Killers_ The Most Barbaric Murderers of Our Time - Cawthorne, Nigel [81]
The young police officer had checked that the cabinet where Ryan kept the weapons was secure, then approved the extension of his licence and forwarded it to the headquarters of Thames Valley Police. In doing so, he had sealed the fate of his own parents, who were later shot by Ryan while they were on their way to visit their son.
While Michael Ryan was holed up in his old school, the children of his first victim, James and Hannah Godfrey, had been found. Apparently, despite witnessing the horrific murder of their mother, they had been tired and had had a little nap. When they awoke, they had gone to look for help.
They met Mrs Myra Rose, herself a grandmother, who was taking a stroll in the forest. She saw the two children coming down a hill towards her. The little boy was wearing a Thomas-the-Tank-Engine T-shirt and his sister had her hair tied back with a pink headband. Two-year-old James grabbed Mrs Rose’s hand and refused to let go. Hannah, who was four, acted as spokesperson.
‘A man in black shot my mummy,’ she said. ‘He has taken the car keys. James and me cannot drive a car and we are going home. We are tired.’
Seventy-five-year-old Mrs Rose lived in Bournemouth and was visiting friends in nearby Marlborough when she decided to go for a walk alone in the Savernake Forest. She found what the children were telling her hard to believe.
‘It was such a horrific story for a little girl to tell,’ Mrs Rose said, ‘I did not know whether to believe it. The children were not crying.’
She was confused about what to do, but then she bumped into another family in the forest and told them what the children had said. One of them went to call the police and Mrs Rose sat down with the children to tell them stories.
‘I don’t think the youngsters really understood what had happened to their mother,’ she told the newspapers later. ‘James would not leave my side and I wanted to stay with the children.’
When the police came, they quickly found the bullet-riddled body of Susan Godfrey. Soon they were mounting a huge search of the 4,500-acre forest with teams of tracker dogs in case its glades contained the bodies of any further victims of Michael Ryan.
Talking to the police at John O’Gaunt School, Ryan appeared lucid and reasonable. He expressed no regret for killing Mrs Godfrey, nor any other of his victims. Only the murder of his mother seemed to trouble him.
Michael Ryan was thought of as a mummy’s boy. Born when his mother Dorothy, a canteen lady, was 33, he was an only child and she lavished all her attention on him. A friend of the family described Ryan as a ‘spoilt little wimp’. It was said: ‘He got everything he wanted from his mother.’ She would buy him a new car every year.
Ryan’s father, Alfred, was a council building inspector and was also attentive. Michael was devoted to him. When he died in 1985, two years before his son made the name Ryan notorious, Michael seemed to go to pieces. ‘He was his life, you see,’ said Michael’s uncle Leslie Ryan. ‘When he went, Michael seemed to go.’
He became violent and unpredictable, and he focused more of his attention on his collection of guns. The family were relieved when they heard that Michael was about to get married. The date was set, then the wedding was called off.
‘He doesn’t know whether he wants to be married or not,’ his mother told relatives. ‘First of all it’s on and then it’s off.’
Many doubt that there was a girl at all. He had certainly never been seen with one and was unnaturally close to his mother. Next-door neighbour Linda Lepetit said: ‘It’s unbelievable that he shot her. They got on so well. We could often hear them laughing and joking together. He had a natter to me