A6 Rebooted

[OneRound]

Many thanks, Sherlock. If you are are able to supply the rest of Hawser's Report, it would be much appreciated.
Best regards,
OneRound

[Sherlock Houses]

*****

[Sherlock Houses]

Thanks for pointing out Ecclestons role as Derek Bentley.

If you search for the Hawser report it appears to be in various libraries and even for sale online. At nearly £300 though (assuming they wouldn't just try and source it then cancel the sale when they couldn't) I would rather access it in a library. That is of course, if it is indeed public.

Hi,

Back in October 2015 I scanned Hawser's 1975 whitewash of a report. Attached are the first 10 pages....

[djw]

Also in May (and June elsewhere) is a talk about the A6 murder by Paul Stickler. I think I will go to this.

U3A Thame

THE A6 MURDER

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Thu 2 May 2024, 2:00 PM

Barns Centre, Church Road, Thame OX9 3AJ

[djw]

Thanks for pointing out Ecclestons role as Derek Bentley.

If you search for the Hawser report it appears to be in various libraries and even for sale online. At nearly £300 though (assuming they wouldn't just try and source it then cancel the sale when they couldn't) I would rather access it in a library. That is of course, if it is indeed public.

[OneRound]

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}?

Hi djw - many thanks for flagging.

I'll definitely watch with interest and hope but doubt that it will be a very deep delve. I note the other case to be featured is that of George Davis. I had never thought of grouping his case with that of James Hanratty. I suppose the most common feature is (or was) the belief in their innocence and the campaigning, particularly by family members, to try and establish that.

Such belief and campaigning was also a prominent feature of the Derek Bentley case and it was in the role of the condemned teenager in the 1991 film Let Him Have It that Christopher Eccleston, the presenter of this series, first came to public attention. Eccleston even attended Bentley's memorial service when he was posthumously acquitted several years after the film's release.

I suspect Eccleston's connection with the Bentley case has resulted in him fronting this short series and that there will be a significant acknowledgement of the impact upon the respective families. If so, that's understandable although I would prefer a detailed probe into the crimes themselves.

Best regards,
OneRound

[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.