a6 murder

[Graham]

I've seen that before, Julie, but that doesn't make it any less interesting - good find. Chicksands is still active - you can't get anywhere near the place.
The Yanks have left, and it's back under the jurisdiction of the RAF, but its official title is Defence Intelligence and Security Centre. It wouldn't surprise me if they monitor you, me and the bloke next door, especially as our late, lamented (?) prime-minister seemed quite keen on knowing what we all do and say.

I wouldn't have thought that the church was used as a decoy, though, because IMHO black magic, satanism, etc., would have attracted precisely the kind of person the authorities would want to keep the hell away from a sensitive area. But - who knows what goes on?

Cheers,

Graham

[Graham]

Every time I read the name Deadman's Hill or hear it, I think of that Jan and Dean record: Deadman's Curve. It's aabout a road in America somewhere (probably out west) and the words include the line:

Deadman's Curve is no place to play
Deadman's Curve, you'd best keep away
Won't come back from Deadman's Curve...

Er...aren't we, er, showing our age a bit, Julie? I remember that song well....

Graham

[Limehouse]

Well, I had a much older brother and sister, so as a child, I experienced the 60s as a pesty little sister! My brother played the song over and over on a horrible old machine passed down from an older cousin. I was about 6 or 7 at the time!

[Graham]

I can't remember if I posted this before, but I just found it again and still find it fascinating - link below. Has anyone else clocked it?

It seems that this Theodore not only found PLA's address, but contacted him and received a letter in reply. Was this about the A6 Case, we wonders, or was it a private, maybe a family, thing? (Unlikely as 'Theodore posted on a crime-related site). Could 'Theodore' be a nom-de-plume for someone who's posted on this thread, I asks meself?

I'd give anything to know, especially as 'officially' PLA plainly didn't want to communicate at all regarding his involvement in the A6.

Has anyone got any further information?

Graham

http://www.crimeforums.co.uk/showthread.php?686-Peter-Louis-Alphon

[Limehouse]

I've seen that before, Julie, but that doesn't make it any less interesting - good find. Chicksands is still active - you can't get anywhere near the place.
The Yanks have left, and it's back under the jurisdiction of the RAF, but its official title is Defence Intelligence and Security Centre. It wouldn't surprise me if they monitor you, me and the bloke next door, especially as our late, lamented (?) prime-minister seemed quite keen on knowing what we all do and say.

I wouldn't have thought that the church was used as a decoy, though, because IMHO black magic, satanism, etc., would have attracted precisely the kind of person the authorities would want to keep the hell away from a sensitive area. But - who knows what goes on?

Cheers,


Graham

Would Gregsten have had anything to do with Chicksands do you think, or would it have been too far away and would he have been too flakey for the job of listening to such stuff?

I would imagine that anyone daft enough to indulge in black magic rituals wouldn't be that interested in state secrets or similar stuff but what do I know?

Enjoying the thread right now, with some half-serious debate and half-tongue in cheek. It's less stressful.

[Natalie Severn]

Fascinating information and pics Julie and Graham.My attention was also caught here by the mention of the RAF Base .
Michael Clark,who was identified by Valerie Storie as the A6 killer.The man she wrongly identified was in the RAF,Valerie had identified him as her rapist in the first identity line up .He was never brought to court at the time to help re identification features ,although this would have been helpful to discover whether he indeed resembled Hanratty. He emigrated to Australia in 1965 and could bnever be traced. Supt.Acott insisted Clark was "dark haired" but Dr Rennie ,VS"s doctor,present at the parade, said he had " light fairish hair " which was corroborated 30 years later by an aunt living on Welsh borders----"[his hair was a] "general mousey colour .
Returning to the sinister Deadman"s Hill. If Alphon really was "keenly interested " in " Black Magic Rituals" said to have taken place at this Church, he may well have known of its malignant associations in 1961.

[RonIpstone]

Fascinating information and pics Julie and Graham.My attention was also caught here by the mention of the RAF Base .
Michael Clark,who was identified by Valerie Storie as the A6 killer.The man she wrongly identified was in the RAF,Valerie had identified him as her rapist in the first identity line up .He was never brought to court at the time to help re identification features ,although this would have been helpful to discover whether he indeed resembled Hanratty. He emigrated to Australia in 1965 and could bnever be traced. Supt.Acott insisted Clark was "dark haired" but Dr Rennie ,VS"s doctor,present at the parade, said he had " light fairish hair " which was corroborated 30 years later by an aunt living on Welsh borders----"[his hair was a] "general mousey colour .

Hello Norma or Natalie,

You could be on to something here. DS 'Bob' Acott was also in the RAF. According to 'Bob' Woffinden, Bob Acott flew 35 bombing missions over Germany, teaching the German nation a lesson or two and earning a DFC in the process. He had started his career in the Met. in 1933 and the war must have come as a pleasant interlude in a career of chasing villains. On demobilisation, fittingly for an aviation war hero, Bob joined the Flying Squad, perhaps subconsciously showing a desire for a career not on terra ferma.

I would imagine that the war hero Bob regarded the petty criminal Hanratty and the feckless Alphon with almost equal disdain and this probably accounts for his ambivalence as to which of the two he should prosecute. You may therefore be right in what I surmise to be your theory that Bob Acott was happy to charge anyone with the murder provided he had not served in the RAF.

Ron

[jimarilyn]

I've been trying to find out how the name Deadman's Hill originated. You'd think it might be something to do with the location of a gibbett, but can't find anything to support that. Maybe a cemetery in the vicinity? Does anyone know?

Graham

Hi Graham,

Deadman's Hill is so named due to it being the place where highwaymen of yesteryear were hanged.................

[Graham]

It doesn't end there.

Hanratty flew to Ireland, and Acott flew there after him. Swanwick wanted to know if it was possible to fly from Liverpool to Dorney Reach. Valerie says that one night when she was at the cornfield with Gregsten they saw a satellite flying through the night sky - this almost certainly means that they were being monitored. Robert Crocker flew as a gunner in the RAF. Airspeed Ltd manufactured an aircraft called the Oxford, obviously named after Acott's side-kick.

I think we're close to cracking it....

Graham

PS: I still want to know why you think Bedford people are dim, etc.

[Graham]

Hi Graham,

Deadman's Hill is so named due to it being the place where highwaymen of yesteryear were hanged.................

Thanks, James. I thought it may have something to do with a gibbett.

Graham

[RonIpstone]

So why did the jury find Jim guilty? We should not forget that the jury was empanelled from the voters of Bedford. I have spent a good deal of time writing about the football club, Luton Town, more popularly known as the Hatters and have come to know the club's fans reasonably well. Luton, a Bedfordshire town, is 20 miles or so further south than its county town, Bedford, and many Hatters hail from Bedford, which does not have a League team of its own. My assumption is that the 1962 jury members, in intellectual capacity and thought processes, were not too dissimilar from the Hatters that I have encountered recently. There were one or two bright ones, but overall I would have to say that most were somewhere between dim and stupid.

I would therefore hazard a guess that notwithstanding the lack of mental facilities available to it, the jury rightly concluded that Hanratty had not stayed in Mrs Jones's B&B, and from this it deduced that Jim had not stayed in anyone's B&B in Rhyl. It seemed to me that when they had found the hapless Mrs Jones the defence investigators stopped looking for other B&B proprietors who might have accommodated Jim.

If Hanratty had not been in Rhyl, then, as everyone has to be somewhere, in the mind of the jury, he would have to have been the abductor at Dorney Reach.

If the jury had approached the question from the other direction and asked whether beyond reasonable doubt the prosecution had proved that he had been the Dorney Reach abductor? Then with Acott's fiddling with the evidence and VS first and wrong identification, it is difficult to see how it could have given a positive answer to that question.

Hello Graham,

The above quote is part of something I posted on 24 May this year and forms the genesis of my 'dim Bedford jury' theory. For the avoidance of any doubt I do not subscribe to the theory that all the citizenry of the towns of Bedfordshire are dim and/or stupid. Of course there are exceptions and no doubt your dad was one of them.

Ron

[Graham]

Hello Graham,

The above quote is part of something I posted on 24 May this year and forms the genesis of my 'dim Bedford jury' theory. For the avoidance of any doubt I do not subscribe to the theory that all the citizenry of the towns of Bedfordshire are dim and/or stupid. Of course there are exceptions and no doubt your dad was one of them.

Ron

Well, they do say hatters were mad. I spent a lot of time in and around Luton when there was a motor industry, and the people I had to deal with were, by and large, crafty and cunning.....par for the course in the motor industry.
Oddly enough, my old man was born in Thurloe Street, which no longer exists, but was just across from Bedford Prison.

Graham

[Natalie Severn]

Thanks Ron or RonIpstone!
I knew all about Supt Acott"s War time record ,thanks, admire him it and very much appreciate the service he gave to our country.
I cannot admire him for what ever role he played when in charge of the murder hunt that caused Michael Sherrard,one of this countries most senior QC"s to make the following statement-which I will repeat ,verbatim-:


MICHAEL SHERRARD QC (James Hanratty's trial barrister): 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.

[Natalie Severn]

Thanks James,

Regarding Alphon"s preoccupation with Black Magic and symbolism.It seems to me this is an avenue of research that may yield most understanding of Alphon"s character and personality.Coupled with his predilection for Hitler and the Nazis,Alphon appears to have personality components that are frequently found amongst those paranoid schizophrenics who may commit crimes of violence -often called "command killings"---because the person suffers from auditory hallucinations that tell them them they have a mission to kill someone.

This could well be what Alphon believed he had been "commanded" to do -as indeed was his given reason for having committed the murder:It was my mission ie the A6 murder on 22nd/23rd August 1963.

[Victor]

My attention was also caught here by the mention of the RAF Base .
Michael Clark,who was identified by Valerie Storie as the A6 killer.The man she wrongly identified was in the RAF,Valerie had identified him as her rapist in the first identity line up.

Hi Norma,

According to Woffinden (page 244) "The men making up the parade were comandeered from nearby bases. The majority were on National Service."

So it's unsurprising Michael Clark was RAF really.

KR,
Vic.