A6 Rebooted

[cobalt]

Correct me if I am wrong, but Nimmo, Hawser and Matthews reports are not in the public domain?

The same is true for the George Davis case from 1975, part of the series, the papers of which are still not available until 2026. So I don't see how far Ecclestone can go really bar what we have done here.

[djw]

Looking forward to that then

Is it odd that last March The Times referred to the case as a miscarriage of justice (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/s...tice-rf0t0ht2b) and now Murdoch's Sky wish to reexamine the case? It is almost like there is a section of the establishment who believe Hanratty should not have been convicted. Is Christopher Eccleston establishment? Perhaps not.

How deep will he delve? Will it be just Gregsten, Storie, Alphon and Hanratty level of analysis? Or will he go deeper and cover Ewer, France, Nudds? Or even deeper into Nimmo, Hawser, Matthews?

[moste]

In May 2024, Christopher Eccleston will reexamine the James Hanratty case for Sky History

https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/docume...ry-newsupdate/

Looking forward to that then

[djw]

In May 2024, Christopher Eccleston will reexamine the James Hanratty case for Sky History

https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/documentaries/christopher-eccleston-guilty-innocent-documentary-newsupdate/

[moste]

Sorry about ghost characters. I’ve decided it’s because I’m in another country

[moste]

Just catching up. It’s amazing to me how when being absent for a while, then diligently picking through All recent posts including well meant prosecution fans efforts, the inescapable conclusion for me has to be that Hanratty was a scape goat.
DNA was clearly the 5th ace up the establishments sleeve. Unashamedly played when they desperately needed to get this monkey off their backs once and for all.
It’s only when the staggering events cleverly portrayed here so eloquently are pieced together one after another that a fair conclusion can be reached.
A lot of people believe Hanratty would have fared better if he had stuck to his Liverpool ‘only’ alibi. I do, and how can we know that while deliberating his predicament with his so called fences, that it wasn’t pointed out to Hanratty the terrible danger he would be placing his family in if the police became aware of certain names and addresses.
If his Rhyl alibi was false, I’m sure this would have been the reason.
In summing up. The majority of interested parties given the discussions on this forum , ( as imaginative jury members) would be hard pressed to not admit there was powerful cause reasonable doubt.

[cobalt]

I doubt that if Hanratty had relied solely on his original Liverpool alibi that it would have fared any better than the ones I referred to in my previous post. The fact that a stranger resembling Hanratty asked for directions at a sweet shop in Scotland Road might have been viewed by the jury as reasonable doubt, although there remained a dispute about the date. However JH would then have had to account for his movements for the following two days and his initial alibi about spending the night at a thieves' den in the city was paper thin. He presumably recognised this himself, hence the change of alibi to Rhyl, which in terms of credibility was a case of 'Out of the frying pan into the fire.'

I remain curious about Hanratty's intentions per the Prosecution case. He leaves the Vienna Hotel intent on becoming a stick-up man but, perhaps losing nerve, opts for casing a few joints for burglary in the Taplow area. Why a wannabe stick-up man ever ventured into Taplow in the first place is inexplicable but it may be he prowled around some more fruitful areas before ending up there. Whatever, he must have had some sort of plans in terms of transport to where he was next headed in the late evening, as well as where he was going to sleep. It's unclear what these plans were.

His actions after entering the car seem bereft of any plan whatsoever. If he was the desperate man he claimed to be then the obvious solution was to turf out the passengers in a field then head somewhere he could feel less desperate. The Prosecution case suggested that Hanratty enjoyed the sense of power granted by his weapon but if that was indeed the case it was purely power for power's sake: he was not pursuing any purpose whatsoever.

By the time the car came to a halt in the lay-by any sense of power had surely run its course. He still had the option of turfing out the passengers and heading off into the darkness but, according to Valerie Storie's testimony, Hanratty decided he wanted to sleep. This was obviously a risky move in terms of him being disarmed as well as pointless: he only had a few hours before daybreak. What was his intention then? What would he have been able to do at a later stage that he could not have done when first encountering the couple in the car or at any point in between?

Hanratty was a man of limited intelligence who did not seem to consider actions and consequences very deeply. That might offer some explanation. But for all that, he was reasonably street wise and would have an instinct for self preservation which seemed absent from this crime.

[caz]

The difference in Hanratty's case is that he was the only one who made it fail - by changing it to Rhyl!

He didn't deserve to hang for it, but it was in his hands.

Love,

Caz
X

[cobalt]

Liverpool might be considered the home of failed alibis.

The Wallace case of 1931 will need little introduction on here: an insurance salesman accused of murdering his wife claimed to be out on a wild goose chase across the city seeking business. Unlike James Hanratty, Wallace made sure he was remembered on his journey, a fact later used against him in court. The jury believed that the 15 minute period available to kill his wife before leaving the house was sufficient to convict, albeit the verdict was later overturned.

George Kelly, accused of the Cameo Cinema murders in 1949 also had his guilty verdict quashed as unsafe, but long after he had been hanged by the neck. His Saturday evening alibi of being out on a pub crawl was supported by several witnesses, including an ex-policeman who ran one of the bars. Bert Balmer, the notorious Liverpool detective, made short work of that alibi as he did in 1951 when a woman was murdered in Wavertree district. The two suspects- Devlin and Burns- thought that admitting to the lesser crime of robbing a warehouse in Manchester at the time of the murder (the robbery was confirmed) would save their necks. They were wrong. One curious aspect of this case was that although the two were known as house breakers, after allegedly killing the woman they decided not to steal anything from the property despite remaining on the premises for some time.

In echoes of the Wallace case, Eddie Gilfoyle was convicted of murdering his wife in 1992 despite having only a 10 minute window of opportunity in the morning before he reported for work in the Wirral area. Given that another witness, a woman who knew Gilfoyle's 8 months pregnant wife, claims she spoke to the victim almost an hour later this seemed to make his alibi secure. Not so. Gilfoyle served 18 years although he still maintains his innocence.

So James Hanratty's failed Liverpool alibi is part of a long tradition.

[caz]

It was a huge problem for Hanratty, cobalt, because an innocent man ought to have been able to convince the jury of where he was and what he was doing when the gunman was busy committing such a ghastly capital crime. Any other criminal activity would have been 'petty' by comparison, which no doubt made it inconceivable to the jury that Hanratty would not have told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth - and then stuck with it - about all his movements, everyone he met, and what he was doing, while someone else was committing rape and murder very far away from where he was.

The mystery for me is how anyone trying to frame Hanratty using the murder weapon, hanky and ammunition, could possibly have known, expected or predicted that this impulsive and unpredictable young man would have no way of proving he was elsewhere. He could have met a girl and gone out on a date; he could have gone to a familiar pub or café where the regulars knew him from previous visits. But nothing. It's like he wandered round Liverpool invisible - when not in the sweetshop, speaking with an accent that didn't even shout "Londoner". The one time in his life when striking up conversations, or getting into them, could have saved his neck, he kept himself to himself and didn't stand out.

Whenever my better half and I visit Liverpool, and return to familiar pubs, shops and museums, we inevitably find people who will strike up conversations with us as a matter of course, and hearing our London accents [East End boy meets West End girl - thank you, The Pet Shop Boys] only makes people more eager to hear about why we are visiting their great city, where we are staying, what we are planning to do and what have you. It's almost the perfect place to be if you might be needing an alibi when you get back down south!

Rhyl? Not so much. I wasn't keen, personally, and green baths don't float my boat. But Rhyl can at least boast a Tarleton Street!

Love,

Caz
X

[cobalt]

No problem, thanks for the corrections. On a site where knowledge of the A6 Case is comprehensive such careless errors can be irritating.

The sweet shop alibi failed to convince the jury when combined with the later Rhyl alibi as Caz has noted and we don't know if it would have stood a better chance if offered in isolation. What we do know is that Hanratty's doppelganger, whether he enquired on the 21st or 22nd of August, has never surfaced to identify himself since that day in 1961. This doppelganger, if he ever existed and was not a figment of the Prosecution case, clearly did not want to 'get in on the act.'

I said earlier that Hanratty's decision to head for Liverpool after he had returned to London in order to place a gun and ammunition under the back seat of a bus made little sense. But given that he did, it would have been in his interests to make himself more visible in the Liverpool environs at the earliest opportunity after arrival. In itself this would have offered no proof of when he arrived in the city, but since he was not witnessed travelling by train at a later date then it might have added some ballast to his claimed movements.

It's curious that the Hanratty alibi, or rather alibis, have been used by those who believe in his guilt as evidence against him. Neither alibi has been effectively disproved but the decision to change the alibi is damaging to both as Sherrard cautioned. And the fact JH headed for Liverpool around the time of the murder can be perceived as a guilty man putting distance between himself and his crime.

[Sherlock Houses]

The crime is botched badly and JH must now ditch the murder weapon and the car to avoid detection. However time is on his side: he has around 4 hours until daylight, and even when the victims are discovered (he assumes they are both dead) it may take time to identify them and link the car back to Malcolm Gregsten. His best option would surely be to dump the weapon and ammunition in some forlorn spot, abandon the car in a railway station car park, then catch an early train to Liverpool in order to establish his alibi. JH does none of this.


Having carried out these futile exercises in concealment, JH at some point does eventually board a train bound for Liverpool although the Prosecution is vague about the day he did this, far less the time. The Prosecution accepted JH’s phoned telegram message from Liverpool on Thursday 24 September as being genuine although there is surely the possibility of impersonation. (I have no idea if such messages were voice recorded in 1961.) It actually bolstered the Prosecution case to have Hanratty scouring around for an alibi in Liverpool after the event so I can see why they did not contest this evidence. Yet it also opens up the question of why Hanratty, if guilty, bothered to go there in the first place. Having decided to return to London and abandon the murder car in Redbridge it would have made as much sense, more in fact, to have gone about his day to day criminal lifestyle in London and acted accordingly.

Hi Cobalt

I feel sure that, in the interests of accuracy [and to avoid any confusion] you won't mind me pointing out a couple of minor errors in your post, namely that it's Michael, not Malcolm Gregsten, and that the telegram message was sent on August 24th not September 24th.

Sorry about that as you are a really good and perceptive poster.

[caz]

It very much seems like the prosecution team were trying to have their cake and eat it.

And how did that go?

Rather too well, eh?

Full of cake, fed to them by a jury who didn't appreciate being lied to by the man in the dock. The prosecution team didn't have to try very hard after that.

Love,

Caz
X

[Sherlock Houses]

It very much seems like the prosecution team were trying to have their cake and eat it. They were trying to get around the enormous problem that Mrs Dinwoodie's revealing evidence posed. They must have found themselves in a real quandary. The sweetshop incident with Hanratty [or his double] must have occurred on Monday August 21st. But wait a minute, it must have been Hanratty's double who was in the shop enquiring about Tarleton Road since Hanratty was in London all day Monday............

"How do we get around this dilemma Geoffrey, how on earth did Hanratty get wind of this sweetshop incident involving his doppelganger " ?

"Don't ask me Graham, you're supposed to be the main man. Perhaps Hanratty was able to buy an alibi from one of his friends when he was back in Liverpool in early October. A friend who heard that a Hanratty lookalike had been enquiring about a Tarleton Road when he popped into Dave Cowley's shop six or seven Monday's earlier, lol."

"That's enough of that Geoff, cut the joking and pass me the paracetamol. You'll never become Lord Chief Justice one day"

[cobalt]

I asked last week about what James Hanratty was carrying when he left the Vienna Hotel but nobody seems very sure of the answer. It may have some significance to the Prosecution case, which I will try to explore. With the caveat that we generally accept on this site that even in the most uncontested of cases there are often small unexplained details, and that a desperate man may not always act logically.

JH left the Vienna Hotel around midday in possession of a revolver and some ammunition. It is possible he was carrying these items on his person but unlikely for two reasons. First of all Valerie Store mentioned her attacker carrying a bag. Secondly, JH had created a Liverpool alibi in advance (to the France family and Louise Anderson) so was presumably headed there to fence some of his ‘swag’ which would require a bag. However, consumed by his desire to make the criminal big time, JH was set on adding to his meagre bag of swag by stopping off en route. He could then later impress the Liverpool criminal fraternity with the fruits of his labours earned as an accomplished burglar/stick up man. That is how I understand the Prosecution case.

We don’t know how or when JH arrived in Taplow- there were no witnesses. This is a gap in the Prosecution case but not insurmountable. A criminal associate may have driven JH there shortly before dusk and subsequently remained silent in the aftermath of what happened. If JH was ‘casing’ houses for burglary it is very difficult to imagine he would have been lugging around 5 boxes of extra ammunition. In fact even a stick up man would have settled for a full revolver plus a few extra bullets. So if JH was the attacker in the corn field then the Prosecution cannot really avoid this problem, although it seems they did.

The crime is botched badly and JH must now ditch the murder weapon and the car to avoid detection. However time is on his side: he has around 4 hours until daylight, and even when the victims are discovered (he assumes they are both dead) it may take time to identify them and link the car back to Malcolm Gregsten. His best option would surely be to dump the weapon and ammunition in some forlorn spot, abandon the car in a railway station car park, then catch an early train to Liverpool in order to establish his alibi. JH does none of this.

Instead he drives back to London, perhaps in panic seeking familiar territory. Even then he could have dumped the weapon en route and caught a train to Liverpool. This poor decision leads to him being identified as a bad car driver in early London traffic and he was rather lucky not to have been seen exiting the stolen car. What JH does next makes absolutely no sense. He either personally collected his extra ammunition boxes from his supplier- hardly necessary since a phone call could have tipped off the armourer- or he was carrying them throughout the crime and decided the best hiding place was in the back seat of a London bus. A place he must have known the items would be swiftly discovered. JH also ran the risk of being seen as a man occupying the back seat of that bus although in the event luck was on his side.

Having carried out these futile exercises in concealment, JH at some point does eventually board a train bound for Liverpool although the Prosecution is vague about the day he did this, far less the time. The Prosecution accepted JH’s phoned telegram message from Liverpool on Thursday 24 September as being genuine although there is surely the possibility of impersonation. (I have no idea if such messages were voice recorded in 1961.) It actually bolstered the Prosecution case to have Hanratty scouring around for an alibi in Liverpool after the event so I can see why they did not contest this evidence. Yet it also opens up the question of why Hanratty, if guilty, bothered to go there in the first place. Having decided to return to London and abandon the murder car in Redbridge it would have made as much sense, more in fact, to have gone about his day to day criminal lifestyle in London and acted accordingly.

Any Prosecution case has the luxury of imputing motive to the accused where it suits, while ignoring any motive which undermines its case. Since I am not the Prosecution I remain unconvinced on these three points. Was JH carrying the 5 boxes of ammunition when he committed the crime- in which case they could only have hindered his activities as either a burglar or a robber? If he was not carrying these boxes how did he, as a member of the NFA community, later retrieve them and from whom? And why did JH, having opened up a Liverpool alibi, not only return to London in order to incriminate himself but later revert to a Liverpool alibi that ran the risk of discovery before he arrived in that city?