A6 Rebooted

[NickB]

Kerry,

I just find it strange that in trying to describe Ingledene he did not simply say it was one of the B&B’s opposite the Windsor.

Was it you who told poster Natalie in April 2011 that the green bath had only recently been removed?

[Derrick]

Hi Kerry and welcome to the A6 thread(s)!

Just a quick question for you.

Do you happen to get many strangers knocking at your door asking about the A6 murder and wanting to see the famous green bath tub?

Any funny/strange stories to regale us with?

Again, welcome aboard.
Kindest regards
Derrick

[Kerry1983]

Hi Graham,
I've not looked into the case in any great detail yet to be honest and i wasn't aware of the history when i bought this house. I do intend to spend quite a bit of time looking it all up though as it's very interesting. I came across this forum a couple of weeks ago when i started researching.
Yes i do believe the house numbers have changed, from what i've read, my house was number 19 in 1961 and it's now number 60. I'm not sure why this happened though.

I see what you mean Nick, it would have been easy to say that as it can be quite clearly seen from the front of the house. Infact i'm looking at the Windsor right now, it's now called the Windsor Vaults though.
It might well have been me that spoke to Natalie, this answers your question aswell Derrick. There have been a few people knocking on the door over the years and asking questions, also people photographing the house from the other side of the road. Like i said though, up until recently i wasn't really aware of the history so it annoyed me a little bit to be honest (especially the photographing) as i didn't know what it was all about. If i had known the actual story at the times then i would have been more helpful where possible, apologies if i did speak to any over you and appeared rude or unhelpful

[Kerry1983]

Oh and Derrick, the famous green bath is no longer here. Not long after i moved in, i did a lot of swapping and changing the rooms. The old bathroom was turned into a nursery for my baby as i was pregnant at the time. My dad removed the bath and i'm sad to say that it got smashed up and chucked in a skip! This was only a couple of months after i bought the house so didn't know a single thing about Hanratty and the relevance of it at that time, nor did my dad. If we did then obviously we wouldn't have done that. To us it was just a horrible old green bath!

Kerry.

[Derrick]

...Oh and Derrick, the famous green bath is no longer here...

Oh Well Kerry...you were not to know.

But I am sure that you now know that you are living in a house that is central to the most fascinating case in British criminal history.

Furthermore, what I would say is that if you want to know just about as much about the A6 murder that is knowable then you have found the right place.

Ask any questions you like and I am sure you will get just about all shades of opinion possible about it

Don't worry though we are a very friendly bunch...aren't we gang

ATB
Del

[caz]

Hi Caz

Your argument makes less sense as Ms Patt's involvement was withheld. How could Sherrard have made much out of something that to all intents and purposes didn't exist as far as he was aware?

But that's the point, Del. The case for the defence can always use the lack of incriminating evidence to try and show reasonable doubt. Sherrard only needed to know when the gun was found to claim - in the absence of evidence to the contrary - that it was possibly put there too late for Hanratty to have done it, then gone up to Liverpool in time to send the telegram. The gun was found very close to the time Hanratty was sending the telegram. But it was never established exactly how long the gun had remained undiscovered.

It was up to the prosecution to demonstrate Hanratty not only had time to do both, but did both.

How well they succeeded was the jury's decision.

You went further than Sherrard could have done by claiming that Hanratty 'would not have been able to send the telegram from Liverpool and put the gun on the bus on the Thursday'. What is your evidence for this?

Love,

Caz
X

[Graham]

Hi again Kerry,

I confess that on one of my visits to Rhyl (about 15 years ago I think) I did knock the door of Ingledene, but probably fortuitously no-one answered. I can well understand your getting annoyed at people taking photos, etc.

By the way, Hanratty himself did not identify Ingledene as the house he claimed to have stayed at. This was done by his defence-team investigators who, armed with Hanratty's description of the house's interior, went on a door-to-door search of houses near Rhyl station. They felt that Ingledene matched the essential criteria of Hanratty's description. Unfortunately, they showed the obliging Mrs Grace Jones only one photo - that of Hanratty himself. Had they followed the correct procedure and showed her a number of photos of different men including Hanratty, and had she identified Hanratty from these as having stayed in her house, then his alibi would have been much, much stronger.

Graham

[Derrick]

...You went further than Sherrard could have done by claiming that Hanratty 'would not have been able to send the telegram from Liverpool and put the gun on the bus on the Thursday'. What is your evidence for this?..

Hi Caz

I haven't gone further than Sherrard at all. Sherrard put up Hanratty's Rhyl alibi and examined him, in chief, on his whereabouts. It was Hanratty who then gave evidence in his own defence as such.

I will go further and answer your question in no uncertain terms by saying that there is no evidence of Hanratty putting the gun on the bus.

If you can show otherwise I will listen but until then I will stand by my assertion that it was impossible for him to have done so because he had been in the North West from the afternoon of the 22nd of August 1961 until late on the Thursday of the 24th August 1961.

Del

[Kerry1983]

[/QUOTE] But I am sure that you now know that you are living in a house that is central to the most fascinating case in British criminal history.

Furthermore, what I would say is that if you want to know just about as much about the A6 murder that is knowable then you have found the right place.

Ask any questions you like and I am sure you will get just about all shades of opinion possible about it

Don't worry though we are a very friendly bunch...aren't we gang

ATB
Del[/QUOTE]

Thank you Derrick, i look forward to investigating and reading up further. I need a good few hours to read through all this though i think
I really didn't realise just how big and popular the case was!

[Derrick]

...Unfortunately, they showed the obliging Mrs Grace Jones only one photo - that of Hanratty himself. Had they followed the correct procedure and showed her a number of photos of different men including Hanratty, and had she identified Hanratty from these as having stayed in her house, then his alibi would have been much, much stronger...

Graham

they as you put it were Joe Gillbanks and, occasionally, a man named Frank Evans. Both of these men were ex-policemen who had done exactly what the current set of policemen did with Hanratty's photo when interviewing Mrs Dinwoodie. That is showing only one photograph.

So in the final analysis the whole of the Liverpool and Rhyl alibi of James Hanratty had, in the first instance, been investigated by either current or ex-serving policemen.

So any blame for the corruption of the alibi scene can only be laid at the door of policeman past and present.

Del

[otterman62]

The bit before it all started....

Sorry to dive into this, but my particular "take” on this case is that people always seem to start reviewing the case from when the gunman tapped on the window of the car and Gregsten and Storie's ordeal began, but my questions, which i would welcome your views on, are from before then, specifically.

Hanratty was a burglar, he admitted this,his criminal record proves it and the Police confirmed this.
The Police never suggested that he had been violent in any way before in his criminal career.
Neither had he ever committed any form of sexual offences.

Why then would he arrive in a cornfield, in the middle of nowhere, with a gun? then abduct, murder and rape the victims.

Hanratty's previous crimes had been mainly in suburban London, near his home.
What was he doing in rural Berkshire in the first place?

It was never suggested that he had an accomplice so he must have used public transport, why take a journey that would have involved several changes to get to an area he was unfamiliar with and which had few houses to burgle than a suburban area?
Why would he be in a cornfield if there were so few houses around to break into?
If he did go there to burgle why would he approach the only (?) car in the field as opposed to avoiding it to prevent being spotted or identified later if he did commit burglary?
If burglary was his motive then why kidnap two people and drive around for hours? again this is completely out of character.

If you think about the case from this perspective then I feel that you have an event that is almost unbelievable in its circumstances, that a burglar with no previous history of violence arrives in the middle of nowhere with a gun, changes his MO completely to approach the only car in the field rather than sneaking past it and then kidnaps two people and ultimately shoots and kills one, then rapes and shoots the other one, leaving her for dead.

I hope that it doesn't come across that I am just taking one side of the story, I am trying to use the facts that were presented by the Police themselves.

I think that the alledged alternative version presented by Peter Alphon makes totally more sense if you deal with the facts. That he (Alphon) was paid to threaten Gregsten and Storie to either intimidate them into breaking up or to show Gregsten in a cowardly light to influence them into breaking up. That is why someone was in the isolated field with a gun and approached rather than avoided the car. This is also why Alphon not Hanratty was recognised by the landlady of the pub that Gregsten and Storie drank in before going to the field. Alphon, a man with accusations of violence and sexual assault against him in the past, proved to be out of his depth, panicked as Gregsten ignored chances to escape and then eventually shot him when he made a sudden move in the car, before raping and shooting Storie.

I believe that this theory also included alledged accusations that a senior figure in the police who was a relative of Mrs Gregsten may have been involved in selecting Alphon and paying him and that this may have had a crucial part in the influence of the conviction of Hanratty. As the evidence against Hanratty was weak at best I find it amazing that this conspiracy theory has never seemed to be investigated properly?

Similiarly there appears to be proof that Alphon did receive a number of payments at the time of the murders, amounting to several thousand pounds, but that again this was never investigated ?

The other potentially important piece of evidence is that Charles France committed suicide but wrote several notes to his family, but these have never been made public, as they are potentially important again why was this was never investigated ?

I think that the possible involvement of a senior police man in the case throws into question the whole case against Hanratty, even down to the DNA evidence which supposedly finally resolved the case.

[Kerry1983]

Hi Graham,
Ooh well i didn't live here then, i would still have been in school and lived 10 mins down the road in Prestatyn! I wouldn't mind at all now if anyone knocked on the door, now that i know the reason why. Nobody has now for a couple of years though. Although someone possibly have have and i haven't been home.

Oh i see, that's interesting. I thought he had named this house himself. His description does seem to match what was in here though so i can't imagine the police had too much trouble in tracking it down. I've looked online to see if i could find any old photos of what the inside of the house looked like back then but haven't been successful. I've only found a couple of the outside.
Has anyone else come across any?

[NickB]

Have you asked the previous occupants about internal photos?

Hanratty describes the bathroom: “Green bath round, sink green to match bath.” After two words I cannot decipher he says “Lavatory and bath room combined.” So it is a room with a green bath, green sink and lavatory.

Then he describes the bedroom: “In bedroom was a small desk.” It is clear from this, and further descriptions he made, that the bathroom and bedroom are two separate rooms.

The obvious inference is that the green bathroom was the one he used for washing etc. But apparently it would not have been because it was a reserve bathroom tucked away in the attic marked ‘Private’. So normally Hanratty would not have seen the green bathroom.

Instead of admitting this might be a reason why Hanratty did not stay there, Foot turns it around and claims that Hanratty slept in the room.
“Hanratty never said he slept in the attic room with the bath, but how would he have known about it if he hadn't?”

[Derrick]

Hi Otterman

Welcome to the A6 Threads

You have made some very interesting arguments which I am sure all of us here will be wanting to debate with you.

Kindest regards
Del

[Graham]

they as you put it were Joe Gillbanks and, occasionally, a man named Frank Evans. Both of these men were ex-policemen who had done exactly what the current set of policemen did with Hanratty's photo when interviewing Mrs Dinwoodie. That is showing only one photograph.

Yes I know, thank you very much.

So in the final analysis the whole of the Liverpool and Rhyl alibi of James Hanratty had, in the first instance, been investigated by either current or ex-serving policemen.

And they made a pig's ear of it.

So any blame for the corruption of the alibi scene can only be laid at the door of policeman past and present.

They certainly contributed to it.

Graham