Murder of John Alan West

John Alan West, known to friends as Jack, was a 53-year-old bachelor who had worked for 34 years as a van driver for the Lakeland Laundry in Workington, Cumberland. He lived alone at 28 Kings Avenue, Seaton, and had returned home from a normal working day just before 6:00 pm on 6 April 1964. In the early hours of 7 April, at around 3:00 am, West's next-door neighbour was woken by noise in his house and saw a car driving away. Police were called and found West dead from severe head injuries and a stab wound to the chest.

Investigators recovered a raincoat left at the scene containing a medallion inscribed "G.O. Evans, July, 1961" and an Army memo form bearing the name and address of a young woman in Liverpool. That woman, a 17-year-old factory worker, identified the medallion and told police she had met a man calling himself "Ginger Owen Evans" in Preston in late 1963. Separately, a stolen car used by the offenders was abandoned in Ormskirk, Lancashire, after one of the two men aroused a neighbour's suspicion by asking to leave it in a yard; she reported it to police. These leads allowed detectives to trace the car's route back to Lancashire and, through criminal and army records, to an address in Preston occupied by Peter Allen.

On 8 April 1964, less than 36 hours after the murder, police went to Allen's home in Preston. Allen was taken in for questioning and eventually led police, via his wife, to Gwynne Evans, who was found in Manchester with West's watch in his possession. During questioning, each man blamed the other for the fatal violence; Evans denied knowledge of a knife before police had disclosed that West had been stabbed. Both men were charged at 1:15 am on 9 April 1964, less than 48 hours after the killing.

Evans and Allen were tried jointly at Manchester Crown Court before Mr Justice Ashworth beginning 23 June 1964, charged with capital murder under the Homicide Act 1957 because West was killed in the course of a theft. A key witness was Allen's wife, called in his defence, who testified that Evans had let Allen into West's house and that both men attacked West, and that Evans had disposed of the murder weapon from the car window. After three hours of deliberation, the jury found both men equally guilty, and both were sentenced to death.

Appeals were dismissed on 21 July 1964. On 10 August, the Home Office announced it would not recommend reprieve for either man, a decision that came as a surprise given the declining use of capital punishment and few recent executions in England. Gwynne Evans was hanged at Manchester's Strangeways Prison and Peter Allen was hanged at Liverpool's Walton Prison, both at 8:00 am on 13 August 1964. These were the last judicial executions carried out in Britain; capital punishment for murder was abolished in the United Kingdom 15 months later. Medical reports released to the National Archives in 2017 indicated Evans had documented psychological problems that, had a diminished-responsibility defence been raised at trial, might have altered the outcome.