A6 Rebooted

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Ron,

Nowadays street lights are automatic, but my point still stands it's pretty stupid for them to come on after it gets dark, otherwise what's the point of having them?

KR,
Vic.

However stupid you may think it is/was the facts are that the street lights in 1961 came on half an hour after sunset.


Mrs Walker saw the young man who came looking for B&B as" it was getting dark,after the street lights were lit" ie after 9pm which tallies very well with what Hanratty maintained .

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Norma,

All we can conclude is Michael Clark looked more like Hanratty than Alphon did. So what?

What nonsense is this? What evidence do you have for saying this? Give one example of anybody ever stating that Michael Clark looked remotely like Hanratty.

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Norma,

They don't have to be guesses, he could have got the information from a previous visit to Rhyl, or he could have been told it by one of his gangster mates, like Terry Evans who we know had got Charlie White to falsify evidence.

KR,
Vic.

Hi Diddums!
There is no record of any such nonsense .[Why did you sign yourself "diddums? ]

[Natalie Severn]

Hi DM,

One aspect of the 'corporate culture' within the police which impacted on the A6 murder is their extraordinary reluctance to consider the possibility of a premeditated attack.

It certainly was "extraordinary".......

This kind of crime makes the police nervous, because it implies that a large part of the evidence they have is simply worthless, but they don't know which part: if they have evidence indicating that Fred Bloggs is responsible,
is this because Fred Bloggs is guilty and careless, or has someone planted the evidence to incriminate him? The result is that the police will almost always plump for the 'random thug' explanation for a murder, and aim to get Fred Bloggs convicted.

exactly---which is why 19 days after the murder ,the back to front "find" of " used cartridge cases " in the Vienna Hotel on the day Nudds was sacked, should surely have alerted police to the possibility somebody had planted them!
Alas ,no one has ever been required to properly explain how 2 used cartridge cases were found the day before the murder took place!

Obviously the best way to get an alibi is to hire someone else to carry out the crime. For the A6 case, I doubt we'll ever know what Ewer was doing at the time of the murder, but I would venture two predictions:

- He would have had a cast-iron alibi

....cast iron no doubt! And before he became terribly busy having to get to work ringing Scotland Yard to help them "identify Hanratty" - the man with "ice blue eyes" who he went to the trouble of "following around " two days in succession [31st August and 1st September 1961, in Swiss Cottage Arcade -tip-toeing from shop to shop from Burtols Dry Cleaners>the photography shop >Caters Flower shop where Mrs Morrell vividly remembered Scotland Yard plain clothes police arriving on 1st September 1961. She even distinctly remembered having to show them the order made by a "Mr Ryan " who sent flowers to his mother,Mrs M. Hanratty of Sycamore Grove.
Curiouser and curiouser!But I see your point,maybe the unwillingness of the police to contemplate this crime as anything other than that of a very very bonkers sex maniac was all due to a "corporate" or "institutional" way of thinking about and tackling such crimes.

[Natalie Severn]

So how do you distinguish between a dyslexic, a dunce and a liar (like Hanratty)?
KR,
Vic.

a dyslexic = George Bush---he was unable to spell .
a dunce = Sarah Palin
a liar = politicians of all parties

so....a difficult task indeed,Vic.

[Victor]

However stupid you may think it is/was the facts are that the street lights in 1961T came on half an hour after sunset.

Hi Norma,

Can you read? I clearly wrote "after dark" not sunset!

Mrs Walker saw the young man who came looking for B&B as" it was getting dark,after the street lights were lit" ie after 9pm which tallies very well with what Hanratty maintained .

Sherrard didn't think so and despite all his mistakes I believe him more than you.

KR,
Vic

[Natalie Severn]

Hello Vic,

I think that the term "lighting-up" refers to the lighting-up of vehicles rather than when street lights start operating. In 1961 lighting- up time was 30 minutes after sunset.

The point that Natalie or Norma was making was that it did not become
properly dark until some time after sunset. This is correct, as when the upper limb of the sun dips below the horizon light is still refracted from the
atmosphere onto the area which had just been in receipt of direct sunlight. Indeed in the early Road Traffic Acts lighting-up time was fixed as starting one hour after sunset.

Ron

Ron,
This is helpful and thankyou for the information.Mrs Walker was questioned by one of the defence solicitors and she said it was "getting dark"---and "the street lights were lit".My point was that although she may ,after six months had passed,have "thought" it was "about 7.30 pm" ,it could not have been if,in fact, the street lights were lit. It must have been at least 9 o"clock on Tuesday 22nd August 1961 in Rhyl.
Light is certainly refracted from the atmosphere onto certain of the areas in Rhyl described viz Kinmel Street---whether it made much difference in South Kinmel Street is something I would like to know since its a very narrow street.One can certainly see its "getting dark" after sunset because of the long shadows etc .Anyway,I hope to find out more on my next visit to Rhyl-if we get sight of a sunset when I am there!.
Norma

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Norma,

Can you read? I clearly wrote "after dark" not sunset!



Sherrard didn't think so and despite all his mistakes I believe him more than you.

KR,
Vic

Vic,
For whatever reason---time factors most likely,Sherrard appears not to have paid very much attention to the contradiction between somebody saying it was "about 7.30 pm" on 22nd August 1961 and "It was getting dark.The street lights were lit".
If it was "getting dark and the street lights were lit" it was not "about 7.30 pm".It was after 9 pm.

[Victor]

What nonsense is this? What evidence do you have for saying this? Give one example of anybody ever stating that Michael Clark looked remotely like Hanratty.

I didn't say Clark looked like Hanratty, I said...

All we can conclude is Michael Clark looked more like Hanratty than Alphon did.

So working this through slowly...

Valerie attended 2 ID parades.

On the first was Michael Clark and Peter Alphon. She selected Clark in preference to Alphon.

On the second ID parade she selected Hanratty, who was later tried and convicted.

Regardless of whether you agree with the decision of the jury, Michael Clark must have looked more like Hanratty than Peter Alphon did.

QED.

KR,
Vic.

[babybird67]

precisel Vic

and, furthermore, for those who wish to argue against all the evidence which proves (and against the Defence team which accepts) that Alphon 'could not have been' the A6 murderer, there is also the huge anomaly that Clark must have looked more like Alphon than Alphon himself did! Of course, twisting physical realities into impossibilities seems par for the course in Hanratty's unofficial defence. At least his official defence have accepted now that he did it and that that has been proven beyond any reasonable argument anymore.

[Natalie Severn]

Victor wrote:

Valerie attended 2 ID parades.

On the first was Michael Clark and Peter Alphon. She selected Clark in preference to Alphon

Quite right.Valerie picked out Michael Clark as the man who had raped her.
She later, in court,stated that she thought Michael Clark looked a bit like Alphon.

On the second ID parade she selected Hanratty, who was later tried and convicted.

Yes -despite the astonishing inconsistency of the identikit Valerie composed looking nothing like Hanratty but a dead ringer for Alphon!

Michael Clark must have looked more like Hanratty than Peter Alphon did.

With such a potentially fatal error as Valerie"s , over selecting Michael Clark as Gregsten"s killer and her rapist in the first instance,and demonstrating monumental inconsistency between the "identikit" she composed and her identification of Hanratty with his square jaw and box like facial structure ,all it demonstrates is that Valerie was not at all sure what her rapist looked like......so we can deduce nothing from either identification.
Victor, if I may point out to you here that you seem to demonstrate significant inconsistencies in your arguments sometimes.For example,you were quick to use terms such as "psychobabble and quackery" in response to verbatim quotes I took from a book by the American Military Service psychiatrist ,John D Campbell, regarding the similarities I suggested appear to be the case ,between Alphon"s personality and that of a schizoid personality,as described by Campbell.Also, only the other day you applied the term "emotional intelligence" to me from the utterly unproven and "bogus" science that conjured the "emotional intelligence" term!
Returning to conventional psychiatry you yourself appear to demonstrate some shortcomings regarding your " spatial" intelligence quotient, if you honestly believe the identikit Valerie helped compose of her rapist looked anything like Hanratty while failing totally to see the astonishing similarity it bears to Alphon. You must be among the very few people on the planet who cannot see that , seriously.

[Victor]

Alas ,no one has ever been required to properly explain how 2 used cartridge cases were found the day before the murder took place!

Hi Norma,

What nonsense, the used cartridge cases were found 2 weeks after the muder, they were ballistically proved to have been fired by the murder weapon forming a cast iron link.

KR,
Vic.

[Natalie Severn]

[QUOTE=babybird67;166867]
At least his official defence have accepted now that he did it and that that has been proven beyond any reasonable argument anymore.[/QUOTE]

What you state is totally untrue.I could give you half a dozen quotes to demonstrate that Michael Sherrard,in May 2002,just after the appeal result ,had tremendous doubt over the handling of the DNA....eg he asks why on earth a piece of cloth from Valerie"s knickers was kept "on ice" by the police for 30 years or more.
Sherrard had many doubts about that result.

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Norma,

What nonsense, the used cartridge cases were found 2 weeks after the muder, they were ballistically proved to have been fired by the murder weapon forming a cast iron link.

KR,
Vic.

Pay attention Vic,please.Don"t you see that if it was Hanratty who left them ,on the morning of 22nd August then they must have been fired the day before the murder took place .This is what has never been explained properly.
NB they were found not 2 weeks after but nearly three! ie 19 days after the murder -the day Nudds was sacked on 11th September.

[Natalie Severn]

The identikit Valerie composed is on the left above the photo of Alphon.The identikit Blackhall composed is on the right.Blackhall is on record as saying the man he saw looked "nothing like Hanratty".