a6 murder

[Limehouse]

Isn't it odd that the prosecution were able to disregard the witnesses who claimed Hanratty was in Liverpool/Rhyl at the time of the murder but accept witnesses who 'saw' Hanratty driving the car, or saw him leaving a building (where it is concluded he slept rough) on the morning following the murder -and then again - have absolutely no witnesses who saw him travelling to the abduction area or wandering around the area on the night of the incident. There is apparently plenty of evidence that puts Hanratty at the murder scene and connects Hanratty to the murder car and weaponc after the incident but nothing at all that shows he travelled to that place and wandered around that place before the incident.

[Steve]

but accept witnesses who 'saw' Hanratty leaving a building (where it is concluded he slept rough) on the morning following the murder

Sorry Limehouse

But nothing like this was ever substantiated - there was never any confirmed sighting of Hanratty on the morning following the murder.

KR
Steve

[Graham]

Isn't it odd that the prosecution were able to disregard the witnesses who claimed Hanratty was in Liverpool/Rhyl at the time of the murder but accept witnesses who 'saw' Hanratty driving the car, or saw him leaving a building (where it is concluded he slept rough) on the morning following the murder -and then again - have absolutely no witnesses who saw him travelling to the abduction area or wandering around the area on the night of the incident. There is apparently plenty of evidence that puts Hanratty at the murder scene and connects Hanratty to the murder car and weaponc after the incident but nothing at all that shows he travelled to that place and wandered around that place before the incident.

Hi Limehouse,

Again, we'll never know how much of the prosecution case the jury actually accepted - personally, I think it was Valerie Storie's ID and other evidence that swayed them.

Regarding the sighting of JH sleeping rough in a building under construction, I believe I recall him giving evidence to the fact that he had £70 on him when he claimed he was in Rhyl and that he said that it wasn't that much money by his standards. So why would he sleep rough, unless of course he really was back in London on the morning after the murder and a long drive back south and needed somewhere to catch up on sleep? I have a feeling that the 'building site sighting' could well be another case of someone being totally mistaken or, not unknown in the A6 Case, someone wanting to get in on the act. I even get the slight impression that Swanwick himself wasn't all that certain of this or the Skillet/Trower/Blackhall sightings. Their evidence is certainly confused.

Re: the lack of sightings of JH at Dorney Reach, have you considered the possibility that he had been for example in Slough during the day of the 22nd and maybe taken a cab to the Dorney area with the view of indulging in a spot of burglary there? OK, a long shot, but nevertheless not impossible.

Good questions, though.

Cheers,

Graham

[Steve]

have you considered the possibility that he had been for example in Slough during the day of the 22nd and maybe taken a cab to the Dorney area with the view of indulging in a spot of burglary there? OK, a long shot, but nevertheless not impossible.

Hi Graham

If he had taken a cab the driver would have come forward - probably, don't you think? However he got there, train being the most likely, he was certainly in the Slough area - for whatever reason!

Kind regards,
Steve

[Graham]

Hi Graham

If he had taken a cab the driver would have come forward - probably, don't you think? However he got there, train being the most likely, he was certainly in the Slough area - for whatever reason!

Kind regards,
Steve

Two years ago my wife lost her wallet and thought she'd left it in a taxi. She phoned the taxi-office to report it and by chance in the office when she called was a driver who said he'd made a trip from where she got into the cab to (more or less) where she got out. My wife has a distinct Irish accent and (very) blonde hair, but the driver said he couldn't recall picking anyone up who matched that description - and that was the morning after. As it turned out, my wife had left her wallet elsewhere (it was found) but that little event confirms to me that taxi-drivers don't necessarily take too much notice of who their fares are.

But you're right - Taplow Station isn't very far away (but too far for me when I made the walk to the cornfield years ago...however, I was a good deal older than JH was at the time).

Cheers,

Graham

[Steve]

But you're right - Taplow Station isn't very far away (but too far for me when I made the walk to the cornfield years ago...however, I was a good deal older than JH was at the time).

Hanratty could also have taken a train to Windsor station, a bit more of a walk to Dorney than from Taplow but quite possible and of course there are rich pickings to be found in Windsor, including royalty!

[Tony]

The jury thought so!

Good Morning Steve,

When I was a little boy way back in 1961 the police were viewed in an almost God like way.
You had to touch your school cap if you walked past one.
If the police arrested someone then they must have done it otherwise why have the police arrested him.
Nobody ever questioned the police. I remember the headmaster saying a policeman was coming to school one day to talk to us. About six of us could not sleep for two nights we been pinching apples at the weekend. It was a road safety talk in the end.
But if the police said it was Sunday it was Sunday.

The Hanratty jury would have had the same attitude and the majority, if not all of them, would have gone in with the attitude: “Well he must have done it the police say so”.

Tony

[Steve]

Hello Tony

Yes, the police did no wrong in those days! Personally, I am still respectful towards officers of the law. Not because they are above reproach, but because they do a difficult job and sometimes risk their lives doing so. In general the attitude towards the police has certainly changed over the years. I would say that television has played a part; from Dixon of Dock Green portraying the police as ordinary and decent people to today’s more realistic programmes.

If I was sitting on a jury in 2008 listening to a police officer’s testimony I would form my own judgement based on common sense and whether or not I believed what he was saying. Back in 1962 I think the jury members would have been able to form a similar opinion and come to a conclusion taking all of the evidence into account, not just the testimony of Mr Acott.

I really do not think that we can presume the Hanratty jury went to the trial with the pre-conception that the accused man was guilty only because the police said so. If that was the case, what would be the point of any trial by jury?

Kind regards,
Steve

[jimarilyn]

The Hanratty jury would have had the same attitude and the majority, if not all of them, would have gone in with the attitude: “Well he must have done it the police say so”.

Hi Tony,
Jean Justice in his impressive book related in vivid detail a rather strange and fascinating incident which took place in the infamous cornfield around the middle of March 1962, involving Jeremy Fox, Peter Alphon and himself. Fear gripped Justice that night in that field, so much so that he fled to a farmer's cottage by the side of a field and knocked up the startled occupants (Mr and Mrs Climo). Justice blurted out his somewhat unintelligible story to them, they calmed him down and went with him back to the car where Alphon and Fox were.The next day Mr Climo was told by police from Burnham that the man with Justice and Fox could not have been Alphon because he was in jail awaiting trial on some other charge. This was an outright lie as Alphon had been granted bail and was definitely not in jail.
Definitely not above telling porkies, the police in the early sixties ?

[reg1965]

Hi all
Just a few thoughts about the last few posts.

Isn't it odd that the prosecution were able to disregard the witnesses who claimed Hanratty was in Liverpool/Rhyl at the time of the murder but accept witnesses who 'saw' Hanratty driving the car, or saw him leaving a building (where it is concluded he slept rough) on the morning following the murder -and then again - have absolutely no witnesses who saw him travelling to the abduction area or wandering around the area on the night of the incident. There is apparently plenty of evidence that puts Hanratty at the murder scene and connects Hanratty to the murder car and weaponc after the incident but nothing at all that shows he travelled to that place and wandered around that place before the incident.

I think that the prosecution witnesses evidence (since the original trial) have still been given greater credibility over the defence's, but I am not sure why!

All of the identification witnesses picked out a totally innocent man first up. Why didn't they (if sure about the mans face) decline to pick anyone.

Blackhall later said that Skillett told him as they were leaving the trial on the 25th January 1962 that; 'Well, it must have been Hanratty because otherwise the police would never had arrested him'. Blackhall had a better view being closer and said the driver was most certainly not Hanratty!

Trower, at best, could only have seen a slight aspect of the mans head and if his mate Paddy Hogan is correct not at all because he was 20 minutes too late.

Later discovery of non-discosure about the cars mileage places the Regbridge evidence into turmol as does conflicting evidence regarding the time that car was first seen abandoned in Avondale Crescent.

Valerie Storie's timings about the pub visit and arrival at the cornfield are questionable and range between over a half hour either way!
Her eyesight is in question and by her own sworn admission that the image of the gunman was fading, irrespective of how certain she may have seemed.

Similarly the Rhyl alibi witnesses show timings that seemingly don't match, yet these are not wildly out by much in comparison. Possibly an hour at most in any case. For instance Mrs Vincent couldn't remember the exact day but Mrs Walker could (because of her sons visit about a tragic family event the coming Friday (25th), and both recollections came from the same day.

Identification evidence is now regarded as being notoriously difficult to take at face value unless it is backed up by other evidence or can be placed in context with other eye witness statements that may corroborate it. This must apply to both sides of the argument equally and fairly.

Regards
Reg

[caz]

I haven't got time to go into the science at the moment so I'll just take your sentence - "So if the rapist had no sperm in his semen, the DNA would not have to disappear because it would never have been present in the first place"
The article doesn't say that there is no DNA present in the semen, it says that it is there, but they have difficulty detecting it.
The arguement is fundamentally the same as the one regarding somebody else's DNA on the portion of the knickers not tested; yes it's a possibility but it still doesn't account for the DISTRIBUTION of JH's DNA.

All the best
johnl

As for the impotent rapist, I didn't say that he was impotent. Impotence implies that a male cannot get an erection necessary for sexual intercourse. I merely suggested that he couldn't or chose not to ejaculate inside VS.

James Dean quoted the following from a LibDem discussion:

‘There would not have been any trace of Storie’s assailant on those knickers, anyway, because Peter Louis Alphon, when he raped Storie, would have pulled them down to her ankles.’

Er, I must be missing something here, because the fact that they were able to determine the rapist’s blood group from semen left on or in the victim at the crime scene makes it irrelevant exactly how and where the ejaculation took place. Semen would have transferred onto the knickers when VS put them back on.

The slightly desperate ‘no sperm’ explanation for the real rapist’s DNA not showing up just adds one more layer to the overall implausibility of the contamination theory, which was already on its last legs in my humble opinion. Does anyone know if sperm would, by extension of the DNA detection problem, have had to be present in a rapist’s semen in order to determine his blood group back in 1961? If so, the ‘no sperm’ theory just lost its legs because we know the guilty blood group was determined, and that the first bit of bad luck an innocent Hanratty would have had was sharing this very common biological factor with the real rapist.

But then his bad luck just got worse and worse until it finally went off the scale, didn't it?

The DNA evidence was quite separate from all the other factors that led to JH achieving prime suspect status, and then being tried and convicted. The only reason JH’s DNA was found on that knicker fragment (regardless of how it got there) was because he was suspected, rightly or wrongly, of this horrible crime due to those other factors.

Being found not guilty by the original jury, or having a conviction eventually declared legally unsafe, merely takes the defendant back to their original ‘presumed innocent’ status; it’s not the same as being proven innocent. Even if the contamination argument could be resurrected and supported by reputable forensic experts, it would not prove JH’s innocence. With no provable alibi, and nothing to indicate that it was another man who left his blood group O semen at the crime scene, it could still have been JH, and all the original suspicions about him could have been justified.

This is why the DNA contamination issue is so crucial: it’s not only the danger of an innocent person being incriminated; it’s the certainty of the guilty party getting away with it, if his conviction relies on a DNA identification which can be shown to have involved either incompetence or dishonesty.

Similarly, if someone other than JH ‘planted’ the evidence in places that would put him in the frame, he could still have belonged in that frame. I don’t know what to think about Alphon, France, Mr X et al, but I don’t like the Vienna Hotel ‘coincidence’ one little bit. I do wonder if Alphon knew Hanratty and maybe became aware very early on of what the latter was meant to have done and where he had stayed the night before. I could see Alphon in a non-murdering role, pulling a guilty Hanratty’s strings somehow and even being paid by a third party to bring about certain results. If Hanratty was aware of anything like this going on, he could hardly have given the police any details without admitting his own starring role.

Something was never ‘right’ about this case, but it’s still a giant leap to conclude that the final verdict had to be ‘wrong’.

Any thoughts?

Love,

Caz
X

[Steve]

Hi Tony,
Jean Justice in his impressive book related in vivid detail a rather strange and fascinating incident which took place in the infamous cornfield around the middle of March 1962, involving Jeremy Fox, Peter Alphon and himself. Fear gripped Justice that night in that field, so much so that he fled to a farmer's cottage by the side of a field and knocked up the startled occupants (Mr and Mrs Climo). Justice blurted out his somewhat unintelligible story to them, they calmed him down and went with him back to the car where Alphon and Fox were.The next day Mr Climo was told by police from Burnham that the man with Justice and Fox could not have been Alphon because he was in jail awaiting trial on some other charge. This was an outright lie as Alphon had been granted bail and was definitely not in jail.
Definitely not above telling porkies, the police in the early sixties ?

This is hearsay and not admissible in a court of law. Someone was certainly lying here, but there is no proof that it was the police telling porkies.

[caz]

This is why the DNA contamination issue is so crucial: it’s not only the danger of an innocent person being incriminated; it’s the certainty of the guilty party getting away with it, if his conviction relies on a DNA identification which can be shown to have involved either incompetence or dishonesty.

Just to go on from this:

If there had been the least indication that incompetence or dishonesty could have led to JH's DNA being identified on that knicker fragment (presumably in the absence of any trace of the original semen evidence), does anyone here believe that JH's legal team would a) have been given their own piece for testing by independent experts, or b) not have raised their own serious objections?

Nobody has to know a thing about DNA to consider this question, so no excuses please.

Love,

Caz
X

[jimarilyn]

This is hearsay and not admissible in a court of law. Someone was certainly lying here, but there is no proof that it was the police telling porkies.

If indeed it was hearsay, there was an awful lot of hearsay allowed during Hanratty's trial.
The police of course wouldn't dream of telling porkies. They wouldn't have to dream of it, they'd just do it if it suited their purposes.
The law, (as far more intelligent people than I have remarked in the past) is an ass.

[Victor]

Phew, what a lot of posts.

A few comments - I've read lots of comments about the evidence being "handled" at the trial etc, but none about whether the knicker fragment and hanky were in plastic bags during this period - or whether they were stored in them. My reason for asking this is that if supposedly "lots" of people handled them - lawyers, ushers, etc - then where are their DNA profiles. Only VS, MG and JH's were found (on the knickers) and the prosecution conclusion put forward being that they were the only people who's bodily fluids were in contact with them.

For the contamination theory to hold then we have to go down a convoluted route:-
1. VS and MG had sex and their DNA was transferred to the knickers.
2. "The rapist" and VS had sex and his DNA wasn't transferred due to no ejaculation or infertility (unsure of how this affects the blood type which was transferred)
3. JH's DNA transferred from cross-contamination with other evidence - trouser wash or whatever

In relation to 2, I do know that even when there is no ejaculation or infertility (no semen - genetic or vasectomy) then it is still possible to transmit HIV, and the reason given for this is often ascribed to lubricating fluids emitted by the male, or friction micro-scratches letting minute quantities of blood pass from male to female. This suggestion obviously gives a possibility as to why the blood typing was possible.

As to 3, there is still no reasonable explanation as to how, if we are talking only about bodily fluids, the trouser wash would contain any DNA - other than urine of course if he was not wearing underwear, but urine is mostly water with urea and other impurities and little DNA.

I just can't see it myself.

Of course I'm here assuming that there's no police conspiracy either police pressure on the scientists or scientist bad practice or scientist conspiracy - which segues nicely to Caz's post #1843 to which the various supplementary questions are:-
a) Was any material left for further tests?
b) Is this permissable in an Appeal Court?
and c) If the "contamination" happened during the 40 year storage then the results should be the same!

Is anyone else bothered by the "No witness sightings (VS excluded)" type comments? Why exclude the person most likely to correctly identify her attacker? It makes no sense.

As for the Rhyl alibi - I just don't believe it, and it seems the jury agrees with me (or rather I agree with them)

As Graham (I think) keeps pointing out, and I agree with him, JH should not have been convicted on the evidence presented at the original trial and should not have been hanged, BUT fortunately the jury were vindicated by the DNA evidence.