a6 murder

[TheShortArtist]

The Pistol

Hi Derrick,


Sorry that I've rambled on! I hope that I've helped in some way and haven't gone and confused the issue even more for you!

Best Wishes,

Zodiac.

Don't apologise Zodiac, these technical details are very interesting.

One of Jimarilyn's early press cuttings: " Police found two blood-spattered cartridges on the floor [ of the Moggie ] ".

What sort of a revolver leaves only two shells? Two cartridges in the car suggests that the murder weapon was an automatic. Since automatics eject their shells one-by-one whereas six-shooters do it in batches of six.

To pick two shells only from a revolver would be quite difficult, especially in near-darkness and with gloves on. Anyway a killer with a revolver would have had no need to reload, still having four rounds to deal with VS.

[Victor]

One of Jimarilyn's early press cuttings: " Police found two blood-spattered cartridges on the floor [ of the Moggie ] ".

Hi TSA,

Only 2 shots were fired in the car, both at Gregsten. VS was shot outside the car, so the 2 spent cartridges in the car are exactly what was expected.

KR,
Vic.

[Limehouse]

Hi everyone,

I have some comments to make concerning evidence offered by the prosecution as listed in the appeal document in the link posted bny Nick (http://forum.casebook.org/newreply.p...ote=1&p=141698)

I have pasted the relevant points (33 & 34) here:

On Thursday 24 August 1961, (the day after the killing), shortly before 9pm, the murder weapon, a .38 Enfield revolver, was found; it was wrapped in a stained handkerchief. The gun was fully loaded and was with five boxes of ammunition and some loose ammunition. These items were all found by a cleaner, Edwin Cooke, underneath the back seat of a 36A bus at the garage at Rye Lane, near New Cross. (The back seat of the bus had been checked on the night of Wednesday 23 August 1961 and the gun and ammunition had not been there at that time.) The prosecution suggested that the gun had been deposited on the morning of 24 August. Complaint is now made that they did not call or disclose the identity of the bus conductress, Pamela Patt (Ground 11).

There are two aspects of the place in which the weapon was found. The first emerges from the evidence of Charles France (known as “Dixie”). James Hanratty was a friend who regularly visited Mr France’s home in Boundary Road, London NW8 where he lived with his wife and children, one being a daughter Carol then aged 16. On an occasion prior to the 21 August 1961, James Hanratty was discussing his activities as a thief with Mr France and referred to the space under the back seat of a bus as a receptacle. James Hanratty’s own account, given in evidence at the trial was that he told Charles France that if he got on a bus with stuff in his pocket he would sort it out upstairs on the bus and put the good stuff in his pocket and put the rubbish under the back seat. It is clear that James Hanratty knew about the space under the back seat and the fact that it was a good hiding place for anything he might want to dispose of. The second feature noted during the trial was the route of the 36A bus: it passes along Sussex Gardens, near the bottom of Sutherland Avenue, Maida Vale, on which is to be found the Vienna Hotel.

My points are:

Hanratty was identified as being the man seen driving the stolen MM car on the morning of 23 August at 7am.

The car was found abandoned close to this 'siting' later that evening, 23 August.

The gun was found in the late evening of 24 August, on a 36a bus. The cleaner who found the weapon insists it was not there the previous evening.

Now, if we are being consistent, the prosecutioon case it that Hanratty was positively identified as being the driver of the car abandoned the morning after the murder. He is also connected to the fining of the weapon via his conversation with Charles France concerning the underneath of the back seat of a London bus being a good place to abandon unwanted loot and,
of course, his hanky beiong found with the weapon.

Additionally, as highlighted above, the bus runs close to the location of the Vienna Hotel where Hanratty stayed the night before the murder. Everyoine following so far?

My point is, what has the location of the hotel to do with the bus route given the sequence of events described above? Is it alleged that Hanratty abansoned the car on the morning of the 23 August and then returned close to the Vienna Hotel to board a bus in order to abandon the weapon? Is that likely?

Or is it possible that someone from the Vienna Hotel set out on August 24, boarded the bus, abandoned the weapon and cartridges with the incriminating hanky, having first held back two empty cartridges in case they were needed for planting later?

Just a few thoughts.

[RonIpstone]

Hi Julie,

I agree that the fact that the No. 36A bus passed near to the Vienna Hotel should not be probative of what is now Hanratty's undoubted guilt.

I write as a bluff, gruff, taciturn north-countryman and as one who is not versed in the ways, particularly the highways and by-ways, of the Metropolis, yet even I know that Sutherland Avenue does not have its 'bottom', or any other part of its anatomy, at, or near, Sussex Gardens. I think that I am right in saying that all three of the Court of Appeal, like myself, are dour north-countrymen; Woolf (Newcastle), Mantell (Manchester) and Leveson (Liverpool), which might account for why they made a pig's ear of the geography.


The No. 36A passes through the centre of London from Victoria Station and would be accessible to a vast number of folk, Hanratty and Alphon included, who might want to dispose of their firearms under the rearmost seat of the top deck. I agree that the choice of the bus and the relevance of the route should not have been used against Jim, as guilty as he undoubtedly was.

Ron

[Derrick]

Keith Simpson said that the wounds in Gregsten had been because the 2 shots were from very close range and in rapid succession before his head had moved.

Could a .38 have made 2 wounds like this?

Wouldn't the head have moved somewhat before a 2nd shot could be discharged?

Plus as TSA implies the cases from a manual six shooter like a .38 would have to have been manually removed as opposed to an automatic. Hanratty would have had to have reloaded the gun in the car after shooting Gregsten and before shooting Storie.

If this is so then Hanratty either had two chambers loaded and discharged them and reloaded all six or had it full and just loaded another 2 in the car?

Does anyone know if Storie mentions this at all?

We know she said that after the first volley at her that Hanratty reloaded and fired another lot which all missed.

Derrick

[Limehouse]

Hi Derrick, welcome to the thread.

According to Woffinden, page 9, after Valerie has helped the gunman to remove Gregsten's body from the car, Valerie urges to gunman to go and she gives him a £1 note from her raincoat. He took it, walked away fro a few feet and then 'he suddenly turned round and fired a number of shots into her body. He then reloaded the gun and fired a further three times. Valerie states she thought these shots passed over her head.

There is not mention of him reloading whilst still in the car. In fact, Valerie describes how he places the gun on the back wiondow ledge during the rape.

Julie

[Graham]

Sorry, but the debate as to whether the gun was an automatic or a revolver is specious, as it was shown forensically that the .38 revolver found on the No 36A bus was the one used to kill Gregsten and maim Valerie. It was never questioned by Sherrard, who of course was desperate for any evidence in favour of his client. As to who planted the gun on the bus, well, that's possibly another story...

Graham

[Zodiac]

Sorry, but the debate as to whether the gun was an automatic or a revolver is specious, as it was shown forensically that the .38 revolver found on the No 36A bus was the one used to kill Gregsten and maim Valerie. It was never questioned by Sherrard, who of course was desperate for any evidence in favour of his client. As to who planted the gun on the bus, well, that's possibly another story...

Graham

Hi Graham,

I totally agree with you. The only point of my post was, an attempt, to try clear up some of the confusion over handgun types and operation that seemed to be creeping into the discussion. I should also mention, without wanting to go into tedious detail, that had a semi-automatic been used to commit the crime then the spent cartridge cases would have looked very different from rimmed .38/200 revolver cartridge cases that were found. .38 ACP and .38 Super Auto are both semi-rimmed cartridges and .380 ACP are rimless. None of them look anything like the .38/200 rimmed cartridges of the Enfield No.2 revolver used in the A6 case.

Best wishes,

Zodiac.

[NickB]

Or is it possible that someone from the Vienna Hotel set out on August 24, boarded the bus, abandoned the weapon and cartridges with the incriminating hanky, having first held back two empty cartridges in case they were needed for planting later?

One of Nudds statements to the police said James Ryan had upon leaving asked the way to a bus stop for the 36 bus. At the trial, the ever helpful Nudds changed this to the 36A bus!

[Limehouse]

One of Nudds statements to the police said James Ryan had upon leaving asked the way to a bus stop for the 36 bus. At the trial, the ever helpful Nudds changed this to the 36A bus!

So, Hanratty dumped the gun BEFORE he did the crime?

[jimarilyn]

Additionally, as highlighted above, the bus runs close to the location of the Vienna Hotel where Hanratty stayed the night before the murder. Everyoine following so far?

My point is, what has the location of the hotel to do with the bus route given the sequence of events described above? Is it alleged that Hanratty abansoned the car on the morning of the 23 August and then returned close to the Vienna Hotel to board a bus in order to abandon the weapon? Is that likely?

Or is it possible that someone from the Vienna Hotel set out on August 24, boarded the bus, abandoned the weapon and cartridges with the incriminating hanky, having first held back two empty cartridges in case they were needed for planting later?

Hi Julie,

An important and very well observed point. I mentioned more or less the same thing to an interested friend in a recent e-mail. William Nudds's first statement to the police, where he claimed Hanratty had asked him how to get to Queensway, was obviously designed to incriminate him and forever associate him with the 36 bus [he'd no doubt forgotten that the alleged murder weapon was found on a 36A bus]. Even if this incident did take place how can it have incriminated Hanratty ? The 'murder weapon' was placed on the 36A bus on the Thursday, a full two days after Hanratty had left the Vienna Hotel and the London area.. Besides all else, Queensway is only a mile and a half from Sutherland Avenue and I feel sure that Hanratty, with his knowledfge of the London area, would have easily known how to get there.

It's interesting to know something of William Nudds's attitude to London's criminal fraternity. Three years earlier, upon his release from prison he had been described as "the most hated man in Britain". Due in large part no doubt to his 'grassing activities' while doing porridge. He stated that whenever possible he would do all he could to damage the criminal fraternity and get back at them for their treatment of him in prison.

[caz]

In my opinion what is pivotal in all this then is Valerie Storie"s identification.
It is my view that Valerie could have been mistaken the second time round too.That Valerie never actually got a good enough view of her attacker---Look again at the very similar case we discussed last week-that of Jennifer Thompson :

Known Cases of Eyewitness Error

The Innocence Project has facilitated the exoneration of 214 men who were convicted of crimes they did not commit, as a result of faulty eyewitness evidence.[5] A number of these cases have received substantial attention from the media.
Jennifer Thompson's case is one example: She was a college student in North Carolina in 1984, when a man broke into her apartment, put a knife to her throat, and raped her. According to her own account, Ms. Thompson studied her rapist throughout the incident with great determination to memorize his face. "I studied every single detail on the rapist's face. I looked at his hairline; I looked for scars, for tattoos, for anything that would help me identify him. When and if I survived the attack, I was going to make sure that he was put in prison and he was going to rot."[6]

Ms. Thompson went to the police station later that same day to work up a [composite sketch] of her attacker, relying on what she believed was her detailed memory. Several days later, the police constructed a photographic lineup, and she selected Ronald Junior Cotton from the lineup. She later testified against him at trial. She was positive it was him, without any doubt in her mind. "I was sure. I knew it. I had picked the right guy, and he was going to go to jail. If there was the possibility of a death sentence, I wanted him to die. I wanted to flip the switch."[7]
But she was wrong, as DNA results eventually showed. It turns out she was even presented with her actual attacker during a second trial proceeding a year after the attack, but swore she'd never seen the man before in her life. She remained convinced that Ronald Cotton was her attacker, and it was not until much later, after Mr. Cotton had served 11 years in prison for a crime he did not commit, that she realized that she had made a grave mistake.
Jennifer Thompson's memory had failed her, resulting in a substantial injustice. It took definitive DNA testing to shake her confidence, but she now knows that despite her confidence in her identification, it was wrong. Cases like Ms. Thompson's, including a long history of eyewitness errors traceable back to Biblical times, prompted the emergence of a field within the social sciences dedicated to the study of eyewitness memory and the causes....continued on net

Hi Nats,

Having just caught up with a careful read of the last few pages, the above simply astounds me.

You reject the DNA evidence in the A6 case, even though it confirms Valerie’s account, right down to a rapist who ejaculated normally (and blew his nose on the hanky later found wrapped round the murder weapon).

And here you are, exhibiting complete faith in the DNA evidence in the above case, contra the victim’s account - which is fine. DNA does after all tend to be more reliable than any witness.

But how have you determined its 100% reliability in the Thompson case, especially as you are reserving ‘all judgment’ of its reliability in Valerie’s?

Also, I see you have been comparing Alphon mentally with the likes of Napper (despite the fact that Valerie’s attacker did ejaculate). So how do you think Alphon would have been able to control himself to the extent that he never did anything remotely comparable to the A6 rape and shootings after August 1961? Napper couldn’t stop himself from doing it all again after Wimbledon Common, even though Stagg was being crucified at the time for it.

One other question: if you think Alphon could have been the man hiding his own murder weapon on the bus, why - and how - did he go to the trouble of wrapping it in Hanratty’s snotty hanky first? It was just a hanky in 1961, proving nothing, and the gunman wore gloves for the actual crime, didn’t he? Was Alphon already anticipating that Hanratty would become a suspect at this point, and did he have reason to think the hanky could be identified as his too?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Now then, Nats, concerning the ‘personal’ matters:

I’m not sure what you mean when you accuse me of making ‘deeply offensive’ personal or ‘personalized’ attacks on you or Claire or any other poster. If you think I have been guilty of breaking the site rules in this regard, then I urge you to report the offending posts to the admin and let them deal with me accordingly. It has been years since I have had any negative feedback from the admin about anything I have posted, and even then there were only about two occasions, both related to the interminable dish it out and take it stuff I used to have on the diary threads with two (male) posters, who have long since ceased to contribute anything on that subject. I was out of order on those occasions, although I felt sorely provoked at the time. And I can absolutely understand anyone taking against me for my forthright posts. I would take against me if I was on the receiving end of some of them. But I actually get very few posters complaining publicly that I have attacked them personally, and none - apparently - complaining to admin direct.

As for you observation that Claire finds me ‘very offensive’ in my rush to judgment about ‘what people are actually saying’, that’s pretty hilarious considering that she was in such a tearing hurry to be offended by me that she totally misjudged what I was actually saying, when I was essentially in agreement with her. When she told me to go and ‘pick on’ someone else, I wondered what the hell I could have done to her! But I really can’t be held responsible if the odd poster takes everything personally and is that determined to feel picked on.

In my view there can be little more personally offensive going on in this thread or elsewhere than the implication that Valerie would have allowed the authorities to believe that she had been raped by a man who ejaculated and left O group semen in her underwear, if that’s not what happened. It has been proved, in law, beyond reasonable doubt that she was indeed raped, shot and left for dead by the man she went on to identify. She didn’t lie, or conspire with anyone to get the wrong man hanged; she has never doubted that the right man paid for the crime; and she was right not to doubt it.

Considering all the personal and baseless things that have been implied - even flatly stated on occasion - about Valerie’s conduct and character, in order to claim that Hanratty was innocent, several posters (not the unidentifiable sock puppets of course) can think themselves lucky that she doesn’t appear to know about this thread, or care enough to defend herself. She could get the whole lot deleted with a click of her fingers, and sue one or two arses while she’s at it.

Please think about that when you next imagine I’m attacking you 'personally' and you feel so hard done by.

Love,

Caz
X

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Caz,

But how have you determined its 100% reliability in the Thompson case, especially as you are reserving ‘all judgment’ of its reliability in Valerie’s?

I havent determined its 100% reliability but there were found to be 214 other cases of wrong identification in one State ---demonstrating the unreliability of eye witness identification by a victim.
And yes,I do indeed continue to reserve all judgment regarding the reliability of the LCN DNA test and what was found of Hanratty"s DNA on the fragment of forty year old cloth-which could have been the result of contamination .We know almost nothing of the history of that cloth.We do not know much about what happened on 28th -and 29th December 1961 in the police lab where Hanratty"s trousers had had seminal fluid removed from the fly area by the pathologist beforethe knickers were examined and before the piece of cloth was cut from them.

Also, I see you have been comparing Alphon mentally with the likes of Napper (despite the fact that Valerie’s attacker did ejaculate). So how do you think Alphon would have been able to control himself to the extent that he never did anything remotely comparable to the A6 rape and shootings after August 1961?

Robert Napper is a paranoid schizophrenic and I believe Alphon was very probably suffering from the very same illness.But the illness doesnt manifest itself in exactly the same way in every individual.However most of those who suffer from episodes of psychosis do ,I understand ,believe, exactly as Alphon did, that they have a "mission".Sometimes such a "mission" entails violence,in which case such "missions" are termed, "Command killings" -whether the A6 was a "command killing" or just a "mission" is difficult to determine but if Alphon was the Gunman,then it seems to me to have been simply a "mission" rather than a "command killing" because Gregsten"s attack with a duffle bag was not anticipated!
Also, I think,contrary to what you say, that there were several mysterious events that were "remotely comparable".For a start,as I say, the A6 murder seems like it wasnt originally intended to turn out like it did but was some kind of bizarre event that turned violent during Mike Gregsten"s attempt to disarm the gun man. Mrs Dalal was one woman who endured a similar "hold up" for which Alphon was originally arrested.

Regarding the hanky: I think the gun was most likely "planted" on that 36A bus---to incriminate Hanratty.Whether it was Alphon who planted it or France----is a mystery .What is for certain is that France would have had an abundance of opportunity to grab one of Hanratty"s hanky"s from the wash,since his wife took on all Hanratty"s washing.

Best Wishes
Norma

[Graham]

The only reason that makes me vaguely suspicious that France planted the gun on the bus, is that Hanratty denied doing it (obviously) but confirmed that the hankie was his. However, I'm 95% certain that Hanratty planted the gun, denied doing so on instructions from his defence, but made a boo-boo when he said the hankie was his. I should think Sherrard must've been holding his head in his hands by then.

Alphon was a nasty, unpredictable piece of work all right - but a hard man? Never. He may have lost his cool on a couple of occasions, but he wasn't the kind of bloke to whack old ladies for their pension money. I often consider that, in 2010, Hanratty would sport a shaved head, tattoes, and go to the gym - he was most definitely a macho type, and given that he made a living out of crime was doubtless prepared, willing and able to put up his dukes if he had to.

Graham