a6 murder

[jimarilyn]

Whatever the reason it doesnt seem remotely unreasonable to have either gone there by mistake or to see Mrs Anderson.

Hi Norma,

I find it very significant and revealing that it was Hanratty, himself, who pointed out to Acott that he went to Paddington Station by mistake after leaving the Vienna.
It would have been far easier for him not to have mentioned Paddington at all, he could have said he went straight to Euston Station. This says a great deal about Hanratty's basic candour and frankness.
I believe if he had had anything to hide or cover-up he would have said he went straight to Euston Station after leaving the Vienna.

[Natalie Severn]

Ron,
I wouldn"t have jumped to that conclusion myself.But ofcourse if you think he did it, that seems possible,
Norma

[Natalie Severn]

Thanks James,
I agree , Hanratty was usually straightforward in his answers but I believe he was a much brighter cookie than most people credit . The way James held his own under the volley of fire from Swanwick, an Oxford educated lawyer from the Inner Temple,would have made Jean Genet swoon---to say nothing of Jean Paul Sartre who would probably have wanted him canonized on the spot as a true existentialist martyr-I kid you not !
By the way,your site is fantastic---I learnt more about the case from your site than all the books put together!
Cheers
Norma

[RonIpstone]

Hi Norma,

I find it very significant and revealing that it was Hanratty, himself, who pointed out to Acott that he went to Paddington Station by mistake after leaving the Vienna.
It would have been far easier for him not to have mentioned Paddington at all, he could have said he went straight to Euston Station. This says a great deal about Hanratty's basic candour and frankness.
I believe if he had had anything to hide or cover-up he would have said he went straight to Euston Station after leaving the Vienna.

Hanratty kept under wraps his real alibi for the the night of 22 August 1961 from the time he first spoke to the police in October of that year until half way through his trial for murder in February the following year. In that time he deceived not only the police but also his barristers and solicitors, and, I would presume, deceived his family. This is as good a barometer of Hanratty's basic candour and frankness as anything else.

I believe that it is likely that Hanratty either went to Paddington Station or at least went in that direction when he left the Vienna. By mentioning Paddington he could counter any evidence that Acott might have that he left the Vienna heading away from Euston. Also Hanratty probably found it easier to embellish the truth rather than tell an outright lie. The truth was he went to Paddington, and the embellishment that he went from there to Euston. The outright lie being that he went straight to Euston from the Vienna.

[Natalie Severn]

Unlike yourself Ron,I believe Hanratty went to Liverpool and Rhyl and set off to go to Liverpool on 22nd August . He wasnt a travelling salesman -he didnt have a job,so to have told the police when he rang them that he went to Liverpool to sell stolen goods to some chaps who were receivers of stolen goods wouldnt have looked terribly good would it?So he lied, and one lie led to another.Perfectly plausible.
But what comes over when he is cross questioned at his trial ,by Swanwick ,is indeed his candour and his unwillingness to try to pass himself off as anything other than he is -a man who has got by in life by housebreaking since the age of sixteen.
When Swanwick puts it to him that he has no feelings towards the house owners who come back and find their premises broken into and their goods missing he replies :

"Sir,I must put this point quite clear,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".

and he replies a minute later , when Swanwick taunts him about the thrill of holding up a couple with a gun:
"The man who committed this is a maniac and a savage.I know what you have proved here [that he wasnt earning an honest living],I am not a man the court can approve of,but I am not a maniac of any kind.I can prove it with my past girl friends.I am decent---I cannot say honest---but I try to live a good and respectable life except for my housebreakings"

And each of the young and pretty girls friends Hanratty had been out with agreed - that he was a chivalrous man, -someone who had always acted in a gentle and kind manner and always quite normally and properly with them.[ [girls such as Gladys Deacon and Carol France]

So yes, in court Hanratty showed himself as plain speaking and frank as James said above .And his girls found him gentle and kind.

[caz]

Look Caz,

As others have expressed the desire to move on from the DNA debate I think you had better find someone else to discuss it with after today,as I dont want to be accused of monopolising the thread with the DNA debate.

I would however remind you that Michael Sherrard ,Hanratty"s lawyer, still continues to remind people that during the trial there was actually a total lack of forensic evidence to link Hanratty with the crime:

not a single fibre; not a single hair ;not a single finger print ;

nothing whatever in the Morris Minor to fit Hanratty with the crime -yet the killer spent six hours in the car where a murder and the rape took place!

Moreover, after phoning the police, Hanratty immediately offered Acott his case of clothes to examine that he had left at Louise Anderson"s . Later when the police interviewed Hanratty, he freely offered his hair,blood and saliva samples--something you may remember Alphon had refused to do.

John Justice who was at the entire trial with his barrister friend Fox, tells of how Hanratty"s exhibits and Valerie Storie"s exhibits were all put into the same box at the trial.They were taken away and brought back again each day with the investigating officer having to display it all on a table-the investigating officer apparently wore no gloves and the underwear,handkerchief were placed alongside each other on the table,each day. Obviously they were not being hindered by any DNA guidelines in 1961 as it hadnt been discovered -so any talk about the LCN DNA fairtesting of these items, clearly likely to have suffered much contamination ,seems deeply suspicious, if not patently ridiculous ---no matter what those who tested the hanky and fragment of cloth might say----I will answer with that delightful quote by MRD, ---"They would say that wouldnt they?"
Anyway,lets not monopolise this thread any further.We are clearly not going to get very far anyway,
Cheers
Norma

Yes, Nats, how very convenient for you and the questions you leave unanswered - let’s ‘move on’ from the DNA evidence and not monopolise the A6 murder thread with it.

So instead, you want us to put our watches back forty years to a time when they had no forensic evidence to link any potential suspect with the murder car: Hanratty, Alphon or anyone else. I thought we’d moved on from there, with your acceptance that it was Hanratty’s DNA on the hanky and underwear and nobody else’s.

But back we are in myth land, with this idea of yours that the wholly incriminating knicker fragment was ever at the trial, never mind carted back and forth in the box of exhibits or ‘placed alongside’ the hanky on the table each day. It wasn’t there.

And as for your fondly imagined scenario whereby the DNA tested hanky and knicker fragment were ‘clearly likely to have suffered much contamination’, it doesn’t matter how ‘likely’ you think it was, since we know that not a single unaccounted for profile showed up, from gloveless investigating officers or anyone else. Only the one profile - Hanratty’s - was picked up from the hanky, and only the three - one matching the hanky profile, a second matching Valerie and the third attributed to Gregsten. There are no indications of any secondary contamination by fourth, fifth or umpteenth parties.

"They would say that wouldnt they?"

What were they supposed to say in those circumstances, Nats? That Hanratty’s hanky was ‘clearly likely’ to have been planted on the bus by other hands, despite the ‘total lack of forensic evidence’ for anyone else’s involvement (to use your own words back at you)? That Hanratty’s semen on the victim’s underwear was ‘clearly likely’ to have been secondary contamination, while the rapist’s semen was ‘clearly likely’ to have disappeared, explaining the ‘total lack of forensic evidence’ against Alphon?

I do find it ironic to see you complaining about the lack of forensic evidence in 1961 and using this as a debating tool. We’ve seen what you do with forensic evidence when you get it. So what good would it have done had any arrived forty years sooner, in the form of a Hanratty fibre, hair or fingerprint? You’d have found a way round it, to arrive at the same: “They would say that, wouldn’t they?”

So before I let you get away with ignoring the DNA evidence completely, I’m hoping you can answer this question honestly:

If the results had been exactly the same in all respects, apart from Alphon’s DNA being in the place of Hanratty’s, would you now be arguing that secondary contamination by Alphon’s intimate samples, stored with the hanky and knicker fragment, was ‘clearly likely’, or that the DNA evidence is simply too unreliable to incriminate Alphon or eliminate Hanratty?

Or would you have been happy to ‘move on’ long ago, confident that Alphon was the rapist and therefore the initial instincts of the police in 1961 had in fact been correct?

Love,

Caz
X

[Natalie Severn]

Caz,
Something as small as a flake of Hanratty"s skin or dried body fluid could have contaminated the exhibits to produce DNA readings.
You can sneer all you like about 40 year old forensics ,but not a single sample of semen was found in that car to link Hanratty to the crime scene ,despite the rape having taken place on the back seat of the car.Not a hair, not a fibre , not a fingerprint from Hanratty.
Dont you find it unusual that there was no evidence of semen or body hair in the entire car to be found after a rape?
Does anybody know for certain whether the rapist actually ejaculated because usually at least a smear of semen would have been found.

Can we be certain of the history of any of this "evidence"---especially now that two or three thousand undisclosed statements have been discovered as well as it being alleged that 112 ,1961 statements were wrongly witheld from the defence.

I found it curious that Michael Sherrard QC, Hanratty"s trial barrister,had this to say after hearing the 2002 appeal had been turned down :

"I really couldn"t bring myself to take in that those who had concealed the evidence in a capital case could have been as wicked as that"

-------So maybe, Caz,as Shakespeare put it- " there is something rotten in the state of Denmark"!

[burkhilly]

More around the houses debate going on I see, but at least it keeps it interesting, for me anyway.

I can't remember who said it (a Judge I think), but DNA evidence should only be used in conjunction with other evidence in a crime. DNA evidence should not be used as a stand alone indicator of guilt.

Norma I see what you're saying regarding the DNA found on the fragment. Was this from semen or from some other bodily part, i.e. skin. However, having said this the fact remains that there appears to have been only three different DNA profiles identified: VS, MG and JH. Therefore where is the DNA of the rapist?

I remain on the fence with regards to the guilt or innocence of JH, getting more and more splinters in me bottom!

[Natalie Severn]

More around the houses debate going on I see, but at least it keeps it interesting, for me anyway.

I can't remember who said it (a Judge I think), but DNA evidence should only be used in conjunction with other evidence in a crime. DNA evidence should not be used as a stand alone indicator of guilt.

Norma I see what you're saying regarding the DNA found on the fragment. Was this from semen or from some other bodily part, i.e. skin. However, having said this the fact remains that there appears to have been only three different DNA profiles identified: VS, MG and JH. Therefore where is the DNA of the rapist?

I remain on the fence with regards to the guilt or innocence of JH, getting more and more splinters in me bottom!

Yes Burkhilly,
Michael Sherrard QC, Hanratty"s trial barrister,is on record as saying his trial was "fatally flawed".
Since then Michael Sherrard has drawn attention to the complete lack of forensic evidence there was at the time to link Hanratty to the crime: no finger prints,blood,hairs,fibres semen,nothing of Hanratty"s was ever found either in the Morris Minor car,or on the cartridge cases that were found in the Vienna Hotel 19 days after the crime or on the gun found on the 36a bus on the 24th August---not a fingerprint or a fibre of Hanratty"s was found on either the gun or the cartridge cases.
However---"a"handkerchief was found wrapped around the gun on the 36A bus but in 1961 as no forensic link could be found to link it to Hanratty such as semen or blood - the handkerchief was forgotten about and left with in police custody in Bedford while the fragment of cloth was stored in a file containing other exhibits in the Met"s lab in Lambeth.
However,by 2002 when the hanky and fragment of cloth were LCN DNA tested, why blow me down----both were found to have Hanratty"s DNA on them!
Your point is absolutely valid though in the light of much more recent research into LCN DNA testing ;LCN DNA test results , used as a measure of a person"s guilt are suspect today. In the past few years evidence has been produced showing that LCN DNA test results are not the reliable instruments for fair testing that they were thought to be in 2002---in fact the greater the sensitivity of the tests, the greater the likelihood of them picking up contaminants,thus making the entire results worthless.Contamination clearly could have happened on 28th December 1961 when the trousers were examined prior to the knickers [in the same lab ]and when semen was removed from the fly area of the trousers.All it would have taken would have been a flake of semen to have given a DNA reading on the knickers.
However the judges, although admitting contamination could have occurred ,said that it could only have happened either through

a]contact between the fly area of the trousers and the knickers

or during storage when there could have been

b]contact between the broken vial[ that may have contained a wash of Hanratty"s semen] and the fragment of cloth ,as both were held in the same file for forty years.
Finally they agreed although it was possible that contamination could have taken place when the exhibits were produced at committal [ not after that , as the fragment of cloth was not produced at trial].
In the end they decided that they were satisfied that a DNA link had been established to Hanratty in the case of both the hanky and cloth fragment and on the basis of those results , the judges rejected the appeal of 2002.

And you are quite right here regarding this controversial technique;this form of DNA evidence must be considered not in isolation,but only in the context of all the evidence----including the witheld evidence in this specific case--.
Best
Norma

[Victor]

Despite Norma "ignore"-ing me, I'm going to comment and correct her errors...

Michael Sherrard QC, Hanratty"s trial barrister,is on record as saying his trial was "fatally flawed".

I've no idea where this quote comes from, but he definitely said "The wrong man was not hanged".

Since then Michael Sherrard has drawn attention to the complete lack of forensic evidence there was at the time to link Hanratty to the crime:

Lack of evidence can never be evidence that something did not happen.

However---"a" handkerchief was found wrapped around the gun on the 36A bus but in 1961 as no forensic link could be found to link it to Hanratty such as semen or blood

Hanratty admitted it was his, and "semen or blood" don't always end up on someone's hanky.

Your point is absolutely valid though in the light of much more recent research into LCN DNA testing ;LCN DNA test results , used as a measure of a person"s guilt are suspect today. In the past few years evidence has been produced showing that LCN DNA test results are not the reliable instruments for fair testing that they were thought to be in 2002

"in the past few years" LCN testing has been vindicated, Norma is referring to 2006 reports.

in fact the greater the sensitivity of the tests, the greater the likelihood of them picking up contaminants,thus making the entire results worthless.

No extra profiles were found despite Norma's claims of many people handling them &tc.

Contamination clearly could have happened on 28th December 1961 when the trousers were examined prior to the knickers [in the same lab ]and when semen was removed from the fly area of the trousers.All it would have taken would have been a flake of semen to have given a DNA reading on the knickers.

The knickers were examined the day after the trousers, so in theory contamination may have occurred, but none was detected.

However the judges, although admitting contamination could have occurred ,said that it could only have happened either through

a]contact between the fly area of the trousers and the knickers

This highlights the difference between secondary transfer and tertiary transfer. Tertiary being incredibly rare.

or during storage when there could have been

b]contact between the broken vial[ that may have contained a wash of Hanratty"s semen] and the fragment of cloth ,as both were held in the same file for forty years.

Or it could be from Alphon!

Finally they agreed although it was possible that contamination could have taken place when the exhibits were produced at committal [not after that , as the fragment of cloth was not produced at trial].

At last, we get a fact.

In the end they decided that they were satisfied that a DNA link had been established to Hanratty in the case of both the hanky and cloth fragment and on the basis of those results, the judges rejected the appeal of 2002.

Norma is also satisfied that Hanratty's profile was found on the hanky and knickers, she's said so, but seems to be relying on some magically vanishing semen.

And you are quite right here regarding this controversial technique;this form of DNA evidence must be considered not in isolation,but only in the context of all the evidence----including the witheld evidence in this specific case.

And that's the point; "The DNA evidence made what was a strong case even stronger."

KR,
Vic.

[RonIpstone]

I've no idea where this quote comes from, but he definitely said "The wrong man was not hanged".

Hello Vic,

I do not think that the two propositions, the first that the trial was fatally flawed and the second that Hanratty was guilty, are mutually exclusive.

A person is entitled to argue that Hanratty's conviction should be overturned on the basis that his trial was fatally flawed, even though he might have been guilty as charged.

I agree that Norma or Natalie and others go further and argue that Hanratty was not guilty in the sense that beyond reasonable doubt he did not do it and some go further still and say that Alphon was the culprit. Yet the last word we shall have on this case put before the court was that undoubtedly Alphon was not guilty. The argument advanced by Hanratty family lawyers was that his trial was fatally flawed. Like it or lump it the Court of Appeal has pronounced on that one in favour of the trial process of 1962.

Once that has been done then there should be no need for anyone to rely on the DNA evidence, but in reality this was not a strong case made stronger by the DNA. The judge summed up for the defence and most commentators thought that the judge had come to his own conclusion that the prosecution had not made out its case. But the dim Bedfordshire jury had other ideas and in the fullness of time the DNA has come to support them.

To put it another way, if the DNA tests had revealed some genetic profile of an unknown subject, i.e. the rapist, then the Court of Appeal would have overturned the conviction. The court would have pronounced that this was a weak case based on suspect identification evidence and the DNA had destroyed any faith in the integrity and safety of the verdict. Their lordships might even have admonished the jury for their lack of intelligence.

In my view this was a weak case rendered almost certain by the absence of DNA of the rapist, unless of course the rapist was Hanratty.

Ron

[caz]

You can sneer all you like about 40 year old forensics ,but not a single sample of semen was found in that car to link Hanratty to the crime scene ,despite the rape having taken place on the back seat of the car.Not a hair, not a fibre , not a fingerprint from Hanratty.
Dont you find it unusual that there was no evidence of semen or body hair in the entire car to be found after a rape?
Does anybody know for certain whether the rapist actually ejaculated because usually at least a smear of semen would have been found.

Good grief, Nats, what do you want - blood?

In fact, I'm not sure you know what you want.

Are you saying there was no rape in that car, or just that the rapist was not Hanratty, but some phantom-like creature who left no trace of his presence? If you accept that someone made of flesh and blood assaulted, shot and left Valerie for dead, after murdering her lover, how are you going to put Alphon or anyone else at the scene, in Hanratty’s place?

Yes, you can be certain (unless you want to accuse Valerie of wickedly deceiving the authorities, and wilfully sending an innocent man to the gallows) that the rapist did indeed ejaculate, with the result that a substantial group O semen deposit ended up on his victim’s knickers, along with a minor AB deposit from her lover. I see no compelling reason why the semen from both acts could not have been contained in situ long enough for Valerie to replace her knickers and catch the seepage. The damp patch on the bedclothes is not inevitable, particularly with a bit of practice.

However,by 2002 when the hanky and fragment of cloth were LCN DNA tested, why blow me down----both were found to have Hanratty"s DNA on them!

Indeed, the knicker fragment was expected to have Alphon’s DNA all over it, or at the very least someone who wasn’t Hanratty, and blow the campaigners down - two perfect matches to Hanratty’s remains were found on both hanky and knickers, together with only two other profiles on the latter from the two victims.

I take your ‘blow me down’ to mean that you think the powers that be somehow manipulated the evidence to get the desired results, all the desired results and nothing but the desired results. But how does that square with your contamination theory, whereby the three DNA profiles were competently obtained and reliably identified, but honestly misinterpreted, due to the mysterious incidental loss of all the rapist’s semen, and the accidental gain of a secondary or tertiary Hanratty contaminant?

Your argument that the entire results are worthless because ‘the greater the sensitivity of the tests, the greater the likelihood of them picking up contaminants’ ignores the fact that you need just the one very specific contaminant to have been picked up in this case and no more, and successfully disguised itself as the rapist’s copious leavings, which are meant to have entirely escaped the sensitivity of the tests.

I am going to press you for an answer to my previous question, because it would be dishonest of you to duck it, while continuing on this back and forth theme of multiple contaminants one minute, manipulation and conspiracy the next.

If it was Alphon’s DNA that had shown up on the knicker fragment, and not Hanratty’s, can you tell me honestly that you’d still be rejecting the results on the grounds that contaminants were ‘clearly likely’ to have corrupted them, making them entirely ‘worthless’ (your word), or rejecting the technique itself as just too unreliable to safely incriminate Alphon or eliminate Hanratty?

This is a crucial question, which is why certain posters hate me asking it and insist it’s an unfair one. It is more than fair. It gives people the chance to show just how honest and balanced they are being when they argue against the validity of the very tests that Hanratty’s campaigners fought for.

Love,

Caz
X

[Natalie Severn]

are you saying there was no rape in that car, or just that the rapist was not Hanratty, but some phantom-like creature who left no trace of his presence? If you accept that someone made of flesh and blood assaulted, shot and left Valerie for dead, after murdering her lover, how are you going to put Alphon or anyone else at the scene, in Hanratty’s place?

I quoted Hanratty"s trial barrister,Michael Sherrard QC,who stated that no blood, fibre or fingerprint was ever found to link Hanratty with the crime.
The Criminal Cases Review Commission,the CCRC uncovered enough serious flaws in the original police inquiry to justify reopening the case. The new evidence included discoveries revealed by a forensic technique developed since the trial-The ESDA test.Dr David Baxendale[Forensic Document Examiner] had just discovered " serious discrepancies" in Det Supt Acott"s and Det Oxford"s Two interviews with Hanratty.
New discoveries about police "notes" had been detected from the impressions left by Det Supt Acott"s handwriting on an overlaying sheet that revealed both different questions and more crucially very different replies by Hanratty than Acott had said was the case at his trial.

It was in the context of speaking about these and other" fatal "discoveries, that Michael Sherrard QC made these comments quoted in the 16th May 2002 Panorama programme.[ie after the results of these Low copy number DNA tests were made known :


MICHAEL SHERRARD: The public were cheated, the system was cheated. I don't regard myself as having been cheated. I, I'm really an intermediate player, but Hanratty was hanged. He was cheated. If the other material that was not disclosed to us would have made the difference, so it, it's fair to say that there seems to be a strong argument at least for saying that the trial was fatally flawed and the word fatal has a real significance in this context.

So Re your question Caz, ---at this present time I am trying not to believe that such absolutely shocking things seem to have happened as these "rearranged notes" but in the light of such shocking discoveries I would reserve all judgment until I know more about the reliability of LCN DNA tests that were carried out incriminating Hanratty through a scrap of cloth that was undoubtedly contaminated with Hanratty"s "copious" body fluid [I bet the prison laundry was visited on more than one occasion ] and some old hanky that had made a magical "reappearance" having mysteriously "disappeared" for half a century only to have been "rediscovered" somewhere in Bedford Police Dept since Hanratty was sentenced to death there---perhaps the latest and most remarkable "co-incidence" in a case of truly astonishing and extraordinary "coincidences ---the DNA that would at last solve everything---and get this Hanratty problem buried for good-.

[btw -regarding Alphon---I would feel exactly the same as I do about the Hanratty case actually,despite him being their first suspect and despite him having confessed to the crime.

[burkhilly]

I am going to press you for an answer to my previous question, because it would be dishonest of you to duck it, while continuing on this back and forth theme of multiple contaminants one minute, manipulation and conspiracy the next.

If it was Alphon’s DNA that had shown up on the knicker fragment, and not Hanratty’s, can you tell me honestly that you’d still be rejecting the results on the grounds that contaminants were ‘clearly likely’ to have corrupted them, making them entirely ‘worthless’ (your word), or rejecting the technique itself as just too unreliable to safely incriminate Alphon or eliminate Hanratty?

This is a crucial question, which is why certain posters hate me asking it and insist it’s an unfair one. It is more than fair. It gives people the chance to show just how honest and balanced they are being when they argue against the validity of the very tests that Hanratty’s campaigners fought for.


X

I'll answer the question first:

If it had been Alphon's DNA then we would have all thought JH was innocent wouldn't we?

..............and none of us would still find this horrible case so facinating!

[Limehouse]

For me, if the evidence against another suspect was the same as that against Hanratty, then I would have the same doubts as I have now.

I don't believe this case was thoroughly investigated, I think some of the evidence was fabricated or manipulated, there are far too many unexplained aspects to the case - for example why there is an absence of any forensic evidence in the car from the attacker WHOEVER HE WAS.

I think Valerie was lead shamefully at both indentity parades and I think the case was returned to Bedford from the Old Bailey because it was known the evidence was questionable and a jury sitting closer to the location of the crime was more likely to convict due to the strength of feeling about the crime locally.

If all these aspects - and more I have mentioned again, were stacked against another suspect, I would have the same doubts as I have now. In other words, it is not Hanratty himself that raises the doubts in me, it is the almost the whole investigation and its outcomes.