A6 Rebooted

[moste]

Valerie stating her visits with Mike to the cornfield 'a couple of times' over the last few months,may really mean,4 or 5 times!
Didn't she state she had visited Mikes home on a couple of occasions.Janet remembers only once?

[louisa]

JPR1975,

I think there are too many players in your conspiracy; besides it would not make much sense for France to expend his energies directing the police towards Hanratty if he himself was the supplier of the gun. And what if Hanratty, facing the inevitability of the gallows, had decided to name names? Or even worse Hanratty might earlier, having seen the ropiness of the prosecution case, tried to turn Queen’s Evidence.

If there was any conspiracy in the early days of the investigation it seems more likely to have been fingering Alphon. He was the man allegedly reported for his odd behavior in a hotel and brought to police attention well before James Ryan. (I think it just as likely the police approached the hotel after ‘information received from reliable sources.’) The cartridge cases at the Vienna Hotel were as capable of ‘framing’ Alphon as much as they were Hanratty. The ID composite wasn’t doing him any favours either. His alibi was never scrutinized the way Hanratty’s later was, and may have been equally porous. (I don’t think your mother is the most credible alibi witness.) If Alphon’s rambling performance in the Paris hotel is any guide, then a jury viewing him in the dock would have needed little convincing that he was the type of character who could drive around Slough for a few hours engaging in pointless narrative. So if there was indeed a conspiracy, and it was against Alphon, then he must have been thankful that Valerie Storie was not ‘coached’ beforehand.

I have little doubt there was a conspiracy to some extent. The murderer would hardly have taken public transport then walked unnoticed to the corn field carrying a gun and a bag of ammunition. Nor could he have taken a taxi (that would have been checked surely) or abandoned a stolen car, so he was almost certainly driven close to the spot by person or persons unknown.
Then there is the curious case of the murder car which yielded no forensic evidence. Either this was false information presented by the prosecution, or the murderer received assistance in the cleaning of the car. A conspiracy either way.

Good post Cobalt. A lot of food for thought there.

I would say that Alphon was exactly the type of man who would walk to a corn field carrying a gun and a bag of ammo. Those items would fit inside an ordinary carrier bag. The area seems quite remote and wouldn't have been lit too well.

And I tend to believe he had already been in the area prior to this, doing a bit of reconnoitre.

[louisa]

Valerie stating her visits with Mike to the cornfield 'a couple of times' over the last few months,may really mean,4 or 5 times!
Didn't she state she had visited Mikes home on a couple of occasions.Janet remembers only once?

That's probably because Janet was out on the other occasion.

[louisa]

Misleading : France's wife. Would obviously have been referring to the police ID picture ,not Stories.
Yes thats right, the Police ID picture, (supposedly supplied by other witnesses)
I reckon they meant to have the right hand picture as Stories,but they even managed to bungle that too,

I believe that could have been the case. I've often wondered why Charlotte France said the ID pic looked like Hanratty.

[richardnunweek]

Hi,
We can fathom over this case for the next hundred years, and still find conspiracy angles.
The fact of the matter is James Hanratty was found guilty of murder , and hanged after an appeal failed.
He was identified by the person he tried to kill Valerie Storie, she remained adamant throughout her life , there was no mistake.
DNA, a few years ago conclusively proofed that he was guilty, albeit contamination is always possible.
The reason why many people of this country have doubted his guilt, is the campaign waged by many celebrities at the time, and a relentless struggle by his family to save him. the fact that Hanratty pleaded with them, he was innocent right to the end , also sticks in peoples minds,as a possibility of innocence.
Positively thinking, the only way Hanratty knew of saving his neck, was to swear innocence, he knew his family would fight tooth and nail for his conviction to be overturned, and he maintained that to the very end.
Everyone likes a mystery , that is why we remain on the Casebook site, but in the case of the A6 murder, in my opinion there is none, its the result of a person of limited intelligence , attempting to force a lift with a loaded gun, and the entire episode spiralled out of control. JH, never ''Finked'' straight then, neither events after.
I would be very shocked to discover,that in this case the country hanged the wrong man.
Just my opinion .
Regards Richard.

[Graham]

Thank you, Richard. Yours is the voice of reason, as ever.

Graham

[louisa]

Hi,
We can fathom over this case for the next hundred years, and still find conspiracy angles.
The fact of the matter is James Hanratty was found guilty of murder , and hanged after an appeal failed.
He was identified by the person he tried to kill Valerie Storie, she remained adamant throughout her life , there was no mistake.

So that's it then, is it? VS remained adamant throughout her life, which means irrefutable proof of there not being a mistake?

I wouldn't mind betting that if the first man she picked in the very first ID parade (forgotten his name) had been put on trial she would have been adament to the end of her days about him being the perpetrator as well!

As I understand things she wasn't even wearing her glasses when she was in the car.

THEN, a while later, she changed her mind about his appearance, not just by a small amount, but she did a total about-face and described somebody the polar opposite of the first person she described.

A totally unreliable eye witness.

DNA, a few years ago conclusively proofed that he was guilty, albeit contamination is always possible.

The reason why many people of this country have doubted his guilt, is the campaign waged by many celebrities at the time, and a relentless struggle by his family to save him. the fact that Hanratty pleaded with them, he was innocent right to the end , also sticks in peoples minds,as a possibility of innocence.

Well I can definitely say that none of the above had any bearing whatever on my ultimate opinion regarding Hanratty. I was a child back then anyway.

My mind became made up that Hanratty could not have committed this crime after I had become interested in the case through reading several books about it.

Also the timeline does not fit. Hanratty was seen in a sweetshop in Liverpool at 5pm on the afternoon of the Slough encounter at 9pm.

I would be very shocked to discover,that in this case the country hanged the wrong man.

Because that has never happened before has it?

[Sherlock Houses]

Although I suspect she already knew who to pick out. Taking her time and asking them to speak was just to make it look more plausible. Acott could not risk her picking the 'wrong' man again and I suspect she had been 'coached' beforehand.

Didn't he touch her on the shoulder and say "Good girl" afterwards?

I would say without any shadow of a doubt that she knew who to pick out from that line-up. It was an absolute cinch that she would select Hanratty, she even agreed with Sherrard's suggestion to her at the Bedford Trial that he must have stood out like a carrot in a bunch of bananas. It's obvious to anyone with any nous at all that she was coached in advance by the scheming and manipulative Acott.

Everything had been decided in advance by detectives investigating the murder. That identification parade as most of us will be aware took place on the morning of Saturday, October 14th. The previous evening, Friday the 13th, a special police conference had been held in Bedford. Senior Bedfordshire officers had gathered there in addition to Det Supt Acott. At that conference it had been decided that a man [ie Hanratty] would be charged within the next 24 hours with the A6 murder. Truly astonishing. A decision had been made at least a full half-day before the 11.00 am. ID parade took place.

NOW CAN ANYONE IMAGINE WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED HAD STORIE NOT PICKED OUT HANRATTY ???

There was absolutely no danger of that happening, everything had been arranged beforehand by a team of suspect detectives gathered around a Bedford table. Nothing was left to chance.

A fateful Friday the thirteenth indeed for the innocent James Hanratty.

[Graham]

Everything had been decided in advance by detectives investigating the murder. That identification parade as most of us will be aware took place on the morning of Saturday, October 14th. The previous evening, Friday the 13th, a special police conference had been held in Bedford. Senior Bedfordshire officers had gathered there in addition to Det Supt Acott. At that conference it had been decided that a man [ie Hanratty] would be charged within the next 24 hours with the A6 murder. Truly astonishing. A decision had been made at least a full half-day before the 11.00 am. ID parade took place.

Can you please identify your source for the above? Thanks.

To me, and I believe in Hanratty's guilt (surprise, surprise...), the crucial question concerning his claimed innocence is this: if hewas framed, as his defenders claim, then why and by whom? A frame-up pre-supposed a conspiracy, for which there is no solid, concrete evidence, just supposition. And if it wasn't Hanratty or Alphon, then perhaps some can suggest just who it was?

I'm not being simplistic here, I would just like some honest, considered answers instead of the current fog of supposition and wacky theorising. It's probably too big an ask, but I'll give it a go anyway......

Graham

[louisa]

NOW CAN ANYONE IMAGINE WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED HAD STORIE NOT PICKED OUT HANRATTY ???

Yes, that's quite a question.

Acott would have been back to square one, but somehow would have managed, eventually, to frame some other poor sod. And Valerie would admit she had been mistaken and this new man was actually the one who was in the car that night.

It seemed that the public were prepared to forgive Valerie anything. I'm surprised they didn't make her a saint.

[uncle_adolph]

The reason why many people of this country have doubted his guilt, is the campaign waged by many celebrities at the time, and a relentless struggle by his family to save him. the fact that Hanratty pleaded with them, he was innocent right to the end , also sticks in peoples minds,as a possibility of innocence.

Sorry, I don't agree with this at all.

The reason for my doubting his guilt is purely and simply because too many aspects of this case just do not stack up. We can start right from the beginning....Dorney was far removed from Hanratty's patch (had he even ever been there before?) and yet we are expected to believe he was simply wandering down the road with a gun in his pocket. Sorry, no. And Hanratty was a hopeless criminal....yet he managed to leave the scene without depositing any fibres....sorry, no. And we can go on and on.

In my view, the whole case begins and ends with Charles France. Apparently such a mate of Hanratty's and yet he committed suicide after his trial leaving behind vitriolic letters against him. He clearly knew far more about what was going on than has been officially admitted but until his final letters are, if ever, released we will simply never know.

If Hanratty was guilty then, fair enough, we have been lead a merry dance all these years. But until these and the many other questions are answered then I think it's only fair that people keep asking them.

[Sherlock Houses]

Can you please identify your source for the above? Thanks.

Certainly. Editions of the Daily Mirror and Daily Express from October 14th 1961......

[NickB]

The decision to charge Hanratty was taken after Trower and Skillett had identified him - which in turn followed his interview with Acott and Oxford in which he had failed to provide satisfactory answers.

[Graham]

Thank you, Sherlock. Yes, I thought the quote in your previous post had a whiff of newspaper reportage about it. It may not have occurred to you that, even in 1961, a man could not be charged in advance of a positive identification on an ID parade, not even a man under investigation by the sinister Mr Acott. I would strongly suggest that the situation was that Acott was under pretty severe Home Office pressure to charge someone with the A6 murder, and that this was made clear to him, and in turn by him to his subordinates, very likely at the Friday the Thirteenth meeting. Acott had been rather cockily confident that Alphon was the killer, and when he was not identified by Valerie it must have come as something of a blow to him. His reputation was on the line.

The charging of a suspect is not 'decided in advance' until and unless the police have sufficient evidence to do so. Until Valerie positively identified Hanratty the next morning, the police did not have sufficient evidence. I agree that in those days the police were not whiter-than-white, but even so they had to be seen to be following accepted legal practice. The Daily Mirror article was just plain wrong - the reporter doubtless interviewed an official police or Home Office spokesman then went away and put his own slant on the situation, as reporters and journalists always have. Sorry, but that article is simply not credible.

Graham

[Graham]

The decision to charge Hanratty was taken after Trower and Skillett had identified him - which in turn followed his interview with Acott and Oxford in which he had failed to provide satisfactory answers.

Our posts crossed. Hanratty's supporters do seem to tend to forget or even ignore his positive identification by Trower and Skillett which took place at Bedford Police HQ late in the afternoon of 13 October. This is no doubt why the Daily Mirror reporter was confident that someone would be charged the next day. As Hanratty duly was, after Valerie had identified him.

A prisoner cannot be legally charged until his rights are read to him, which didn't happen until Hanratty was taken to Ampthill Police Station and charged at 6.15pm by Supt Barron with the murder of Michael Gregsten. Hanratty said nothing.

I wonder how much weakened, if at all, the case against Hanratty would have been had Trower and Skillett not identified him?

Graham