# 30: The Hungerford Massacre Part 2

An episode of [Outlore with Eleanor Neale](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1682504024), 27 Jul 2023, 43 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/105f723ac/podcast/play/103880341/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-5-9%2F401851613-44100-2-fb824278fb58ff5c.mp3

Today's episode is part 2 of the Hungerford Massacre. Please make sure you go back an episode and listen two part one before you dive into this one. Trigger Warning: shooting, suicide Resources: https://linktr.ee/usualdisclaimer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

## Transcript

[0:05] Hello everyone, and welcome to Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor
[0:09] Neil, a true crime podcast where we crack open some of the most
[0:12] notorious cases in history. Given the topics that we'll be
[0:16] investigating, it goes without saying that this show comes with
[0:20] a content warning. The details can get a bit heavy
[0:23] and you might find some of the themes we discussed triggering.
[0:26] Listener discretion is strongly advised and check the
[0:29] description for some resources and further information.
[0:38] So today's video is going to be Part 2 of the Hungerford
[0:42] Massacre. I'm just going to give you a
[0:44] quick recap and then we'll just get straight into it.
[0:47] So Michael Robert Ryan is a 27 year old man from Hungerford in
[0:51] England who decided on one day in August in 1987 that he was
[0:57] going to go out and commit and massacre.
[1:00] He started in a forest named Savannah Forest.
[1:03] He killed a woman named Susan Godfrey in front of her two
[1:06] children but spared the children.
[1:08] He then went to a petrol station and attempted another murder on
[1:12] the cashier at the petrol station but his gun didn't work
[1:15] and so he just fled and went back to Hungerford.
[1:18] Once he got back to Hungerford he set his home on fire, grabbed
[1:22] three of his guns and began shooting at his neighbors.
[1:25] So far in the case, he has killed 5 people and injured a
[1:29] further 5 or 6 more. Those five deaths include Susan
[1:33] from the forest, like I said, an elderly couple named the Masons,
[1:37] a police officer named PC Brereton, and a man named
[1:40] Kenneth Clements who was walking with his children.
[1:43] So far, the majority of the massacre has taken place on
[1:47] South View, which is where he lives.
[1:49] At this point. Again, Michael realizes that he
[1:52] has got all he can get from South View.
[1:54] He'd reloaded his guns. No more cars were coming up.
[1:57] None of the neighbors were coming out.
[1:59] And so he decides to move on on foot.
[2:02] He got onto a road named Fairview Road and he was
[2:05] listening out for another victim and heard voices coming from a
[2:09] back garden of a house. And so he follows them and goes
[2:12] into that back garden. There he found 84 year old Abdul
[2:15] Khan just enjoying the nice summer day in his back garden.
[2:20] And Michael Ryan shot and killed him.
[2:22] Michael then went back up onto South View, got the rest of his
[2:26] ammunition out of the boot of his car, realizing that it was
[2:29] easier on foot and on the move to go to all these different
[2:32] places. There were new victims.
[2:34] So he's getting all the ammunition out of his car when
[2:36] another car turns up onto South View.
[2:39] This time it was Julie Jackson's husband, IVA Jackson, the one
[2:43] that she called from the house saying that she was injured and
[2:46] he was being driven there by his friend George White.
[2:49] As soon as Michael spotted the car, he began shooting first at
[2:53] George White. He only needed to shoot him once
[2:56] and he killed him instantly. He then moved on to IVA Jackson,
[2:59] and he was shot quite a few times in the chest, in the
[3:02] shoulder, in the arm. And so Ivor kind of collapsed
[3:07] and realized that he wasn't dead.
[3:10] He thought he was probably gonna die, but he thought the best
[3:14] option at this point was to just play dead and hope that Michael
[3:18] didn't shoot him again. And literally straight after
[3:20] that, another car comes up South View, but this time it was
[3:26] Dorothy Ryan, Michael's own mother, on her way back from her
[3:30] job interview, actually, as she was driving towards South View.
[3:33] So before she'd even got onto the street, she had no idea that
[3:36] any of this was going on. A neighbor had actually tried to
[3:39] flag her down on another Rd. saying, like, whoa, don't go
[3:42] down there. Like, I've heard there's a
[3:43] gunman down there. There's a lot going on, Stacey.
[3:46] But anyway, she ignored this man she turned on to South View.
[3:50] And then she realized the devastation.
[3:53] She saw two cars smashed into each other.
[3:56] Of course, when George White was shot and killed, the car just
[3:59] continued going and crashed into the back of PC Brereton.
[4:02] She saw these two cars all smashed up, all the windows
[4:05] blown out. She saw all the houses on the
[4:08] street with their windows blown out.
[4:11] And then she looks up and sees her own son standing there at
[4:15] the end of the road with two big guns strapped to him, another
[4:18] one in his hand, in the middle of all of this devastation.
[4:21] So she's stops the car. She flies out and tries to
[4:24] reason with him. She's shouting to him, saying,
[4:26] please, Michael, stop, put the guns down.
[4:29] She's holding her hands up. She's surrendering.
[4:31] She approached these two cars, the one with Ivor and George in
[4:34] and the one with PC Brewerton in.
[4:36] And she spots Ivor in the passenger seat of the car.
[4:39] He was still alive. He did survive his injuries, but
[4:42] he was playing dead. And so she also thought that he
[4:44] was dead. And she looked at him and said,
[4:47] not you as well either. She continued up the road to
[4:50] Michael. And she was shouting, Michael,
[4:52] please stop, stop. To which he turned round, saw
[4:56] his own mother standing there pleading with him.
[4:59] But at this point, I don't think anyone could have stopped
[5:02] Michael Ryan. And he stood there and shot his
[5:05] own mother to death. Psychologists think at this
[5:09] point that Michael Ryan almost snapped out of it, but not
[5:13] entirely. He kind of, he must have come
[5:16] down a peg, at least in this kind of psychotic mental state
[5:21] that he was in, because instead of going on to a different road
[5:24] now to go and find more victims, he just went for a walk cross
[5:29] Hungerford Common, maybe to calm himself down, maybe to think
[5:32] about what he'd just done. He made it to the other side of
[5:34] the common where there was kind of like a kids play area.
[5:38] There was like a climbing frame, a slide.
[5:40] There was an outdoor pool. And obviously with it being a
[5:43] really warm summer's day in the middle of the school holidays,
[5:46] there was about 20 or so children there with their
[5:48] families. But this is something you might
[5:51] have already noticed about Michael Ryan is that he doesn't
[5:53] seem to want to target children. He's had plenty of opportunities
[5:58] with the children in Sabanac Forest.
[6:00] With Keith Clement's son, he's had plenty of opportunities and
[6:05] chooses to spare the children. That's something we'll talk
[6:07] about a bit more at the end of the video when we look at his
[6:10] psychology and stuff like that. But for now, he gets to this
[6:14] kind of playground, part of Hungerford Common, and he began
[6:18] targeting only the adults. A man named Francis Butler was
[6:22] out walking his dog that day in the memorial garden.
[6:25] And I believe his dog was like, off its lead, or maybe just on a
[6:28] really long lead. It was off in the grass at this
[6:31] point, and he literally only just entered the gates of the
[6:34] park when Michael Ryan shot him dead.
[6:37] A man named Dean has since told his version of events of that
[6:40] day. He was actually a child in the
[6:43] playground at the time that this was going on, and the playground
[6:46] was right next to the path, so the children saw everything.
[6:50] Dean remembered hearing these really sudden loud banging
[6:54] noises and so he turned around to see Francis Butler still
[6:57] stood up in the gateway. Just smoke around his feet from
[7:01] where the bullets had obviously hit the ground.
[7:03] And then suddenly Francis falls to the floor and within a few
[7:07] seconds is in a pool of his own blood.
[7:10] And then the kids turned to the direction that the shots came
[7:13] in, and there was kind of like a tree in front of the climbing
[7:17] frame, so they couldn't see the path on the other side.
[7:19] And as he was getting closer, obviously more of him was
[7:22] visible from behind the tree. So Dean remembers seeing feet
[7:26] and then legs and then a torso with guns strapped to it, and
[7:30] suddenly all these 20 or so children on this climbing frame
[7:34] began running in the opposite direction, going to Dean's
[7:37] house. Michael Ryan eventually caught
[7:40] up to where Francis Butler was now slumped on the floor,
[7:43] probably already dead, and he shot him one more time at point
[7:46] blank range just to make sure that he was dead.
[7:49] And then he carried on. As Michael got to the road, he
[7:52] spotted a car, just a taxi on its way to pick up its next
[7:55] passenger. And he took that as an
[7:57] opportunity to claim another victim and he shot about 5 or 6
[8:01] rounds into the car. The taxi driver was named Marcus
[8:05] Bernard. He was killed almost instantly,
[8:08] making him Michael Ryan's 10th victim of the day.
[8:11] And we actually have an eyewitness from this point
[8:15] because even though everyone at the park had run away, one man
[8:18] that lived pretty much next to the park saw all of this going
[8:22] on from his driveway. It was a couple that lived in
[8:26] this house next to the park, Mr. Hall and Mrs. Hall.
[8:29] Mrs. Hall was up in the bedroom window at the front of the house
[8:32] watching all of this go on while, of course, Mr. Hall was
[8:36] on the drive. And Mr. Hall recalls watching
[8:38] Michael Ryan shoot the taxi driver and then pick up his gun
[8:42] off of his body like it was strapped to his body.
[8:44] He picked it up and looked at it almost in disgust.
[8:48] Now of course you can't tell just from looking at someone
[8:51] what they're thinking. There's multiple different
[8:53] things he could have been thinking or feeling in that
[8:56] moment. Maybe he was disgusted in
[8:58] himself, maybe he was shocked at his actions.
[9:01] Maybe he didn't want to carry this on but felt like it had
[9:04] already gone too far. Or a lot of people believe maybe
[9:08] the gun just jammed and he was angry at the gun, not at himself
[9:11] for using the gun. But the Halls witnessed him look
[9:14] at this gun in disgust and then take take it off of his body,
[9:18] take the strap off his body and just slam it on the floor.
[9:22] And then he continued with just his semi automatic and a pistol,
[9:26] which makes me think that the gun probably jammed or broke or
[9:29] something. But before Michael got too far
[9:31] down the road, he heard Mr. Hall behind him and turned round to
[9:36] see him and immediately began shooting straight away.
[9:39] Mr. Hall turned round and ran back into his house and luckily
[9:42] not one of the shots hit him. He wasn't even injured and
[9:46] Michael realized that he wasn't going to hit him and so he just
[9:49] turned around and carried on down the road and went and
[9:52] carried on his massacre. At this point, police are
[9:55] desperate for more men be people back at the police station,
[9:58] people to answer the phones, people to actually go out and
[10:01] look after the town, people to barricade different roads.
[10:05] So they were even calling in people that had days off and you
[10:08] know, ex police officers, just anyone that could come in and
[10:12] help them that was even a little bit qualified.
[10:14] And this included PC Trevor Wayne, right?
[10:17] It was actually his day off at the time and he was away from
[10:20] home. However, his wife had already
[10:22] called him letting him know what was going on in Hungerford.
[10:25] So he was already on his way home to come and protect his
[10:27] wife. As he was driving back into
[10:29] Hungerford, he passed Hungerford Common and saw all this smoke
[10:33] behind and obviously at the time he didn't know that this was
[10:36] coming from Michael Ryan's house or that it was even connected to
[10:40] the gun man. He carried on driving until he
[10:42] drove past a group of people that were kind of huddled in
[10:45] some trees on the side of of the road.
[10:48] And so he pulled over and got out of the car to go and ask
[10:50] them what was going on. And they were very clearly
[10:53] frantic, saying, there's a man with a gun on the loose.
[10:55] We're just trying to hide. So PC Trevor Wainwright knew
[10:59] what he had to do. He made his way home.
[11:01] He checked on his wife, made sure that she was safe at home,
[11:04] locked the doors behind him. And and then went to the police
[11:08] station to work on this operation.
[11:10] When he got there, his colleagues informed him that
[11:13] they thought that the perpetrator was a man named
[11:15] Michael Ryan. And Trevor Wainwright was very
[11:18] confused because he'd never heard this name before.
[11:20] Trevor used to coach the young men's football club in the town,
[11:24] so he knew most of the young men around Michael's age.
[11:28] He the coach most of the boys or knew most of the boys through
[11:32] the ones he coached. It was very rare that he came
[11:35] across someone Michael's age and had never heard of them before.
[11:38] At this point, it had been almost an hour since Michael
[11:42] Ryan's killing spree began. It was around 1:30 PM and the
[11:45] firearms squad were almost in Hungerford.
[11:48] But of course, the firearms squad, because they weren't
[11:51] local to Hungerford, they lived elsewhere.
[11:54] They would have probably struggled to navigate.
[11:55] And because it was all done by police radio, it's OK for local
[11:59] police officers to say or go to this street because local people
[12:03] will know where that is. But the firearms squad, since
[12:06] they don't live there, they won't know places based on
[12:10] street names. So PC Wainwright decided to go
[12:13] into town, risk his own life, go into the center of Hungerford
[12:18] and go and get as many St. maps as he could find for these
[12:22] firearms police officers. As he got into town, he could
[12:26] really sense the fear in the public.
[12:28] There were just rows and rows of police cars, ambulances, fire
[12:33] engines, all waiting to go and do their job.
[12:35] As soon as it was deemed safe, they were all blocking off
[12:38] certain roads so that people couldn't go down there.
[12:41] There was ambulances giving people medical help.
[12:43] There were people huddling in different shops and doorways and
[12:47] anywhere they could get that was kind of out of the way to make
[12:50] sure that they were safe. So PC Wainwright ran into the
[12:53] nearest news agents and just said give me every single map of
[12:57] Hungerford that you've got. And he took them all back to the
[13:00] police station for the firearms squad who were finally in
[13:03] Hungerford. However, no one knew where
[13:06] Michael Ryan was. Like I said earlier, he was on
[13:09] the move so it was hard to track him and they hadn't got a phone
[13:12] call in a while reporting him and saying he's on this street,
[13:16] so they didn't know where to start.
[13:18] PC Wainwright had actually planned on going with the
[13:22] firearms team in the helicopters or in the police cars or
[13:25] wherever they were going because he knew his way around
[13:27] Hungerford. He was quite high up in the
[13:29] police force. However, just as he was about to
[13:32] leave the police station with them, his Sergeant called him
[13:35] into his office and gave him some devastating news.
[13:38] There'd been an 11th victim of Michael Ryan's and it was PC
[13:43] Wainwright's own father, Douglas Wainwright.
[13:46] Douglas and his wife Kathleen. PC Wainwright's parents actually
[13:50] lived over 2 hours away from Hungerford in Kent.
[13:54] However, they were surprised visiting their son on that day.
[13:58] They weren't supposed to be there.
[13:59] Trevor didn't know that they were going to be there, which
[14:02] makes this all the more upsetting.
[14:04] They were just trying to see their son and surprise him and
[14:07] spend some time with him over summer when they drove straight
[14:10] into Michael Ryan's massacre. Michael Ryan had shot Douglas as
[14:14] he and Kathleen had been driving past.
[14:16] He only got him once in the head, but that was enough to
[14:20] kill him instantly. Kathleen luckily was not
[14:23] injured. She was able to crawl out of the
[14:25] car and hide until Michael Ryan had left and then one of the
[14:28] neighbors bravely came out of their house and kind of ushered
[14:31] her inside their house to safety.
[14:33] Michael Ryan then moved on to another St. named Priory Broad
[14:37] and killed his 12th victim, Eric Vardy.
[14:40] Eric, just like Douglas, had just been driving his van on a
[14:44] normal day when he was shot and killed.
[14:47] And as all of this had been going on, local man named Carl
[14:51] Harris had heard the gunshots and decided that he had to do
[14:54] something. Carl Harris was a former Army
[14:57] man and so as soon as he heard these noises, he knew that they
[15:00] were from a semi automatic. He recognized it, whereas other
[15:03] people could mistake it for other noises.
[15:06] He knew exactly what it was and so he knew that he needed to
[15:10] help someone. He was a very, very, very brave
[15:12] man. So Harris went out to
[15:14] investigate, and he got to the bottom of Priory Road, and as
[15:18] soon as he looked up, he saw Michael Ryan standing there with
[15:22] these guns strapped to him. He was aiming at the houses on
[15:25] Priory Road, shooting through the windows.
[15:27] Presumably he'd seen people inside, seen shadows or
[15:30] whatever, and he was trying to kill the people in the houses.
[15:34] So Harry saw him at the other side of the road and knew if he
[15:37] even turned round, Harry's would be dead as well.
[15:40] So he decided to take cover against a wall.
[15:43] So this wall had like a Bush growing over it, so he could
[15:47] press himself against the wall and kind of hide in the leaf.
[15:50] He stayed there for a couple of minutes and it was just dead
[15:53] silence. And so he thought, well, maybe
[15:55] he's moved on. And so Harry's decided to come
[15:58] out of the Bush and as he did, Michael Ryan was still there.
[16:02] He turned and saw Harry's and immediately started shooting at
[16:06] him. Harry's turned and ran and just
[16:09] doved straight through one of the nearest hedges that
[16:13] connected to someone's garden. So now he was in someone's
[16:16] garden. He just jumped straight through
[16:17] this Bush. So he was laid there for a
[16:19] second and he assessed himself to make sure that he wasn't
[16:23] hurt, that he hadn't been shocked.
[16:24] So obviously he was in a lot of shock, there was a lot of
[16:26] adrenaline, so he could have been hit and he might not have
[16:30] noticed, he might not have felt it.
[16:31] He double checked himself and he wasn't injured at all.
[16:34] So he got up out of this garden, made his way back onto Priory
[16:38] Rd. where Michael Ryan was, where he'd just been shooting at
[16:42] him, and watched as Michael Ryan walked around the edge of the
[16:45] road. He turned the corner so now
[16:47] Harry's knew exactly where he was.
[16:49] But before or Harry's could follow him up that road, that
[16:52] was his plan to follow him up the road, he saw a red car
[16:56] rolling down the hill. So he ran and caught up to this
[16:59] car and stopped it. And that was when he realized
[17:02] that the driver of the car was slumped over and bleeding.
[17:06] It was Michael Ryan's 13th victim, a 22 year old woman
[17:09] named Sandra Hill, and she'd been shot and killed as she was
[17:13] just driving. So Harry's opened the car door
[17:16] and like, tried to get her out and take her over to a grass van
[17:20] when a neighbor came up behind him and offered to help.
[17:23] Obviously, people were in their windows watching all of this
[17:26] happen because they were scared and they wanted to know what was
[17:28] going on, but they were too scared to go outside.
[17:31] So these two men carried Sandra Hill's body over to the nearest
[17:34] grass verge and they laid her down.
[17:36] They were kind of assessing her wounds and everything, but it
[17:39] seemed as though she wasn't going to make it.
[17:42] An elderly woman even came out of her house with a little
[17:45] plastic first aid box and offered it to Carl Harris and
[17:48] said, I know it's not much but maybe you can do something with
[17:51] it. Of course, it only had like,
[17:53] plasters and little antiseptic wipes in.
[17:55] Meanwhile, the police helicopter was finally repaired and in
[17:59] action. They sent it up to go and try
[18:01] and locate Michael Ryan because it was very hard to do via, you
[18:06] know, people calling the police station.
[18:07] So they sent a couple of firearms officers up in this
[18:11] helicopter. And it's believed that Michael
[18:13] Ryan saw this helicopter in the sky and thought, well, how can
[18:17] he get away from it? How can he make sure that he
[18:20] isn't seen by this helicopter? And his solution was to just
[18:24] invade people's homes. And if he had to shoot the
[18:26] occupants, he had to shoot them. Michael broke into two houses.
[18:37] First was that of an elderly couple named Myrtle and Victor
[18:41] Gibbs. He walked in and shot the two of
[18:43] them in the kitchen, killing Victor instantly and seriously
[18:47] injuring Myrtle. He then goes across the road and
[18:50] breaks into a man named Michael Jennings home and shoots him and
[18:54] gets him in the leg Michael Jennings collapses.
[18:57] Michael Ryan thinks that he's killed him and so he just leaves
[19:00] the house and moves on. However, Michael Jennings is
[19:03] just injured. Michael Ryan then goes across
[19:06] the road and he doesn't break into this house, but he sees
[19:09] someone through the window. So he shoots through the window
[19:12] and seriously injuries a woman named Myra Geeta.
[19:15] Karl Harry's at this point was just sat on that grass verge
[19:18] with Sandra Hill and the neighbor and they were waiting
[19:21] for an ambulance. But they could hear all of these
[19:24] gunshots going on on this other street.
[19:26] And Karl knew that he couldn't just stay there.
[19:28] There was number point in him staying with Sandra because she
[19:31] was already gone at this point and they were just waiting for
[19:33] an ambulance to come and confirm that.
[19:35] But he knew that he could potentially be sick living lives
[19:38] on this other street. And so he gets up and he goes
[19:41] there. But the problem he faced with
[19:43] going onto this street is that once he turned the corner, it
[19:46] was straight all the way up. So even from the bottom, if
[19:49] Michael Ryan Even so much has turned a little bit, he would
[19:53] see him. And if he saw Carl Harry's, of
[19:55] course, he's going to start shooting at him.
[19:57] And so Carl had to think of a way to get up the road without
[20:00] being seen. He debated it for a moment,
[20:02] standing at the bottom of the street, thinking, is this really
[20:05] worth it? It was such a.
[20:07] The likelihood was that if he even tried to go up there, he
[20:11] wouldn't survive it, but he knew that there was a small chance
[20:13] that he would and that he could save people, and so he decided
[20:17] that he was going to do it regardless.
[20:19] So Carl Harry set off up this road, but did it very
[20:22] strategically. So on one side there was cars
[20:25] parked pretty much all just one after another.
[20:29] And so he thought if he kind of stuck down and stuck behind
[20:32] them, he'd be able to hide himself from Michael Ryan pretty
[20:36] much all the way up. He was walking for a little bit,
[20:38] and then he realized that he hadn't actually heard a gunshot
[20:42] in a while. So he decided to peek over the
[20:45] top of the car just to make sure that Michael Ryan was even still
[20:48] there. And when he did, Michael Ryan
[20:51] was on the other side of the car, pretty much just a few feet
[20:55] away from him. Luckily, he didn't see Carl
[20:58] Harris, and so he ducked back down and rolled under the car to
[21:01] make sure that Michael couldn't see him.
[21:03] And listening to Carl Harris describe this as something like
[21:06] out of a horror movie, he was laid there underneath this car
[21:10] for so long, watching Michael Ryan's boots just walk backwards
[21:14] and forwards past the car. Eventually he watched as Michael
[21:17] Ryan went all the way to the end of the road and turned off.
[21:21] And it was almost at the same time that a woman began
[21:24] screaming. And Carl Harris knew that he had
[21:27] to go and help this woman. So Carl got up and ran up the
[21:30] road and quickly identified that this screaming was coming from a
[21:34] car that had kind of veered off and almost crashed into a wall.
[21:38] There was a woman in the passenger seat who was
[21:41] screaming, but she didn't seem too injured.
[21:44] She had blood on her but she didn't seem to be in a bad way.
[21:48] And then he looked at the drivers seat to see a man
[21:51] slumped over, clearly already dead.
[21:54] So Harry's went round to the driver's seat and he began
[21:57] trying to get this man out of the car.
[21:58] He laid him on the floor at the back.
[22:00] And this woman the whole time is of course frantic saying my
[22:03] husband, my husband, I'm a nurse.
[22:05] And so Carl Harris is saying, well help me then if you're a
[22:08] nurse, help me compress his wounds and maybe we can save
[22:11] him. His wounds, however, were just
[22:13] far too severe. The 16th and final victim of
[22:16] Michael Ryan's 60 minute massacre was 34 year old father
[22:21] Ian Playel. As Harry's was kind of sat there
[22:24] with Mrs. Playle, he was approached by another man, a
[22:27] neighbor that had come out of a house, which was actually Myra
[22:30] Gitas boyfriend. If you remember the woman that
[22:34] Michael Ryan had shot through the window and he said, my
[22:37] girlfriend's injured, I need you to come and help.
[22:39] The boyfriend led him to the house where Myra was laid on the
[22:43] bed. And she'd been shot in the
[22:45] thigh. And it was clearly very, very
[22:47] bad. So Carl Harry's kind of bandaged
[22:49] it up as best as he could with, like, towels and stuff, told her
[22:53] boyfriend how to apply pressure to it and said, look, you're
[22:56] going to have to do this and wait for the ambulance to come.
[22:59] I've got to go back out and go and help other people.
[23:01] So Carl, Harry's got back outside onto the road when
[23:04] another neighbor approached him and said, I think I saw the
[23:07] gunman go into that house over there, which was Michael
[23:11] Jennings house. So Harry's ran over to Jennings
[23:13] house and he was banging on the front door, but no one was
[23:16] answering. And he was yelling.
[23:18] He was saying, look, I'm here to help you.
[23:20] The gunman's gone. He was banging on the door, but
[23:22] still no one was answering. He couldn't even hear any noise
[23:26] from inside the house. So Harry's bent down and looked
[23:28] through the post box on the door and he could see a man sat in
[23:33] the stairs in the hall and said shouted to him, he was like, you
[23:36] OK, what? What's happened?
[23:37] And Michael Jennings replied that he'd been shot.
[23:40] So Carl Harris is saying, well, let me in, I can like, bandage
[23:43] up your wound. And unfortunately, Michael
[23:45] Jennings had locked the door, and he couldn't really get
[23:49] himself up because he'd been shot in the leg, so he couldn't
[23:52] walk to the door to unlock it. And so Harris, he's saying,
[23:55] well, do you want me to try and knock it down?
[23:56] I can try and smash through the glass on the door and unlock it
[23:59] or whatever. And Michael said, no, he thought
[24:02] he could do it. And so he dragged himself across
[24:05] the floor to the door and unlocked it.
[24:07] Harry's ended up having to like, kind of lift him up and carry
[24:11] him back to the stairs where he sat him down, bandaged up his
[24:14] wounds again, told him how to apply pressure to his own wounds
[24:18] and said that he had to get back out there.
[24:20] Before Harry's left the house, Michael Jennings said, well, you
[24:23] might want to go next door. I think I heard the gunman go in
[24:26] my next door neighbor's house as well.
[24:28] So Harry's walks around to the Gibbs's house and immediately,
[24:31] it's way worse than he expected. The full front door was just
[24:35] basically like a glass door and it was all shot through.
[24:39] So Harry's very bravely goes into this house.
[24:43] For all he knew, Michael Ryan could still be in there.
[24:46] So he went in the house and he was being very strategic.
[24:49] Of course, if Michael Ryan was still in that house, he needed
[24:52] to keep his wits about him. So he was staying low.
[24:55] He was staying to the walls and everything and he was thinking
[24:58] so much about potentially being seen that he forgot to look at
[25:02] his foot in and accidentally stepped on a huge pile of
[25:06] smashed glass, which of course made a very, very loud noise.
[25:09] So now Harry's is panicking. If the gunman was still in that
[25:13] house, he definitely just heard that and he would probably come
[25:16] down to finish the job. He waited about 20 seconds and
[25:20] he didn't hear any movement from upstairs.
[25:24] And so he thought, well, surely if Michael Ryan had been in
[25:27] there and heard that, he would have come down.
[25:29] And then he heard noises coming from the kitchen.
[25:32] But it wasn't a man. It was a woman's voice, an old
[25:35] woman's voice. It was Myrtle Gibbs, and she was
[25:38] begging him to come and help her and her husband.
[25:41] So Carl Harry's got into the kitchen and the whole thing was
[25:45] just covered in blood. Myrtle Gibbs and her husband
[25:48] Victor, also known as Jack, they were both laid on the floor.
[25:52] Jack was over the top of Myrtle, and it was very clear that he'd
[25:57] tried to save his wife. He tried to jump in front of her
[26:00] and take the bullets for her. And immediately Kyle Harris
[26:04] realized that Jack Gibbs was deceased already and there was
[26:09] no use even trying to help him. He needed to focus all his
[26:13] attention on Myrtle. He grabbed Myrtle and kind of
[26:16] pulled her to the side. He was bandaging up her wounds
[26:19] and everything. And the whole time, all she
[26:20] could think about was her husband.
[26:22] She's saying, is he alright? Is he going to make it?
[26:25] And Kyle Harris just had to say to her, look, he's gone.
[26:29] We can't be worrying about him. We need to be worrying about you
[26:32] and making sure that you survive.
[26:34] Kyle managed to help Myrtle with her injuries as best as he could
[26:38] until the ambulance got there anyway and she managed to go to
[26:42] hospital. However, two days later, she
[26:45] passed away from her injuries. But as I'm sure you can imagine,
[26:48] in this time that Kyle Harris is running from house to house
[26:51] looking after all these survivors, Michael Ryan had
[26:55] moved on and he was going elsewhere, and police still had
[26:58] no idea where he was. The helicopter couldn't find
[27:01] him, and he was still to be taken down.
[27:03] Until now, he'd just been kind of walking the streets
[27:06] aimlessly, just looking for new victims.
[27:08] He didn't care where he was going.
[27:10] He was just more kind of following noises to know that
[27:13] there were people in those houses or on those streets.
[27:16] But this time he actually had a purpose.
[27:19] He knew where he was going. He decided to go and end the
[27:23] massacre at his old high school, John O Gaunt Community College.
[27:27] On his way there, he did attempt one last murder on a whim.
[27:31] I don't think he was planning on doing this, but it just the man
[27:35] was right there. He turned to the side and saw 66
[27:38] year old George Noon in his porch and Michael just shot at
[27:42] him. George was hit by the bullet and
[27:44] seriously injured. However, he did survive.
[27:47] So Michael Ryan made his way to John Ogont Community College and
[27:51] the school was completely empty because it was the summer
[27:54] holidays. The kids weren't there, teachers
[27:55] weren't there, no kind of staff, not even cleaners were there.
[27:59] And so he went in and locked the doors behind him, locking
[28:02] himself in. Michael at this point had
[28:05] spotted the police helicopter, which was kind of hovering over
[28:09] the school. So he knew that police were
[28:11] probably on their way. There was probably going to be a
[28:14] huge firearm squad. There was potentially going to
[28:17] be a standoff. He knew that this was over.
[28:20] Michael began shooting at the police helicopter, but
[28:23] eventually, I think he just realized that it was no use.
[28:26] The bullets were barely even reaching the helicopter.
[28:29] No one was injured. The helicopter wasn't even
[28:31] damaged, I don't think so. The firearm squad arrives at the
[28:35] school and they know that they've got to strategically
[28:38] make their way over there because they need to be within
[28:41] firing range of the windows of the school in case he starts
[28:45] shooting it, then they need to be able to shoot him back.
[28:48] But of course that means if they're that close that they
[28:51] could be killed. So they're trying to get closer
[28:53] without, you know, drawing too much attention to themselves.
[28:57] So they're like climbing walls and diving through bushes and
[29:00] stuff. It was some mad mission and the
[29:03] firearm squad was there with no kind of communication from
[29:08] Michael Ryan for about 3 hours. They could see him moving about
[29:12] inside the school, but he wasn't saying anything.
[29:14] He wasn't shooting at them. He wasn't, you know, he wasn't
[29:18] doing anything. But it was still too dangerous
[29:21] to try and go there because he still had a gun and he could
[29:24] have still killed them. Eventually, after about four
[29:27] hours of this kind of silent standoff, one of the officers
[29:32] finally made contact with Michael Ryan.
[29:34] This officer shouted to him and asked him like what weapons he
[29:37] had, how much ammunition he had. And Michael replied that he only
[29:41] had his 9mm pistol left and a couple of rounds of ammunition.
[29:46] And this negotiation with this officer went on for another
[29:49] hour, leaving it 5 total hours that he was in this school.
[29:54] And the massacre started at 12:30.
[29:57] So he was in this school until 7:00 PM.
[29:59] And the officer is trying to say to Michael, like, look, leave
[30:02] your weapon. Just come out.
[30:04] If you give yourself up now, you won't be hurt.
[30:06] No one will shoot at you. We'll just arrest you.
[30:09] And that can be the end of it. But Michael was just constantly
[30:13] asking about his mother. Was his mother all right?
[30:15] Where was she like, has she survived?
[30:17] What are her injuries like? But he knew full well that he'd
[30:20] killed his own mother on South View.
[30:23] Now, this can be interpreted in a few different ways.
[30:26] Either he's been genuine and he genuinely doesn't know if she is
[30:30] OK or not. Because he could have been in
[30:32] such a psychotic rage that it was all just a blur to him.
[30:35] And maybe he doesn't remember. He doesn't remember specific
[30:38] people that he shot. Maybe he just remembers shooting
[30:41] at, but he doesn't realize how many bullets he actually fired
[30:45] and maybe he was just hoping that he injured her and that she
[30:49] was OK. However, of course, she did pass
[30:52] away very quickly after he shot her.
[30:54] But another reason that psychologists think he was
[30:56] saying this is because he kind of knew that he shot his mother
[31:00] and killed her, but he was just making sure because his mother
[31:04] was his life. His whole life he depended on
[31:07] his mother, and if his mother was dead, there'd be no reason
[31:11] for him to carry on. There'd be no reason for him to
[31:13] give himself up. He didn't want to go on without
[31:15] his mother, so he was making sure whether she was dead or not
[31:19] before he decided what he was going to do with himself.
[31:22] Police assured him that they would try and find out what
[31:24] happened to his mother. Of course, it would take a lot
[31:26] of different communication between them, the police
[31:29] station, the hospitals, the ambulances, everything like
[31:31] that. And he was just saying to police
[31:33] that he was not going to leave the school until he found out
[31:36] what happened to his mother. However, towards the end of this
[31:39] negotiation, he was saying things like, I didn't mean to
[31:43] kill her. So he knew that his mother was
[31:45] dead. Psychologists have struggled to
[31:47] make sense of, you know, what he's talking about during this
[31:50] negotiation. They don't really know what he
[31:52] was trying to get or trying to say during this whole thing.
[31:57] One minute he's asking if she's OK, if she's alive, and then
[32:00] he's saying he didn't mean to kill her.
[32:01] He asked about how many casualties there'd been.
[32:04] And of course police didn't tell him.
[32:06] They didn't want to give him the satisfaction of knowing how many
[32:09] people he'd killed or injured. And he was saying things to them
[32:12] like Hungerford must be a bit of a mess by now.
[32:15] I wish I'd stayed in bed. And so many times through this
[32:18] hour long negotiation, police thought they had him.
[32:21] They thought they'd got him calmed down enough to the point
[32:23] where he was going to come out. But then at 6:52 PM, around six
[32:27] hours after the massacre had begun, police outside the school
[32:31] had one single gunshot come from inside.
[32:36] Michael Ryan had taken his own life.
[32:38] He didn't even warn police. There was nothing dramatic.
[32:41] There were no threats. He just silently took his own
[32:45] life so that he didn't have to deal with the consequences of
[32:48] the heinous acts that he'd just committed.
[32:51] Michael Ryan's total death toll was 1617, including himself.
[32:56] And he also killed his dog. And he injured 15 more people.
[33:01] So there were 31 human victims altogether, and the youngest
[33:06] victims were 216 year old girls. A lot of people lost to their
[33:11] loved ones that day. And most people in Hungerford
[33:14] and the surrounding areas knew at least one person that had
[33:18] been affected by this massacre, be it a survivor or someone that
[33:22] actually lost their life. Many, many police officers
[33:24] actually resigned after taking part in this operation.
[33:28] They felt that they didn't want to go back to work either
[33:31] because they were too traumatized, because they felt
[33:33] inadequate that they couldn't have stopped him sooner, or
[33:36] because they felt embarrassed and they didn't want to be part
[33:40] of a police force that could let this massacre get so bad.
[33:44] Most of the people that lived on South View moved away completely
[33:48] out of Hungerford, some of them because they just couldn't be
[33:52] around the place where such events took place.
[33:55] The fire that Michael Ryan started in his own house
[33:58] eventually ended up affecting 4 houses on that street.
[34:03] So that's three other houses full of people's sentimental
[34:06] things, their belongings, you know, material things that
[34:10] they'd spent their life collecting.
[34:11] Michael Ryan destroyed all of that as well.
[34:14] Although some people that lived on South View, including Sylvia
[34:17] Pascoe, if you remember the woman that went and dealt with
[34:21] that 16 year old girl's injury, she decided to stay there.
[34:24] She wasn't going to let Michael Ryan and his horrific act ruined
[34:29] that street for her, the street that she loved and the community
[34:32] that she loved and had grown up in.
[34:34] It's unclear why Michael Ryan actually set fire to his house.
[34:38] People have theorized a lot of different things.
[34:40] Maybe there was evidence in there.
[34:42] However, this whole massacre didn't seem that planned, so I
[34:45] don't know what kind of evidence that would be.
[34:48] Other people have theorized that maybe he just didn't want police
[34:52] going through his things. Maybe it was just a kind of
[34:54] pride thing. He didn't want his things going
[34:57] through after he he was gone. He probably knew that he was
[34:59] going to take his own life at the end of this massacre, so why
[35:03] not take all his belongings with him and not give police the
[35:06] option to go through his things. Maybe it was just a possessive
[35:09] thing. Maybe he just wanted the
[35:10] control. Most of the survivors that Karl
[35:13] Harris treated that day when they went to hospital, the
[35:16] doctors told them that if Karl Harris hadn't helped them and
[35:19] kind of banned, shut their wounds and put pressure on them
[35:22] and you know, help them out, a lot of them would have probably
[35:25] lost their lives. The 16 year old girl, the one
[35:27] that was shot on South View, the one that Sylvia Pascoe came and
[35:31] helped and you know, bandaged up, if she would have lost just
[35:34] two or three more pints of blood, she would have lost her
[35:37] life. Kyle Harris, of course, saved
[35:40] multiple different lives that day.
[35:42] I have never seen bravery and level headedness quite like that
[35:47] in a case before and I have researched a lot of cases.
[35:50] He was phenomenal. He went on to become a captain
[35:53] in the British Army. Again, like I said, he was a
[35:56] former army man but after this incident he decided to go back
[35:59] and be in the army and he also won a lot of awards for his
[36:02] bravery including the Queen's Commendation for bravery, which
[36:06] is just lovely. 16 year old Alison Chapman and her mother
[36:10] that drove onto South View right into Michael Ryan's kind of
[36:14] firing line. Both of them survived.
[36:17] However, Alison Chapman will have a bullet lodged in her back
[36:21] for the rest of her life. I don't know why they haven't
[36:23] taken it out. Maybe it would cause more
[36:25] problems to take it out. So that bullet has been in her
[36:28] back ever since 1987 and she's even given birth to a son.
[36:33] She might even have multiple children by now, but with that
[36:37] bullet in her back, which is insane.
[36:40] Before the massacre, there hadn't been a murder in
[36:43] Hungerford for 111 years. So that was since the 1800s.
[36:48] That's how unexpected this was. It was such a safe area, but the
[36:52] community's reaction to the massacre was so lovely.
[36:55] It was exactly as you would expect.
[36:57] There was a fund set up for the survivors and for, you know,
[37:01] paying for funeral costs because these were very unexpected
[37:04] deaths. Maybe a lot of these people
[37:07] hadn't been saving for funerals. Funerals were paid for different
[37:11] healthcare. Things were paid for, even
[37:13] things down to like smashed windows, because a lot of
[37:17] people's windows were shopped through and not everyone can
[37:20] afford to replace four or five windows all at once.
[37:23] People were volunteering to do things for other people,
[37:26] volunteering to help clean up smashed glass and things like
[37:29] that. The next morning after the
[37:31] massacre, the local church held a full service and hundreds of
[37:35] people turned up. And as I'm sure you can imagine,
[37:37] the town was absolutely crawling with journalists for the next
[37:41] couple of weeks, Which is to be expected.
[37:44] But at the same time, it wasn't even very respectful in this
[37:49] instance. A lot of people recall feeling
[37:51] very exploited with the way that journalists were dealing with
[37:54] this. They didn't care about
[37:56] Hungerford. They didn't care about the
[37:57] survivors. They didn't care about the
[37:59] people that had been through this.
[38:01] They just cared about the story. The press coverage of Douglas
[38:04] Wainwright's death was probably the worst of all of them.
[38:08] Douglas Wainwright was PC Wainwright's father who was
[38:11] coming with his wife to come and surprise his son that day.
[38:14] And the press clung to the fact that PC Wainwright had actually
[38:19] signed Michael Ryan's approval form to get him a license to own
[38:25] the guns that he eventually killed PC Wainwright's father
[38:29] with. Of course, PC Wainwright isn't
[38:31] to blame. Michael Ryan didn't have a
[38:33] previous criminal record, no serious mental health concerns.
[38:37] There was number reason for him not to own these guns.
[38:40] There was nothing that PC Wainwright could have seen that
[38:43] could have predicted this. The media printed headlines like
[38:47] PC signed his own father's death warrant, which is just
[38:50] disgusting. It shows that British tabloids
[38:53] then and still now have always just been insensitive and
[38:58] terrific. As a result of this massacre,
[39:01] major law changes were made in the UK and very quickly as well.
[39:06] That's one thing I love about this case is that the government
[39:09] were very quick to react and to help and save their citizens.
[39:14] The Firearms Amendment Act was passed which banned the personal
[39:17] ownership of semi automatic rifles.
[39:20] Just like that. All it took was one massacre and
[39:23] semi automatics were banned in this country.
[39:26] You can only get them like if you're a police officer or
[39:29] something. Now, one of the most frustrating
[39:31] things about this case is that no one knows why.
[39:34] Because of course, he was such a loner.
[39:36] He didn't tell anyone anything. If he'd written anything down,
[39:39] it was burnt down in the house, fired.
[39:41] The only person that was close to him was his mother, and she
[39:44] was dead too. No one knew why Michael Ryan
[39:47] targeted the people that he targeted.
[39:50] Of course, it did seem rather random, but he seemed to stick
[39:53] on his St. for a while. So was it something against his
[39:56] personal neighbors? Maybe he was just taking a out
[39:59] his anger on Hungerford or humanity as a whole.
[40:03] He never fit in. Like I said earlier, one thing
[40:06] you might have noticed about Michael Ryan is that he never
[40:09] targeted children. He had plenty of opportunities
[40:12] to shoot and kill children, but he didn't, which is very
[40:15] interesting to me. If he was in a blind kind of
[40:18] psychotic episode, surely he would be shooting at anyone and
[40:23] everyone he came in contact with.
[40:25] The fact that he spared children shows me that he has some kind
[40:28] of. Conscious thought, he knew that
[40:30] he didn't want to kill children, so he decided not to in that
[40:34] time. So he was thinking rationally to
[40:37] a degree. So maybe he was thinking
[40:39] properly, maybe he wasn't in a kind of episode, maybe he was
[40:43] just a cold hearted killer. But other people think that he
[40:46] was targeting all the people, you know, people his age and up
[40:50] because they were the ones that weren't accepting him into
[40:53] society. They were the ones that had
[40:56] successfully integrated into society and he was looking at
[40:59] them like they were different and like they wouldn't let him
[41:02] in. So he was taking that anger out
[41:04] on them. Maybe he was just jealous of
[41:06] normal people because that's what all his victims were.
[41:09] They were just normal people living normal lives on normal
[41:13] roads, doing normal day-to-day things, having picnics with
[41:15] their families, you know, driving to and from work out in
[41:19] the garden with their significant other.
[41:21] They were just doing very mundane tasks that Michael Ryan
[41:25] couldn't even do because he couldn't fit in.
[41:27] But unfortunately, we'll never know why he targeted, who he
[41:30] targeted, why he even did this at all.
[41:33] Some sources say that Michael Ryan's autopsy should that he
[41:38] had no abnormalities in his brain.
[41:41] Now, I don't know how true this is because like I say, I only
[41:44] found it on some sources. But sometimes when people are
[41:47] severely mentally ill, you can tell by looking at their brain.
[41:51] Maybe it's kind of malformed. Maybe there's a tumor, maybe
[41:54] there's, you know, you know, something physically wrong with
[41:56] the brain rather than just hormone levels.
[41:58] And his autopsy showed that his brain seemed normal, healthy
[42:02] from the, you know, physical makeup anywhere.
[42:05] But again, I don't know how true that is.
[42:11] Thank you so much for listening to usual disclaimer.
[42:13] At this point, I just want to say that if you've been affected
[42:16] by any of the topics we discussed today, please check
[42:19] the description where we've left some helpful resources.
[42:22] If you want to hear more cases like this one, make sure to
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[42:31] And if you really enjoyed, I'd love it if you could leave a
[42:33] rating and a review too. Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor
[42:37] Neil is an Audio Boom Studios production.
[42:40] See you next time.

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