storie has never talked publicly about the murder of her lover or the attempts by Hanratty's family to clear his name after he was hanged for the killing.

Now, with new DNA evidence possibly crucial to deciding Hanratty's guilt, and the Court of Appeal about to deliver its verdict, she says she knew he was the killer as soon as she looked into his eyes - and that he knew it too.

Ms Storie, now 63 and paralysed from the shoulders down, says: "It was the eyes. They looked at me and I looked at him. He knew perfectly well that I knew who he was."

Any hint of doubt disappeared when he spoke the words her attacker had used as he held her and her married lover, Michael Gregsten, captive at gunpoint in a car beside the A6 before shooting them both on 22 August, 1961.

Ms Storie said: "As he was saying that sentence - 'Be quiet will you, I'm thinking' - I could hear that voice which had been talking to me for nearly six hours. And he knew when he looked at me: he knew that I knew. And there was no doubt whatsoever."

Talking in a Channel 4 documentary tonight, Ms Storie also relives the horror of the night when a stranger with a gun tapped on the window of their Morris Minor parked in a cornfield.

For the next five hours the gunman, sitting in the back seat, forced Mr Gregsten to drive the three of them around, before making him pull over at a lay-by near Bedford - at a place called Deadman's Hill. Minutes later Mr Gregsten was shot in the head.

"I screamed and said 'you bastard, you shot him, why did you do that'?" recalls Ms Storie, who still lives in the same Slough semi where she was born. She added: "He said 'he moved too quick'.

"There was the stench of blood and there had been this horrendous noise. I said 'I've got to get a doctor - please, please'. I begged him. He told me to turn around. He said 'kiss me'." As they faced each other, a passing car's headlights briefly illuminated the face of the killer. "That was the only real glimpse that I had of him, the lights were full on his face," said Ms Storie. Then he forced her into the back seat and raped her.

Hanratty was caught six weeks later and convicted in what was then the longest trial in British criminal history. On 4 April, 1962, he was hanged. He became a figurehead in the campaign to end capital punishment.

? Hanratty - The Whole Truth, tonight at 10pm on Channel 4.