a6 murder

[CliveEnglish]

I think to say there was “no reason whatsoever” for him to wear gloves on a hold-up is (like “no evidence anywhere”) a slight exaggeration.

I don’t see how Harry Hirons’s evidence helped to convict if he wasn’t called to give it.

It is interesting how:
- Valerie’s recollection is taken to be reliable on selected occasions only, like the garage.
- Valerie’s mistaken first id casts doubt upon her second, yet Hanratty’s false first alibi casts no doubt upon his second.
- The perceived ingrained unreliability of those in the case with criminal connections does not apply to Hanratty who was a full time criminal.

A good afternoon to you Nick.
I can't see any kind of exaggeration in my comment about the gloves when there is no material evidence to show Hanratty being in possession of a pair of gloves. He never wore gloves on a job and no gloves were ever found. To come to any other conclusion is mere speculation.
Mr Hirons evidence was used in court as DS Acott was questioned by both the prosecution and the defence as reprinted in Woffinden on pages 254-257.
I am not sure how you have gained the impression from my posts that I have suggested anything like the last 3 points you have made. Perhaps they are a composite of other posters views. But they are certainly not mine.
Ironically Nick, your first point about Valerie Storie's recollection of the Regent Garage was questioned by DS Acott, certainly according to his testimony at trial when cross examined over Mr Hiron's evidence. (see above pages from Woffinden again)
Clive

[Natalie Severn]

NickB

It is interesting how:

-

Valerie’s mistaken first id casts doubt upon her second, yet Hanratty’s false first alibi casts no doubt upon his second.

It has got nothing to do with it.Valerie"s was mistaken,not deliberately falsifying anything.

-

The perceived ingrained unreliability of those in the case with criminal connections does not apply to Hanratty who was a full time criminal.

Hanratty was not in the same league as those criminals who gave evidence against him and almost certainly framed him.He was no master criminal or seasoned prison "informer as were Nudds and Roy Langdale both .He was 24 years old , a petty crook with learning disabilities.

[CliveEnglish]

Hanratty was not in the same league as those criminals who gave evidence against him and almost certainly framed him.He was no master criminal or seasoned prison "informer as were Nudds and Roy Langdale both .He was 24 years old , a petty crook with learning disabilities.

Hello Norma
I agree with you when you say that Hanratty was basically a petty crook.

I find it hard to fathom what exactly Nick is arguing when he says "The perceived ingrained unreliability of those in the case with criminal connections does not apply to Hanratty who was a full time criminal."

Were France, Nudds, Langdale and Anderson just part time criminals and happened to be on their days off when giving evidence against Hanratty. No, of course not.

Anderson most certainly had fencing charges looked at kindly by the police for her lies, sorry, evidence.

Nudds was to quote a newspaper from the late 1950's "Britains most hated man". An inveterate police informer and grass. His word would be the last one anyone with any knowledge of the man would take.

France was a Soho lowlife who just managed to keep himself the other side of the line as far as prison was concerned.

And as far as Langdale is concerned he was "always helpful to the police". His involvement in the case is not something anyone would be happy about. A suspended sentence for helping another onto the gallows.

Hanratty told it as it was when cross examined by Mr Swanwick. He said "I ain't a man the court approved of as of good character, but I am not a murderer. This is a murder trial, not a housebreaking trial."

But Norma, I am not so sure that the case hinged necessarily on the testimony of these 3 (France excluded). Valerie Stories identification, the connection with the gun and the slugs and the association of several pieces of fabricated evidence sealed the deal as far as I can see. I am sure that the jury would have ignored Nudds, Anderson and Langdale and would have been less than impressed by Skillet and Trower.
Clive


Are Italy the new England or what!

[Natalie Severn]

Yes Clive,indeed they did.But who from this "criminal fraternity" may have planted the gun under the back seat of the 36a bus?As ex-convicts -Nudds and Langdale with particularly long records inside [most of their adult lives in fact] , they had all learned about the back seat of a London bus for crying out loud !BTW---did the hanky have Hanratty"s initials embroidered on it too?
Do tell us who paid the hush money to Alphon---or was the £5,000 paid into his bank account the months following the murder for the deed itself?These are the questions that need answering first in my opinion.
Cheers
Norma

[Victor]

I agree with you when you say that Hanratty was basically a petty crook.

Hi Clive,

Hanratty definitely was a petty crook, but also a repeat offender who never got any time off for good behaviour - one of only 5 prisoners in the country at the time who were so poorly behaved. He'd expressed an interest in progressing to more serious crimes than housebreaking and car theft. The fiasco where he basically squandered his father's pension fund on the window cleaning business showed he had little commitment to "going straight".

I find it hard to fathom what exactly Nick is arguing when he says "The perceived ingrained unreliability of those in the case with criminal connections does not apply to Hanratty who was a full time criminal."

Norma in particular has highlighted the criminality of Nudds, Snell, Langdale, France and Anderson, presumably in an attempt to undermine the reliability of their evidence. However, Hanratty's prison record is worse than all of these people for someone of his relative youth, therefore there should be more doubt about the reliability of Hanratty's evidence than theirs.

As far as I am aware Anderson and France were never prosecuted, and Grace Jones received the same immunity from prosecution as Anderson.

Anderson most certainly had fencing charges looked at kindly by the police for her lies, sorry, evidence.

As did Grace Jones.

Nudds was to quote a newspaper from the late 1950's "Britains most hated man". An inveterate police informer and grass. His word would be the last one anyone with any knowledge of the man would take.

Not that I'm saying Nudds is innocent, but wasn't he hated becasue he was an informant?

France was a Soho lowlife who just managed to keep himself the other side of the line as far as prison was concerned.

So he had a better record than Hanratty then.

And as far as Langdale is concerned he was "always helpful to the police". His involvement in the case is not something anyone would be happy about. A suspended sentence for helping another onto the gallows.

Another informant, but absolutely he received favourable treatment for the information he supplied which opens up the suggestion that he made it up in order to "get out of jail free".

As for Alphon's money, I'm interested in finding out where that came from too, although it must be remembered that £2,500 out of £7,500 came from his newspaper interviews, and it's not been ruled out that more of it could have come from the media too. Add on the gambling wins, compensation and gifts from his parents, and the possibility that he was involved in money laundering then there may not be as much of a mystery as Foot made out. And the major point has to be that it was Alphon himself who gave Foot permission to view his bank records in order to prolong the mystery.

KR,
Vic.

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Victor,
I dont believe the issue of where the missing £5000 came from is resolved by any means.It was a massive sum in those days when a house with three bedrooms in London cost less than that, and Alphon became less newsworthy not more newswothy when they dropped the charge of the A6 murder.
Regarding Hanratty; he fared badly enough in the education system to require special needs teaching.He was illiterate,which also could mean he was dyslexic which was not treated any differently from other learning needs in those days.If that were the case then he need not have been of low or below average intelligence.But his learning disability together with the serious head injury which would have had an unfortunate effect on trying to find a decent job, his first being as a dustman .His first conviction,like that of Alphon"s was for stealing a motor vehicle---Hanratty stole a motor bike and Alphon a car .
Anyway,it progressed to burglary.He was never done for GBH or violence , or,like Langdale the torture of a fellow inmate-a teenager who shared Langdale"s cell.Incidently Langdale had a far longer criminal career at 24 than Hanratty-probably one of the longest on record because by the age of 24 years of age than Hanratty---Langdale had twelve convictions. and Hanratty by contrast had had 4 only by the age of 24 .[page 159 Woffinden].
[Sorry I have to leave off Vic---computer about to quit--]

[caz]

Hi Caz,
Several matters concerning Alphon cause me to wonder about him.The first one is to do with his bank statements which revealed that some £7,500 had been paid into his bank account following the murder.Only some £2,500 could have come from the stories he sold to the press, it has been calculated ,so who was it who paid him £5,000 -an enormous sum of money in those days when you could buy a new house much less? It was paid in the Autumn after the murder, 1961, in £1,000 installments ,so who paid it and why?
On the face of it ,it looks very much like he was paid to commit the A6 murder.
It was also reported by several witnesses that he acted extremely nervously,hurriedly and strangely both at the Vienna Hotel when he was seen late morning after the murder [23rd] at the Vienna Hotel and this nervous behaviour clearly continued up until Peter Sims ,the manager of the next hotel he stayed at, from 23rd August ,the Alexandra Court Hotel,in fact it was precisely because people had become suspicious of his nervy erratic behaviour there that they apparently complained to the manager. Finally Juliana Galves ,the hotel manager ,when she knocked on his door late morning on 23rd,saw on top of his suitcase a pair of black nylon gloves!

Best
Norma

So the victim didn't know Alphon from Adam and his DNA was not found on her semen-stained knickers, or on the mucous-stained hanky wrapped round the murder weapon. But no matter, because anyone with lots of money going into their account, who behaves oddly and is said to own black nylon gloves, is just asking to be accused of rape and murder, even if he couldn't possibly be found guilty beyond reasonable doubt?

I'm trying to work out what your definition of a miscarriage of justice really is. Does it not apply to anyone so odd that he tried - and failed - to incriminate himself?

Hanratty was not in the same league as those criminals who gave evidence against him and almost certainly framed him.He was no master criminal or seasoned prison "informer as were Nudds and Roy Langdale both .He was 24 years old , a petty crook with learning disabilities.

Oh dear, oh dear, this just won't do, Nats.

You have zero evidence for whichever 'criminals' you have in mind here 'almost certainly' having framed an innocent Hanratty. I suppose they also knew that the scientists could be relied upon to carry on the framing game into the 21st century, by matching up semen and nasal secretions with his exhumed corpse.

You seem to be doing an 'Anderson', whereby your instincts are telling you what's what, and who are the really bad boys in all of this, when it should be solid, unadulterated evidence doing the talking - all the way from 1961 to 2002.

Do tell us who paid the hush money to Alphon---or was the £5,000 paid into his bank account the months following the murder for the deed itself?

An extremely stupid and dangerous game, surely, to play with someone so odd and unpredictable that he later not only tried to confess to the crime but also volunteered related bank account information! If someone paid Alphon for doing it, and wanted the cops to go haring off in a Hanratty direction and never look back, what on earth was their reaction to Alphon's efforts to get the attention back on himself and his movements?

Love,

Caz
X

[Natalie Severn]

Have got the computer restarted Vic: To finish the post then: Nudds criminal career has to be read to be believed !Since his first offence in 1917 up until three days before he got his job in the "Vienna Hotel" he was barely out of jail-he had been in jail nine years when he was last released.His longest period out of jail was twelve months.
Can you give me the source for this other information on Grace Jones, Vic? I know nothing about her other than that at the time of the trial she was still the landlady of the B&B in Rhyl ,Ingledene, and that was where Hanratty said he had stayed and she remembered him staying there. The only problem for her was that as a woman who was actually unfamiliar with court procedure she had spoken to the fairground chap from Rhyl [Terry ]during the break,which as a witness she should not have done ,so her evidence was not allowed.But there were plenty of other Rhyl witnesses who came forward and whose statements, never got heard,even though they had been to the Rhyl police, who in turn had filed and sent off their report on their statements.
None of those witnesses were known to have had any criminal convictions whatever as far as we know.
Best
Norma

[Natalie Severn]

Caz,
I have the source for my information on the criminals and gangsters whose police and court "testimony" sealed Hanratty"s fate from
"Hanratty,The Final Verdict" by Bob Woffinden.I dont think he wrote about Nudds" long criminal careeer or Langdale"s equally long criminal career in his book using anything other the facts about their sentences.They were very well known figures in London"s underworld at the time.
You dont think any of the DNA could have become contaminated? Please.......!
Best
Norma

[Victor]

Nudds criminal career has to be read to be believed !Since his first offence in 1917 up until three days before he got his job in the "Vienna Hotel" he was barely out of jail-he had been in jail nine years when he was last released.His longest period out of jail was twelve months.

Hi Norma,

Nudds was definitely a career criminal, but he never served his full term on any of the occassions he was imprisoned, Hanratty always served his full terms.

Can you give me the source for this other information on Grace Jones, Vic? I know nothing about her other than that at the time of the trial she was still the landlady of the B&B in Rhyl ,Ingledene, and that was where Hanratty said he had stayed and she remembered him staying there.

In her evidence Grace Jones admitted to keeping 3 different sets of books, and essentially defrauding the taxman. I get this information from Woffinden page 229, only he puts a very pro-Hanratty slant onto the events. The most obvious example of this being when he talks of Swanwick dropping the book... "Michael Hanratty has always remembered..."

The only problem for her was that as a woman who was actually unfamiliar with court procedure she had spoken to the fairground chap from Rhyl [Terry] during the break,which as a witness she should not have done ,so her evidence was not allowed.

Her evidence was permitted, and she disobeyed a direct and specific instruction from the judge, and then tried to cover it up. Claiming naivety is a feeble excuse.

But there were plenty of other Rhyl witnesses who came forward and whose statements, never got heard,even though they had been to the Rhyl police, who in turn had filed and sent off their report on their statements.

19 names and addresses were passed to the defence team and it was up to them to investigate. Furthermore the defence team elected not to call them for the appeal.

KR,
Vic.

[Natalie Severn]

Thanks Vic,
I believe the prosecution called for her "visitor" books in order to see if Hanratty had put his name in them.Hardly what he or many others automatically do after staying in a B&B----its actually a pretty "middle England" tradition ,mostly done in up market resorts rather than a down at heel Rhyl guest house behind the railway station in Rhyl -in 1961- for pete"s sake!! I havent seen any evidence about Mrs Jones having " defrauded the tax man " but if she did then she was hardly the only one nor was she in the same league of "defrauding" as our numerous MP"s who do it regularly and as of right---like the MP who charged us expenses to clean out the moat of his second home,which was a castle no less! I believe if Mrs Jones "defrauded the tax man" it would have been to the tune of a few shillings a week in 1961 and that there was and is no comparison whatever to that same prosecution lawyer relying on the likes of Nudds and Langland----notorious villains from London"s underworld to testify againsy Hanratty and get him executed.Ever wondered why the "mini" villain on the periphery of London"s underworld, Mr France , topped himself ,Vic?His "gun story" helped send Hanratty to the gallows remember .Frankly none of them were remotely honest, reliable or decent as people , much less as witnesses in a murder trial as mysterious and contentious as this one proved to be.Each and everyone of them could be bought for a handful of silver----or less.
The witnesses from Rhyl who came forward during the trial were, to all intents and purposes, decent reliable perfectly straightforward folk---though it may have been a bit late in the day.There were objections from Acott and the prosecution were there not ?
The whole thing stinks to high heaven if you ask me.

[Limehouse]

Evening Norma

The prosecution felt impelled to try to establish that Hanratty was in possession of a pair of black gloves that they were ready to rely on very dubious evidence from Louise Anderson to achieve it. It is well known that Hanratty never wore gloves so there is no reason whatsoever that he should have started wearing them for this particular outing.
Also the prosecution introduced other evidence to try to link Hanratty which with hindsight is plainly wrong when compared with the facts.
For instance the evidence of Harry Hirons is a complete red herring but links the fuel station that the car stopped at to near to Hanratty's home. But the car stopped at was a Regent gas stand near London Airport as Valerie Storie quite explicity stated.
The location of the notorious roadworks changed from initial statements to magistrates court to trial and helped to further incriminate Hanratty.
According to Valerie Storie the killer said call me Jim, yet this has since been shown to be not what Valerie Storie really believed.

I am certain that these points all helped to convict Hanratty.

Acott was also, to be frank, misleading over the seizure of the Vienna Hotels books. Non disclosed police records show that Acott could not have been in possession of them for a full nine days, as he said at trial, before the 20th September when DSgt Oxford records them as having been removed. This may have not incriminated Hanratty and the books may not have been tampered with but it is surely another worrying aspect of the case as is the entry of a "deposit" from Alphon on the morning of the 22nd for £1 7s 6d.
Clive

Are England having a laugh or what. Worst performance I have even seen. Why didn't Heskey do what he does best and fall over just outside the oppositions box?

Hi Clive,

You are right to be concerned about the evidence concerning the gloves. In actual fact there is NO evidence about gloves other than the testimony of Anderson that she 'missed' a pair of gloves soon after a visit from Hanratty. This testimony does not add up to evidence because:

- There is no proof that the gloves were 'missing' because Hanratty stole them.
- There is, as you say, no evidence that Hanratty ever wore gloves during criminal escapades.
- No gloves connected to the crime scene have ever been found and tested.

In fact the only reliable evidence concerning gloves at the crime scene comes from VS who stated that the attacker wore gloves. This being the case, it was important to tie the non-glove-wearing Hanratty to glove-wearing status - thus Ms Anderson is recruited to make the connection in return for not being prosecuted as a receiver of stolen goods from the man standing in the dock accused of murder and rape.

Watching England on Friday night was like watching POSH at their very worst.

[Limehouse]

Hi Clive,

Hanratty definitely was a petty crook, but also a repeat offender who never got any time off for good behaviour - one of only 5 prisoners in the country at the time who were so poorly behaved. He'd expressed an interest in progressing to more serious crimes than housebreaking and car theft. The fiasco where he basically squandered his father's pension fund on the window cleaning business showed he had little commitment to "going straight".

Norma in particular has highlighted the criminality of Nudds, Snell, Langdale, France and Anderson, presumably in an attempt to undermine the reliability of their evidence. However, Hanratty's prison record is worse than all of these people for someone of his relative youth, therefore there should be more doubt about the reliability of Hanratty's evidence than theirs.

[B]As far as I am aware Anderson and France were never prosecuted, and Grace Jones received the same immunity from prosecution as Anderson.
As did Grace Jones.


KR,
Vic.

Hi Vic,

I have placed in bold some comments I would like to respond to:

Hanratty certainly let his father down by walking out on the window cleaning business, funded by his father's pension fund, but it was his father's decision to start the business and so it is unfair to describe Hanratty as having 'squandered the money on the business' as if he did so single handedly.

In no way can Hanratty's prison record be considered worse than Nudds. Hanratty did have a bad record for such a young man but Nudds had spent his whole youth and adult life in criminal activity. You make much of Hanratty not getting time off for good behaviour but it does not follow that he was badly behaved in jail. Good behaviour included attendance at educational classes - something Hanratty m,ay have been unprepared to undertake due to his learning difficulties which were, in all probability (as Norma points out)
due to dyslexia. What we do know is that whatever behaviour Hanratty displayed in prison, he had no record of violence towards others.

Let's get one point straight about Anderson's dishonesty v Grace Jones'. It is clear to me that Louise Anderson had everything to gain by testifying AGAINST Hanratty - immunity from presecution for receiving stolen goods - goods stolen from people's homes. Grace Jones, however, exposed her dishonsety (for tax evasion) by testifying FOR Hanratty - something she did not have to do. If she was really so dishonest, when the investigators came knocking, she could have denied ever having such a man in her home.

Have a good evening.

Julie

[NickB]

The witnesses from Rhyl who came forward during the trial were, to all intents and purposes, decent reliable perfectly straightforward folk.

Like Alexei Sayle's dad ...

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/me-my-dad-and-the-day-that-bedford-cid-came-for-us-689060.html

[Natalie Severn]

Like Alexei Sayle's dad ...
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion...us-689060.html

Thanks Nick, interesting.
However Mr Sayle stayed in Room 4 according to Mrs Jones.Hanratty did not stay in Room 4 .On the first night he stayed in the bathroom cum bedroom at the top of the house-the one he described as having a green bath which it did indeed have.The second night he stayed in a "proper room" which had been vacated that morning by the "Such family"who had left early---the point being it was not the one that was occupied by Mr Sayle.
Hanratty did not breakfast with the other guests as he was supernumerary, but had his meal with the family of Mrs Jones which he described as having two tables and a tiled yard----which it did.
Best
Norma