a6 murder

[Graham]

Hi D-Muir,

Of course this does not necessarily exonerate JH, since she could have been mistaken, given her terrible ordeal, but it does suggest that her evidence should not be taken as gospel truth

.

The jury took it as gospel truth, which is what counts.

Regarding VS's description of her assailant's eye-colour, I still haven't seen anything in writing from Foot, Woffinden or anyone else, to suggest that at any time she described the eyes as brown.

Graham

[P.L.A]

Regarding VS's description of her assailant's eye-colour, I still haven't seen anything in writing from Foot, Woffinden or anyone else, to suggest that at any time she described the eyes as brown.

More importantly, Sherrard hasn’t mentioned it, either at the trial or subsequently.

Even Woffinden acknowledges that the whole issue is myth. At the time of the infamous police broadcast, their records show VS hadn’t said anything to them about the colour of her assailant’s eyes.

The police strategy straight after the shock was to just let her talk, which she did in an unstructured way. The questions came a little later.

Peter

[Tony]

Hi D-Muir,

.

The jury took it as gospel truth, which is what counts.

Regarding VS's description of her assailant's eye-colour, I still haven't seen anything in writing from Foot, Woffinden or anyone else, to suggest that at any time she described the eyes as brown.

Graham

I find that statement a little strange Graham.

The jury in Timothy Evans’ murder trial must have accepted Christie’s evidence as Gospel truth.
Is that all that mattered there then?

Obviously it did at the time; so no need to pick me up on that.
But we know what happened in subsequent years even though Christie was hanged for murdering women and hiding them in Rillington Place the establishment would still have liked us to believe that there were two men in the same house doing exactly the same thing unbeknown to each other.

Tony.

[Graham]

Hi Tony,

I find that statement a little strange Graham.

In our adversarial system of justice, it's the job of the barristers to try and convince the jury using whatever evidence, defence and prosecution, they have available. If a barrister knowingly gives false evidence to the jury, and he's caught out, he's for the high jump. In JH's case, the evidence and argument that Swanwick produced was sufficient for the jury to accept that it was the gospel truth and they found accordingly.

The jury in Timothy Evans’ murder trial must have accepted Christie’s evidence as Gospel truth.
Is that all that mattered there then?

There is still debate about whether Evans really was innocent, even though I believe it's now officially accepted that he was - the debate still goes on. Again, whoever was prosecuting him produced a case sufficient for the jury to accept. Not a question of 'is that all that mattered'. It's a question of who and what the jury believe. But in any trial by jury, it's what the jury chooses to believe and the verdict they give that matter.

Who or what, precisely, is 'the Establishment' to whom you refer? Is this another wearisome suggestion that in any trial in which in later years the guilt of the defendant is doubted, some shadowy but influential power-in-the-land rigged said trial, or following appeal? I think if you take a look at murder cases which have gone to appeal, say over the past 70 years, it is a very small percentage indeed which continue to exercise the brains of people like you and me in years to come.

All the best,

Graham

[P.L.A]

Anyone not believing in the coincidences in such cases as the A6 murder and 10 Rillington Place may be interested in this extract from a recent obituary of Sir Alec Bedser

But it was with his brother Eric, with whom he enjoyed what he called "a complete and absolute affinity", that Alec Bedser will always be associated.

In 1957, both men were awarded 15 £1 Premium Bonds by their club. Thirty-five years later, two brown envelopes fell through the door. They had both won £50, a coincidence with odds of more than 20 billion to one.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/cricket/1494827.stm

Peter

[P.L.A]

the establishment would still have liked us to believe that there were two men in the same house doing exactly the same thing unbeknown to each other.Tony.

I wouldn’t have said they were doing exactly the same thing. One was a mass murderer, the other was possibly guilty of a common or garden, ten a penny domestic murder.

Saying a domestic murder took place in the same house that a mass murderer was operating from isn’t quite like suggesting Fred West and Harrold Shipman were boozing partners without realising what the other was up to.

For what it’s worth, I think Evans murdered his wife as an ordinary domestic murder. He told Christie, who didn’t want the police at the house because of the two bodies in the garden. Christie told Evans he would dispose of the body and find a home for the baby. When Evans went off to Wales, Christie killed the baby.

Evans was only ever tried for the murder of his daughter, for which he was hanged. If he had only been found guilty of murdering his wife in domestic circumstances, he would have had a reasonable chance of being reprieved.

Peter

[Graham]

On the subject of coincidences, in 1980 my wife and I came back from 4 years in the USA and were house-hunting. My company had rented my American house to an English couple on a month by month deal. The first house we looked at when we were back in England and house-hunting turned out to be owned by the people who were renting our house in America!!

Re: Evans/Christie, I'm still not convinced that Timothy Evans didn't murder his own baby. I'm pretty much convinced that Christie killed Evans' wife. But this is for another thread.

Cheers,

Graham

[Victor]

On the question of the gunman's eye-colour, it seems to me that there can be no serious doubt that VS did initially describe it as brown.

Hi DM,

I completely disagree, there is serious doubt that VS ever described the gunman's eye-colour as brown. There is no record of her ever having done so other than by making assumptions:-

1. The police detective in the confusing interview which is self-contradictory, however, there is no direct evidence that this came from VS, only assumption.

2. The identikit image which is black and white and the eyes appear to be dark.

If (as she claimed) she had specified that his eyes were blue, why did she not protest when confronted by the (brown-eyed) Alphon?

Alphon was part of an ID parade and she didn't know which of the line up he was, so how could she protest?

Additionally, if the identity parade was properly conducted, then the other participants must also have had brown eyes.

I don't think this is true.

There is also a more subtle point here. The car was in darkness most of the time, and even when cars passed, their headlights would not have done much to illuminate the interior (they were a fair distance away and the car windows were small). In low-light conditions the human eye can only see in monochrome, so the most she could have said was that the assailant's eyes were light-coloured: they could have just as easily been green or grey as blue. By contrast, dark-coloured eyes are invariably brown.

I don't agree with the first part, and for the second part I would describe some blue eyes as dark and some as light depending upon the shade which can go from steely blue\grey to navy blue. A similar thing could be said for brown eyes, where Alphon's "hazel" could be considered light brown.

KR,
Vic.

[Alfie]

Hello all

I've read a couple of posts saying that Hanratty confessed to France that he'd "done something that scared him".

Can anybody tell me the source for this information, and when the confession is supposed to have been made?

Cheers

Alan

[Tony]

Hi Tony,



In our adversarial system of justice, it's the job of the barristers to try and convince the jury using whatever evidence, defence and prosecution, they have available. If a barrister knowingly gives false evidence to the jury, and he's caught out, he's for the high jump. In JH's case, the evidence and argument that Swanwick produced was sufficient for the jury to accept that it was the gospel truth and they found accordingly.



There is still debate about whether Evans really was innocent, even though I believe it's now officially accepted that he was - the debate still goes on. Again, whoever was prosecuting him produced a case sufficient for the jury to accept. Not a question of 'is that all that mattered'. It's a question of who and what the jury believe. But in any trial by jury, it's what the jury chooses to believe and the verdict they give that matter.

Who or what, precisely, is 'the Establishment' to whom you refer? Is this another wearisome suggestion that in any trial in which in later years the guilt of the defendant is doubted, some shadowy but influential power-in-the-land rigged said trial, or following appeal? I think if you take a look at murder cases which have gone to appeal, say over the past 70 years, it is a very small percentage indeed which continue to exercise the brains of people like you and me in years to come.

All the best,

Graham

Hi Graham,

So there are no cover ups by the establishment then?

This comes out only today:




“Scotland Yard is set to publish a report into the death of anti-racism activist Blair Peach more than three decades ago.

Relatives of the dead man have been campaigning to obtain a secret internal review of the killing for many years.

Last year Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson said he was willing to publish the document but only after it had been checked by solicitors.

The report will finally be made public after the Crown Prosecution Service said on Friday that officials have completed their work and given their findings back to senior officers.

It is understood that a copy of the report has already been passed to solicitors representing Mr Peach's partner Celia Stubbs.

The decision to publish was made after public pressure to reveal the almost forgotten review in the months after the death of Ian Tomlinson during G20 protests.

Mr Peach, 33, was hit over the head at a demonstration against the National Front in Southall, west London, in 1979.

Members of the Met's riot squad, called the Special Patrol Group, were suspected of hitting him with a rubberised police radio or a lead-filled cosh.

The report written by Commander John Cass, a former senior officer at the Met's internal complaints department, examined his death. He is believed to have recommended the prosecution of police officers although no charges were ever brought.”
Sounds like a good attempt at a cover up to me.

Tony.

[caz]

So there are no cover ups by the establishment then?

This comes out only today...

Horses for courses, Tony.

Just how would 'the establishment' have gone about setting up Hanratty, from the very start in 1961, up until the result of the appeal, more than 40 years later? I'm not interested in vague suggestions about the possibilities, or specifics that apply to other cases. What are the specifics in this case that indicate legal shenanigans spread over four decades?

i said there was no pressure on her to pick out the prime suspect. different thing entirely, indeed she should not even have known which one the prime suspect was. what pressure she put herself under, only she knows.

Hi larue,

Indeed, it could and should only have been the pressure she put herself under to find her attacker. If he had been in that first line-up it stands to reason he could only have been the man the police suspected at the time - Alphon. But she evidently didn't know which one the suspect was and didn't recognise him as her attacker, because she failed to pick him out.

If you allow for the victim putting pressure on herself, during that first parade, to pick out her attacker if he was there in the line-up, her mistake is completely understandable - arguably more so if he wasn't even there than if the man who had chatted to her for hours before raping her was standing there, large as life, and she got no clue from him that they'd ever met before.

I don't believe Alphon was that good an actor, although he still has a dwindling audience hanging onto his performances.

Love,

Caz
X

[RonIpstone]

Hello all,

Paul Foot wrote about the succession of Home Secretaries that refused to open an independent public inquiry into the A6 case and concluded that this refusal was a ploy on the part of the establishment to uphold Hanratty's conviction at all costs, or, if you like, a cover up.

But if these Home Secretaries had been satisfied in their own minds that Hanratty was guilty, possibly through evidence that would not have been admissible in court, then one can begin to see why no such inquiry was held.

The Home Secretary of the day would see that the holding of such an inquiry would not rectify a miscarriage of justice, because none had occurred. But why not hold such an inquiry if only to confirm Hanratty's guilt and to settle public disquiet raised by Foot and Lord Russell's books?

The answer to that question lies in Nudds's second statement which implicated Alphon, and was the result of quite sustained Police pressure on the hapless Nudds. Any public inquiry would have to look into the various statements by Nudds and the means by which they were obtained. Nudds might have been a disreputable crook and liar, but he had no reason to lie when making his first statement which exonerated Alphon and implicated Hanratty. He lied in his second statement as he was forced by Police pressure to make a statement which put Alphon in the running for the crime.

I believe that the Home Secretaries who had refused a public inquiry did so as they realised that the Police conduct of this aspect of the investigation would come for adverse comment. To that extent we can say that there was a cover up by the establishment, but not the cover up advocated by James Hanratty's supporters.

Ron

[SteveS]

Hello all,

Paul Foot wrote about the succession of Home Secretaries that refused to open an independent public inquiry into the A6 case and concluded that this refusal was a ploy on the part of the establishment to uphold Hanratty's conviction at all costs, or, if you like, a cover up.

But if these Home Secretaries had been satisfied in their own minds that Hanratty was guilty, possibly through evidence that would not have been admissible in court, then one can begin to see why no such inquiry was held.

The Home Secretary of the day would see that the holding of such an inquiry would not rectify a miscarriage of justice, because none had occurred. But why not hold such an inquiry if only to confirm Hanratty's guilt and to settle public disquiet raised by Foot and Lord Russell's books?

The answer to that question lies in Nudds's second statement which implicated Alphon, and was the result of quite sustained Police pressure on the hapless Nudds. Any public inquiry would have to look into the various statements by Nudds and the means by which they were obtained. Nudds might have been a disreputable crook and liar, but he had no reason to lie when making his first statement which exonerated Alphon and implicated Hanratty. He lied in his second statement as he was forced by Police pressure to make a statement which put Alphon in the running for the crime.

I believe that the Home Secretaries who had refused a public inquiry did so as they realised that the Police conduct of this aspect of the investigation would come for adverse comment. To that extent we can say that there was a cover up by the establishment, but not the cover up advocated by James Hanratty's supporters.

Ron

Ron
You wrote "possibly through evidence that would not have been admissible in court, then one can begin to see why no such inquiry was held." above.

Even someone as intelligent as you must surely understand that any evidence considered inadmissable stays as such. How could one turn down an inquiry based purely on evidence that was considered inadmissable. It is plainly nonsense.

So, significantly, two senior persons in the establishment tried to convince the same Home Secretary, Mr Roy Jenkins, on two distinct occasions, that the case against Hanratty was safe.

The first was Mr Dick Taverne QC MP who was under secretary of state at the Home Office to Roy Jenkins in 1967. Taverne firsty suggested that there was milage in Langdale's confession by announcing that his [Langdale] confession could not have been influenced by media reports which is absurd, as exposed by Foot. (1988 p408) Secondly, Taverne goes on to suggest that Hanratty was seen visiting the sweetshop that Mrs Dinwoodie served in on another Monday in October 1961! This is plainly absurd as it is not only uncorroborated but was not entered into evidence by the prosecution at trial in 1962 or at appeal in 2002. So where did Dick get this piece of mis-information? Because, as it is well known, Mrs Dinwoodie was questioned about the incident only 2 weeks after the 9th October, the only other Monday that Hanratty could have been in Liverpool after the A6 murder.

Second on the list is Cyril Lewis Hawser QC who tried to do what Mr Swanwick failed to do at trial in 1962. That is to suggest, in 1975, that Hanratty sped to Liverpool in time to ask Mrs Dinwoodie about Tarleton Road or whatever and then rush back in time to get to the Vienna Hotel for 11:30pm. The fact that the Crown relied on numerous witnesses who plainly contradicts this did not put off the beaver like Hawser. Total nonsense I would say.

If Hanratty was truly guilty then why have successive Home Secretaries just relied on destroying their own Crown case in trying to prove that Hanratty was guilty whilst not putting forward anything new that may implicate Hantatty! You tell me. Douglas Nimmo did not even bother to interview Dutton or Larman to add insult to injury.

This says to me that the establishment have been more than happy to bury the Hanratty case at every turn even though the true facts in the case suggest Hanratty was not guilty.

Even in the 1990's when the defence asked for DNA test's why did it take 7 years for the Crown to actually do anything? Then why, after several inclusive tests, did the FSS pull the "Hanratty is guilty" rabbit out of the hat just in time for a long postponed appeal to go ahead?

What frightens the establishment so much about this case?

[RonIpstone]

What frightens the establishment so much about this case?

Hello Steve,

I have already said that (1) various Home Secretaries have come to the conclusion, possibly on evidence that would not have been admissible before a jury that Hanratty was guilty, and that on the admissible evidence the jury had come to the correct verdict and (2) any inquiry would have to consider why and how Nudds gave his second statement.

The second point mentioned above might undermine public confidence in the Police.

I do not see why the Home Secretary in considering whether to recommend the exercise of the Royal Prerogative of pardon or reprieve, or whether to recommend to the House of Commons that a public inquiry be opened, should not look at the totality of evidence in favour of and against the convicted man.

And when push came to shove and the case got before the Court of Appeal, those Home Secretaries were proved right by the DNA technology which would not have been admissible in 1962.

Ron

[Victor]

Even someone as intelligent as you must surely understand that any evidence considered inadmissable stays as such. How could one turn down an inquiry based purely on evidence that was considered inadmissable. It is plainly nonsense.

Hi Steve,

That's the point though, evidence that is inadmissible in court remains inadmissible in court, but there's no reason why it shouldn't be used by the investigators or legal representatives, etc. Inadmissible to the court doesn't mean that the evidence doesn't exist.

Second on the list is Cyril Lewis Hawser QC who tried to do what Mr Swanwick failed to do at trial in 1962. That is to suggest, in 1975, that Hanratty sped to Liverpool in time to ask Mrs Dinwoodie about Tarleton Road or whatever and then rush back in time to get to the Vienna Hotel for 11:30pm.

Hawser and Swanwick didn't suggest that Hanratty did speed to Liverpool and back, just that it was possible for him to have done so.

Douglas Nimmo did not even bother to interview Dutton or Larman to add insult to injury.

Larman, hadn't he emigrated to Australia or something like that?

Even in the 1990's when the defence asked for DNA test's why did it take 7 years for the Crown to actually do anything? Then why, after several inclusive tests, did the FSS pull the "Hanratty is guilty" rabbit out of the hat just in time for a long postponed appeal to go ahead?

Jennifer Wiles discovered the knicker fragment in 1991, and Bedfordshire Constabulary discovered the hanky in Sept\Oct 1997.

Obviously they were subjected to SGM+ techniques before it was determined that there wasn't enough DNA on the sample and they needed to be investigated by LCN to obtain a meaningful result. Tests which obviously take time to run.

What frightens the establishment so much about this case?

What frightens Woffinden et al so much about the DNA results that he clamours for them, and then attacks "the establishment" when they decide that to confirm the result they need to exhume Hanratty (something the family had already done!) to get a genuine match?

KR,
Vic.