LES ECREHOUS I Bailiwick of Jersey, Channel Islands

In honour of Alphonse Le Gastelois 1914 - 2012

Images and words by The Coracle, except Alphonse portrait by James L Amos

The Beast of Jersey terrorised his small Channel Island community with a series of sex attacks on women and children between 1957 and 1971. He climbed through open windows at night, wearing a rubber mask with nail studded wristlets, leading his victims outside by a rope tied around their neck.

Initial suspicions fell on Alphonse Le Gastelois, an eccentric 57 year old agricultural worker and fisherman. Alphonse liked to roam the beautiful island lanes at night and wore an old raincoat tied with rope, matching the description of The Beast. Despite being questioned 12 times over 12 months and then freed by Scotland Yard, he was the only one of the 30 suspects whose name was released by the police, resulting in Jersey venting their fears and frustrations on him, eventually burning down his home in an arson attack.

By 1961 Alphonse had decided to escape for a life of solitude in the uninhabited Les Ecrehous archipelago, a tiny group of rocks between Jersey and the French coast. Like Jersey and Guernsey, Les Ecrehous have been self-governing possessions of the British crown since William the Conqueror was the Duke of Normandy. The area’s extreme tidal range means only three islets are visible above the sea at high tide. On one of them lived Alphonse, alone on a rock roughly 18 x 12 feet. The islets had been sporadically inhabited by fishermen and families holidaying from Jersey. Idyll on a sunny summer’s day, shockingly vulnerable during a winter storm with fifty foot waves. To keep warm at night, he slept under a table, next to a small gas heater. For Alphonse his new home was; ‘paradise, compared to what I’ve been through’.

He became an expert forager of rockpool lobsters, gull eggs and seaweed but with no drinkable water, he was reliant on visitors to keep him alive. In return, he maintained the other shacks and became a cause celebre as the ‘King of the Ecrehous’. He even petitioned the Queen for independence, hoping to enact an ancient Norman law that gives ownership after ten years of residency in a previously deserted place.

In 1971 Edward Paisnel was convicted as the actual Beast of Jersey after an 11 year reign of terror. Having run a red light in a stolen car, elements of his frankly terrifying beast costume were discovered in the boot. Alphonse, despite now being beyond all suspicion, decided to remain as king of his castle/shack saying; ‘I shall die here in peace. Away from wagging tongues’.

1975 brought more trouble. After 14 years of monastic solitude, he was removed to Jersey prison, being accused of burning down one of the shacks. Despite being acquitted by a jury within two minutes, the Ecrehous spell was broken and he remained in Jersey until his death in 2012 at the age of 97. His final years were weighed down by extreme poverty and he remained in isolation, barely leaving his home. In 1999, the Jersey government debated giving him £20,000 compensation but decided otherwise to avoid ‘setting a precedent’.

In a BBC interview, he was quoted as saying; ‘What can you do? You can’t rebuild my life, you can’t rebuild me. I don’t want much now, only want to be left in peace’.

During the years spent on his own private Alcatraz, he presumably stared at Jersey as the islanders stared back at him. Perhaps the world is now a kinder place for those who struggle to fit into societal norms. Jersey native Peter Colback has started a campaign for a memorial to Alphonse, on Jersey, facing Les Ecrehous. A reminder of man’s occasional inhumanity to man; ‘lest we forget’ as he puts it.

Meanwhile, the high tide still laps at the wooden door of his old home and a colonies of roseate terns noisily swoop down to keep intruders at bay.