Running Wild

The Massacre: Various Theories

After this melancholy parade of murder and kidnap victims, I turned to the various theories suggested by the senior Home Office committee charged with the investigation of the killings.

(1) The Lone Assassin. Michael Ryan and the Hungerford tragedy come immediately to mind, like the many similar multiple murders in Japan, the United States and elsewhere. These motiveless killings, in which solitary psychopaths run amok, shooting at unknown passersby, offer an explanation for the Pangbourne Massacre. It seems remotely conceivable that a solitary assassin, perhaps with specialist SAS training in murder by strangulation, trip wire and crossbow, might have entered the estate, killed the security guards and then moved through the ten houses, restraining the children before killing the adult occupants. He may then have returned to collect the children, perhaps driving them away to some secret destination where they remain at his mercy to this day.

Comment: all the evidence collected, from a shattered video in the Lymingtons' house recording an early morning film transmission, to the clock in the Maxteds' Porsche which stopped when the car was driven into the garage door, indicates that the murders were carried out almost simultaneously, within a period of time lasting as little as ten minutes. Several of the victims were killed by gunshots fired in the open air, and it is inconceivable that the intended victims did not flee the estate at the first sign of danger.

(2) Thrill Killers. An extension of theory 1, which answers some of the objections to the single-killer hypothesis. Is it possible that a group of Michael Ryans, perhaps five or six deranged members of a local rifle club, strayed into the Pangbourne estate, perhaps after an all-night drug-taking orgy? Challenged by the guards, they were then provoked into a chain reaction of violence and murder.

Comment: all the investigating teams (CID, Special Branch, Army Intelligence and secret services) agree that the murders were carried out by a band of assassins numbering at least half a dozen and more probably ten to twelve, working skillfully together to a tightly planned schedule. It is unlikely that a group of psychopaths could have collaborated to this degree, given their customary impulsive behavior and taste for random brutality. Although several of the victims were killed in ingenious ways, none was subjected to gratuitous cruelty. Indeed, the deaths have the clear hallmark of deliberate and careful executions.

(3) A Misdirected Military Exercise. The suggestion has been made in the tabloid press and by backbench Members of Parliament that the Pangbourne Massacre was the tragic outcome of an unofficial military exercise, in which a group of inexperienced SAS trainees were directed to the wrong target. They may have believed that they had been parachuted into a Warsaw Pact country, lost their heads and then murdered the adult residents of the estate before taking pity on the children.

Comment: inquiries at the highest level within the War Office and the secret services fail to substantiate this theory. A large area surrounding Pangbourne Village was minutely searched, but there is no trace of military vehicles, tire tracks or helicopter exhaust on grass or foliage. None of the residents of the nearby estates reports any sightings of military units. The lawns and soft ground within the estate show no footmarks of athletic men or any signs of their equipment.

(4) The Political Dimension: Foreign Powers. The scale of the Pangbourne Massacre, the number of victims and the daunting task of controlling a large group of children together suggest the deployment of resources that only a foreign power could muster. Many of the murdered parents held senior positions in professions that brought them into frequent contact with foreign governments. The possibility exists of an elaborate act of revenge for unpaid debts or "consultancy fees."

Comment: exhaustive inquiries confirm that none of the victims was politically involved in any way. Their only contacts were with U.S. and EEC governments, and the latter's willing collaboration in the police investigation rules out this possibility.

(5) International Terrorism. Ballistics analysis of the spent bullets and the curious collection of weapons used point to the possible involvement of an international terrorist group, perhaps the IRA or a disaffected assassination squad of Libyan professionals. But the absence of any trace left by such a group, as well as the abduction of the children, rules out this option. However, the example of Patty Hearst suggests that one of the older children may have been brainwashed by a maverick group, perhaps a successor to the Baader-Meinhof gang, the French Action Directe, or the Italian Red Brigades. This remains an outside but remote possibility.

(6) Organized Crime. At least two criminal gangs in the East End of London and one in Glasgow are capable of mounting the large-scale operation involved in the Pangbourne Massacre. The abduction of the children may be part of a mass kidnapping attempt that misfired. Alternatively, the massacre may have been a revenge killing by an international drug syndicate. But there is no suggestion that even one of the parents was involved in drug dealing, in the laundering of syndicate revenues through the London money markets, or in any other activities connected with organized crime.

(7) The Parents as Killers. Could one or more parents have killed the others, and then committed suicide? Possible motives include sexual jealousy, professional rivalry or individual psychopathy. Could the appalled children, in a state of shock that has still not lifted, have then fled the estate, taking refuge in a remote property owned by one of the families? Curiously, for all their participation in group activities at the recreation club, the parents themselves did not mix socially, never invited each other into their homes, and seem to have known one another only as casual acquaintances. All the domestic staff agree that in the three years of the estate's existence there was not a single example of marital infidelity between fellow residents, a remarkable tribute to the concepts of social engineering built into the estate's design.

(8) The Domestic Staff. Could disaffected members of the domestic staff-the chauffeurs, housekeepers, cooks and tutors-have turned against their employers? All the servants on leave (one, an elderly gardener, died of a heart attack on hearing of the massacre) were repeatedly interrogated, and far from showing resentment they all seem to have sincerely admired their employers, and were clearly happy to work for them.

(9) Bizarre Theories. There remain a few outlandish possibilities.

(a) A unit of Soviet Spetnaz commandos, targeted on the residential quarters of the NATO headquarters staff at Northwood, received an incorrect war alert order and were parachuted by error into the Pangbourne estate during the night of June 24. They slaughtered the adult residents, assuming they were senior military personnel, then realized their error and abducted the children.

(b) An experimental nerve-gas projectile fell from an RAF or USAF military aircraft into the Pangbourne area and deranged a group of nearby residents, who committed the murders. They then destroyed all traces of the children before suffering retroactive amnesia that erased any memory of the crime. Unaware of the murders they carried out, they have now returned to ordinary domestic life.

(c) The murdered residents and their children were, unknown to themselves, deep-cover agents of a foreign power. Their mission accomplished, the parents were "instructed" to murder each other, and the children disappeared into the cellars of the foreign embassy before being spirited abroad.

(d) The parents were murdered by visitors from outer space seeking young human specimens.

(e) The parents were murdered by their own children.

Looking through this list, it struck me that all were as fanciful as each other. Some uniquely strange event had taken place at Pangbourne Village, and to find its source I needed to visit the estate myself.