Death of Peter Alphon
I have been following this thread for the past few weeks on and off (without having had the time to read it all) after reading Paul Foot's book for the first time over Christmas. It seemed to me that the key person who could provide answers to a lot of the questions that pervade the case was Peter Alphon. It would have been especially valuable to know (a) if he was acquainted with William Ewer (as he seemed to imply) before the murder; (b) the precise sources of the £7,500 that came into his accounts after the murder; (c) if he was acquainted with Charles France at some point before Hanratty was charged with the murder (although the story of the meeting in Southend sounds a bit unlikely). It seems to me possible that Alphon could have committed the murder in the way that he described - except that there are a few inconsistencies with Miss Storie's account of what happened: for example, as far as I recall she did not get the idea (or if she did did not mention) that the gunman was trying to separate her from Gregsten. The mis-managed shooting of Valerie Storie would seem to imply that the gunman did not intend to kill either of them, as Alphon stated - the gun went off spontaneously in reaction to what he thought was a threatening move by Gregsten. Once Alphon was not identified by Valerie Storie in the police line-up, it would have been possible for him to have become part of a frame-up of Hanratty owing to the coincidence of Hanratty's having stayed at the Vienna Hotel at more or less the same time. On the other hand, why would Alphon have needed to frame Hanratty once he was already "in the clear"? Perhaps it was the thought that without another plausible suspect the police might have come back to him and arrested him anyway, even without Valerie Storie's positive identification? In any case, it has now been reported that Peter Alphon has died in a London hospital some time in January (following a fall at home) so it seems that the key surviving protagonist in this case has taken a lot of its mysteries with him to his grave.
I have been following this thread for the past few weeks on and off (without having had the time to read it all) after reading Paul Foot's book for the first time over Christmas. It seemed to me that the key person who could provide answers to a lot of the questions that pervade the case was Peter Alphon. It would have been especially valuable to know (a) if he was acquainted with William Ewer (as he seemed to imply) before the murder; (b) the precise sources of the £7,500 that came into his accounts after the murder; (c) if he was acquainted with Charles France at some point before Hanratty was charged with the murder (although the story of the meeting in Southend sounds a bit unlikely). It seems to me possible that Alphon could have committed the murder in the way that he described - except that there are a few inconsistencies with Miss Storie's account of what happened: for example, as far as I recall she did not get the idea (or if she did did not mention) that the gunman was trying to separate her from Gregsten. The mis-managed shooting of Valerie Storie would seem to imply that the gunman did not intend to kill either of them, as Alphon stated - the gun went off spontaneously in reaction to what he thought was a threatening move by Gregsten. Once Alphon was not identified by Valerie Storie in the police line-up, it would have been possible for him to have become part of a frame-up of Hanratty owing to the coincidence of Hanratty's having stayed at the Vienna Hotel at more or less the same time. On the other hand, why would Alphon have needed to frame Hanratty once he was already "in the clear"? Perhaps it was the thought that without another plausible suspect the police might have come back to him and arrested him anyway, even without Valerie Storie's positive identification? In any case, it has now been reported that Peter Alphon has died in a London hospital some time in January (following a fall at home) so it seems that the key surviving protagonist in this case has taken a lot of its mysteries with him to his grave.
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