a6 murder

[Limehouse]

Hi everyone,

I have just been catching up with recent threads after a few days' absence. Some very interesting points have been raised and i was particularly interested in the post expressing Dr John Parrington's views on the DNA evidence.

Strangely enough, I came to this thread fully convinced of Hanratty's innocence, regardless of the DNA evidence. I am now less convinced of his innocence but I still disregard the DNA evidence. This is for two reasons. Firstly, I do not think the garments were stored so that cross-contamination could be avoided. Secondly, I don't think for one moment that the powers-that-be would let it be known that an innocent man had hanged. Look how long it took to get an admission that Derek Bentley should not have hanged - and he WAS at the scene of the murder.

My doubts about Hanratty's innocence have been raised by the intelligent debate that has been conducted on this thread. I realise that I was swayed by the way evidence was presented and argued by Foot and Woffinden, painting Hanratty as a 'loveable rogue' when in fact he was a ruthless criminal, determined to fill his pockets with cash gained from robbing people's homes. Of course, that does not mean he was capable of murder and rape. However, once again, other posters have pointed out that there really are only two men in the frame - Alphon and Hanratty - and if evidence is flimsy against Hanratty, it's no stronger against Alphon.


Having said all of this, the cases of Barry George, Colin Stagg and indeed Stefan Kisko have to be considered when considering how evidence against a suspect is gathered and presented in court. All of these men were innocent of the crimes they were charged with. All of them served time in prison, either on remand or as a result of being convicted. All of them were vulnerable men, living close to the scene of the crimes who were easy 'fit into the image of a likely suspect'. We could add Bentley and Evans to this list. Men who were ripe for taking the blame. I am not wholly convinced Hanratty falls into this category, but I can't help thinking that the jury were given enough evidence to convict him without hearing evidence that might have thrown a great deal of doubt on his guilt.

[larue]

The one area in which I believe questions will be asked from now until the cows come home is just what did happen in the Morris Minor that night. I for one am not prepared to place on written record my own thoughts and feelings and theories, and for reasons which I think should be pretty obvious. Just be careful, guys!

this is of course a problem, as a free and frank discussion of this area would be revealing. as the trial was public, and well reported at the time and since, the events and relevant information should lie within the public domain, though i suspect a libel lawyer would take a far different view.

make no mistake, events in the morris minor are key to the whole mystery.

To conclude, I certainly do not think that the A6 Case is cut and dried, even after 47 years, and that someone, somewhere, has highly relevant information which as far as we're all concerned has never been made public, and probably won't be

you're right there Graham, but then, one day...

[larue]

On the old boards someone whose name I've forgotten wrote a long, highly-scientific and extremely interesting post regarding DNA profiling - if anyone (Larue? Steve?) has salvaged this post I feel it would be great to read it again.

Cheers,

Graham

by an amazing co-incidence...

[larue]

searching aboot in the bowels of my pc, i found.....






strunt
Police Constable Join Date: May 2007
Posts: 1


Hanratty: It's still a mystery

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Hanratty case, which even now remains a subject for debate despite the passing of many years and the Appeal hearing of 2002 with its emphasis on the DNA evidence, justifies its description by Bob Woffinden as the most fascinating case which there has ever been in British criminal history. This is because of the direct conflicts of evidence with no seeming reconciliation possible in many areas of the case. Although people cannot be blamed for jumping to the conclusion that Hanratty was guilty if they have heard of the DNA evidence but know little else about the case, the notion that somehow all other evidence must be ignored offends one's natural sense of justice and can surely only be accepted if in fact the DNA does turn out to prove conclusively ( as the Court of Appeal said ) that Hanratty must have been guilty.

Does it prove that? I do not think so. The type of testing used is known as PCR ( Polymerase Chain Reaction ) and the Americans call it molecular photocopying. It depends on massive magnification of the tiniest samples and it is quite obvious that such a technique must be highly vulnerable to cross-contamination since one may have begun with the smallest amount imaginable. Nowadays detailed regulatuions require the most stringent handling procedures ( commonly as many as 50 different pairs of rubber gloves may apparently have to be used ) and it is stating the obvious to point out ( as the Criminal Cases Review Commission did point out but the Court of Appeal chose not to take any notice ) that in Hanratty ( where of course nobody in the 1960s had ever heard of forensic DNA save for a handful of very specialist scientists) procedures corresponding to the requirements of he regulations were not followed in any way. As there was plenty of mixing of items and indeed a broken and empty vial was found with the items when it was known that a vial of liquid containing a wash of Hanratty's trousers had been kept at the time, it is impossible to see how the evidential integrity of the crime samples can be relied upon. The Court of Appeal casually assumed that this must have been some other vial ( what? ) but made no comment upon what then was supposed to have become of the vial from the wash in question. Nor is the point about no other person's DNA being found a valid one. The knickers were not preserved as an entire garment but only a tiny fragment remained. Nobody can possibly know what was on the rest of the item. Furthermore, if the source of the DNA on the handkerchief was the mucus staining why did the usual RFLP method not pick this up. The fact is that PCR can pick up sweat and Hanratty appears to have handled that handkerchief during his evidence. It has always been agreed he sweated a good deal in the witness box. Surely the most that can be said about the DNA is that one possible explanation of it is that Hanratty was guilty but another is that it got there during storage and handling after the crime. It is equivocal.

What about some of the other points in the case then? Surely the following are of significance:
1. The Rhyl witnesses did not emerge, as Leonard Miller seems to think, as a result of much later campaigning. On the contrary, as soon as Hanratty put forward the Rhyl account they made statements to the police which Scotland Yard did not disclose to the defence or the court, or even to the prosecution for that matter.
2. The cumulative weight to be attached to the alibi evidence surely cannot be casually brushed aside as Mr Miller thinks. It is obvious from the statements that there was a man answering Hanratty's description going round Rhyl asking for digs, seeking to sell stolen goods in the street etc. at the key time. It would be something of a coincidence if some other person whe happended by chance to answer his description had been doing these things in a small town in relation to which he happened to invent a lying story saying he was doing them in relation to exactly the same time. Nor has any such other person ever come forward.
3. One of Hanratty's regular crimes was stealing cars. Shortly before his arrest he stole, for example, a Jaguar to order from a London street and drove it up to the north West. It seems far fetched that he would not know how to drive a Morris Minor.
4. The only two days when Mrs Dinwoodie ( the Liverpol sweetshop lady ) was in the shop in that period were the Monday and the Tuesday, which was the day of the murder. The prosecution's own evidence shows Hanratty was in London all day on the Monday ( indeed, this is how he was tied to the Vienna Hotel ) and so the Tuesday is the only day when he could have gone into the shop. As his own barrister pointed out, he would have needed a helicopter to get to Dorney Reach in time.
5. The prosecution case was that there was not and never had been any connection between Hanratty and Alphon. The first time the Vienna Hotel was mentioned in relation to the case was when the police had Alphon reported to them as behaving strangely in another hotel a few days after the murder. His alibi given was the Vienna Hotel. If you "stop the film" at that point and ask what would be the odds against the real murderer ( who could have been anybody and could have been anywhere on the night before the murder ) just happening to turn out to be a person who had spent the night before the murder in the same hotel as the one which Alphon gave as his alibi for the murder night they must be millions to one. And yet the prosecution's case rested on this absurd possibility.
6. One of the very first things Hanratty did when arrested was to volunteer forensic samples. As an experienced crook, a strange thing for him to do if guilty as he must have known he could not be forced to provide the samples.

I still find it impossible to come to any other conclusion save that the case in Hanratty's favour is far more coherent and compelling than the case against him. Of course, different readers tend to attach more or less weight to different aspects of a case like this but I fail to see how any real;istic examination of the whole case can avoid the point that, in the light of all that is known both at the time of trial and since, as soon as you attempt to put together a scenario for how Hanratty spent that crucial week in August 1961 which includes his carrying out of that murder it is not very long before you begin to run into grave improbabilities!

[larue]

unsafe

in the last few years, there have been many highly publicised trials and convictions, followed months and sometimes years later by an overturning of the verdicts, because they are considered to be 'unsafe'

is this word 'unsafe' the correct term?

to me 'unsafe' means a car whose brakes do not work, or a ricketty scaffolding i would not care to climb up. but a conviction, 'unsafe'? what about the good english word 'wrong' as in 'we were wrong to convict this person' does the usage of the word unsafe imply that the person convicted was in reality guilty as charged, but has now 'gotten away with it' on a technicality???

the thing i have noticed, is that, after the release of said convicts, there seems to be little or no further investigative work done on behalf of the public at large, by the forces of law and order. does this too, imply the guilty have gotten away with it?

of course, it could well be that this is exactly what has happened, or it could equally well be that the person[s] convicted were indeed innocent of those crimes. either way, it is not a very good advertisment for english justice.

i wonder, if those people who were released after such reversals, had been executed instead of being imprisoned, would there be a similar effort, but with pardons instead of releases??? i guess not

[Limehouse]

Thanks for digging up the PC Strunt post La Rue. A very good case for suspecting that Hanratty was innocent. If we accept this argument (and it is very compelling and informed) we still only have Alphon and Hanratty in the frame. Could there be a third, unknown man out there somewhere or should we still swing between Alphon and Hanratty?

[larue]

hi Limehouse

re the 'strunt' post, glad i still had it. i thought at the time of it's original posting that it was very powerful.

i think the chances of an 'unknown man' being somehow involved, is quite plausible. with a little reasonable speculation, [not flights of fancy] a good case could be constructed for this.

[Limehouse]

Hi la Rue,

If there is a third man, he must surely be connected to either Hanratty or Alphon as a huge part of the case seems to focus on the Vienna Hotel which connects Hanratty, Alphon and the gun. A third, unrelated man would be hard to fathom unless a completely different gun was used and the evidence linking Hanratty to the gun and hotel was planted and fabricated.

[larue]

Hi la Rue,

If there is a third man, he must surely be connected to either Hanratty or Alphon as a huge part of the case seems to focus on the Vienna Hotel which connects Hanratty, Alphon and the gun. A third, unrelated man would be hard to fathom unless a completely different gun was used and the evidence linking Hanratty to the gun and hotel was planted and fabricated.

i see what you mean, the vienna certainly seems to be a center of interest in this case, but i am thinking of a third not unrelated man [ cue anton karas and his zither ] but someone who has been kept out of the limelight [ hehe limelight, harry lime - the third man - geddit? ] i think the provenance of the gun is above question, and maybe another man's involvement might bring forth the cry of 'fanciful' from the judge, but another man, especially one with an 'in' could easily supply a motive.

[JamesDean]

Hi everyone,

Some excellent posts!

This is not the only criminal case where evidence is 'cherry picked' and only the evidence which supports the prosecution is brought to light; that which seems contradictory or supportive of the defence is simply withheld. Surely it is against the law to do that. In my book that would be tantamount to 'attempting to pervert the course of justice'. All evidence should be presented and it is then up to the jury to decide which evidence they feel is conclusive. If the jury are unable to reach a clear verdict because there is conflicting evidence then that is what should happen. To hide evidence because it doesn't help the prosecution case should be a clear breach of the law. I'm not suggesting that the prosecution should present evidence which is contradictory to their view of matters but at least the contradictory evidence should be available to the defence team who will be able to present it in support of their client if it is seen to be helpful. In a trial of the magnitude of the Hanratty case it is paramount that a verdict is based upon knowledge of all the facts.

The gun on the bus intrigues me. Did Hanratty put it there or was it planted? If it was Hanratty who hid it there then we can suppose that he intended to retrieve it at a future date when things cooled down. Why else would he leave it where it could be discovered? There must have been far better ways of disposing of the weapon so it would never have been located. And why wrap the weapon in your own Handkerchief? Even though DNA was not in vogue at the time it seems a sloppy thing to do. I wonder why the DNA 2002 tests did not come up with other matches than Hanratty's from this article? It must have been handled by many people including the police, the prosecuting lawyers, the cleaner and, last but not least, whoever placed it under that seat on the bus! Perhaps that was Hanratty but we don't know that as a fact.

The strunt post is indeed a well constructed argument that doesn't seek to clear Hanratty but simply to point out that there is a significant possibility that the DNA evidence is not as clear cut as some would have us believe.

It beggars belief that the appeal panel chose to exclude the possibility of cross contamination in the DNA analysis. Law is so specialised that only lawyers can investigate lawyers. How independent is that?

This will run and run ...

[Limehouse]

When I started to think that I may have been wrong about Hanratty's innocence, I always felt there was a strong possibility that he was hired and that the plan went terribly wrong. I have expressed before, my belief that perhaps he expected his Liverpool alibi to be confirmed but that when things turned out the way they did, those that would have confirmed it backed out. I could not, and almost still can't, imagine that Hanratty just happened across the couple. In my view, the only way this would be possible would be if he had travelled out that way to rob some houses. However, it seems unlikely, as he usually selected houses in an area in advance, and went back to rob them.

If there was a plan, I wonder why Hanratty didn't try to save himself by incriminating those involved? Was his loyalty and urgency not to be a 'grass' really so strong that he was prepared to die and to put his family through such hell? It seems very unlikely.

[Tony]

Police 'evidence'.

Hi everyone,

I have just been catching up with recent threads after a few days' absence. Some very interesting points have been raised and i was particularly interested in the post expressing Dr John Parrington's views on the DNA evidence.

Strangely enough, I came to this thread fully convinced of Hanratty's innocence, regardless of the DNA evidence. I am now less convinced of his innocence but I still disregard the DNA evidence. This is for two reasons. Firstly, I do not think the garments were stored so that cross-contamination could be avoided. Secondly, I don't think for one moment that the powers-that-be would let it be known that an innocent man had hanged. Look how long it took to get an admission that Derek Bentley should not have hanged - and he WAS at the scene of the murder.

My doubts about Hanratty's innocence have been raised by the intelligent debate that has been conducted on this thread. I realise that I was swayed by the way evidence was presented and argued by Foot and Woffinden, painting Hanratty as a 'loveable rogue' when in fact he was a ruthless criminal, determined to fill his pockets with cash gained from robbing people's homes. Of course, that does not mean he was capable of murder and rape. However, once again, other posters have pointed out that there really are only two men in the frame - Alphon and Hanratty - and if evidence is flimsy against Hanratty, it's no stronger against Alphon.


Having said all of this, the cases of Barry George, Colin Stagg and indeed Stefan Kisko have to be considered when considering how evidence against a suspect is gathered and presented in court. All of these men were innocent of the crimes they were charged with. All of them served time in prison, either on remand or as a result of being convicted. All of them were vulnerable men, living close to the scene of the crimes who were easy 'fit into the image of a likely suspect'. We could add Bentley and Evans to this list. Men who were ripe for taking the blame. I am not wholly convinced Hanratty falls into this category, but I can't help thinking that the jury were given enough evidence to convict him without hearing evidence that might have thrown a great deal of doubt on his guilt.

Hello Limehouse,

I’m sure we could add many more miscarriages of justice to that list but the Stephan Kisko case is one of the most alarming.

The semen of the murderer of Leslie Moleseed was found on her underwear it contained sperm. At the time of his arrest Stephan had allowed a sample of his semen to be taken. When analysed it contained no sperm at all; this was not disclosed to the defence by the police.

David Waddington, Stephan’s QC, encouraged him to plead guilty on the grounds of diminished responsibility. He didn’t and was found guilty and would have been hanged if that penalty were available.

When the non disclosed evidence came to light after sixteen years Stephan Kisko was released almost immediately but sadly died 18 months later.

After the trial David Waddington became Home Secretary and in a free vote he voted for the restoration of the death penalty.

If there is only one word to stop the reintroduction of state murder; that word is ‘KISKO’

Sorry if it is departing from the subject in hand.

Tony.

[larue]

All of them were vulnerable men, living close to the scene of the crimes who were easy 'fit into the image of a likely suspect'. We could add Bentley and Evans to this list. Men who were ripe for taking the blame.

this is very true. when one looks at these cases, and others, it is very easy to see a very alarming pattern emerging

[larue]

hi Limehouse

I am not wholly convinced Hanratty falls into this category, but I can't help thinking that the jury were given enough evidence to convict him without hearing evidence that might have thrown a great deal of doubt on his guilt.

bullseye!!!!!

[Limehouse]

Hi everyone,

Some excellent posts!

This is not the only criminal case where evidence is 'cherry picked' and only the evidence which supports the prosecution is brought to light; that which seems contradictory or supportive of the defence is simply withheld. Surely it is against the law to do that. In my book that would be tantamount to 'attempting to pervert the course of justice'. All evidence should be presented and it is then up to the jury to decide which evidence they feel is conclusive. If the jury are unable to reach a clear verdict because there is conflicting evidence then that is what should happen. To hide evidence because it doesn't help the prosecution case should be a clear breach of the law. I'm not suggesting that the prosecution should present evidence which is contradictory to their view of matters but at least the contradictory evidence should be available to the defence team who will be able to present it in support of their client if it is seen to be helpful. In a trial of the magnitude of the Hanratty case it is paramount that a verdict is based upon knowledge of all the facts.

The gun on the bus intrigues me. Did Hanratty put it there or was it planted? If it was Hanratty who hid it there then we can suppose that he intended to retrieve it at a future date when things cooled down. Why else would he leave it where it could be discovered? There must have been far better ways of disposing of the weapon so it would never have been located. And why wrap the weapon in your own Handkerchief? Even though DNA was not in vogue at the time it seems a sloppy thing to do. I wonder why the DNA 2002 tests did not come up with other matches than Hanratty's from this article? It must have been handled by many people including the police, the prosecuting lawyers, the cleaner and, last but not least, whoever placed it under that seat on the bus! Perhaps that was Hanratty but we don't know that as a fact.

The strunt post is indeed a well constructed argument that doesn't seek to clear Hanratty but simply to point out that there is a significant possibility that the DNA evidence is not as clear cut as some would have us believe.

It beggars belief that the appeal panel chose to exclude the possibility of cross contamination in the DNA analysis. Law is so specialised that only lawyers can investigate lawyers. How independent is that?

This will run and run ...

Hi James,

Interesting post. With reference to evidence witheld from a jury, I think the defence and prosecution often get together and agree on which evidence will be heard and what will be held back. Sometimes evidence is not heard because it is feared it will not stand up well to cross-examination but in the case of the Hanratty trial, I feel sure crucial evidence was not heard by the jury.

The issue of the gun being wrapped in Hanratty's hanky is also interesting. Hanratty made it known that he did not wear gloves during his robberies but wiped surfaces free of finger prints with a clean hankerchief. One could understand him wrapping the gun in a CLEAN hanky to protect it from finderprints and fibres, but why not drop the gun under the back seat of the bus using the hanky and take the hanky away so that no forensic evidence could be found on it? Even a supposed 'mental defective' like Hanratty could work that one out. No, it seems that someone wanted the gun to be linked to Hanratty, and the evidence presented at court had a witness testifying that Hanratty had told him it was a 'good place to get rid of unwanted loot' and a gun wrapped in Hanratty's snotty rag (sorry) is duly found. Likewise, cartridges linking Hanratty to the crime are 'found' in the hotel room he used and these were 'found' after the room was searched because another, different man, was suspected of the crime. It all is very, very strange. This is why I am half convinced that if Hanratty was guilty, he was not working alone and when things went wrong, he was framed.