A6 Rebooted

[Dupplin Muir]

On the other hand, why would Hanratty leave the handkerchief there? It doesn't appear to have served any useful purpose, and a criminal would usually have followed the maxim 'Don't leave any unnecessary evidence around'. It's unlikely to have been for fingerprints, because he could easily have wiped the gun, put it on the floor, and taken the hanky with him.

We really need to know whether JH identified it as his or not!

[caz]

Hi Caz,

Yes, I think it is entirely possible that someone in Hanratty's circle framed him for the murder and knew it would be easy to frame him because they knew he was going to Liverpool and what he was going to Liverpool for. They knew it would have been difficult, but not impossible, for him to prove his alibi. It is possible that this is what might have happened.

Julie

Hi Julie,

Sorry to push you on this, but only 'entirely possible'? Surely, for Hanratty to have been entirely innocent, as you strongly believe he was, someone in his circle must at the very least have handled the murder weapon, wrapping it in Hanratty's dirty hankie before hiding it on the bus.

What other explanation could there possibly be?

Luckily for the person responsible, Hanratty could provide no decent alibi and actually lied about his whereabouts; he had the same blood group as the gunman; and 40 years on forensics were able to show it was Hanratty's mucous on the hankie. None of this could have been guessed at the time by anyone attempting to frame him for this capital crime.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

So, there is no evidence that VS and MG had sex on the night of the murder and there is no evidence that either semen stain was blood group AB. That's very worrying.

Is it really that worrying, Julie? Again, the major profile matched Hanratty, while the major find in '61 was the rapist's group O semen.

As the 2002 judgement observed, it would have taken a very strange contamination event to replace every last detectable trace of the (major) rapist's semen with a (minor, as in diluted?) seminal 'wash' from an innocent Hanratty's trousers, while leaving Valerie's (minor) DNA (from vaginal fluid presumably mixed up with the rapist's semen) intact and detectable beneath.

Assuming the seminal fraction minor profile (red reading) did not match Alphon's DNA, and accepting that only Gregsten's semen could also have been present (and in the minor quantity, reflecting the order of events and time difference between) when the underwear was first examined, the findings provide ample confirmation, and no contradiction, of the events according to Valerie.

I would be interested to hear why - and how - you would expect those findings to have been any different if the original verdict was correct. Put another way, is there anything about the DNA results you actually find inconsistent with the guilty verdict?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

On the other hand, why would Hanratty leave the handkerchief there? It doesn't appear to have served any useful purpose, and a criminal would usually have followed the maxim 'Don't leave any unnecessary evidence around'. It's unlikely to have been for fingerprints, because he could easily have wiped the gun, put it on the floor, and taken the hanky with him.

We really need to know whether JH identified it as his or not!

Hi DM,

I agree it sounds completely daft to leave his hankie there, but even more daft to leave the murder weapon itself! He could so easily have tossed the latter in the Thames and continued to use the former to blow his hooter! But he would have been in one hell of a state at that point in time, so who knows? It was also utterly daft to hold up this couple at gunpoint in the first place, then take them on such a long drive before shooting MG dead, raping VS and finally failing to make sure his only witness would not live to tell the tale.

The whole thing was botched from beginning to end when you think about it, so why would we expect common sense from the gunman at any point, or indeed the ability to pull one over on the authorities and escape justice?

The only way it might make sense for someone else to have disposed of the gun is if they knew, or strongly suspected, Hanratty was responsible, and did it as a kind of insurance. He could hardly have accused anyone by name of framing him in this way without admitting his own involvement. But there was always the (outside) risk that he would end up confessing all, thereby taking others down with him.

I could well imagine him going to Dixie France in a muck sweat after the murder, saying he was in some unspecified "trouble". France may then have advised him to "get rid" of any incriminating items ("how?" "oh you know, Jim, do what do you usually do") and "get yourself an alibi asap" (hence the belated trip up north and seemingly out of character telegram referring to having a nice time). Whether France offered any more practical help, or knew the appalling nature of the trouble Hanratty was in from the start, is another matter. It may only have dawned on him later, at which time he would surely have had serious regrets about any advice or assistance he had given.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Unfortunately for the Hanratty family the DNA tests shows that the hankie around the gun was one on which Hanratty had blown his freckled nose. Obviously this of itself would not prove that he had committed the murder, but it does bring it very close to him.

Hi Spitfire,

As I say, at the very least it indicates that the gunman, or whoever else put the murder weapon on that bus, must have been connected with Hanratty in some way. That should narrow down the suspect pool significantly, for those who remain convinced of Hanratty's total innocence.

Adding to the 'freckled nose' debate, I must say this supposedly striking feature tends to harm the defence more than the prosecution. It was high summer in daytime Liverpool and Rhyl, when Hanratty was meant to have been seen by umpteen witnesses; high summer but dead of night, when Valerie got her glimpses of the gunman's face. By the time she saw Hanratty in good light in the second identity parade it was mid-October. Nobody, either for or against, apparently remarked on Hanratty's freckles when he was in all the newspapers, and on everyone's minds. So why should Valerie - uniquely - have noticed their absence or presence?

I know a thing or two about freckles. I was smothered in them as a child and hated them. They have faded over the years thank goodness, but I used to quite like evenings and winter time, when they wouldn't show half as much as in the daytime in summer. Very pale skin too apart from the freckles, except when I stayed out in the sun too long.

For what it's worth.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Well, Caz, you don't appear at all ring rusty after your absence from the A6 board. Some hard punches hitting the spot and especially imo in respect of that hankie.

Cheers OneRound, it's good to be back.

...a couple of further points about the hankie:

1. I assume finger prints could have been obtained from the hankie in 1961. It seems odd that Hanratty's weren't found on the hankie, particularly as he had blown his nose on it.

2. The hankie was found in an envelope (inside another envelope) at Bedfordshire Constabulary as part of the investigation by the CCRC. This was more than thirty years after Hanratty's trial. I'm not suggesting foul play here but I do remain slightly uncomfortable about using modern scientific methods to prove guilt when modern safeguards which are normally a pre-requisite of such methods have not been applied.

I understand your concerns, although I guess there was not much they could do, after all those years, about the absence of modern safeguards. They did what they could, and still appear to have achieved a conclusive result, despite the less than ideal conditions.

From section 122 of the 2002 judgement:

As far as the handkerchief is concerned, it will be remembered that when first examined it was considered to be of no scientific interest. No blood or semen was detected. When John Bark, a forensic scientist working at the Forensic Science Laboratory in Birmingham, examined the handkerchief in 1997 he found that:

“The handkerchief appears to be stained with some body fluid, cellular material which has bonded strongly to the cotton fabric over a number of years. There is no microscopic evidence that semen is present.”

And from section 123:

The handkerchief was placed in an open buff OHMS envelope from which, no doubt, it was produced both at the committal proceedings and at trial. It was not examined by Dr Grant. In those circumstances the opportunities for contamination would seem to be extremely limited.

Love,

Caz
X

[moste]

Actually One Round ,I don't think they can take fingerprints from material like thin cotton, just the mucous would show blood group in '61

[OneRound]

Thanks, Moste. That might also mean that the person who abandoned the gun on the bus saw no additional significance in leaving the hankie there too, rather than it being an attempt to frame Hanratty.

Best regards,

OneRound

[OneRound]

... Hanratty could provide no decent alibi and actually lied about his whereabouts ...

The above extract from Caz's post does not of course prove Hanratty's guilt. However, it weighs heavily with me.

Hanratty seems to have been a fairly sociable person. By way of a couple of examples, the friendships he struck up with Terry Evans when first in Rhyl and the guy in Ireland who wrote his postcards and accompanied him in his hired car.

It seems odd for Hanratty to have kept himself so to himself if in Rhyl around the times of the A6 crimes being committed. And no paper evidence (for example, a bus ticket, a signed guest house register, a receipt for anything) of his presence in Rhyl either - unlike his stay at the Vienna Hotel for which he kept the bill and showed to the Frances.

As I say, this doesn't prove guilt but it certainly doesn't provide comfort either. What this does do though definitely for me is rule out the possibility of someone setting out to frame Hanratty in advance. It would have been incredibly rash to do so when you would have expected Hanratty to behave in his usual carefree manner and thus most likely have a sound alibi.

Best regards,

OneRound

[OneRound]

Is it really that worrying, Julie? Again, the major profile matched Hanratty, while the major find in '61 was the rapist's group O semen.

As the 2002 judgement observed, it would have taken a very strange contamination event to replace every last detectable trace of the (major) rapist's semen with a (minor, as in diluted?) seminal 'wash' from an innocent Hanratty's trousers, while leaving Valerie's (minor) DNA (from vaginal fluid presumably mixed up with the rapist's semen) intact and detectable beneath.

Assuming the seminal fraction minor profile (red reading) did not match Alphon's DNA, and accepting that only Gregsten's semen could also have been present (and in the minor quantity, reflecting the order of events and time difference between) when the underwear was first examined, the findings provide ample confirmation, and no contradiction, of the events according to Valerie.

I would be interested to hear why - and how - you would expect those findings to have been any different if the original verdict was correct. Put another way, is there anything about the DNA results you actually find inconsistent with the guilty verdict?

Love,

Caz
X

And now a word for the Defence.

In answer to Caz's final question, I don't find anything inconsistent with the guilty verdict.

However, I'm not convinced that's the only question. Could it be possible that Hanratty's DNA appeared as a result of major contamination and that the AB semen identified was not that of Gregsten but the rapist?

Best regards,

OneRound

[Spitfire]

However, I'm not convinced that's the only question. Could it be possible that Hanratty's DNA appeared as a result of major contamination and that the AB semen identified was not that of Gregsten but the rapist?

I thought that it had been shown in 1961 that the rapist was an O secretor.

[Dupplin Muir]

I'm attaching (I hope) what is quite an interesting scientific paper about a rape case in which the perpetrator left no DNA on the victim at all, and was only convicted when they found her DNA on his genitals. This clearly implies that the attacker didn't use a condom, and it seems unlikely that he was aspermic either, since the paper would surely have mentioned such a relevant fact (and in any event you find epithelial cells in semen, even if the man can't produce sperm).

Note also where the paper says:

Unfortunately, in many sexual assault or rape cases no spermatozoa or semen stains can be found

The implication is clearly that while a lack of DNA is not common, it is hardly phenomenally rare either.

Of course, in the case cited in the paper, the tests were carried out very shortly after the crime. In the A6 case you also have to consider the long gap between the crime and the DNA tests. It's not impossible that, had DNA testing been available back in the day, a sufficient sample might have been obtained, but in the intervening years the DNA degraded to the point where it could no longer be detected.

[Spitfire]

I'm attaching (I hope) what is quite an interesting scientific paper about a rape case in which the perpetrator left no DNA on the victim at all, and was only convicted when they found her DNA on his genitals. This clearly implies that the attacker didn't use a condom, and it seems unlikely that he was aspermic either, since the paper would surely have mentioned such a relevant fact (and in any event you find epithelial cells in semen, even if the man can't produce sperm).

Note also where the paper says:



The implication is clearly that while a lack of DNA is not common, it is hardly phenomenally rare either.

Of course, in the case cited in the paper, the tests were carried out very shortly after the crime. In the A6 case you also have to consider the long gap between the crime and the DNA tests. It's not impossible that, had DNA testing been available back in the day, a sufficient sample might have been obtained, but in the intervening years the DNA degraded to the point where it could no longer be detected.

They found semen stains shortly after the rape and as I understand it these were identified as coming from an O secretor rapist.

As I have mentioned before, Dr Lincoln the Hanratty's scientist, went on camera after the first batch of inconclusive DNA tests, and stated that he was confident that further testing would produce a profile.

Even Geoff Bindman stated that his belief was that the DNA testing would clear Hanratty and went so far to say that it might implicate Alphon.

Had the DNA tests exculpated Hanratty, then I would have accepted them as I now accept them, although the effect is to put the crime on Hanratty.

[Spitfire]

It would seem that Michael Mansfield QC was able to accept the DNA tests as exculpating Alphon, as he was able to agree with the Prosecution's Mr Sweeney that evidence showed that Alphon did not commit the rape.

While talking about the Defence counsel, one should remember that more or less after Mrs Jones's disastrous performance in the witness box, Michael Sherrard abandoned any attempt to advance the Rhyl alibi. It was open to Sherrard to ask the Court of Appeal to allow him to adduce evidence from witnesses which he could not call at the Bedford trial. He made no attempt to do so.

Whatever passed between Sherrard and Hanratty during and after the trial would be protected by legal professional privilege and the former would not be at liberty to disclose what was said to him by the latter. However, Sherrard could not call alibi witnesses if their evidence conflicted with his instructions from Hanratty.

[Dupplin Muir]

The problem with the DNA evidence is that the appeal occurred during the 'honeymoon' period when it was seen as infallible and judges, barristers and police didn't really understand the maths and science behind it. A barrister who did understand these disciplines would have ripped the state's scientist apart. Putting aside the all-too-likely possibility of deliberate fraud there are at least two approaches that could have been used:

Firstly, as has been pointed out by several people, an experiment that cannot be repeated is scientifically worthless. Trying to say 'But...but...surely you don't believe that a scientist would lie' is an admission of failure. Personality has no place in science: you should assume everyone is lying until you've confirmed the experiment yourself. A repeatable experiment performed by Dr Liar is science; a non-repeatable experiment carried out by Professor Honest is not science.

Secondly, FSS persisted in claiming that DNA cannot give a false positive, in the face of all the contradictory evidence. A large study in the US submitted samples to a number of DNA labs, and the results showed a 1.2% rate for false matches, and this was when there was none of the 'offender' DNA present on the samples supplied. Again, in the case of the A6 murder, you not only have that chance of a false positive, but also the possibility of contamination, given the very dodgy way the samples were stored. I don't know what the final probability of a false result was, but I imagine it would be at least 4-5%. Since they didn't accept the possibility of false positives they wouldn't bother re-testing positive matches.

Lastly, I suspect (but can't prove given FSS's paranoia about independent oversight) that while they didn't believe in false positives, they were perfectly happy to accept the possibility of false negatives, and if they failed to get a match on the first run they would do it again. Of course, if my surmise is correct then it just increases the probability of a false match.