A6 Rebooted

[NickB]

Acott had suggested, in the interests of fairness, that all the members of that parade wear 'surgeon's caps' to hide their hair so that JH's didn't stand out

Acott ordered the caps to be obtained for both id parades, but he was in charge of neither.

Bedfordshire police officers arranged the first parade on 13-Oct-61 and Buckinghamshire officers the second on 14-Oct-61. It was they who decided whether or not to use the caps.

The situation facing Kleinman was not clear cut. Even Woffinden (on page 246) can see why he would prefer Hanratty’s hair to be uncovered:

“Kleinman clearly wished to avoid anything which might have drawn greater attention to Hanratty’s eyes” and if Hanratty was picked “it would be a weakness in the prosecution case that she had picked out someone whose hair looked strikingly different to that of the murderer”.

In December 1966 the Sunday Times said of the id parades that Kleinman 'made no objection at the time and makes none now'. (He was interviewed for the article.)

It also said: ‘Unusually the names, addresses, and descriptions of all the men in it were recorded.' This demonstrates that the Buckinghamshire police, who had no connection to the case, were conscious that this was an important event.

The contention that anyone would have picked out Hanratty on these parades is disproved by Blackhall and Hirons who picked other people.

[gallicrow]

I thought that Hirons was only present for the first id parade - did he attend the second one as well?

[Derrick]

...Acott ordered the caps to be obtained for both id parades, but he was in charge of neither....

Nick

But he was present at all of the ID parades in September and October.

At the September parade he noted down Michael Clarks physical description, which included dark eyes.

At the second October parade just after Valerie picked out Hanratty he immediately grabbed her arm and said "well done". His very presence in the same building as the parade would now be considered a breach of the rules under section D of PACE.

Delboy

[NickB]

Hirons was indeed only present at the first id parade.

Here are the Sunday Times interviews with Skillet and Trower ...

Skillet

Skillet was driving to work down Eastern Avenue when he stopped at a traffic light. A grey Minor hurtled up on his near side, pulled across in front of him and skidded to a halt. Skillet had his foot out of the door to go and talk to the driver when the lights turned green and they all moved off. At the next halt, a roundabout, Skillet drew alongside and leant forward to shout at the driver. As he spoke the driver turned and laughed at him.

“It was such a horrible face, with those staring blue eyes that I couldn’t get him out of my mind. I couldn’t sleep for weeks afterwards. If he hadn’t laughed at me, I probably wouldn’t have remembered him at all,” he told us.

On Blackall not picking out Hanratty at the id parade, Skillet said:
“Some people think that proves I was mistaken. But it wasn’t Blackall’s car that nearly got smashed, was it? He hadn’t the interest I had.”

Trower

“I was in Redbridge Lane, Ilford, waiting to take Paddy Hogan to work. I saw this grey Minor tearing down the road. I noticed it because it had such a loud exhaust – a modified rally job – without that it wouldn’t have struck me. I got a good look at the driver. They asked me how long I’d seen him for, and I said three seconds. When the police checked it, that was just how long it did take. Then the car turned round the corner.”

“Later, on the way past with Hogan, I saw a lot of busies [police] round it. I said I’d seen the car go past, and he turned me round and we went back to the police. That’s how I became a witness.”

Trower is indignant with Panorama’s presentation of the case:
“They put up Hogan saying I couldn’t have seen Hanratty because I was late coming down that morning. Well who took me back to the police but Hogan? And if I didn’t see Hanratty, how did I pick him out?”

[Graham]

Although Trower did indeed pick out Hanratty on the i.d. parade, his evidence in court was somewhat confused when under cross-examination, and later contradicted by his friend Hogan. I never set too much store by the Mad Driver Of The Morris Minor evidence.

By the way, as Nick mentions, Trower said that the Morris Minor he encountered had an unusually loud exhaust. Does anyone know if this applied to Michael Gregsten's Morris?

However, Trower had one very good thing going for him - a Humber Super Snipe. one of my favourite cars.

Graham

[Alfie]

The Ryan-Hanratty link

Woffinden theorises that the police made the Ryan-Hanratty connection on Sept 25 when Dixie took them a postcard that JH had sent him from Ireland.

But doesn't that presuppose that Dixie knew that 'Jimmy Ryan' was in fact James Hanratty?

I thought he and his family testified that they'd always known JH as Jimmy Ryan. When did Dixie learn his friend's real surname?

[Graham]

Woffinden theorises that the police made the Ryan-Hanratty connection on Sept 25 when Dixie took them a postcard that JH had sent him from Ireland.

But doesn't that presuppose that Dixie knew that 'Jimmy Ryan' was in fact James Hanratty?

I thought he and his family testified that they'd always known JH as Jimmy Ryan. When did Dixie learn his friend's real surname?

Alfie,

as far as I'm aware, the connection was made when the cartridge cases were found at The Vienna Hotel and the register checked to see who had stayed in that room. It was found that a "J Ryan" occupied that room on the night prior to the murder, and the name "Ryan" was back-checked in police records relating to the A6 Case to Ewer's sighting, and the Ryan who had bought flowers to be sent to Mrs Hanratty. At least, that's how I think the link was made, as there has always been some degree of uncertainty about this. The police visited Hanratty's parents, but told them he was wanted regarding stolen cars, not for the A6 murder.

Graham

[Alfie]

Hi Graham

Am I right in thinking though that Dixie wouldn't have learned that Jimmy Ryan was JH till Oct 6, when Acott interviewed him, Charlotte and Carole at Scotland Yard?

[OneRound]

Hi OR,



Unfortunately JH was the main architect of his own downfall when he changed his alibi. I've said for ages that had he stuck to his Liverpool story there was a reasonable chance of his being acquitted. I also think that had this case been tried under Scots law, the verdict may well have been 'not proven'.



Have said it before, but JH never proved conclusively that he was in Rhyl when he said he was. Had he but left a signature in a visitors' book, or kept a bus ticket-stub, or given a street name and even a house number with regard to his claimed accommodation, he'd have been off the hook.


With regard to Valerie Storie's credibility (or lack of it), there's a fuzzy delineation in law (and I ain't a lawyer) between what is legal and fair and what is unfair but legal. She didn't pick out Alphon, who was the police's suspect, and that was all that mattered. The law didn't care one way or the other about her picking out Michael Clark or anyone else who wasn't Alphon when she identified JH at the second parade. I would also add that Mr Kleinman had no objections regarding the second parade - rightly or wrongly (and I believe wrongly). Acott had suggested, in the interests of fairness, that all the members of that parade wear 'surgeon's caps' to hide their hair so that JH's didn't stand out (like a carrot in a bunch of bananas, as Sherrard said), but for reasons I don't know Acott's suggestion was never implemented and Kleinman made no complaint.

The DNA is, frankly, done and dusted and analysis cannot, as far as I'm aware, be repeated. The later Court of Appeal accepted the DNA findings as true and reliable, and that, really, was that. I was under the (perhaps erroneous) impression that only one male DNA was found on the knickers, and that it matched the DNA extracted from JH's remains, and also on the hankie and was, therefore, accepted as being JH's. Alphon supplied samples prior to the 2002 Appeal, and his DNA was found neither on the knickers nor the hankie, and he was finally ruled out as a suspect.

Graham

Hi Graham - thanks for your typically considered reply.

I very much concur with your first two paragraphs. With regard to your second, the onus was effectively on Hanratty to conclusively prove that he was in Rhyl having previously lied about being in Liverpool. I'm sure his inability to do that weighed heavily with the jury. It does with me too even though by itself it does not prove guilt.

As for Valerie Storie's identification of Hanratty after plumping for someone else on the first parade, I'm not questioning the legality of her doing that - just flagging that if I had been a juror, I would have needed a lot of convincing after her earlier mistake. For me, she should only ever have been able to identify with true belief one person. After all, there was only the one and same person who shot Michael Gregsten and raped her.

My major grouch about Hanratty's parade was not so much about the ''carrot in a bunch of bananas'' (although the Court of Appeal's conclusions here are interesting) but the use of voice identification. Not illegal but, as Mansfield put it at the 2002 Appeal, ''incurably unfair''.

I accept the DNA is ''done and dusted''. I was trying to show why I am surprised so much reliance has been placed upon it. As well as Hanratty's DNA, DNA from semen of someone else was also detected on the knicker fragment. This was ''assumed'' to come from and was ''attributed to'' Michael Gregsten by the Court.

Best regards,

OneRound

[NickB]

At this distance it is difficult to know if France knew Ryan’s real name was Hanratty. I have posted in some detail why I do not think France led the police to him.

It is true that when Acott visited Hanratty’s parents on 26-Sep he asked if they had heard of Dixie France, but I think it is more likely that the police approached France rather than the other way round.

We know that the police made enquiries in the criminal fraternity about ‘J Ryan’. A likely dive to ask in was the Rehearsal Club. So I think it is likely that someone in the Rehearsal Club told them there was a Jimmy Ryan and they should talk to his friend Dixie France. After all, this was exactly what Ann Pryce told Michael Hanratty on 3-Oct-61.

Woffinden cites the Sunday Times Dec-66 article for saying France took the postcard to the police. This is what it said:

The unfortunate France had several reasons for killing himself.

His first suicide attempt was in January, before the trial began. He had been intensely depressed for some time. His brother had been killed in a particularly nasty car accident a fortnight before. His wife was extremely upset that he’d brought Hanratty into her home and among her three children. He had gone to the police with Hanratty’s postcard from Ireland and so irrevocably cut himself off from his friends and job in the underworld of Soho. His wife says: “His life was the West End.” Finally he was worried about an article he had contracted to write for the Sunday Pictorial.

The article is full of mistakes and this may be one of them. I seem to recall one of the 1970s Sunday Times articles saying that Mrs France was the source.

[Alfie]

Hi Nick

The Rehearsal Club seems a definite possibility. Another is that Leonard remembered writing a postcard to a 'Dixie' France - not the sort of name you hear every day - and passed that titbit along to the police too.

[Graham]

Hi OR,

My major grouch about Hanratty's parade was not so much about the ''carrot in a bunch of bananas'' (although the Court of Appeal's conclusions here are interesting) but the use of voice identification. Not illegal but, as Mansfield put it at the 2002 Appeal, ''incurably unfair".

Yes, well, I can't disagree, but Kleinman was there supposedly to see fair play.

As well as Hanratty's DNA, DNA from semen of someone else was also detected on the knicker fragment. This was ''assumed'' to come from and was ''attributed to'' Michael Gregsten by the Court.

You're correct, of course. I'd just forgotten, as it's a long time since I read up on the DNA in the A6 Case.

Graham

[Graham]

I'd love to see those suicide letters of Dixie France, the ones the police confiscated and have never to this day been made public......

I've suspected for some time that the gun may have been supplied by France, and I wonder if Acott had him lined up for a very meaningful discussion at the time of his death. France, as we know, actually appeared for the prosecution at Hanratty's trial, which couldn't have gone down too well, and again I wonder if Hanratty, after sentence, may have dropped one or two little snippets of info to the police....we'll never know, obviously.

Graham

[NickB]

Although his letters to his family have not been published, Hanratty's defence saw the letter to the Coroner, and parts of it were read out in court. There is nothing there to support the remorse theory: "This is a letter written in great bitterness and with great feeling against the man Hanratty" said the Coroner.

Sunday Times 1966

Recently two Sunday Times reporters have been allowed to read Charles France’s letters, written before his suicide. Outside the France family they are the only people who have read all these documents. One reporter believes that they should be accepted at their face value - France committed suicide because of the shame he brought his family by introducing a ‘monster’ like Hanratty into the household. The other believes the letters are the expression of a man trying to protect his beloved family from the stigma of his own guilt - that he was, in fact, involved in the murder either with Hanratty or, more horrifically, with Alphon.

Sunday Times 1971

My take on the 1971 bit is that the first reporter's findings did not fit with the narrative the newspaper was pursuing and so they sent in a second!

[Graham]

Sunday Times 1971

My take on the 1971 bit is that the first reporter's findings did not fit with the narrative the newspaper was pursuing and so they sent in a second!

Could be! I was always under the impression that France wrote 'a lot' during his self-imposed exile in the boarding-house, and that the police took 'some' of his writings which were never seen again by anyone, family included.

France and his family, who were close, seemed to be on friendly terms with Hanratty - he stayed with them quite frequently, and Charlotte did his laundry and ironing. Maybe he did blot his copy-book with regard to Carole, but that's the way of the world. However, if France was merely an acquaintance and a past mentor of Hanratty, and not an accomplice, it seems hard to justify his suicide. As far as he, France, was concerned, Hanratty was a small-time not-too-successful burglar, and not a potential murderer. Of course, if there was something in the relationship that France deeply regretted, that may well cast a different light on his suicide.

Graham