Mystery of disappearing stuffed gorilla solved

By By Richard Savill Published: 11:47AM GMT 05 March 2010

Alfred the chimpanzee with Ron Mrogan, right, and Fred Hooper, centre Photo: SWNS

Alfred had been one of the esteem attractions at Bristol Zoo during his eighteen years in captivity. Such was his interest that after his genocide in 1946 he was pressed and mounted in a potion box at the museum.

Police appealed for information, scoured the internal university campus and interviewed leaders of the tyro kinship in an try to find him, but to no avail. They suspected he might have been stolen by opposition students.

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For scarcely 3 days there was no pointer of Alfred, until Donald Boulton, the university caretaker, found him in a doctor"s watchful room.

But the poser of who took Alfred and where he went has remained a poser for some-more than 50 years.

Now, after the genocide of one of the culprits, Ron Morgan, 79, a former estate representative in Bristol, the tip at the behind of the `escape from the notable relic has been revealed.

The story had never been told since Mr Morgan, his university crony Fred Hooper, 77, and his alternative accomplice, well known usually as DS, feared they would be prosecuted.

Mr Morgan, of Clevedon, Somerset, kept a scrapbook with photographs of the gorilla, in that the animal was ready to go in a hat, a wig and with middle-eastern head dress.

As a reverence to Mr Morgan, his family and friends have oral of the stunt.

Mr Hooper, 77, who lives in Cheltenham, Glos., said: "It was primarily my idea. I was about twenty-three at the time and I thought it would be a great broom week jape.

"It took a bit of planning. We knew the porter and so we were means to get a key cut to the delegate doorway that related the notable relic to the university.

"Then we hid in the belfry until about 1am when all was closed. It wasn"t such a great thought in hindsight as the bells were still toll and were incredibly loud.

"We got in to the notable relic and afterwards we used the side doorway to get him out.

It was really early in the sunrise and we pressed him in to the foot of an old Vauxhall car, that cost me �35, folded behind the seats and sped off to my bedsit.

"That"s where he stayed for the generation and we took cinema of him in opposite guises.""

The friends kept the pressed chimpanzee in the bedsit in Clifton, Bristol, for 60 hours.

Mr Hooper added: ""There were all sorts of stories going around, people thought Cardiff students had kidnapped him and there was a gossip he was in a cavern somewhere.

"It was regularly the goal to lapse him and so the easiest thing was to take him to a doctor"s watchful room that was only opposite the road. It was midday on a Saturday and we only carried him over and left him there."

Mr Morgans son, Gerard, 45, pronounced the scrapbook, containing the photographs and strange stories from the internal newspaper, the Bristol Evening Post, had turn a family heirloom.

"My father used to rise his own photographs that is because he was means to take these cinema but any one else anticipating out," he added.

"This scrapbook has been sealed in a tip drawer in the home and trafficked around the universe with him.

"Occasionally the scrapbook would come out and along with my brothers I desired listening to the story of Alfred."

Bristol Museum has sent a minute to Gerard Morgan assuring the family that no one will be prosecuted.

Tim Corum, emissary head of Bristol"s Museums, Galleries and Archives service, pronounced the revelations were "intriguing".

"Although we would never acquit any such bootleg wake up as reportedly happened, the legislature will not be receiving any movement opposite the conjectural perpetrators either.

"Instead we will be adding the ultimate reports to the prominent record relating to one of Bristol"s most appropriate desired figures."

Bristol Zoo in 1948, and was afterwards pressed and put on arrangement in a potion box at the city"s museum.