A6 Rebooted

[Derrick]

Succinct and precise, that's me!

Touche Turtle Spitfire...

Thanks for pointing out my spelling mistake..

That should read...

Your succinct precis of the DNA evidence sheds light on your ignorance of that part of the case.

...of course.

Del

[caz]

The DNA evidence is not convincing seeing as the pellet fraction obtained from the knickers showed a profile made up of at least two persons. These "unknown" elements where attributed to Storie and Gregsten. How one could assume that Gregsten was a contributor without a referential profile by which it could be compared is not science but conjecture.

Hi Del,

Forgive me if you have explained all this before, but back in 1961 they established from semen staining on the knickers that the rapist's blood group was O. Gregsten's blood group was presumably also established at the time, from his corpse, to be AB.

From section 113 of the Appeal Judgement we learn this:

'The knickers arrived at the Metropolitan Police Laboratory (MPL) on 23 August 1961 where they were examined by Dr Nickolls, the director and his assistant, Henry Howard. They were found to be stained with seminal fluid in the area of the crotch and at the back for five inches upwards from the crotch. Vaginal fluid from Valerie Storie was also present. There were smaller quantities of seminal fluid of blood group AB assumed to have come at some earlier stage from Michael Gregsten.'

I seem to recall you disputed this blood typing of the smaller quantities, but I am at a loss to see how they concluded that semen from two individuals was present and established the gunman's to be group O unless they also established that the other male was not O, but AB, in common with Gregsten.

The point has long been made that no matter how you look at the forensic evidence and seek to undermine or refute one or more aspects of it, there is nothing even remotely inconsistent with what one would expect to find if the victims had indeed had sex 'at some earlier stage' before Valerie was raped by Hanratty. Whoever did it was flesh and blood (group O), so you can complain about the lack of forensics in that car until hell freezes over but it doesn't get Hanratty, with his semen on the knickers and his nasal mucous on the hanky, off the hook.

Love,

Caz
X

[gallicrow]

Ingledene

Personally, although I am still not 100% sure that Hanratty was guilty of the crimes he hanged for, I am completely certain that he didn't stay at Ingledene on the 22nd / 23rd August 1961.

[cobalt]

To take a sporting metaphor, it’s hardly desperation to prefer the memory of tactical changes as remembered by a manager, to that recalled by an individual player such as Joe Sayle. Hanratty was a ‘player’ who used boarding houses fairly regularly and would have paid as little attention to where he stayed as the average (male?) guest does. I notice that guests being shifted to different rooms has never been a problem for the prosecution, even when that evidence was offered by William Nudds.

A better example of desperation regarding the boarding house alibi would be the remark made by the prosecution, to the effect that Mrs Jones had travelled down to Bedfordshire to drum up publicity for her boarding house in Rhyl. This was a gratuitously offensive remark since it was clear from the evidence that business was rather brisk at her establishment, and in little need of some free publicity. The judge should have struck the comment down, as it was an insulting comment made without foundation.

This desperate line of attack on Mrs Jones acknowledged her potential threat to the prosecution case. She identified Hanratty in open court as the man who stayed at her boarding house in Rhyl, and was therefore contradicting the identification evidence of Valerie Storie. She also had the advantage of seeing the man in question in daylight. I suppose in prosecution terms she was seen as fair game.

On a separate issue, is there any evidence of either Alphon or Hanratty having served any of their National Service, which was mandatory at that time?

[NickB]

When Grace Jones walked to the witness box to be cross-examined she smiled at a solicitor sitting behind Sherrard. Swanwick noticed this and asked her about it. After an initial denial, she admitted that she knew the man.

A week or so before a defence solicitor had been caught talking to another witness (Louise Anderson) before she gave evidence. So it appears that this had happened again. (Kleinman perhaps?)

If Jones had been briefed by a defence solicitor this would explain how she gave such ‘ideal’ answers to Sherrard. She had left her books behind so must have thought that she could say what she liked and no-one would be able to challenge it.

For example, when Sherrard asked when the young man had stayed at Ingledene she replied that it was the week of 19-26 August 1961. How did she know this? Sherrard didn’t ask, but Swanwick did - and she didn’t have an answer. Eventually she had to admit: “I can’t really remember what week he did stay.”

Her evidence was a succession of lies which she had to retract. If she had not gone there to tell the truth, why had she gone there? Headlines like ‘Hanratty WAS at Rhyl says Landlady’ were duly splashed across the evening papers, as she could have expected.

Alphon did 1.5 years National Service in the RAF at Marlow. He left early because of a ‘mental or nervous disorder’.

The National Service Board graded Hanratty as class III so he was not called up.

[cobalt]

I think ‘lies’ is an overstatement regarding the evidence of Grace Jones. You are suggesting that she wanted ‘in on the act?’ Very few people I have ever met want to go anywhere near a courtroom in any capacity, except lawyers. Despite her unpleasant experience she never wavered from her belief –in this respect she is the mirror image of Valerie Storie- that Hanratty was at her boarding house in Rhyl during the critical period.

Thanks for the information regarding Alphon and Hanratty, which was along the lines I had suspected. (Could I ask how you found this out?)

I was interested for two reasons. The first was their mental assessment by a neutral government body ; the second their exposure to basic firearms training.

[Graham]

She identified Hanratty in open court as the man who stayed at her boarding house in Rhyl, and was therefore contradicting the identification evidence of Valerie Storie. She also had the advantage of seeing the man in question in daylight. I suppose in prosecution terms she was seen as fair game.

Hardly a reliable identification. Her actual words, as she indicated the man in the dock, were, "There he is, there. I feel as if I have seen him at our house". Not, "Yes, that is definitely the man who stayed at our house".

As she had been called as witness in the trial of James Hanratty, of which she was obviously aware, and who claimed to have stayed at her house, then it was equally obvious that when asked regarding the man whose photo she had recognised, she would point to the man in the dock. It was not, as in Valerie Storey's identification, that she was asked to pick out one man from a line-up of several men. I would be very surprised if the court took this to be a fair and inarguable identification.

One other point. When Hanratty was still clinging to his Liverpool alibi, Sherrard warned him that he might be taken to Liverpool and asked to identify the house or flat in which he claimed to have stayed. "If you fail to do so", Sherrard warned, "you will be lost". No such warning was, as far as I am aware, given regarding the Rhyl 'alibi', which rather suggests to me that even his defence considered it to be false.

Graham

[NickB]

If you read the testimony of Grace Jones she seems to waver quite a bit about Hanratty.

Then in 1966 she became certain about him after a visit from the persuasive Paul Foot. A week later she gave the interview to Panorama.

Then a few weeks after that she told Nimmo: “I cannot say if Hanratty ever stayed at my house although I have a feeling he may have done. If he did stay, I could not honestly say when it was.”

Regarding a mental assessment of Hanratty, I notice in a Guardian letter Miller said there were “two medical diagnoses prior to the crime that he was a latent psychopath”. One was by the prison medical officer at Wormwood Scrubs, but I don’t know about the second one to which he refers.

[Graham]

NickB wrote:

Regarding a mental assessment of Hanratty, I notice in a Guardian letter Miller said there were “two medical diagnoses prior to the crime that he was a latent psychopath”. One was by the prison medical officer at Wormwood Scrubs, but I don’t know about the second one to which he refers.

In 1954 Hanratty had attended the Portman Clinic for psychiatric treatment of his 'delinquency'. In August 1955 he was remanded in custody for housebreaking and placed in the juveniles' wing of Wormwood Scrubs, where he slashed his wrists. He was diagnosed by the prison medical-officer as a 'potential psychopath with hysterical tendencies'. Later, when he was serving part of another sentence he was sent to Durham Prison, where the medical-officer also stated that he was psychopathic.

Graham

[caz]

If you read the testimony of Grace Jones she seems to waver quite a bit about Hanratty.

Then in 1966 she became certain about him after a visit from the persuasive Paul Foot. A week later she gave the interview to Panorama.

Then a few weeks after that she told Nimmo: “I cannot say if Hanratty ever stayed at my house although I have a feeling he may have done. If he did stay, I could not honestly say when it was.”

Thanks for this, Nick.

How anyone could now say with a straight face, that Grace Jones was more likely to be right about Hanratty's precise whereabouts on the night in question than Valerie Storie, is quite beyond me.

If Grace Jones only had a feeling he may once have stayed at her house, how does that even begin to put him in one of her back rooms, where he claimed to have stayed, on the only night of that summer that could possibly be relevant?

Imagine the (rightful) howls of derision had Valerie Storie eventually come out with: "I cannot say if Hanratty was ever in our car although I have a feeling he may have been the same man who put us through that lengthy and terrible ordeal. At least I have no better ideas".

Love,

Caz
X

[moste]

[quote]Imagine the (rightful) howls of derision had Valerie Storie eventually come out with: "I cannot say if Hanratty was ever in our car although I have a feeling he may have been the same man who put us through that lengthy and terrible ordeal. At least I have no better ideas".

Makes no difference , He was always going to hang!

[Spitfire]

Imagine the (rightful) howls of derision had Valerie Storie eventually come out with: "I cannot say if Hanratty was ever in our car although I have a feeling he may have been the same man who put us through that lengthy and terrible ordeal. At least I have no better ideas".

The answer to that, I suppose, is that if she had been capable of identifying the gunman/murderer/rapist or whatever you want to call him, with the certainty which she claimed, then why on earth did she pick out an innocent man on the first parade?

The answer I suspect is that she knew that the police had their prime suspect (Alphon) and that he was on the parade, so she took a chance and picked someone that looked like a gunman/murderer/rapist. If she did that on the first parade, then it is not an unreasonable inference that she did the same on the second parade, where the identification of Hanratty was made easier by his unusual coloured barnet and his uneducated London accent.

[NickB]

Sherrard asked Acott: “If you really rely on the description given by Miss Storie, how could you have begun to think that this [Alphon] was the man whom you should interview in connection with the murder?”

Acott answered that Alphon had to be interviewed to be eliminated. But why did he make a public appeal for Alphon naming him as the suspect and then visit Storie? The police knew about Alphon’s parents and his almanac supplier. They could have traced and interviewed him without fuss.

[Spitfire]

Acott answered that Alphon had to be interviewed to be eliminated. But why did he make a public appeal for Alphon naming him as the suspect and then visit Storie?

And why did he 'persuade' Nudds to change his statement to put Alphon in Room 24 of the Vienna?

[OneRound]

The answer to that, I suppose, is that if she had been capable of identifying the gunman/murderer/rapist or whatever you want to call him, with the certainty which she claimed, then why on earth did she pick out an innocent man on the first parade?

The answer I suspect is that she knew that the police had their prime suspect (Alphon) and that he was on the parade, so she took a chance and picked someone that looked like a gunman/murderer/rapist. If she did that on the first parade, then it is not an unreasonable inference that she did the same on the second parade, where the identification of Hanratty was made easier by his unusual coloured barnet and his uneducated London accent.

Hi Spitfire,

That's very compelling.

I'm not saying you have changed tack but in a few of your recent posts you do appear more to the view that Hanratty got a raw deal at trial. Fair comment?

Best regards,

OneRound