a6 murder

[Steve]

This is a flower shop ....

... in Scotland Road, Liverpool. It was trading as a flower shop in 1961 and is located almost opposite the sweetshop, which has been demolished.

[JIMBOW]

Leonard Miller's book

Despite my best efforts I have been unable to come up with 'Shadows of Deadman's Hill' anywhere, having tried all the usual suspects (Zoilus Press, the original publishers (very poor website, by the way), AbeBooks, EBay etc). Living in far-off Calgary, I certainly would not want to borrow it from someone but does anybody have the faintest idea where it might be procured commercially (used/new)? Didn't anticipate this much trouble, after all it was only published in 2001, not all that long ago.

Love Steve's pics of the locales of interest, the latest being the Scotland Road flower-shop. Maybe Cilla was behind the counter, she'd have been the right age in '61!!

Regards,
Jim

[simon]

Hello Jim,
Mine is a photocopy - for which I paid approximately the same as the original hardback!! If you have no luck elsewhere, I can send you details of where I got it from.

Regards,
Simon

[Steve]

Jim, there were copies for sale on eBay recently. My advice is to keep looking and one will appear for sale sooner or later.

[Tony]

ID Parades

Hi Steve,

I agree, Hanratty changing his alibi was probably his undoing with the jury. I have always wondered (and expressed so here) whether he was fully expecting to be given an alibi by friends in Liverpool but when they heard what he was charged with simply refused to do so.

Having no alibi itself does not imply guilt. After all, no one reports having seen Hanratty anywhere near the abduction scene at the key times but then there are reports of him (or someone like him) being seen near areas where the car was abandoned.

Hello everyone,

As Limehouse correctly says lack of an alibi does not mean guilty.

Witness the following:

In the mid 1980,s I was working in the surveying department for a large building company in Manchester and one lunch time a policeman came in and asked if any of us wanted to make up the numbers on an ID parade at the police station just up the road. We would be rewarded handsomely with a five pound note each. Although I wanted to go simply to see what happened I was excluded because in those days I had a beard. So did a couple of other lads who wanted to go. Anyway the policeman selected three of the lads and off they went; only two came back.

The case was one of a serious sexual assault. The victim picked out one of our lads, Mike, and she then immediately left the room. The three lads went to the desk with all the other volunteers to collect their fivers but Mike was kept behind. He had just been identified by the victim as her assailant.
Of course he said that he wouldn’t have volunteered to go anywhere near a police station if he had carried out an attack but the police said, although they believed him they needed to follow it up.
“Where were you on Friday night six weeks ago?” or something like that. He was kept for about two hours at the police station and he said he was probably at home that evening with his wife.
The police went round to his house and talked to his wife and she knew because of some other event in her history six weeks previously that Mike had gone out alone.
Although perfectly innocent he told me it did put a strain on his relationship with his wife for a while. He never heard another thing from the police and to this day does not know whether the case was solved or not.

Tony.

[Steve]

Hi Limehouse

I agree that not having an alibi is not proof of guilt, far from it. However, from our perspective all these years later, despite lots of attempts to establish an alibi and with none ever having been made, it does lend a lot of weight to the argument that Hanratty was the A6 killer.

Steve

Hi Tony

100% agree that lack of alibi is not proof of guilt!

Kind regards,
Steve

[JIMBOW]

Jim, there were copies for sale on eBay recently. My advice is to keep looking and one will appear for sale sooner or later.

Steve, I have seen a magazine advertised on eBay with an article entitled 'Mystery of Deadman's Hill' but am quite sure this is not Miller's book. If you've seen Miller's book on eBay though, then I shall, as you suggest, keep on looking.

Simon, as I say, I'll keep on looking a wee while longer but may, in the end, ask you for the info on where you got your photocopy.

Regards,
Jim

[Steve]

Jim, that's a different publication, not Miller's book, but worth buying all the same.

[jimarilyn]

Nobody has addressed the problem I now have about where the gun was when Valerie was being tied up. What was Mike doing at this time? I think this is important and once again why didn’t the defence ask this simple questionNo I think we have been told very selective pieces of what was said and happened in that car.

I think this is an extremely important point Tony. On Monday evening travelling back to Liverpool from Ormskirk, I stopped at a lay-by on the A59 to enjoy a delicious pizza I'd just picked up

[jimarilyn]

Just doesn't ring true...add up.... or even make any sense

Nobody has addressed the problem I now have about where the gun was when Valerie was being tied up. What was Mike doing at this time? I think this is important and once again why didn’t the defence ask this simple question
No I think we have been told very selective pieces of what was said and happened in that car.

I think this is an extremely important point Tony. On Monday evening last, travelling back to Liverpool from Ormskirk, I stopped at a lay-by on the A59 to enjoy a delicious pizza I'd just picked up from a take-away. It was around 10pm and as I was sitting in my Ford Ka my mind started wandering to certain aspects of the A6 murder case.

The road I was on was quite quiet (only about 4 or 5 cars on average passed by each minute) and I tried to visualise in my mind's eye what it might have been like that August night in 1961 in Mike Gregsten's Morris Minor. I suppose an MM and a Ka are fairly similar in size and I tried to put myself in Mike Gregsten's position.

The imaginary gunman in my Ka is perched in the middle of the back seat and leaning forward to bind the wrists of the imaginary female sitting to my left, who's now facing him head on. Where's his gun ? Why has he still got those black nylon gloves on ? Wait a minute...he's now standing stooped over her and tying one end of a rope to the car door handle and the other end to her wrists (??). Where's that blummin' gun ? I'm bigger and stronger than him, why don't I just knock the b*****d out with a good right hook to his chin..?

$64,000 question....where was the Enfield .38 ?

Did Mike Gregsten subconsciously have a death wish ?




PS> Don't know how post 1344 got there. Gremlins in the works perhaps ?

[Tony]

Finding of the gun.

Hello everybody,

Any one wanting to see an interview with the bus cleaner who found the gun go to this link.
I’m sure you will all have seen it anyway.

Tony.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/23/newsid_3013000/3013236.stm

[Tony]

Freedom of Information? Not really.

Hello again everyone,

Most people think the A6 case is now dead and buried and nothing is happening behind the scenes. Well I am as much in the dark as everybody else but did anyone on this thread request any of the following information from the National Archives in July 2006?


Central Criminal Court CRIM 1/3814 Session: 1962 Jan 2 Defendant: HANRATTY, James Charge: Rape and murder


Director of Public Prosecutions DPP 2/4039 1965-1967 ALPHON, Peter Louis: S66 Post Office Act 1953. Threatening telephone calls to Lord RUSSELL


Metropolitan Police MEPO 2/9720 1962-1968 A6 murder: question of new evidence in the case of James Hanratty

https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/foi-july2006.pdf

It is also interesting to type in the search box Peter Louis Alphon and you come up with the following:

Report concerning offences of fraud and hire purchase frauds committed by Peter Louis Alphon
Covering dates 1961.
Closed for 69 years.
Record opening date Jan 1st 2031.

Wonder what that’s all about then.


Tony.

[jimarilyn]

[QUOTE=Tony;34744]
Report concerning offences of fraud and hire purchase frauds committed by Peter Louis Alphon
Covering dates 1961.
Closed for 69 years.
Record opening date Jan 1st 2031.
QUOTE]

Interesting that William Nudds was jailed for fraud around the same time (1962). Alphon claimed that he knew Nudds well and that they altered the hotel register in the Vienna Hotel. Sounds about right.

[simon]

I've now finished reading Shadows of Deadman's Hill, and I have to say that I find Miller's viewpoint very convincing - not least because of the numerous flaws that he points to in the previous books. Maybe just a case of me believing the last thing I read ? - This was certainly true when I used to read about Jack The Ripper, many years ago. But I don't think so, because this time there's the DNA to take into account as well. I find myself in the position, after decades of telling people "No - actually someone called Alphon did it", of believing now that Hanratty was, after all, the killer. And it does seem that even Paul Foot, despite his brave "there must be something wrong with the science" comment, was coming towards the same conclusion. (Did he ever read Miller's book, does anyone know ?). I've never had a problem with Hanratty's denials to the end : he didn't want his family to think the worst (i.e the truth) of him. But wouldn't he be amused to know that, all these years later, here we all are arguing about it!

[jimarilyn]

Why didn't Alphon ever do any porridge

I find it completely baffling how Peter Alphon managed to avoid a prison sentence, time after time. No matter what he seemed to do the police authorities and magistrates just turned a blind eye. Who was looking out for him and why ? Fraud, hire purchase fraud, violent assault, menacing phone calls, not to mention other things, anyone else would have spent some time at Her Majesty's Pleasure. He must have had some pretty powerful and influential friends.