a6 murder

[richardnunweek]

Hi ,
I read nothing sinister in Janet G visiting Valeries bedside a couple of days after the event, infact it is a normal reaction to speak to someone who shared their love ones last moments on earth, rather like many service men during WW2 who visited the wifes/ loved ones, of fallen comrades offering information that folks home would otherwise never know.
However one would loved to have been the fly on the wall, Just out of curiosity, although sympathetic small talkj was proberly all that occured, also it made a great picture for the press.
Regards Richard.

[jimarilyn]

Good morning Jimarilyn,

I know that Janet said in interviews long after the crime that she had never believed in capital punishment and I also think she said she did not blame Hanratty’s parents for their campaigning.

But do you know if she ever expressed an opinion about the guilt or innocence of James Hanratty?
Also did she keep in touch or have any more meetings with VS?

Tony.

A very good morning to you too Tony (Sun is shining brightly here up north at the moment )

In answer to your question I definitely remember reading (or hearing on a TV documentary) something to the effect that in later years Janet Gregsten came to believe that Hanratty was innocent of the murder of her husband.

As for her keeping in touch with VS perhaps someone else on this thread can enlighten us on this matter. I get the feeling that a certain person may have made some contact with her.

James.

[jimarilyn]

Hi Tony,

Further to your question about Janet Gregsten having an opinion on Hanratty's innocence or guilt, it was on Bob Woffinden's TV documentary "Mystery of Deadman's Hill" where the narrator says......"But as years passed Janet Gregsten became increasingly perturbed by the case. She conceded Hanratty was probably not the killer. Last January (1995) while discussing the case with a friend, she had a heart attack and died"


James.

[Tony]

Hi Tony,

Further to your question about Janet Gregsten having an opinion on Hanratty's innocence or guilt, it was on Bob Woffinden's TV documentary "Mystery of Deadman's Hill" where the narrator says......"But as years passed Janet Gregsten became increasingly perturbed by the case. She conceded Hanratty was probably not the killer. Last January (1995) while discussing the case with a friend, she had a heart attack and died"


James.

Hello Jimarilyn,

The sun is shining brightly in the Peak district as well. Pity it went away for the summer.

Thank you for that reply. I thought I had seen/read that Janet Gregston had come to believe that Hanratty was innocent. I wonder if it was through reading Foot/Woffinden. I can’t believe she would not have read them. I also can’t believe Valerie Storie would not have read them.
I wonder what she made of them.
Very strange and upsetting really that she died of a heart attack whilst discussing the case.
I also get the impression that one of our regular contributors may be in contact with her and maybe as you say he can enlighten us or at least tell us he is unable to betray any confidences.

Off out now for the afternoon so see you on here this evening.

Tony

[jimarilyn]

Thank you for that reply. I thought I had seen/read that Janet Gregston had come to believe that Hanratty was innocent. I wonder if it was through reading Foot/Woffinden. I can’t believe she would not have read them. I also can’t believe Valerie Storie would not have read them.
I wonder what she made of them.
Very strange and upsetting really that she died of a heart attack whilst discussing the case.
I also get the impression that one of our regular contributors may be in contact with her and maybe as you say he can enlighten us or at least tell us he is unable to betray any confidences.

Off out now for the afternoon so see you on here this evening.

Tony

Hi Tony,

I'm off too, in a short while. I would say the odds are that Valerie Storie would have read both books, if only out of curiosity. As for Janet, I would guess that she read Paul Foot's book. Alas, she could not have read the Bob Woffinden book as it was published in 1997, a couple of years after her death.

Hope you enjoy the rare sunshine.


James

[Graham]

Hi Tony,

I was away on biz, not hols....just when we get a bit of halfway decent weather.

I remember the A6 Case when it happened, and it was seen by the press and the public as one of the most repulsive and horrendous cases ever to come in front of a UK court of law. There's no point in my denying that the police were seen as heroes, that they'd done a marvellous job in catching the culprit who got his just desserts, etc., etc. The police in those days were seen as supermen who could do no wrong - we know better now. At the time there was no real suggestion that they'd got the wrong man, and very little in the way of demonstration against the sentence. And there, to an extent, it rested for some time.

There were rumblings before Foot's book was published that JH was the wrong man, but it was Foot's book that really started the ball rolling. I was (still am) a great admirer of Paul Foot, and to me he was someone who always believed strongly in what he said and wrote, and wasn't the kind of writer who wrote first and thought afterwards. His book was extremely well-written and very persuasive, and this, together with the gathering pace of the JH Is Innocent movement, led me to think strongly that he really was the wrong man. I couldn't see people like John Lennon running their colours up the wrong mast. So yes, I was pretty well convinced that JH was innocent. (Woffinden's book I find much less convincing than Foot's, oddly enough. He assumes too much, for a start, even though his book contains much more genuine detail than Foot's. He also makes the prime mistake of imbuing JH with a personality he never had).

I was also highly suspicious the the identification evidence (and I still am) and as I've said many times on this thread I genuinely don't think JH should have been convicted on the evidence placed before the court. Unfortunately for him, the jury thought different.

With regard to Alphon, I was never convinced that he was the A6 killer. To me, his presence in the case was by way of pure coincidence, and he used his weird personality and talents to profit by it. Had the manager of the Alexandra Court Hotel not reported Alphon to the police, we'd never have heard of him to this day.

The other big mistake made by both Woffinden, and to a lesser extent Foot, was to 'invent' a motive for the murder and rape. That someone should actually pay to have Gregsten and Storie seperated, and further to use a gun-toting crook to do it, is frankly risible as far as I'm concerned. I think that this invention actually seriously weakens the case for JH's innocence, at least as far as I'm concerned, because anyone propounding it can't be taken seriously in my honest opinion. It's a wonder Ewer didn't issue more writs for libel than he actually did.

And then, of course, there was the DNA. I was as surprised as anyone when it pointed straight to JH, but I have not to date seen any reason to doubt its accuracy. I also can't see any reason to suspect some kind of conspiracy to fiddle the results so as to save the Establishment's face and so forth. OK, call me naive if you like, but I'm also realistic - when presented with sufficient evidence to support a wrongful conviction, the 'Establishment' usually goes along with it, and I could cite a few cases (as we all could). I've kept out of the DNA discussion on this thread, because nothing will ever convince me that there was anything at fault with the testing procedure. Simple as that, and apologies to anyone who thinks otherwise.

If Alphon is the A6 killer, then (a) he had a perfect alibi that even the police accepted; (b) where's his DNA on the forensic exhibits; (c) his DNA didn't match any other DNA on the exhibits.

To me, the fascination of the A6 Case lies not in 'whodunnit' but in 'why' and also in unravelling the mass of coincidence and mystery that still surrounds it.
Yes, there may well have been some kind of conspiracy, but after rather than before the murder. Yes, the role of Charles France needs to be examined very closely (although I doubt that this is now practical or possible at this remove). Yes, the police acted disgracefully before, during and after the trial.
Yes, Alphon confessed (when it was safe to do so) and then withdrew it, and hung around the Case for years afterwards, making £££'s out of it when he was able. Yes, I accept that there are plenty of people who are totally convinced of JH's innocence, and I hope there always will be, otherwise the debate will end.

But unfortunately, the one piece of inarguable, concrete evidence that will convince me of JH's innocence so far hasn't emerged either on these boards or away from them. Maybe it will one day, who knows?

Sorry to rattle on a bit...

Cheers,

Graham

[P.L.A]

Hanratty in Rhyl

Hi Jimarilyn

Gosh, that was a lot of good constructive work. I am most impressed with your dedication to the cause.

As you know, I am from the Jim Did It brigade, and have been so since 1962.

I fully agree with your analysis of Hanratty’s movements and have never understood those suggesting he was recalling a previous visit to Rhyl when he looked for lodgings.

I have always believed that his strategy was to tell the absolute truth about everything at all times, with the exception of the crucial period. As a professional crook, he must have known that to give an alibi that was correct except for the date would have been suicidal. This could have been so very easily exposed with sightings, entries in guest house registers, etc.

To my mind, what he did after the Liverpool alibi fell apart was to pick on a location that he vaguely knew, and Rhyl was ideal. No one could come forward and say they had seen him looking for B&B at some other time, he knew roughly where the rail and bus stations were and was aware that Liverpool and Rhyl were connected by a bus service – which he had used. (I realise that in 1961, most places were connected with good bus services).

Don’t forget that Hanratty never claimed to have stayed at Ingledene. It was Mrs. Jones and her daughter that said he lodged there. When interviewed in the condemned cell by Home Office officials he was unable to expand on his story, even though his life was in danger.

It is all very well for Foot et. al. hypothesising that he probably spent one night in one room and then moved to another for the second, etc. – main problem is that Hanratty didn’t come up with any of this when his life depended on it.

Hanratty only changed his alibi once Sherrard pressurised him into agreeing to take the stand. The defendant didn’t originally want to give evidence, but his advocate thought that he would create a favourable impression with the jury.

P.S. I also think that the identikits appear to resemble Alphon.

Peter

[JamesDean]

I've kept out of the DNA discussion on this thread, because nothing will ever convince me that there was anything at fault with the testing procedure. Simple as that, and apologies to anyone who thinks otherwise.

An excellent post Graham.

I don't wish to draw you into a discussion on the DNA but I am curious as to why you have complete faith in the testing procedure. What convinces you that there is no possibility of the result being wrong? Do you simply have blind faith in the infallibility of the forensics?

If Alphon is the A6 killer, then (a) he had a perfect alibi that even the police accepted; (b) where's his DNA on the forensic exhibits; (c) his DNA didn't match any other DNA on the exhibits.

Alphon shared the same blood group as Hanratty so the forensic evidence pointed to him as much as to Hanratty ... oh and to 45% of the adult male population; that must have narrowed things down!

The only exhibit that was tested for DNA wasn't an exhibit. The fragment never went to court. The fragment was an offcut from the piece of crotch that Dr Grant cut from Valerie's knickers and was stored, packaged as described in the judgment, until it was 'discovered' in 1991 in a laboratory file. Part of the fragment was used in the 1995 test when no DNA was detected at all. The remaining fragment of the fragment was used in 1997 and that is the source of the infamous DNA result.

Admittedly Alphon's DNA wasn't detected on the fragment but, back in 1961, neither was there any forensic evidence located from an examination of Hanratty's clothes and nothing seems to have been found in the car either. Lots of blood would have been in that car and the killer drove it to Redhill but somehow, if the killer was Hanratty, he avoided getting even a trace of Gregsten's blood on his Hepworth trousers. Talk about Houdini making the killer's DNA disappear from the fragment and I would say Houdini must have also made Gregsten's blood disappear from the Hepworth trousers.

If it is valid to say that the killer's DNA 'must' have been on the tiny fragment of material, that was only a small fraction of the staining on the knickers, then I suggest it is just as likely that the killer's trousers would have had some forensic evidence, ie Gregsten's blood, somewhere on the fabric. None of Gregsten's blood or any fibre linking Hanratty to the murder was ever found on the Hepworth trousers so, if he was the killer, then Houdini was certainly at work. This is the same Houdini who is blessed with removing the killer's DNA from the fragment when we don't even know if the fragment ever came into contact with DNA from the killer. Yes the killer's DNA was somewhere in the staining on the knickers but there is no guarantee that it was on the fragment. The fragment cannot be 'assumed' to be representative of the complete garment. That a Particular DNA was not found on the fragment does not conclusively prove what may have been present elsewhere on the garment.

The appeal judges had no knowledge of the DNA content of the knickers as the knickers had been destroyed after Hanratty's execution; so the judges took the leap of faith that the fragment accurately represented all there was to know, forensically, about the knickers. Sorry but that's just not good enough!

If no-one can agree that there is some possibility, however remote, that the killer's DNA was either not found on the fragment or was never present on the fragment and that Hanratty's DNA was as a result of contamination, then please explain how he failed to get any forensic evidence onto his much loved Hepworth trousers?

Sorry to bring DNA back to the main thread but it's where it belongs. Many of you who believe in Hanratty's guilt do so only because of the DNA. You can't prove the DNA is infallible in this particular case any more than I can prove otherwise. I have never sought to prove that the DNA result is false. It's not now possible to do so as there is nothing left to test in the future as technology advances. I am merely trying to suggest that it is a 'possibility' that the result could be spurious and we should not become totally prejudiced by the presumed infallibility of the test performed in 1997 using a bleeding edge technique on evidential material that had not been subject to any proper handling and storage as would now be required for the result to have any weight as evidence.

Meanwhile, jimarilyn makes a convincing argument for the validity of the Rhyl alibi. Are we going to suppress all thoughts of Hanratty actually being innocent and ignore ever more compelling argument in favour of the Rhyl alibi merely because we are prejudiced?

Regards
James

[johnl]

An excellent post Graham.

I don't wish to draw you into a discussion on the DNA but I am curious as to why you have complete faith in the testing procedure. What convinces you that there is no possibility of the result being wrong? Do you simply have blind faith in the infallibility of the forensics?



Alphon shared the same blood group as Hanratty so the forensic evidence pointed to him as much as to Hanratty ... oh and to 45% of the adult male population; that must have narrowed things down!

The only exhibit that was tested for DNA wasn't an exhibit. The fragment never went to court. The fragment was an offcut from the piece of crotch that Dr Grant cut from Valerie's knickers and was stored, packaged as described in the judgment, until it was 'discovered' in 1991 in a laboratory file. Part of the fragment was used in the 1995 test when no DNA was detected at all. The remaining fragment of the fragment was used in 1997 and that is the source of the infamous DNA result.

Admittedly Alphon's DNA wasn't detected on the fragment but, back in 1961, neither was there any forensic evidence located from an examination of Hanratty's clothes and nothing seems to have been found in the car either. Lots of blood would have been in that car and the killer drove it to Redhill but somehow, if the killer was Hanratty, he avoided getting even a trace of Gregsten's blood on his Hepworth trousers. Talk about Houdini making the killer's DNA disappear from the fragment and I would say Houdini must have also made Gregsten's blood disappear from the Hepworth trousers.

If it is valid to say that the killer's DNA 'must' have been on the tiny fragment of material, that was only a small fraction of the staining on the knickers, then I suggest it is just as likely that the killer's trousers would have had some forensic evidence, ie Gregsten's blood, somewhere on the fabric. None of Gregsten's blood or any fibre linking Hanratty to the murder was ever found on the Hepworth trousers so, if he was the killer, then Houdini was certainly at work. This is the same Houdini who is blessed with removing the killer's DNA from the fragment when we don't even know if the fragment ever came into contact with DNA from the killer. Yes the killer's DNA was somewhere in the staining on the knickers but there is no guarantee that it was on the fragment. The fragment cannot be 'assumed' to be representative of the complete garment. That a Particular DNA was not found on the fragment does not conclusively prove what may have been present elsewhere on the garment.

The appeal judges had no knowledge of the DNA content of the knickers as the knickers had been destroyed after Hanratty's execution; so the judges took the leap of faith that the fragment accurately represented all there was to know, forensically, about the knickers. Sorry but that's just not good enough!

If no-one can agree that there is some possibility, however remote, that the killer's DNA was either not found on the fragment or was never present on the fragment and that Hanratty's DNA was as a result of contamination, then please explain how he failed to get any forensic evidence onto his much loved Hepworth trousers?

Sorry to bring DNA back to the main thread but it's where it belongs. Many of you who believe in Hanratty's guilt do so only because of the DNA. You can't prove the DNA is infallible in this particular case any more than I can prove otherwise. I have never sought to prove that the DNA result is false. It's not now possible to do so as there is nothing left to test in the future as technology advances. I am merely trying to suggest that it is a 'possibility' that the result could be spurious and we should not become totally prejudiced by the presumed infallibility of the test performed in 1997 using a bleeding edge technique on evidential material that had not been subject to any proper handling and storage as would now be required for the result to have any weight as evidence.

Meanwhile, jimarilyn makes a convincing argument for the validity of the Rhyl alibi. Are we going to suppress all thoughts of Hanratty actually being innocent and ignore ever more compelling argument in favour of the Rhyl alibi merely because we are prejudiced?

Regards
James

DNA-so it's jump again and back to the beginning !
As Graham pointed out in post 2110 there is no Rhyl alibi !

[Tony]

The hangman

Hello everyone,

Did anyone catch the one hour documentary last Tuesday on the History channel at 9.00pm?
It’s bound to be repeated. It was about the British hangmen and although gruesome was nevertheless very interesting. Next Tuesday’s offering is about the French executioners and how one family of four men guillotined over 1,000 men.
Anyway back to The British hangman. It contained footage of Harry Allen who executed James Hanratty and there was also an assistant hangman who was silhouetted out to preserve his identity. He explained how it all worked and how they went about everything. He said he had been in attendance at seventeen executions and not one of the seventeen condemned men ever uttered a word from the time they (the hangmen) entered the holding cell until they dropped.
I am sure he must have attended Hanratty’s execution and if so will possibly be the only man alive to have seen the execution despite what Woffinden says about David Lines being the last man.
Anyone got any information on this?

Tony

[JamesDean]

Hello everyone,

Did anyone catch the one hour documentary last Tuesday on the History channel at 9.00pm?
It’s bound to be repeated. It was about the British hangmen and although gruesome was nevertheless very interesting. Next Tuesday’s offering is about the French executioners and how one family of four men guillotined over 1,000 men.
Anyway back to The British hangman. It contained footage of Harry Allen who executed James Hanratty and there was also an assistant hangman who was silhouetted out to preserve his identity. He explained how it all worked and how they went about everything. He said he had been in attendance at seventeen executions and not one of the seventeen condemned men ever uttered a word from the time they (the hangmen) entered the holding cell until they dropped.
I am sure he must have attended Hanratty’s execution and if so will possibly be the only man alive to have seen the execution despite what Woffinden says about David Lines being the last man.
Anyone got any information on this?

Tony

Hi Tony

The assistant at Hanratty's execution was Royston Lawrence Rickard, who assisted at 15 executions as 1st assistant and 2 as 2nd assistant, making 17 in total, between 1953 and 1964, including that of Ruth Ellis and also at one of the two final British hangings in 1964, that of Peter Anthony Allen. He died in June 1999.

Regards
James

[Tony]

Hi Tony

The assistant at Hanratty's execution was Royston Lawrence Rickard, who assisted at 15 executions as 1st assistant and 2 as 2nd assistant, making 17 in total, between 1953 and 1964, including that of Ruth Ellis and also at one of the two final British hangings in 1964, that of Peter Anthony Allen. He died in June 1999.

Regards
James

Hello Again James Dean,

Well I don’t know exactly when this assistant executioner was filmed. It could have been a couple of months ago or it could have been before 1999.

But it’s strange that the man on the telly said he had assisted in 17 executions and your man, Royston Lawrence Rickard, also assisted in 17. I think it was probably the same man but I’m not certain. If it wasn’t the same man it is one hell of a coincidence but then we are used to them on this thread aren’t we?

Thank you James Dean.

Tony.

[Graham]

James,

Re: DNA testing, I have as much faith in this procedure as I have in finger-printing, fibre-analysis, etc. Such forensic tools are thoroughly checked out and proven before being approved, otherwise the law really would be 'an ass'.
Yes, in days of yore it was thought that the 'science' of phrenology was ****-hot at nailing wrong-doers, but hopefully we've moved on from what is essentially a very subjective method of analysis to what is an absolutely objective one.

However, I will concede that no technique can ever be 100% infallible, witness the Birmingham Six and Dr Skuse's certainty that the nitro-cellulose traces on the hands of the accused came from their handling explosives. Later, it was suggested (but never, I think, proved) that the nitro-cellulose could equally have come from the brand-new pack of cards they were using on the train to Liverpool. However, to this day there is argument about the innocence/guilt of the Birmingham Six, so maybe that is a bad example to choose.

Re: the Identikit. In 2008, we have the major advantage over any witness in the 1962 trial that we know what Alphon looked like. If you were given photos of 100 different men, one of which was Alphon, could you honestly say that without any chance of error you could identify him by means of the Identikit image? Damned if I could. Even the modern E-kit is not accepted as totally reliable, for the simple reason that human memory can never be totally reliable.

Re: the Rhyl Alibi, JohnL correctly points out that it never existed because it was never proven. At best, even with all the good will of the Rhyl 'witnesses', it can never be more than heresay. PLA points out that all Hanratty did, with regard to Ingledene, was suggest that where he stayed at the critical time bore certain resemblances to Ingledene. But he never mentioned the name of the house or Kinmell Street, was unable to describe the people who ran it or his fellow guests; he described only the fact that where he stayed was 'close to the station', but so were, and are, dozens of B&B's in Rhyl. Grace Jones may well have acted from the highest altruistic reasons, but she did Hanratty's case little good.

Has anyone any further thoughts/observations on Charles France's role in the A6 Case?

Cheers,

Graham

[caz]

If I had been Acott and armed with this identikit and then found Alphon I would have said to Oxford:
“Game, set and match Oxo my lad. Open the scotch”

Hi Tony,

So why didn't he?

When all is said and done, Acott could have coached VS to pick out Hanratty, and she could have had no more idea whether the man who raped her resembled Clark, Alphon, Hanratty or someone else entirely - having seen the man's face only briefly in the lights of that passing car. But it still wouldn’t give Hanratty a provable alibi or indicate Alphon’s guilt instead. It certainly wouldn’t indicate his guilt, if she proved herself unable to identify her attacker by appearance alone, from the selection of men put in front of her. In short, you can find holes in VS's identification of Hanratty, but you cannot then expect VS to fill them herself with an Alphon-shaped plug.

If the victim had spent some time with the man in broad daylight and then picked out someone who genuinely looked just like Alphon, there’d have been a lot more to worry about when she unaccountably settled for Hanratty. As it is, if Hanratty looked nothing like Clark, it can only indicate how little she could really have seen and absorbed, in which case the man could have looked nothing like any of the men later presented to her.

If the DNA findings can’t reasonably be put down to all Alphon’s traces being confined to the material they threw away, and Hanratty’s only transferred by accident to the bit they kept, then VS could merely have been ‘coached’ to pick out the right man, after having picked out the wrong man initially. Alphon was neither of those men.

"But as years passed Janet Gregsten became increasingly perturbed by the case. She conceded Hanratty was probably not the killer. Last January (1995) while discussing the case with a friend, she had a heart attack and died"

That’s an interesting quote, but I’m not sure it says much. The late Brian Maybrick had been sceptical at first when Paul Feldman claimed that his grandfather’s cousin James was Jack the Ripper. But Brian was increasingly persuaded by Feldy’s theorising until he ‘conceded’ that his relative probably was the infamous murderer. Likewise Janet could have been increasingly persuaded by those championing Hanratty's innocence that her husband was probably murdered by someone else.

Neither Brian nor Janet would have had any more information, evidence, or special insight than anyone else concerning who the killer was or wasn’t. So their conversions to the 'cause' could point more to the zeal and persuasive powers of the individual ‘campaigners’ than to the rightness of the campaign itself. Again, a conviction can be unsafe and therefore unjust without necessarily being wrong.

I’d just like to add that I have no axe to grind here and speak only as I find. I’d be horrified if I thought that a series of blunders had caused an innocent, and terribly unlucky Hanratty to be hanged and then to go down in history as the animal who raped one victim and shot both, while the guilty man got away with it. It’s doubly unfortunate in this case that the mud continues to stick to two men, one of whom was not involved with the rape and murder. In claiming that one was innocent, one is inevitably pointing the finger at the other, and risking an injustice in the opposite direction. Sure, Alphon brought the mud on himself, but that in no way entitles anyone to throw more mud in that direction unless it’s stronger than the mud that convinced VS, the 1962 jury and those appeal judges that the right man was fingered beyond reasonable doubt.

Love,

Caz
X

[jimarilyn]

Hi Jimarilyn

Gosh, that was a lot of good constructive work. I am most impressed with your dedication to the cause.

As you know, I am from the Jim Did It brigade, and have been so since 1962.

I fully agree with your analysis of Hanratty’s movements and have never understood those suggesting he was recalling a previous visit to Rhyl when he looked for lodgings.

I have always believed that his strategy was to tell the absolute truth about everything at all times, with the exception of the crucial period. As a professional crook, he must have known that to give an alibi that was correct except for the date would have been suicidal. This could have been so very easily exposed with sightings, entries in guest house registers, etc.

To my mind, what he did after the Liverpool alibi fell apart was to pick on a location that he vaguely knew, and Rhyl was ideal. No one could come forward and say they had seen him looking for B&B at some other time, he knew roughly where the rail and bus stations were and was aware that Liverpool and Rhyl were connected by a bus service – which he had used. (I realise that in 1961, most places were connected with good bus services).

Don’t forget that Hanratty never claimed to have stayed at Ingledene. It was Mrs. Jones and her daughter that said he lodged there. When interviewed in the condemned cell by Home Office officials he was unable to expand on his story, even though his life was in danger.

It is all very well for Foot et. al. hypothesising that he probably spent one night in one room and then moved to another for the second, etc. – main problem is that Hanratty didn’t come up with any of this when his life depended on it.

Hanratty only changed his alibi once Sherrard pressurised him into agreeing to take the stand. The defendant didn’t originally want to give evidence, but his advocate thought that he would create a favourable impression with the jury.

P.S. I also think that the identikits appear to resemble Alphon.

Peter

Hi Peter,

Very good post.

Even though we have different views regarding the guilt or innocence of James Hanratty I always enjoy reading your posts. You are obviously very knowledgeable about the case.

I would like to address a few of the points you raise.

Hanratty, it would very much seem, had a fascination and affinity with funfairs, which is probably what attracted him to Rhyl when he was in Liverpool on July 25th 1961.

Arriving that early evening at Rhyl bus station I would guess that he headed straight for the attractions of the fairground. Who knows, perhaps fairgrounds in those days were an ideal place to enquire about possible fences for receiving stolen jewellery etc. He struck up a friendship with Terry Evans and obtained work on the dodgems for 3 or 4 hours. I'd say that left him with very little (if any) time to acquaint himself with the geography of the town, especially as he left the next morning.

If I'm reading your post correctly Peter, you're hinting that Hanratty paid only the one visit there. If so, then how would you account for the fact that Hanratty was able to describe (in impressive detail) the inside of a guesthouse he never stayed at ? The green bath, the potted plant, the large hallstand, the tiled courtyard at the back and the fact that you could hear (but not see) trains shunting. Hanratty was also able to state the correct charge for a 2 night stay (25 shillings).

You say that Hanratty never claimed to have stayed at Ingledene. What he did say about this was......that he had travelled in and out through other streets and knocked at the door of a small guesthouse with a sign saying 'bed and breakfast' The landlady took him in. I remember reading (it may have been a post from Larue) something to the effect that Hanratty got all excited at the appearance in the Bedford courtroom of Mrs Grace Jones.

Re. your last paragraph, I haven't read anywhere that Sherrard pressurised Hanratty into agreeing to take the stand. I have always been under the impression that Hanratty changed the second part of his Liverpool alibi when it dawned on him that things were looking really bad for him and that the lies (about staying with 3 men in Liverpool) that he had naively allowed himself to get tangled up in were doing him great harm. I have always thought it was Hanratty's own wish to take the witness stand not from any pressure from Michael Sherrard.

regards,

James