Killers_ The Most Barbaric Murderers of Our Time - Cawthorne, Nigel [79]
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