a6 murder

[larue]

According to the coppers, there was no forensic evidence at all in the car, whether connected with JH or anyone else.

Cheers,

Graham

now that i find impossible to believe. mg's dabs must have been on it, even if only on the boot handle. and his blood and brain matter would have been splattered all over the inside, unless of course the gunman took the precaution of thoroughly valeting the car before he abandoned it?

[Graham]

now that i find impossible to believe. mg's dabs must have been on it, even if only on the boot handle. and his blood and brain matter would have been splattered all over the inside, unless of course the gunman took the precaution of thoroughly valeting the car before he abandoned it?

Whoops, sorry! I meant to say 'forensics other than those left by Gregsten and Storie'.

Which reminds me: someone on this thread said that photos of the interior of the car existed - I've never seen them. Any idea of where they can be found?

Cheers,

Graham

[larue]

Whoops, sorry! I meant to say 'forensics other than those left by Gregsten and Storie'.

[giggle!] i did wonder...

Which reminds me: someone on this thread said that photos of the interior of the car existed - I've never seen them. Any idea of where they can be found?

Cheers,

Graham

i would expect the car to have been extensively photographed, but i have never seen any such pictures published, and would doubt that they would ever escape the custody of the police, still, one never knows...

[Graham]

[giggle!] i did wonder...



i would expect the car to have been extensively photographed, but i have never seen any such pictures published, and would doubt that they would ever escape the custody of the police, still, one never knows...

I've got a vague memory that a photo of the car's interior was included in one of the less well-known A6 books that I read years ago, but I can't remember which...

I also wonder what happened to the car itself. It was owned by Gregsten's aunt, but I'm sure she didn't want it back. So was it auctioned, scrapped or what?

Cheers,

Graham

[JamesDean]

I've got a vague memory that a photo of the car's interior was included in one of the less well-known A6 books that I read years ago, but I can't remember which...

I also wonder what happened to the car itself. It was owned by Gregsten's aunt, but I'm sure she didn't want it back. So was it auctioned, scrapped or what?

Cheers,

Graham

Hi Graham

I have no information (yet) on the fate of the original car or photos of the interior. However, as a matter of curiosity, if you click on this link you will see a list of cars for sale; scroll down to the section listing privately owned cars and the 8th car down is the Morris Minor used in the BBC programme "Hanratty". If you click on the photo it enlarges.

http://www.morrisminorspares.co.uk/esmcars.php

Regards
James

[Graham]

Hi Graham

I have no information (yet) on the fate of the original car or photos of the interior. However, as a matter of curiosity, if you click on this link you will see a list of cars for sale; scroll down to the section listing privately owned cars and the 8th car down is the Morris Minor used in the BBC programme "Hanratty".

http://www.morrisminorspares.co.uk/esmcars.php

Regards
James

Thanks for that, mate, but I caught that long ago.

As it goes, my sister-in-law was filling her Morris Minor Estate at some garage in Dudley more years ago than I care to recall, and this smooth-talker came up and offered her £££'s for the car. Sis-in-law being permanently broke, she accepted, etc., etc., and then some time after watched her dearly-loved car being driven over a cliff in a TV detective programme, something like 'Callan' if you're old enough to remember that series. She was not amused.

Cheers,

Graham

[caz]

'evenin' all
[knees bend, dixon theme fades out]

i'm not a member of the jim is innocent brigade, or the hanratty did it brigade, i'm still sitting on the fence. it's pretty lonely up here. i think there is a plausible argument for both views.

i find the dna evidence rather difficult to accept in isolation. if it was presented as part of a body of evidence, along with other tangible evidence, then i think i would find it easier to accept. it seems to me, to be at odds with other factors in the case.

for instance, normal head hair loss for adult males is in the region of 50 to 100 hairs a day. [ this does not include men who are going bald ]. say, 75 hairs on average.

jh was alleged to have spent aproximately 6 hours in the death car, so at the 'normal' average rate of loss, he should have shed in the region of 18 hairs in the car during that time. the forensics experts found zip, despite going over the car with a fine tooth comb.

likewise there was no fluid or fibre evidence, nor a single fingerprint, not one single solitary thing to link him to that car. and yet forty odd years later - bingo. dna jackpot. it almost beggars belief.

Hi larue,

Good on you for sitting on the fence. I’m ready to jump up there with you at any time, if anyone could just give me a half plausible explanation for the DNA findings that allows someone other than Hanratty to have been the rapist.

To be fair, someone was in that car and whoever it was, there was no forensic evidence to put him there. So it’s surely a neutral factor and not therefore ‘at odds’ with any others. They did ascertain the rapist’s blood group in 1961, and the DNA evidence 40 years later did not show up any inconsistencies with the early assumptions made about the origins of all the staining on the victim’s clothing, or of course with the verdict reached by the jury when taking all other factors into account, including VS’s identification of Hanratty and his alibi fiasco.

So it’s not really a case of having to accept the DNA evidence ‘in isolation’, any more than it would have been if the result had indicated that VS and the verdict were wrong.

I do wonder what some people would accept as proof beyond reasonable doubt that Hanratty did it. The jury and the court of appeal both decided that the burden of proof had been fully satisfied. So actually, I’m not sure those who are still convinced of his innocence can insist on the presumed innocent rule at this juncture. Nobody would ever stay in prison at that rate, because there will always be a friend or relative or doubter around to claim that an injustice put them there.

So it’s one thing for the fence sitters and those with deeper misgivings to keep alive the ‘unsafe conviction’ arguments, but quite another for anyone to claim Hanratty was innocent, in the face of the official verdict, if they can produce no tangible evidence that would come close to overturning it.

Love,

Caz
X

[alan]

Graham, I cannot help but think that Foot was more than a little disingenuous in trying to portray Hanratty as a 'cheeky little Cockney sparrow', choosing to virtually ignore such charming character traits as his (Hanratty's) taking advantage of a 16-year-old girl, his callous abandonment of the window-cleaning business that his father had sacrificed his pension rights to start up and his seeming predilection for the services of, shall we say, 'professional ladies'.

I also think it appalling that when, as the years went by and it became more and more patently obvious that the victim's widow had had nothing to do with the murder, that Foot was not man enough to make some kind of apology to the lady in question for the undoubted grief he had caused her with his implications of her possible involvement.

I further think it a great pity that, having played a significant role in securing the overturning of the guilty verdict of the so-called 'Birmingham Six', he was unable to apply his undoubted investigative skills in assisting the authorities in finding just which IRA scumbags did then, in fact, murder 21 innocent people in Brum in '74. It would seem that, in Foot's eyes, there are different categories of 'innocent victims'.

Cheers,
Jim

Dear Jim,

I agree with your first paragraph whole heartedly. To push it a bit further JH may have compromised France's daughter against her will. She may have told her parents leaving France to pursue some sort of revenge including, possibly, the planting of the cartridge cases.

Alan

[Tony]

[QUOTE=jimarilyn;45597]

Hi Tony,

Are you off to watch the Owls ?

regards

James

Hello Jimarilyn,

Yes I did go to see The Owls last night.

Hello Vic,

I took particular notice of Mam Tor on my journey. I slowed down and can report that The Shivering Mountain did not noticeably shiver unlike me during a couple of Nottingham Forest’s attacks on our goal.


Tony.

[Victor]

Hi Tony,

So it wasn't shivering, but did it have a snowy peak?

KR,
Vic

[jimarilyn]

A post from the old A6 thread

Hi all,

An interesting post was submitted (27th April 2007) on the old thread by a John B of Hereford. I quote him as follows :-

I remember this murder so well. I was at an impressionable age and secret trysts between married people were only for The News of the World. There was a strong rumour in many of the pubs along the Caledonian Road in North London (it runs from King's Cross to Holloway Road) that Hanratty was innocent and that people who knew it and could prove it would not step forward. This stayed with me and my acquaintances for many years and the DNA results came as a big surprise.

There was little sympathy then for the woman; don't know why but some things stay with you. Don't know what to believe now.

regards,

James

[Graham]

Hi James,

Yep, I remember that post too. Did we ever hear from John B again?

The A6 Case was pretty sensational, and I suppose there were loads of myths and legends concerning it. On the basis that there probably isn't much smoke without fire, maybe what John B wrote does have some kind of basis.

I have a very, very vague memory of reading in a tabloid years ago that it had been suggested Alphon belonged to British Intelligence....

Cheers,

Graham

[jimarilyn]

A very impressive post from the old thread

An extremely impressive post was submitted last year (on my 55th birthday coincidentally) by Strunt. It was the only post he ever submitted, alas, but I'm sure most of you will agree it speaks for itself : -
The Hanratty case, which even now remains a subject for debate despite the passing of many years and the Appeal hearing of 2002 with it's emphasis on the DNA evidence, justifies it's description by Bob Woffinden as the most fascinating case which there has ever been in British Criminal History.This is because of the direct conflicts of evidence with no seeming reconciliation possible in many areas of the case. Although people cannot be blamed for jumping to the conclusion that Hanratty was guilty if they have heard of the DNA evidence but know little else about the case, the notion that somehow all other evidence must be ignored offends one's natural sense of justice and can surely only be accepted if in fact the DNA does turn out to prove conclusively ( as the Court of Appeal said ) that Hanratty must have been guilty.

Does it prove that ? I do not think so. The type of testing used is known as PCR ( Polymerase Chain Reaction ) and the Americans call it molecular photocopying. It depends on massive magnification of the tiniest samples and it is quite obvious that such a technique must be highly vulnerable to cross-contamination since one may have begun with the smallest amount imaginable. Nowadays detailed regulations require the most stringent handling procedures ( commonly as many as 50 different pairs of rubber gloves may apparently have to be used ) and it is stating the obvious to point out ( as The Criminal Cases Review Commission did point out but the Court of Appeal chose not to take any notice ) that in Hanratty ( where of course nobody in the 1960's had ever heard of forensic DNA save for a handful of very specialist scientists ) procedures corresponding to the requirements of the regulations were not followed in any way. As there were plenty of mixing of items and indeed a broken and empty vial was found with the items when it was known that a vial of liquid containing a wash of Hanratty's trousers had been kept at the time, it is impossible to see how the evidential integrity of the crime samples can be relied on. The Court of Appeal casually assumed that this must have been some other vial ( what ?) but made no comment upon what then was supposed to have become of the vial from the wash in question. Nor is the point about no other person's DNA being found a valid one. The knickers were not preserved as an entire garment but only a tiny fragment remained. Nobody can possibly know what was on the rest of the item. Furthermore, if the source of the DNA on the handkerchief was the mucus staining why did the usual RFLP method not pick this up ? The fact is that PCR can pick up sweat and Hanratty appears to have handled that handkerchief during his evidence. It has always been agreed that he sweated a good deal in the witness box. Surely the most that can be said about the DNA is that one possible explanation of it is that Hanratty was guilty but another is that it got there during storage and handling after the crime. It is equivocal.

What about some of the other points in the case then ? Surely the following are of significance :

1)The Rhyl witnesses did not emerge, as Leonard Miller seems to think , as a result of much later campaigning. On the contrary, as soon as Hanratty put forward the Rhyl account they made statements to the police which Scotland Yard did not disclose to the defence or the court, or even to the prosecution for that matter.

2)The cumulative weight to be attached to the alibi evidence surely cannot be casually brushed aside as Mr Miller thinks. It is obvious from the statements that there was a man answering Hanratty's description going round Rhyl asking for digs, seeking to sell stolen goods in the street etc., at the key time. It would be something of a coincidence if some other person who happened by chance to answer his description had been doing these things in a small town in relation to which he happened to invent a lying story saying he was doing them in relation to the exact time. Nor has any such other person come forward.

3)One of Hanratty's regular crimes was stealing cars. Shortly before his arrest he stole, for example, a Jaguar to order from a London Street and drove it up to the North-West. It seems far fetched that he would not know how to drive a Morris Minor.

4)The only two days when Mrs Dinwoodie (the Liverpool sweetshop lady) was in the shop in that period were the Monday and the Tuesday, which was the day of the murder. The prosecution's own evidence shows Hanratty was in London all day on the Monday ( indeed, this is how he was tied to the Vienna Hotel ) and so the Tuesday is the only day when he could have gone into the shop. As his own barrister pointed out, he would have needed a helicopter to get to Dorney Reach in time.

5)The prosecution case was that there was not and never had been any connection between Hanratty and Alphon. The first time the Vienna Hotel was mentioned in relation to the case was when the police had Alphon reported to them as behaving strangely in another hotel a few days after the murder. His alibi given was the Vienna Hotel. If you "stop the film" at that point and ask what would be the odds against the real murderer (who could have been anybody and could have been anywhere on the night before the murder) just happening to turn out to be a person who had spent the night before the murder in the same hotel as the one which Alphon gave as his alibi for the murder night they must be millions to one. And yet the prosecution's case rested on this absurd possibility.

6)One of the very first things Hanratty did when arrested was to volunteer forensic samples. As an experienced crook, a strange thing for him to do if guilty as he must have known he could not be forced to provide the samples.

I still find it impossible to come to any other conclusion save that the case in Hanratty's favour is far more coherent and compelling than the case against him. Of course, different readers tend to attach more or less weight to different aspects of a case like this but I fail to see how any realistic examination of the whole case can avoid the point that, in the light of all that is known both at the time of trial and since, as soon as you attempt to put together a scenario for how Hanratty spent that crucial week in August 1961 which includes his carrying out of that murder, it is not very long before you begin to run into grave improbabilities.



Phew !! I need to increase my typing speed to 3 wpm.


regards,

James

[Tony]

Good Afternoon Tony,


Valerie Storie did not pick out Alphon, regardless of any similarities she noticed between him and the man she did pick initially. Had she done so, it could well be that the police would have had a simpler (not so sure about ‘more convincing’) case to put before the jury. But as I’ve pointed out before, it would have involved your same less than reliable Valerie Storie and your same fallible police in need of a conviction, which means that Alphon could have been hanged instead, on no stronger evidence against him. How would that have served the cause of justice any better? Why would anyone be taken seriously if they still claimed he did it after someone else’s DNA (Hanratty’s) turned up on the hankie as well as the knickers, but no trace of Alphon’s? And yet, that is what is being claimed, and Alphon has never been identified by anyone as the gunman and no forensic or circumstantial evidence has ever put him at the scene.


Love,

Caz
X

Hello Caz,

Please do not think I am ignoring you. That would never do would it? In fact I have to admit that you are one of my favourites on here.

To answer your questions fully is difficult because it would take up so much time and space but I will attempt, in my own amateurish fashion, to do so in a collection of posts.

I will address them to you so you can shoot me down as and when.

Regarding your post that I refer to here I would say the following:

Valerie Storie did not pick out Alphon on the first ID parade but she possibly came within a whisker of doing so. He was after all the suspect and the police at that time were surely convinced that they had their man. If she had picked him out she would not be “my same less than reliable Valerie Storie”. She would have been very reliable.
She would have picked out the police’s suspect and presumably Acott would have grabbed her by the arm and said: “Well done”.
She would then be pleased to have identified Alphon and would have presumably gone to court and given the evidence against him that would have led to his execution and would presumably still be saying today: “I know who was in the car and now I have settled my score with Alphon”

Love,

Tony.

[JamesDean]

Valerie Storie did not pick out Alphon on the first ID parade but she possibly came within a whisker of doing so. He was after all the suspect and the police at that time were surely convinced that they had their man. If she had picked him out she would not be “my same less than reliable Valerie Storie”. She would have been very reliable.
She would have picked out the police’s suspect and presumably Acott would have grabbed her by the arm and said: “Well done”.
She would then be pleased to have identified Alphon and would have presumably gone to court and given the evidence against him that would have led to his execution and would presumably still be saying today: “I know who was in the car and now I have settled my score with Alphon”

Hi Caz and Tony and everyone,

I'll post here a quote taken from a debate in the commons re the Hanratty trial. There is much more than this that I could post but this part of the debate references the identification. It makes for interesting speculation as to what the turn of events would have been had Alphon been picked out by Miss Storie. Had she picked out Alphon, I am sure that Miss Storie would have been unshakeable in her belief that she had picked the right man. I'm not making any criticism of Valerie Storie. It was a horrific event and she was a young girl of 22 who must have been under a great deal of pressure to identify a suspect. The first identification parade only lasted 5 minutes and it took place despite her doctors advising that she was too ill at the time. As we know, no-one was asked to speak and it was the manner of his speech that convinced Miss Storie, at the second identification parade, that Hanratty was the man who was responsible for the crime against her and Michael Gregsten.

Does anyone think that Alphon may have been singled out at the first identification if he had been asked to speak? Read this extract and decide for yourself. I'm sure you can guess who Mr X is! ...

The case against Hanratty at the trial was based positively on three counts,
which I will consider in turn, particularly in the light of new evidence.

The first was Valerie Storie's identification. Valerie said she had seen the assailant only
momentarily in the head lights of a passing car. She had to rely mainly on recognising
his voice. She took part in two identification parades, at the first of which she picked
another man. She admitted that this man resembled Mr. X. At the second identification
parade, after 20 minutes, she chose Hanratty when he said "finking" rather than
"thinking". I have tape recordings that prove that Mr. X mispronounces in the same way
— Everyfing you asked. and: I want free hundred pounds… followed by: …you had
better make it free hundred pounds. These tape recordings are available to the Home
Secretary. Indeed, some of them have been heard at Scotland Yard, at an inquiry.
The matter of identification is important. There were three identifications of Hanratty
reported at the trial. There were five identifications of other people by leading Crown
witnesses.

The identification was possibly the most crucial evidence in the trial of James Hanratty.

Any comments?

Regards
James