a6 murder

[jimarilyn]

Also:

"And the darkest hour is just before dawn"
Dedicated to the One I Love
Mamas & Papas

Hi Julie,

Also....."The darkest hour is just before dawn" a beautiful song by the great Emmylou Harris, from her 1980 album "Roses in the snow"


regards,
James

[Limehouse]

Hi James,

"The Darkest Hour is Just before Dawn"

Reckon that line must be biblical then - or Dylan penned it and they all liked it so much they couldn't resist using it!

I like Dylan very much too. Recently, my husband and I were trying to draw up a list of our favourite Dylan tracks but it's just so hard not to keep adding another one.

Julie

[jimornot?]

Hi James,

"The Darkest Hour is Just before Dawn"

Reckon that line must be biblical then - or Dylan penned it and they all liked it so much they couldn't resist using it!

I like Dylan very much too. Recently, my husband and I were trying to draw up a list of our favourite Dylan tracks but it's just so hard not to keep adding another one.

Julie

Hi Julie, Reg and James

apparently phrase first used in 1650 by a theologian Thomas Fuller http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/darkest-hour.html

Didn't really rate / know much of Dylan until I got his Greatest Hits album - not really one bad track on it and several fantastic lyrics - even if some inspiration came from long-gone theolgians

all the best

Viv

[jimornot?]

passing cars

hi Limehouse

this is a verrrrry interesting point. but then again, if is was light enough for ms storie to see her assailant, why should she mention a passing car?

Hi Larue and all

(very good to see you back here btw Larue)

Indeed. At the end of the day Valerie is adamant she got a good enough view of the assailant and when one considers the time spent in the car with him, there is surely every reason for her to feel confident in this. Perhaps the car came by that much earlier and she was mistaken about timings.

Interested about the message in the stones - think I missed reference to this. If verifiable it would tend to add weight to her assertion about the eye colour wouldn't it and perhaps mean we should accept that previous reporting of brown eyes was an error

ATB

Viv

[Victor]

Interested about the message in the stones - think I missed reference to this. If verifiable it would tend to add weight to her assertion about the eye colour wouldn't it and perhaps mean we should accept that previous reporting of brown eyes was an error

That's the problem, it's not verifiable. No-one found the stones, Kerr didn't spot them, but by that time he had noted down some details, albeit that that went missing later. No police officer saw them, but they were getting their information first hand from the victim. In fact the only reference to it is VS sworn testimony - but she has no reason to lie, and all her other details are correct.

The brown eyes was a police error, but it was said on camera and the media ran with it, there is no evidence that VS ever said it.

KR,
Vic.

[jimarilyn]

That's the problem, it's not verifiable. No-one found the stones, Kerr didn't spot them, but by that time he had noted down some details, albeit that that went missing later. No police officer saw them, but they were getting their information first hand from the victim. In fact the only reference to it is VS sworn testimony - but she has no reason to lie, and all her other details are correct.

The brown eyes was a police error, but it was said on camera and the media ran with it, there is no evidence that VS ever said it.

KR,
Vic.

Seeing as you are so keen on people providing evidence Victor, where indeed is your evidence/proof that the brown eyes statement is a police error ?

As you say, the police were getting their information from Miss Storie, so WHO do you think was the source of Superintendent Morgan's televised police statement on the morning of the murder ? ...."We are anxious to trace a man of the following description ....aged about 30 years, 5 feet 6, proportionate build, dark brown hair, palish face, erm...brown eyes, very-deep set, not very-deep set, straight nose, wearing a dark lounge suit and believed to have an East End London accent."

Do you think the Superintendent was making it up as he was going along ?
Just three days later (sorry for repeating myself here) when she was helping Det-Sgt Mackle compose the identikit photo, Valerie Storie confirmed that the killer's eyes were dark (not light) in colour.

Your presume a lot in the last two lines of your post.

KP
James

[Victor]

WHO do you think was the source of Superintendent Morgan's televised police statement on the morning of the murder ? ...."We are anxious to trace a man of the following description ....aged about 30 years, 5 feet 6, proportionate build, dark brown hair, palish face, erm...brown eyes, very-deep set, not very-deep set, straight nose, wearing a dark lounge suit and believed to have an East End London accent."

Hi James,
This was discussed a while ago and Graham stated that in the interview Morgan wasn't clear when he made the statement and is almost certainly the source of the brown eyes comment.

Do you think the Superintendent was making it up as he was going along ?

No I think he was ill-prepared and mis-read the notes and got confused.

Just three days later (sorry for repeating myself here) when she was helping Det-Sgt Mackle compose the identikit photo, Valerie Storie confirmed that the killer's eyes were dark (not light) in colour.

The light or dark discussion is also quite recent. Both Woffinden and Foot have a picture on their cover with Hanratty with dark eyes which only leads me to the conclusion that sometimes Hanratty's eyes appearred to be dark.

KR,
Vic.

[larue]

I like Dylan very much too. Recently, my husband and I were trying to draw up a list of our favourite Dylan tracks but it's just so hard not to keep adding another one.
Julie

reckon 'desolation row' must be in there somewhere, and 'sad eyed lady of the lowlands' and maybe two or three hundred others

no easy task

[larue]

Hi James,
This was discussed a while ago and Graham stated that in the interview Morgan wasn't clear when he made the statement and is almost certainly the source of the brown eyes comment.
KR,
Vic.

hi all


Superintendent Morgan's televised police statement on the morning of the murder is included in Bob Woffinden's documentary, and for what it's worth, i thought Superintendent Morgan sounded clear and confident when he read out the description, stumbling only on the 'deep set' eyes part.

as an aside, i have another source of information which states that VS described brown eyes on day one, and maintained this for the first month after the attack, changing it only after she was transferred to Guys hospital, about the same time as she made the 'my memory of this man is fading' confession to Mr Acott.

i have attempted to contact the source of this statement, to aks if he is prepared to discuss his sources, but, as with Mr Sherrard, i have met with no success, as yet.

[jimarilyn]

I totally disagree about your assessment of Superintendent Morgan, Victor. The man obviously was very experienced in his job and would know the importance of issuing an accurate and truthful statement in the hunt for a murderer. He was quite clear in his statement and even corrected his initial mis-reading of "very deep-set".
You think he was ill prepared and mis-read his notes. Ill prepared, a policeman about to issue an important statement on a live ITV News report ?? Do you think he was also confused about the gunman's age, height, build, complexion, nose etc., or was it just the eye colour that he got wrong ?
It stands to reason that there could only have been one source for the gunman's description, namely the victim herself, speaking to police officers at Bedford Hospital earlier that morning.

Superintendent Morgan's interview can be seen and heard 4 minutes and 7 seconds into the YouTube video below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXad3ZLQlRY

KP,
James

[jimarilyn]

hi all


Superintendent Morgan's televised police statement on the morning of the murder is included in Bob Woffinden's documentary, and for what it's worth, i thought Superintendent Morgan sounded clear and confident when he read out the description, stumbling only on the 'deep set' eyes part.

as an aside, i have another source of information which states that VS described brown eyes on day one, and maintained this for the first month after the attack, changing it only after she was transferred to Guys hospital, about the same time as she made the 'my memory of this man is fading' confession to Mr Acott.

i have attempted to contact the source of this statement, to aks if he is prepared to discuss his sources, but, as with Mr Sherrard, i have met with no success, as yet.

Hi Larue,

Looks like our posts have crossed.

Re. Dylan I wouldn't know where to start to compile even a top 100 from his prodigious output of classics.


regards,
James

[larue]

Hi Larue and all
(very good to see you back here btw Larue)

thank you for saying so Viv

Indeed. At the end of the day Valerie is adamant she got a good enough view of the assailant and when one considers the time spent in the car with him, there is surely every reason for her to feel confident in this. Perhaps the car came by that much earlier and she was mistaken about timings.

that maybe so, but i don't know it jibes with her later remark about her fading memory of the man's face, and her failure at the Alpon id parade.

[Limehouse]

Hi Larue and all

(very good to see you back here btw Larue)

Indeed. At the end of the day Valerie is adamant she got a good enough view of the assailant and when one considers the time spent in the car with him, there is surely every reason for her to feel confident in this. Perhaps the car came by that much earlier and she was mistaken about timings.

Interested about the message in the stones - think I missed reference to this. If verifiable it would tend to add weight to her assertion about the eye colour wouldn't it and perhaps mean we should accept that previous reporting of brown eyes was an error

ATB

Viv

Writing a message with stones seems to lend weight to my suggestion that it was not so very dark when the killer left the scene of the murder. It would be difficult to locate stones (when you can't move very much) and compose them into a message without a reasonable amount of light.

Julie

[jimarilyn]

[blast!!!! that's another post disappeared into the ether. does anyone else have this trouble???]

I used to have this problem Larue, gremlins getting in the works and preventing a post from appearing on the thread. So annoying to see posts disappearing somewhere into the great unknown of cyber space.

Most of the time (another Dylan song !) nowadays I compose a post using Wordpad and copy and paste it. Much more reliable.

regards,
James

[Rob63]

I`m just reading a book called 'War Crimes: Underworld Britain in WW2 by M.J. Trow ISBN 978 1 84415 728 0. Whilst obviously not dealing with this specific case it has some very interesting cases and observations regarding crime during WW2 and the immediate post war years. I `ve found it intriguing and hardly been able to put it down so far...well worth a read as the late `50s early `60s seem to have more in common with the war years than in comparison with contemporary times.