a6 murder

[RonIpstone]

I think that it is you that is missing the point BB67. Vic is going to be on Mastermind with his specialist subject 'The A6 Murder', whereas Norma or Natalie is not.

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Jen,
re your reply here:

Originally Posted by jimarilyn
Re. your first point I will refer you to a very recent post of Victor's [#7189] which is just one [of many] example of Victor's lack of knowledge and understanding about the A6 case and his ludicrous and unfounded allegations.....
The only ludicrous and unfounded allegations i have read on this thread have come from you and your cronies who insist the earth is flat and an innocent rape victim would prefer to have an innocent man hang for the crime!

I think the problem here is that for some of us Hanratty was an innocent victim of a frame up.So it is some of our view and certainly mine that an innocent man did hang for the crime.The trial and everything that has followed has been a complete travesty of justice in my view--ie I speak for myself here.
Moreover, Alphon did actually confess to the crime,was in a position where he could have left the gun under the back seat etc did have a reason for returning to his locker at Victoria for which he would logically have taken the 36A bus .He also confessed not once but several times.Several witnesses,Mr Fogarty- Waul,Mrs Mary Lanz, Mr and Mrs Cobbs and their next door neighbour Mr Newell spoke of seeing a man answering Alphon"s description in the area yet not one of them spoke of ever seeing Hanratty in the area. The car was found without any forensic evidence linking it to Hanratty [or Alphon]:no fingerprints, no fibres,no blood,no semen.
Alphon may not be guilty .But he raises questions himself about why he was ever charged with the murder in the first place and why he went on confessing to it.
Moreover a great deal of information has arrived since the 2002 ruling that questions the validity of DNA found on any tiny piece of 40 year old cloth kept at a police station in nothing like the laboratory conditions required.
It really very difficult to debate ,when we start to attack one another with unrestrained anger as seems to has been happening again lately.
Jen,can I suggest you desist from calling me a "flat earther" and from attacking Hanratty,who I am defending, with such unbridled venom.
Thankyou for your cooperation,
Kindest Regards,
Norma

[Graham]

Hi Norma,

That doesn"t make Alphon guilty but it does raise questions about why he was ever charged with the murder in the first place. and why he went on confessing to it.

Hang on a bit - Alphon never was charged with the murder. He was a suspect only. His 'confessions' were publicitiy stunts, pure and simple. Every one of them contained some piece of false information. He was in it purely for what he could get out of it.

Regarding a stitch-up, frame-up, conspiracy, whatever, there has never been any concrete proof that Hanratty was framed. Not one bit. Loads of speculation and conjecture, of course, but no proof.

Graham

[Natalie Severn]

I think that it is you that is missing the point BB67. Vic is going to be on Mastermind with his specialist subject 'The A6 Murder', whereas Norma or Natalie is not.

Why are you having a go personally at me Ron?What are you actually saying?
If you are saying you think Vic is much more knowledgeable than I am about the A6 then fine--thats your view.Its ok with me.I don'"t have the problem with Vic that some do.
Also, you know my name is Norma so why call me Norma or Natalie? Am I to call you Ron or Ron Ipstone?

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Norma,



Hang on a bit - Alphon never was charged with the murder. He was a suspect only. His 'confessions' were publicitiy stunts, pure and simple. Every one of them contained some piece of false information. He was in it purely for what he could get out of it.

Regarding a stitch-up, frame-up, conspiracy, whatever, there has never been any concrete proof that Hanratty was framed. Not one bit. Loads of speculation and conjecture, of course, but no proof.

Graham

Graham ,
First I think Alphon was taken into police custody twice over the A6 and questioned twice .Once following the suspicions of the guests in the Alexandra Ct Hotel on 27th August, the second time after Crocker alerted the police to the cartridge cases allegedly "found" in the Vienna Hotel 19 days after the murder.
His "confessions" may have been publicity stunts---and they may not have been.
The information about the rigging of evidence I refer to can be found in the
biography of Michael Sherrard,who was regarded by Lord Denning as "the best of advocates".He knew Hanratty better than any of us, met Supt Acott who he mistrusted very profoundly and says so in his book,and certainly points to a great deal of withheld evidence;shady witnesses drawn from the prosecution;police fiddling with witness statements" ,as, he states ,was proven by modern forensic hand-writing tests and other things that were "[U]tampered with[/U] " at the police station!
Regards,
Norma

[Graham]

Hi Norma,

Yes, Alphon got to know the inside of police interrogation-rooms rather well. Don't forget that he also voluntarily gave himself up when Acott had a general alert out for him. To me, that doesn't seem like the action of a guilty man. He said himself that his interview with Acott and Oxford scared the hell out of him. Also, his 'confessions' came after Hanratty's execution. And there's one other point to make regarding Alphon: if he had confessed before Hanratty was executed, the police would have wanted hard evidence that he could prove he was the A6 killer. What proof could he offer? Confessions to murders are commonplace, especially confessions to high-profile murders. Finally, if he made a death-bed confession, who'd believe him even then without positive proof?

The alteration of Hanratty's statement was not a major insertion of damning evidence by Acott; had it been, I think loads more would have been made of it by now. It was rather naughty, though, but after all Basil was under immense pressure to nail someone for the A6, and I am certain he knew he had the right man in James Hanratty.

Finally, as has been mentioned by myself and others many times, the verdict at Hanratty's trial was a major surprise to many, including the judge. I have never thought there was sufficient prosecution evidence to secure a guilty verdict, but the jurors certainly felt there was. I would dearly love to find out a bit of what was discussed for those long hours in that jury-room.......

Graham

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Graham,
Well I think its easy to understand the jury really. Had I been a juror at the trial and seen Valerie, a young woman brought in on a stretcher , 23 years old ,paralysed for life ,from the shoulders down and heard her say without a moments hesitation,that Hanratty was the man who had committed such a grotesque crime,then I would have been hard pressed not to find him guilty---whatever the evidence or lack of it.
But such certainty is not uncommon actually among victims of rape and assault and has often been proved to be mistaken.The victim is often quite mistaken about the identity of her attacker--as Valerie proved when she "identified" Michael Clark.
The DNA evidence is not what it was thought to be either---far from it reading American sites on this very issue.
There isnt a single bit of evidence,true,honest to goodness evidence,against Hanratty ,evidence that connects him directly to the crime---or Alphon come to that !

But certainly Alphon seemed to know things about that crime--he also said someone had "shopped" him at the Alexandra Hotel where he went immediately after the murder.
I am a bit nervous to quote anything more that Michael Sherrard said but he said after the 2002 ruling that he had never credited that anyone would be so wicked as to withhold [crucial ] evidence in a capital case---you know who he was referring to.

[Derrick]

I think that it is you that is missing the point BB67. Vic is going to be on Mastermind with his specialist subject 'The A6 Murder', whereas Norma or Natalie is not.

Yeah I can see it now.

John Humphrys: And the next contender.......Your Name?
Victor: Victor X
JH: Occupation?
VX: Posting aimless nonsense on the A6 Forum all day.
JH: ...and your specialist subject?
VX: The A6 Murder.
JH: OK Victor, you have 2 minutes on the A6 Murder starting...now...What was the name of Hanratty's lady friend who worked at the Rehearsal Club?
VX: Errr...Mary something...ummm...Prior....Umm...Priest...(2 minutes later) **** I haven't got my books with me at the minute John...I'll have to answer that correctly when I get home...but for now you'll just have to accept that her name is Mary Prior and bugger the darn accuracy of it all.
JH: Sorry Victor...The answer is Ann Pryce and you have scored zero points.

[Limehouse]

Hi Jen,
re your reply here:


I think the problem here is that for some of us Hanratty was an innocent victim of a frame up.So it is some of our view and certainly mine that an innocent man did hang for the crime.The trial and everything that has followed has been a complete travesty of justice in my view--ie I speak for myself here.
Moreover, Alphon did actually confess to the crime,was in a position where he could have left the gun under the back seat etc did have a reason for returning to his locker at Victoria for which he would logically have taken the 36A bus .He also confessed not once but several times.Several witnesses,Mr Fogarty- Waul,Mrs Mary Lanz, Mr and Mrs Cobbs and their next door neighbour Mr Newell spoke of seeing a man answering Alphon"s description in the area yet not one of them spoke of ever seeing Hanratty in the area. The car was found without any forensic evidence linking it to Hanratty [or Alphon]:no fingerprints, no fibres,no blood,no semen.
Alphon may not be guilty .But he raises questions himself about why he was ever charged with the murder in the first place and why he went on confessing to it.
Moreover a great deal of information has arrived since the 2002 ruling that questions the validity of DNA found on any tiny piece of 40 year old cloth kept at a police station in nothing like the laboratory conditions required.
It really very difficult to debate ,when we start to attack one another with unrestrained anger as seems to has been happening again lately.
Jen,can I suggest you desist from calling me a "flat earther" and from attacking Hanratty,who I am defending, with such unbridled venom.
Thankyou for your cooperation,
Kindest Regards,
Norma

Well done Norma - you have made some excellent points and have done so with considerable tolerance under the difficult circumstances.

A week or so ago - I was really impressed with the way the thread was progressing with some interesting and lively but civil debate. In recent days it has got very nasty again and it makes me sad.

Some people are able to contribute to the debate and make thought-provoking comments and ideas that really add to the thread. This is true for BOTH sides of the camp.

Yesterday I posted some comments that summed up how I was fgeeling at the time and I have reporduced them below:

I have said this before and I will repeat myself. Those who believe Hanratty was guilty have a genuine belief that justice was done. On their side is the verdict of the jury – the outcome of several appeals and the DNA evidence. That must give you all a certain amount of clout when arguing your case.

However – those of us who doubt Hanratty's guilt do so out of an equally genuine belief that justice was not done – either for Hanratty and his family or for Mike and Valerie and their families. We don't have the clout that the jury verdict and the appeals and the DNA evidence has – but that does not make us idiots or criminal-worshippers or morally deficient.

I just wish some people could understand and respect what I have written above. I am neither 'monumentally stupid' - 'unable to grasp things' - 'illogical' or a 'flat earther' - all of which have been aimed at me in recent days. Like Norma - I would like this excellent thread to get back on a civil and thought-provoking footing. Both camps are guilty of bringing the thread down and both camps need to reflect and think on.

[babybird67]

There isnt a single bit of evidence,true,honest to goodness evidence,against Hanratty ,evidence that connects him directly to the crime---or Alphon come to that !

.

I'm sorry Norma but I really do not know how you can state such a thing.

There is a wealth of evidence linking Hanratty to the crime.

Cartridges from the murder weapon were found in the room in which he stayed in the Vienna. The remaining bullets and the murder weapon were found in precisely the place he confessed he would hide things, wrapped in a handkerchief he acknowledged belonged to him.

The victim identified him as her attacker.

Two independent witnesses identified him as the man driving the murder car later that day.

He lied about his whereabouts on the day in question...not usually necessary if you are doing something perfectly innocent on the day in question.

Finally....his semen was mixed with Valerie's DNA in a consistency which PROVES he had sex with her...not just spilled on there, but showing he had sex with her. That was accepted not only by the prosecution at the appeal but by the defence as well. Why do you think Hanratty's brother has retired to Spain, relinquishing all fight on behalf of his brother now? Because he has finally accepted, as the defence team had to, that his brother was guilty. The DNA proves that. Not only was Hanratty's DNA there proving he had sex with Ms Storie, but even if, as is usual on this thread, the deniers pooh pooh the DNA yet again...it would take a miracle to explain how contamination could account for Hanratty's semen being present but no other DNA profile of the unknown rapist...not a speck from anyone else...yet the same people that argue that even the merest speck from Hanratty could have contaminated the knickers seem to ignore the fact that every other DNA profile was absent (other than the two victims)...not even one drop of anyone else's either on the hankie or on the knickers...it would take a miracle to exonerate Hanratty.

And as for venom...sorry but Hanratty deserves it. He's a murderer rapist liar and life wrecker. I'm comfortable with directing venom at him, and will continue to do so.

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Jen,
Well ok but now that I can see where you are coming from let me explain my position on each of your points one by one.

Cartridges from the murder weapon were found in the room in which he stayed in the Vienna. The remaining bullets and the murder weapon were found in precisely the place he confessed he would hide things, wrapped in a handkerchief he acknowledged belonged to him

Yes,cartridge cases were found there the day Nudds was sacked for theft ie 11th September, 19 days after the murder and 15 days after the police had been to the Vienna Hotel in connection with their suspect Alphon. It was also disputed by Juliana Galves that anybody stayed in Room 24 since August 16th 1961 ,[though I know Hanratty said he had stayed there---or did he think he had]?
Regarding the back seat of a London bus---every small time crook in London
knew this was a good place,not to hide guns but to dump "rubbish"-junk jewellry etc.
The handkerchief was a plain white hanky like millions of others in the uk.It was handled by numbers of people during the trial,including Hanratty when he was shown it.

Two independent witnesses identified him as the man driving the murder car later that day

Do you mean the Redbridge witnesses?
Blackhall was the one the police were interested in and who had sat nearest the driver at the roundabout at 7 am with his window wound down.He was asked by police to compose an identikit and Blackhall not only failed to identify Hanratty but said the man he saw "looked nothing like Hanratty".
Skillett did identify Hanratty, yes.

Then there was James Trower who was roundly dismissed by Paddy Hogan whose house he had called on to give Hogan a lift.Hogan said he had arrived so late he couldn"t have seen him.

Then there was the "Concealed evidence"viz
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.

Here is some of the worrying evidence that Sherrard must be referring to and that was never called up at the trial.
It related to two women witnesses .One who had parked every weekday up until the previous week in the exact same spot as the MM was found that Wednesday.
She had been asked to move her MM---which coincidently was the same colour model and make as the murder car and she had parked,at 8.15 each day that week on the opposite side of the street but in the same position.She insisted the other MM was not there at 8.15 that day.
Yet another woman had taken her child in his buggy to the shops at 5.30 pm.At that time there was no Morris Minor on her side of the road where the murder car was found at 6.30 that night.But it was there when she got back from the shops at 6.10.


Regarding Valerie"s identification.Hear Mr Sherrard QC:
MICHAEL SHERRARD: The witness may be perfectly honest, absolutely convinced that he or she has identified the right man or woman and you're not going to be able to cross-examine them to show that they're lying "cos they're not lying, they're telling the truth as they see it.
Here is recent example of eye witness error by the victim:

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...........

Will continue in another post,
Regards,
Norma

[Natalie Severn]

Jen,
I did address the reason why I would strongly dispute the DNA findings earlier on the thread but to recap.My opinion is based on the research,again done in America only recently and where such evidence as the 2002 appeal court used would now be ruled completely out of order in most States in America today.Others here have used British research to demonstrate its fallibility.[Caddy etc]. It is the fact that the cloth was not only tiny but had been kept in a drawer in a lab in conditions that would be judged inadmissable today.The history of that 42 year old cloth is unknown in scientific DNA terms.Th handkerchief is of the same dubious provenance.It was kept in a drawer in a police station in Bedford for forty years.
The piece of cloth examined was cut from the crotch area of the knickers in 1961 and as far as anybody knows the crucial part was cut away.Hanratty"s trousers were brought to the same lab for examination.

[Limehouse]

Does anyone know if there were actually samples of Valerie's and Mike's DNA available at the time of the testing? I mean - Mike was dead so did they just extract three DNA profiles and assume one was the killer's and the other two were MG's and VS's?

[Graham]

Hi Norma,

Just a few comments:

It was also disputed by Juliana Galves that anybody stayed in Room 24 since August 16th 1961 ,[though I know Hanratty said he had stayed there---or did he think he had]?

You suggest that Hanratty might have been mistaken about staying in Room 24, but you appear to take it as inarguable fact that he was NOT mistaken about staying at Ingledene. Some inconsistency here, methinks.

Regarding the back seat of a London bus---every small time crook in London
knew this was a good place

How do you know? If every small-time crook knew it, then why did Hanratty bother telling Dixie France about it?

The handkerchief was a plain white hanky like millions of others in the uk.It was handled by numbers of people during the trial,including Hanratty when he was shown it.

Then how come Hanratty positively and definitely identified it as his? So far as I know it's never been stated that the hankie was monogrammed, but it may have been and if it was would have fitted in with Hanratty's dandyish nature. There must have been something about the hankie which allowed him to recognise it as his. And let's be honest, if he had his wits about him, he'd have said he'd never seen it before in his life!

Th handkerchief is of the same dubious provenance.It was kept in a drawer in a police station in Bedford for forty years

.

Then how did it get Hanratty's snot on it?

Re: the cartridge cases, I always thought it odd that when Acott told Hanratty about them being found, Hanratty's first question was "What size are the bullets?" Not something like "Dunno wot you're talkin' about, guv".

Graham

[Graham]

Hi Julie,

Does anyone know if there were actually samples of Valerie's and Mike's DNA available at the time of the testing? I mean - Mike was dead so did they just extract three DNA profiles and assume one was the killer's and the other two were MG's and VS's?

As far as I'm aware they obtained DNA from Valerie herself and from one or both of Gregsten's sons. They also obtained DNA from Peter Alphon.

Graham