a6 murder

[NickB]

Well I am really,really impressed by Derrick"s post on the controversial LCN testing that took place -so many thanks Derrick :

Me too Norma.

Well done Derrick.

Perhaps you could explain it then.

[Natalie Severn]

Well I am grateful there is somebody on the thread who knows enough about this LCN DNA testing that was heralded with such triumph as the decisive factor regarding the alleged guilt of James Hanratty by the Crown Prosecution in the 2002 appeal.Nothing,it appeared, was considered to be of any real significance that the defence presented---viz the numerous flaws, contradictions and "coincidences" in the original trial that Michael Sherrard, QC, Hanratty"s 1962 trial barrister, drew attention to on May 16th 2002,immediately after the ruling rejected the appeal.All the discrepancies of the original trial had either been ignored or dismissed with scant attention having been paid because,it was asserted the LCN DNA test results provided apparently overwhelming proof that Hanratty did it!
However we now learn that such LNA DNA testing, has, since 2002 , been subjected to in depth research by a team of FBI scientists and found to be more than just "wanting" in fact it has been discovered to be so "unreliable" that it has now been outlawed for use in appeal courts in the States.

Best
Norma

[jimarilyn]

Unkempt and Robert Kempt

Almost finished reading Lord Russell's book again. As all who have read it would probably agree it is a very good read, extremely well written and very perceptive. On page 85, I was struck by an expression that William Nudds had used in the Magistrates Court [Committal proceedings] at Ampthill, a couple of months prior to the trial itself. He had said then... "When I saw Mr Durrant it is true to say that he looked unkempt......". He went on to use the word unkempt again. It is a word that is not used a lot in everyday life and upon reading it it brought to mind Robert Kempt, the manager of Reynolds Billiard Hall in Lime Street. Further on in his book [page 124] Lord Russell writes.....

The evidence given by Hanratty in his examination-in-chief about his conversation with Kempt had been corroborated by another witness. A man of about the same age as the accused did walk up the steps leading to the billiard hall one evening between about 6 and 7pm and asked the manager whether he wanted to buy a watch. Furthermore, Kempt replied exactly as Hanratty had stated in his evidence, "This is not a sale room. You are not going up there to sell watches. We are licensed premises.""

Kempt, for obvious reasons, could not pinpoint the date except to say that the incident had happened that summer (1961) sometime before August 26th, the day he went on holiday.
So here we have a situation of Hanratty trying to sell a gold wrist watch just a few yards away from the bus station from where the Rhyl bound bus departed. The Rhyl bus left at 6pm. It is reasonable to assume that Kempt was not rigid in his observance of time. There is plenty of leeway. The billiard hall's slack period (when Kempt waited outside on the steps below) was in the early evening. My belief is that Hanratty had about a quarter of an hour to kill while waiting for the Rhyl bus to leave and decided to chance his luck at selling the gold watch in a place where the 'right sort of people' might congregate.

Less than 24 hours later the highly reputable Trevor Dutton was approached by a young man on Rhyl's High Street who tried to sell him a gold watch. This young man was dressed in a suit which was remarkably similar to the one Hanratty was wearing at the time. Probably just another one of those innumerable coincidences................

[Natalie Severn]

James.
Interesting that you select the Kempt and Dutton witnesses here,corroborating each other,one and interesting too what you say about the bus station that used to be in the side road next to Lime Street station.I used to go to the Cafe just next to the bus stop,which nearly everybody did, while waiting for the bus to Rhyl! Reynold"s Billiard Hall just across from the station,was where he said he went to try to sell the gold wrist watch which would have been just before six pm ,"Usually I [Kempt] stood outside before it got busy between 6 and 7 pm".
The following day -23rd August-Mr Dutton,"a man of unimpeachable integrity", went from Kinmel Bay to deposit some money in Barclay"s Bank in Rhyl High Street.He did this only twice in 1961 so he was quite sure what day it was.He stated that he was walking between Barclay"s Bank and the Old Post Office next to Burton"s,when a young man in a dark grey and and light grey suit stepped out and asked him if he would like to buy a watch.Interestingly this is where street hawkers do still congregate.... people will congregate around someone "fire eating" or someone "bible thumping" Yesterday they were looking in admiration at a Kestrel on somebody"s wrist someone who had lost an arm in an accident and the Kestrel was standing on their prosthetic wrist more or less in the exact spot described by Mr Dutton.It was a shame that it was the defence team that either didnt have time left to follow up the police statement Mr Dutton made,-the only reference to it is his name and address scrawled on an envelope by Hanratty"s solicitor"s clerk .The Abergele Police also passed Dutton"s statement to Supt Nimmo from Scotland Yard but it was never acted upon.Attached is a photo of Mr Trevor Dutton.

[Graham]

Norma,

1] Confession to make: I earlier wrote, and have just erased and corrected it, that Norma's pic was Michael Fogerty-Waul. It isn't. It's Dutton. Sorry if anyone read this and concluded that Graham was talking out of his chuff. In Foot's book the pic of Fogerty-Wall is on the next page to that of Dutton's.

2] Dutton unfortunately described the man he claims to have met as having, quote, "an Irish or a Cockney accent, or a combination of the two". This wouldn't be, would it, his idea of what a Londoner with an Irish surname might sound like? If he'd described his man as, for example, speaking like a real Cockney, I might have given his evidence some house-room. Sadly, his evidence is worthless.

3] When we lived in the USA great publicity was given to the testimony of a man who said that he was standing by the picket-fence watching the JFK parade through Dallas, and he heard 'the whine of a bullet pass close to his head'. Convincing evidence, you might say, except that when stills and movie films were examined, the man who made that statement was nowhere to be seen anywhere near the picket-fence. Not to accuse him of out-and-out lying, because he most definitely was on the streets of Dallas that day, watching the parade; he later admitted that he was mistaken as to where he was standing, but I believe he continued to claim that he heard the whine of a bullet very near to him.

4] re: the DNA, has any of the numerous posters on this subject ever been professionally employed in forensic science?

Graham

[Natalie Severn]

Graham,
2]Hanratty"s father was born and bred in Ireland and had a strong Irish accent which can be heard on the tapes.Growing up in London and hearing his father"s pronunciation may well have influenced Hanratty"s pronunciation of mid vowel sounds.Also Cockney is a mixture of Irish and the South East dialect,so it should sound as Dutton described it to him since he rarely in his life had moved out of Kinmel Bay in North Wales.
There are others who corroborate Dutton"s Rhyl sighting ,who state they saw Hanratty when he was looking for digs the night he arrived in Rhyl,22nd August.Mr Larman and Mrs Walker for example who remembered both him looking for digs and trying to help him find somewhere as well as remembering his strangely coloured hair in the sun -it was black they said but bronzish.

How anyone who can put such faith in the statements of those two pathological liars and gangsters, Nudds and Langdale yet reject those of Mrs Jones,Trevor Dutton Cristopher Larman and Margaret Walker astonishes me really Graham.*
Norma

*and that is leaving out the statement of Mrs Dinwoody of Liverpool who Supt Acott investigated and genuinely believed had seen Hanratty in her shop-AND he believed she saw Hanratty on the 22nd August rather than 21st.

[Graham]

There are no recordings of Hanratty speaking, so we don't know for sure how he sounded, but Irish he did not. And this is the first time ever I have heard Cockney described as a mixture of Irish and south-eastern dialect. I speak as someone who has had theatrical training in pronunciation and accents.

The real problem with all of the Rhyl 'witnesses' is that they are acting after the event, so to speak. What if one of these fine people contacted the police or the defence-team prior to the trial, or even prior to when Hanratty disclosed his Rhyl Alibi? Then, I would concede, some credence could be attached. But they didn't. All the Rhyl 'witnesses' came forward after Mrs Jones unfortunate experience at Bedford. Sherrard seemed to be especially careful about potential witnesses 'getting in on the act'; the bloke at the Liverpool left-luggage office in particular, who claimed that someone he recalled as 'J Ratty' left a case there at more or less the right time. Yeah, course he did...

I never put much faith in Nudds, and even less in Langdale who, it seems to me, was a classic yet crude police plant. Had Mrs Jones been shown more than one photo I'd have gone along with her, but the defence shot itself up the arse when just a photo of Hanratty was shown to her. The same with Mrs Dinwoody - only this time it was the police who showed her JUST a phote of Hanratty and no other. How many times must I repeat this before it sinks in? Can you please tell me where I can read about Acott claiming to believe that Hanratty was in the sweet shop when he, Hanratty, claimed he was? And as Hanratty abandoned his Liverpool alibi when he realised it was shot to ribbons, why does it matter?

I repeat: NO credence can be attached to the Rhyl Alibi because there is NO concrete proof or evidence that Hanratty was there when he claimed he was.
I ask again: where is his name in a B&B guest book? His ticket stub for the bus ride from Liverpool? A citizen of Rhyl coming forward with evidence prior to Hanratty's alibi-switch - it was only after the trial that anyone from Rhyl claimed to have seen him there. His mentioning to anyone in the France family that he'd been to Rhyl?

Sherrard himself was highly sceptical of the Rhyl Alibi, to the extent that he made Hanratty sign a disclaimer; and quite rightly too. There never was, and never will be, any SOLID evidence that Hanratty was in Rhyl at the critical time.

Graham

[RonIpstone]

4] re: the DNA, has any of the numerous posters on this subject ever been professionally employed in forensic science?

Good point Graham.

The Hanratty family had at least two well qualified scientific experts to advise them at various stages of the proceedings. We should assume that they did their best for the Hanrattys and if any of the arguments now being ventilated had any validity then we would expect those experts to have advanced them.

[Graham]

Ron,

1] if the DNA in the A6 Case is suspect, then one must assume that the DNA in other cases is also suspect. How many cases? - ten? A hundred? A thousand? Ten thousand? Now I keep a fairly close internet watch on what's going in the world of true crime, both in the UK and elsewhere, and I don't at this moment in time recall coming across one single current case in which a DNA analysis is challenged as being totally wrong. As always, I stand to be corrected on this.

2] something that only recently occurred to me. The charge of rape was dropped in the trial of James Hanratty (I believe 'held in reserve' is the appropriate term). In which case, why should Valerie's underwear have been brought into the court as a possible exhibit after the first day of the trial? If this is the case, then it stands to reason that it would have been stored seperately to, for example, Hanratty's trousers, which weregermaine to the case against him. Do we know for sure if Valerie's underwear was brought to the court every day of the trial; or not?

Graham

[Graham]

Old Station Inn

Posted before, but perhaps of interest to newcomers to this thread.

Graham

[RonIpstone]

How anyone who can put such faith in the statements of those two pathological liars and gangsters, Nudds and Langdale yet reject those of Mrs Jones,Trevor Dutton Cristopher Larman and Margaret Walker astonishes me really Graham.*
Norma

*and that is leaving out the statement of Mrs Dinwoody of Liverpool who Supt Acott investigated and genuinely believed had seen Hanratty in her shop-AND he believed she saw Hanratty on the 22nd August rather than 21st.

Where on earth has that come from, Norma?

[Graham]

The Flat Earth Society is going ape tonight, Ron....

Graham

[RonIpstone]

The real problem with all of the Rhyl 'witnesses' is that they are acting after the event, so to speak. What if one of these fine people contacted the police or the defence-team prior to the trial, or even prior to when Hanratty disclosed his Rhyl Alibi? Then, I would concede, some credence could be attached. But they didn't. All the Rhyl 'witnesses' came forward after Mrs Jones unfortunate experience at Bedford. Sherrard seemed to be especially careful about potential witnesses 'getting in on the act'; the bloke at the Liverpool left-luggage office in particular, who claimed that someone he recalled as 'J Ratty' left a case there at more or less the right time. Yeah, course he did...

Graham

Specifically with Trevor Dutton's account that a young man tried to sell him a gold watch, is the fact that Hanratty himself never mentioned trying to sell anyone his watch in Rhyl. Jim's supporters say that Jim had a watch in Liverpool which he tried to sell to Kempt on the billiard hall steps. It would have been natural for him to try to sell the watch in Rhyl. There is some logic in that, but Hanratty never mentioned trying to sell the watch in Rhyl in his evidence as eventually given. It is almost as if when altering his alibi he had forgotten the bit about Kempt and the watch, and accordingly had forgotten to include the watch in his new tale.

I believe in the television and film world this would be classed as a continuity error. In the early part of his alibi, the Liverpool bit, Jim has a watch to sell and tries to sell it. In the amended second part of the alibi, the Rhyl bit, the watch is forgotten. The lack of continuity is strong evidence of invention on the part of our hero.

The other striking thing is that not only did Jim not mention that he had tried to sell the watch to Dutton, or anyone else in Rhyl, no one else came forward to say that they had been approached by a man matching Jim's description selling a watch. If Hanratty needed the cash then he would not have stopped at Dutton, he would have approached others until either he had his collar felt, or sold the watch. So we should really expect (1) Hanratty to have said he hawked his watch around the streets of Rhyl (2) a stream of witnesses to say that this happened, yet all we get is Mr Dutton, describing 'Hanratty', a Londoner with an Irish name, as having an accent that he had difficulty placing, a dialect of Irish or cockney or possibly a mixture of the two.

The dialect description does not dovetail totally with Mrs Dinwoodie's evidence that the man who came into the sweetshop for directions was hard to understand with a Scots or Welsh dialect. Dutton would have read about this before he went to the police. Yet according to Michael Sherrard Hanratty had a normal and average young Londoner's voice.

So for those reasons I think that Dutton's account highlights the deficiencies in Hanratty's tale, rather than reinforces his alibi.

Ron

[Graham]

The whole point is, Ron, that until half way through the trial Hanratty had never mentioned to anyone that he was in Rhyl at the critical time.

Just go back to my post ref: the so-called witness at the JFK assassination, and you'll see how easy it is for someone to 'suddenly remember' what he or she imagined he or she was doing at a given time, providing that he or she has the stimulus provided by a later 'reminder'. Thus in the A6 Case, the only Rhyl 'witnesses' who came forward (after Grace Jones, that is) were those who read about the case in the papers and 'suddenly remembered'....

Graham

[RonIpstone]

The whole point is, Ron, that until half way through the trial Hanratty had never mentioned to anyone that he was in Rhyl at the critical time.

Just go back to my post ref: the so-called witness at the JFK assassination, and you'll see how easy it is for someone to 'suddenly remember' what he or she imagined he or she was doing at a given time, providing that he or she has the stimulus provided by a later 'reminder'. Thus in the A6 Case, the only Rhyl 'witnesses' who came forward (after Grace Jones, that is) were those who read about the case in the papers and 'suddenly remembered'....

Graham

Graham

Agreed that the first pooint to take against Hanratty is that at no stage was his trip to Rhyl mentioned to anyone until he told his lawyers half way through the trial when it was apparent that large holes were going to be blown out of his account of staying in Liverpool. But the devil is in the detail and if the details support Jim's version, or at least cast doubt on the prosecution case, then Jim gets off. The details do not stand up to scrutiny.

I agree that the memory is a peculiar thing and that honest people can make mistakes which have been induced by a lapse of time or suggestion, or a combination of the two.

Ron