A6 Rebooted

[Graham]

I was merely making a comment with regard to the discussion concerning the destructive power of bullets. Nothing more. And I rather suspect that Anthony Gregsten had been told later in life by his mother the extent of his father's injuries. It certainly was well-reported in the press at the time that Janet Gregsten was taken to Deadman's Hill to identify her husband - I added this for the benefit of any posters who may not have been aware of this ordeal that she was subjected to.

If you feel that what I wrote suggests that I was 'getting at something', then that is your interpretation - I was not 'getting at' anything.

Graham

[propatria27]

Hi Pete

I remember seeing somewhere (can't think where though) that this stash was actually discovered by the police down by the banks of the Thames.

If the ordnance hadn't been fired and no fingermarks where gleaned then it would obviously be difficult to judge whether it was originally part of the 36A/A6 murder booty.

HTH
Del

DNA testing of the cloth might prove interesting. I've always thought that a normal handkerchief is too small to wear as a mask for an adult (try it with one of yours).

Pete

[Derrick]

DNA testing of the cloth might prove interesting. ...

Hi Pete

That is if it still exists.

Del

[Derrick]

Just thinking about what the murderer might have done that night...

Having just killed two people (as he thought) he would get rid of the evidence as soon as possible. Perhaps drop the murder weapon in a place where it would remain undiscovered and perhaps torch the car. That is what villains usually do.

But, strangely, in this case the car is abandoned in East London and the murder weapon (if it indeed was the murder weapon) was put under the back seat of a London bus.

This to me can only suggest one thing.

That thing is that they where both left to be discovered by the police. Any other explanation is just not credible.

This is just as credible as finding 2 spent cartridge cases in a hotel room some 3 weeks after the most vile murder of the 20th century and suggest that they were left there before the murder.

Add to that the fact that the Vienna Hotel only became interesting to the police because Peter Alphon stayed there on the night of the murder.

Hanratty guilty? Nonsense.

Del

[Spitfire]

I don't think that Hanratty was thinking straight on the night he murdered Michael Gregsten and raped and attempted the murder of Valerie Storie, so it is difficult to judge his actions by the yardstick of the thinking villain.

Why Hanratty should be so careless as to leave two spent cartridge cases in his room at the Vienna, is a question which I cannot answer. However carelessness was the Hanratty trademark throughout all his criminal endeavours and we should not be surprised to find this trait present in the A6 Murder.

There will be conspiracy theorists who hold contrary views but the evidence points to James Hanratty being the killer. A respectable argument could be mounted to the effect that the prosecution, even with the DNA evidence, had not brought home the murder charge to the degree required by law, namely beyond all reasonable doubt. To argue that Hanratty is clearly innocent is totally unrealistic, IMHO.

[moste]

Well, yes it certainly is that , a humble opinion I mean.
It never ceases to humour me, the way some people listen to, and one would imagine , digest, the avalanche of information that is available in the form of very clever investigative publications, which reveal all of the information that is needed to satisfy the most ardent doubting Thomas.
And yet we continue to have this none constructive sound coming from the ostriches mouth below ground "He must be guilty the jury said so, and anyway Valerie Storie cannot be wrong"!

[moste]

I don't think that Hanratty was thinking straight on the night he murdered Michael Gregsten and raped and attempted the murder of Valerie Storie, so it is difficult to judge his actions by the yardstick of the thinking villain.

Why Hanratty should be so careless as to leave two spent cartridge cases in his room at the Vienna, is a question which I cannot answer. However carelessness was the Hanratty trademark throughout all his criminal endeavours and we should not be surprised to find this trait present in the A6 Murder.

There will be conspiracy theorists who hold contrary views but the evidence points to James Hanratty being the killer. A respectable argument could be mounted to the effect that the prosecution, even with the DNA evidence, had not brought home the murder charge to the degree required by law, namely beyond all reasonable doubt. To argue that Hanratty is clearly innocent is totally unrealistic, IMHO.

There wasn't a shred of evidence to suggest Hanratty left the two spent cartridges on the chair in the hotel, or the weapon on the bus for that matter, so no need for you to answer those questions anyway.To suggest he did such a thing is totally unrealistic, incidentally, Holding a contrary view doesn't make a person a conspiracy theorist.

[Spitfire]

We will never know the mental goings-on in the tortured mind of James Hanratty as he went on his murderous rampage through the south-east of England on that fateful day and night in August all those years ago.

Hanratty himself was unable to face the enormity of his crimes and to the end denied that he was the malefactor responsible, yet we must remember that Hanratty was capable of maintaining a lie or pretence for a sustained period of time. He told Acott and then told his legal team that he spent the night of 22 August 1961 with criminal associates in Liverpol. He sustained this pack of lies for over three months, only changing tack in the middle of his trial when faced with the possibility that Mr Justice Gorman, the trial judge, might order him to be taken to Liverpool to identify his night's lodgings. As was pointed out to him by the ever capable Michael Sherrard, if he failed to do this, he would be lost.

Hanratty must have been a convincing liar as neither Sherrard nor Kleinman suspected that the Liverpool alibi was a fabrication in so far as it related to the events of the later part of the evening of 22 and the morning of 23 August, as they were quite prepared to allow Hanratty to give evidence on the basis he was in Liverpool for all of the relevant time.

However the change of alibi was to prove the undoing of Hanratty, and this, together with Hanratty's demeanour in the witness box and dock, was to provide the jury with sufficient reasons to bring home the guilty verdict.

Hanratty could not bring himself to admit to his beloved mother that he was responsible for the vile crime of which he was convicted.

[Derrick]

...I don't think that Hanratty was thinking straight on the night he murdered Michael Gregsten and raped and attempted the murder of Valerie Storie, so it is difficult to judge his actions by the yardstick of the thinking villain...

But where does the thinking start and stop eh?

The culprit was certainly doing some thinking so as to not leave any evidence in the car, on the gun and ammo found on the bus and on the cartridge cases from room 24.

He also wasn't seen abandoning the car on the evening of the 23rd in Avondale Crescent nor dumping the gun on the bus.

I'm afraid one cannot have it both ways.

Del

[Dupplin Muir]

Derrick wrote:

But where does the thinking start and stop eh?

The culprit was certainly doing some thinking so as to not leave any evidence in the car, on the gun and ammo found on the bus and on the cartridge cases from room 24.

He also wasn't seen abandoning the car on the evening of the 23rd in Avondale Crescent nor dumping the gun on the bus.

I'm afraid one cannot have it both ways.

I was just about to make a very similar point. You might also add the claim that Hanratty was attempting to provide himself with an alibi.

It seems that some people want to reduce JH to a kind of puppet who does whatever is necessary to fit in with the hypothesis of his guilt. When he is required to be cunning and far-sighted, then he is just that; when it becomes necessary for him to be stupid and careless, then that becomes true. If you have to do this, then there's something seriously wrong with your hypothesis. This isn't to say that JH couldn't make mistakes, but they would be consistent mistakes.

As an illustration, assume that Hanratty decided to go into the armed robbery business. From the point of view of a career criminal this could be seen as a rational decision. He then gets hold of a gun (another rational decision), but then decides to hold up a couple of people sitting in a car. This is totally irrational, because how much money was he likely to make from such a crime? He'd probably have got a better haul carrying out one of his burglaries, without attracting the police attention consequent on an armed robbery.

[caz]

It works the other way round too. Those who believe Hanratty was innocent want him to be rational enough not to use his new toy to hold up a courting couple, yet so irrational that he kept a genuine alibi to himself (which apparently umpteen honest witnesses could have supported) and chose instead to offer a false alibi for the night in question (which obviously nobody honest could have supported).

So when he could not maintain the false one he felt obliged to change it to the genuine one, with the inevitable result that the jury now knew he was a liar, and worse, the lie related directly to his alleged whereabouts while this capital crime was being committed. He wasn't required to prove his alibi, but giving two of them arguably had a fatal effect on the jury. Would an innocent man have risked the rope by lying about where he was, when he could have told the truth and stuck with it? Clearly the jury thought not.

The argument has typically been that Hanratty worried about his inability to prove he was in Rhyl, and thought he could make Liverpool more convincing (even though he supposedly spent the murder night in Rhyl, not Liverpool). But if there were umpteen witnesses in Rhyl who had seen or spoken to him, he must have seen or spoken to at least some of them too. Yet he either had no memory of any of these people, or no faith that one of them might actually remember him and confirm his genuine alibi. So instead he said he spent the night in Liverpool (where he saw and spoke to nobody, and nobody saw or spoke to him - because he wasn't there). I find that very hard to get round. It would actually suggest to me some form of mental illness in an innocent man. It's completely irrational, isn't it?

Incidentally, he can hardly be described by either 'side' as cunning or far-sighted, considering his fate.

Love,

Caz
X

[Sherlock Houses]

As an illustration, assume that Hanratty decided to go into the armed robbery business. From the point of view of a career criminal this could be seen as a rational decision. He then gets hold of a gun (another rational decision), but then decides to hold up a couple of people sitting in a car. This is totally irrational, because how much money was he likely to make from such a crime? He'd probably have got a better haul carrying out one of his burglaries, without attracting the police attention consequent on an armed robbery.

Good observation DM.
It seems very appropriate at this point to consider what James Hanratty's trial evidence [February 8th] was regarding this matter.........

Swanwick : "I suggest that your great ambition was to become a "stick-up" man and that on August 22nd you went out and used your "new toy", a gun."

Hanratty : "If I did, why did I go to a car parked in a cornfield ? I would be looking for a bank or a shop or somewhere where there was some cash."

[Spitfire]

I have often wondered what was going through the evil mind of James Hanratty as he nudged 847BHN onto the highway which would give its name to vile crime he had just perpetrated. He had killed Michael Gregsten and he thought he had killed the only witness, Valerie Storie. He had used gloves unusually for him, so fingerprints on the car would not be a problem, he merely had to dispose of the car and gun without first being caught in possession of either, and make his way to Liverpool where on Monday he had said he was going.

I don't think that Hanratty was bothered about cleaning the car to remove hairs or fibres which he might have shed during the course of his hard to fathom escapade. A rational Hanratty would have reasoned that if hairs or fibres were likely to have been shed by him, then they would be all over Valerie Storie whom he had just raped. A non-rational. careless Hanratty would not have bothered. In any event the forensic science team could not find hairs or fibres on either the car or on Valerie Storie.

My hypothesis is that Hanratty set out to do a stick up job on Tuesday 22 August 1961. He had a gun and he had fashioned himself a mask out of a large hankie. For whatever reason, the stick up never came to fruition. Perhaps his nerve failed him.

Why or how Hanratty came to be wandering around Dorney Reach in the evening on 22 August I cannot answer. Why he should want to abduct Mike and Val, one does not know. Perhaps he wanted some practice at exerting the authority of the gun, so he could order bank cashiers about. I just do not know.

Did he have a plan? Not really. He wanted time to think of one. His problem was getting away from Mike and Val before they could raise the alarm. I do not think that he intended to kill either Gregsten or Storie. He was most assertive that they should not look at him, the indication being that he expected them to be alive once the night's wanderings had been completed, and he did not want them to be able to identify him.

If Hanratty's intention was to kill both of them, then it would hardly matter how much of him they saw.

If Hanratty's intention was to kill just Gregsten, then why did he change his mind and try to kill Storie? It all suggests that the Hanratty was acting on impulse with a sort of perverted rationality.

[Derrick]

...He had used gloves unusually for him, so fingerprints on the car would not be a problem...

Valerie Storie testified that the gunman had told her to help him pull one of his gloves off before the sexual assault. So for a period of time he didn't have his gloves on.

...In any event the forensic science team could not find hairs or fibres on either the car or on Valerie Storie...

I find that aspect of the case to be quite unfathomable.

...My hypothesis is that Hanratty set out to do a stick up job on Tuesday 22 August 1961...

What? In the middle of nowhere?

You then ask more questions to which you don't seem to have any rational answers for and, strangely, neither do I or anybody else for that matter.

Hanratty had exhausted the available funds of his current fences and, with a lot of valuable hooky gear to offload, therefore headed north. That is a rational and reasonable explanation for Hanratty's actions and whereabouts that fateful week; not prancing around the Buckinghamshire countryside with a gun and shed loads of ammo just on the off chance of what in particular?

I believe that this was planned in advance and if Hanratty was the A6 murderer then he could not have been working alone, therefore there had to a conspiracy of sorts because he would not have been able to send the telegram from Liverpool and put the gun on the bus on the Thursday.

The other members of a conspiracy could not have afforded for Hanratty to be arrested for fear that the hangman would have had a little more work to do, if Hanratty turned Queens evidence.

Del

[NickB]

there had to a conspiracy of sorts because he would not have been able to send the telegram from Liverpool and put the gun on the bus on the Thursday.

If the gun was put on the bus at 6.10 am by the man Pamela Patt saw, who bore too close a resemblance to Hanratty for Woffinden to mention, then he had plenty of time to get to Liverpool.