A6 Rebooted

[Derrick]

Not as I read it. The Court said at paragraph 105 as follows:

105. Applying this reasoning we came to the conclusion that the DNA evidence on this appeal is evidence which we are entitled to admit under section 23. Furthermore we conclude that in our discretion we should admit the evidence while recognising:
(1) that its weight, if any, will depend on whether the appellant may be right that the explanation for the DNA findings is contamination.
(2) that if the appellant is able to show that because of lack of disclosure or the misdirections in the summing up the trial was still fatally flawed the DNA evidence will not rescue the conviction.

Hi Ron

From the appeal

202. As to the application under section 23 Criminal Appeal Act 1968 now to rely upon the same evidence (which goes to the question of the identity of the killer), the DNA evidence to which we have referred leads conclusively to the view that this material does not render the verdict unsafe.

What is your view of that statement eh?

And this?

212....In our judgment for reasons we have explained the DNA evidence establishes beyond doubt that James Hanratty was the murderer. The DNA evidence made what was a strong case even stronger. Equally the strength of the evidence overall pointing to the guilt of the appellant supports our conclusion as to the DNA.

If that isn't circular logic then I don't know what is.

Derrick

[RonIpstone]

Please give me references (which are not in the Appeal Ruling of 2002) to where we can all find out how the referential DNA profiles of Valerie Storie, Michael Gregsten and Peter Alphon were obtained.

Hello Del,

We will put the ball back in your court and ask for references from the Hanratty Defence team (Bindman, Mansfield, Docs Lincoln and Evison) where they allege that inadequate or non-existent referential profiles of Valerie Storie, Michael Gregsten or Peter Alphon have compromised the investigation and have caused the DNA profile of Hanratty to be misidentified.

Ron

[RonIpstone]

Hi Ron

From the appeal

What is your view of that statement eh?

And this?

If that isn't circular logic then I don't know what is.

Derrick

Hello again Derrick,

It is a matter of law whether the trial was fatally flawed or not. The Court of Appeal has ruled that it was not fatally flawed on the grounds which were contended for by the Hanratty Team. That is that, irrespective of the DNA evidence.

The next question is whether the conviction was safe. On two occasions the Court of Appeal has said the conviction was safe and that there was sufficient evidence on which the jury could have convicted. Admittedly the Court in 2002 relied on the DNA evidence to make the conviction safer.

All I was saying in my earlier posts is that if you rubbish the DNA evidence you are still left with a court's decision that the trial was not fatally flawed and that the conviction was safe, a decision given by no less than two Courts of Appeal. Added to which the court instructed the CCRC not to send any more old cases to it. The point is that the CCRC is not going to send this case to the Court of Appeal.

Ron

[Natalie Severn]

Julie,
Good questions.Some more:
-Paul Foot was permitted to view Alphon"s bank accounts after Alphon asked his bank in The Strand to disclose his 1961 bank account statements to Foot in 1967.They revealed that very large sums of money were paid in soon after he had been released by police in late September 1961.The sums are out of keeping with Alphon"s financial standing and way of life.They amounted to seven thousand five hundred pounds [in 1961 this would translate into between eight and nine hundred thousand pounds[£800,000 -£900,000---a comfortable three bedroomed house could be purchased for £2,000 in 1961].
Foot reckoned £2,500 was accounted for by newspaper sources but that,he stated would have been the absolute maximum he would have got from such sources given that his story,after release wasn"t really worth buying [£270,000].So a lot of money can not be accounted for.
Alphon himself claimed he received the money after carrying out the A6 murder.
Why was Alphon not questioned about these huge sums of money revealed in his October/November 1961 Bank Accounts, when Alphon made his public confessions about being the A6 murderer?

A question for RonIpstone

Might you be able to throw some light on the above in what appears to be a significant negligence in this case on the part of the authorities?

Subsequent to him being released, Alphon ,the first suspect in the A6 murder,made a series of "confessions"-the first of which was taped by Jean Justice, and made as early as 1962.
Might you be able to offer an explanation as to why he was never interrogated by police about these especially huge sums of money paid into his Bank Account after the murder was committed in the Autumn of 1961,particularly once Paul Foot revealed that he had seen Alphon"s Bank Accounts,in the Strand and he had confessed to being the A6 killer .

Moreover,Meike Dalal did,positively identify Alphon as her attacker in September 1961,yet the police chose to believe the alibi provided by a fellow almanac door to door hawker-why was that do you think?

[Limehouse]

Hi Norma

There is a good reason why the almanac company gave Alphon an alibi. He was frequently in their office purchasing almanacs to sell on door to door to the public. He was a good customer.

At the same time Mrs Dalal claimed to be being attacked in broad daylight by a man she identified as Alphon - wearing an Alphon-like shortie raincoat - Alphon's two 'friends' from whom he regularly purchased almanacs claimed he was in their office.

Alphon provided the alibi the day after he was charged with the attack on Mrs Dalal.

[Black Rabbit]

Your arrogance, self-righteousness and smugness truly amaze me. I bet I'm far from the only one who believes this.This post of yours and the majority of your posts remind me of a farmer's field containing a hundred steers........

A LOAD of BULLOCKS !!

You sound like a scratched, whining record and feign indignation at every least opportunity. Grow up for goodness sake.

Gonna have to agree

[caz]

Caz, Alphon, did not have an alibi for the night.Ok,that doesnt make him the gunman,but given his "confession" he spells out a possible "motive" which was that the "Central Figure" had hired him to stop the affair between Valerie and his brother in law ,once and for all.

Hi Nats,

You'd have to explain the terms of this most irregular hiring.

Alphon, as he has been described by you and others, would be the last person in the known universe anyone in their right mind would 'hire', with a view to stopping a love affair. The gunman succeeded in stopping this affair all right: he murdered MG in cold blood, then raped but unaccountably failed to silence VS, the only witness. Would you have hired the unstable, loose-lipped Alphon for such a job? And if you had been that daft, would you still have paid him when he screwed up on such a monumental scale, and paid him so handsomely? It makes no sense I'm afraid. Alphon would have been dropped like a hot brick and any association with him severed.

Hanratty would have been such an easy target to have on hand as a "patsy".

What? So he was blood-typed for his compatability with the rapist (before or after it was known that Alphon would rape VS?) and watched day and night to make sure he wouldn't have a half decent alibi? Oh yes, it would have been an absolute doddle to set Hanratty up in the first place, knowing the police would play ball and manipulate VS into not identifying Alphon, but picking out their completely different "patsy", who would in turn play ball by not mentioning Rhyl when it could have made all the difference; and knowing the authorities would happily keep the kettle boiling right through to the DNA results and the lost appeal in 2002.

Pull the other leg, Nats. An easy target? I'll say he was easy. But nobody setting up an innocent man had the remotest right to expect it would be anything other than nigh on impossible to pull off at all, never mind with such consummate ease.

Alphon,in my view,had a schizoid personality.Several people who had known him well such as his landlady said he was a "loner";was interested in the occult and black magic;was a crusader- a man on a mission, a member of the fascist party, a loafer who had never had a proper job and crucially,a dead give away in fact,a "mummy"s boy".He is almost a classical definition.Its an incontrovertible fact that it is people who have this type of personality, form the biggest percentage of people who commit the cold blooded killings we read about oin newspapers.

Can you not hear yourself as a prosecution lawyer saying all this and being rightly torn to shreds for it? In any other scenario you'd be the first to join in! It's cruel and unusual speculation at best to accuse Alphon on such an extraordinarily shallow basis, and amounts to no more than the case against any oddball loner or fantasist who gets himself caught up in someone else's crime. Colin Stagg anyone? Timothy Evans? The first Ipswich Strangler suspect, before Steve Wright entered the frame?

c) Could the cartridge cases have been 'planted' in room 24 in order to incriminate Alpthon on the assumption that he would be identified that day in the ID parade?

d) Did the police already know that 'J Ryan' was J Hanratty - and a convicted criminal - before Alphon was ruled out by the ID parade and did they then simply slot Hanratty into the frame?

Again, where do people get this idea from that a petty rogue like Hanratty, plucked by nothing more than serendipity, should have been 'simply' slottable into this very specific frame, when they couldn't make Alphon fit, no matter how hard they squeezed? The only reasonable explanation for Jim fitting the frame so damned perfectly, from 1961 to this day, is that it was made for him, when he embarked on his first and last adventure with a loaded firearm.

e) How closely did the police investigate a possible link between the attack and the relationship between VS and MG? Did the police consider the possibility that VS may have been the original target - given that MG was about to leave his wife? Is this what they meant when they later siad they at first thought it was a 'gas meter job?'

Surely you jest, Limehouse. The gunman shot VS as an afterthought, realising she was a liability only after he had murdered her lover and raped her. And he couldn't even get that right, leaving her alive to tell the tale. And you think her dogged determination to survive, if only to see this man again in the dock, was all for nought, because she failed to see him again in either id parade?

-Paul Foot was permitted to view Alphon"s bank accounts after Alphon asked his bank in The Strand to disclose his 1961 bank account statements to Foot in 1967.They revealed that very large sums of money were paid in soon after he had been released by police in late September 1961.The sums are out of keeping with Alphon"s financial standing and way of life.They amounted to seven thousand five hundred pounds [in 1961 this would translate into between eight and nine hundred thousand pounds[£800,000 -£900,000---a comfortable three bedroomed house could be purchased for £2,000 in 1961].
Foot reckoned £2,500 was accounted for by newspaper sources but that,he stated would have been the absolute maximum he would have got from such sources given that his story,after release wasn"t really worth buying [£270,000].So a lot of money can not be accounted for.
Alphon himself claimed he received the money after carrying out the A6 murder.
Why was Alphon not questioned about these huge sums of money revealed in his October/November 1961 Bank Accounts, when he made his public confessions about being the A6 murderer?

Because nobody in their right mind would have paid someone like Alphon a single penny after the event, if they'd intially engaged him to do some minor frightening and he'd indulged in murder and rape instead, screwing up royally in the process then blabbing to all and sundry about it?

Can you really not see how wildly improbable and problematic the alternative scenarios are, compared with the oh so 'simple' slotting of a guilty Hanratty, DNA and all, into a crime frame of his own making?

Love,

Caz
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[Natalie Severn]

Hi Caz
2 points for starters:
Alphon was the first suspect in the A6 case.His paranoid behaviour had alerted guests to the possibility he was the A 6 killer.this was on August 26th.He provided the police with a bogus alibi of his mother on this occasion and as a result was released.19 days after the murder he was arrested as used cartridge cases were found at the VIenna Hotel where he had been on August 22 and had been sen late morning, dishevelled and distracted late morning-23rd. when V.S.later identified Michal Clark as her rapist Alphon was released. Hey presto! Abracadabra! Insp.Acott shuffled the cards and up popped Hanratty who had been at the Vienna on 21st !Wow!WOW!ta Miss Perkins of the Alexandra Hotel for spotting Alphon acting like the A 6 killer--- we know he later confessed but too late to do anything except cover our tracks ad infinitum.
If you believe Hanratty did it you would believe anything Caz. ...yes I mean it.
Love N x

[Natalie Severn]

Caz...... Excuse typos in above ...am using phone to post during break on motorway!xn

[Natalie Severn]

Hi again Caz! 2nd point:
I would have thought,given Alphon's confession that a sun of money amounting to nearly the equivalent today of £800,000 paid into his bank account so soon after the A6 murder and given he had been suspected of the killing until V.S. Identified Michal Clark instead of Alphon,that at the very least inquiries as to where it hadcome from ought to have been made by police.Blackmail is a very likely reason for such sums but without further information. Who knows but that what happened had been planned to happen-and possibly worse not less.at the very least Alphon is in there somewhere ...btw he was actually a rather astute nutcase nx

[RonIpstone]

A question for RonIpstone

Might you be able to throw some light on the above in what appears to be a significant negligence in this case on the part of the authorities?

Subsequent to him being released, Alphon ,the first suspect in the A6 murder,made a series of "confessions"-the first of which was taped by Jean Justice, and made as early as 1962.
Might you be able to offer an explanation as to why he was never interrogated by police about these especially huge sums of money paid into his Bank Account after the murder was committed in the Autumn of 1961,particularly once Paul Foot revealed that he had seen Alphon"s Bank Accounts,in the Strand and he had confessed to being the A6 killer .

Moreover,Meike Dalal did,positively identify Alphon as her attacker in September 1961,yet the police chose to believe the alibi provided by a fellow almanac door to door hawker-why was that do you think?

Hello Natalie or Norma,

I am not sure that Alphon was the 'first' suspect but he was certainly a suspect before Hanratty came on the scene.

The explanation as to why, if that had been the case, he was not interrogated by the Police on his 'confession' was that the Police were not investigating anything to which his confession related. They had concluded the investigation into the murder of Michael Gregsten which had resulted in the conviction of Sunny Jim. It would have been a waste of time and effort to interview the oddball Alphon further, he had already provided a satisfactory alibi and further investigations into what he may have subsequently said to contradict the alibi were most probably regarded as unnecessary.

Alphon was not prosecuted over the Meike Dalal incident due to insufficient evidence, namely they did not have evidence that would persuade a jury, even a Bedfordshire one, that Alphon was guilty beyond reasonable doubt.

Ron

[Natalie Severn]

Thanks Ron or RonIpstone

Sorry----I was not aware Alphon ever did provide a "satisfactory" alibi? He said that he met his mother in London on the evening of 22nd and this was accepted by Acott but later , his mother, in the presence of his father,agreed that this was not true.Isn"t that so?

As for the Vienna Hotel and the Nudds "alibi",well ofcourse that does depend on whether or not you want to believe any of the ludicrous nonsense provided by Nudds"s three different statements.Given your position of total mistrust about the alibi"s provided by the respectable Rhyl witnesses , I am most surprised at your inconsistency, here.Are we to understand then ,that you totally and unequivocally accept the word of a long term jail bird like Nudds,who changed his statements,one day giving Alphon an alibi the next destroying it totally,all this while at the very same time ,rejecting in total the word of all eleven of the Rhyl witnesses who eventually came forward to say they believed they had seen Hanratty in Rhyl on 22nd and 23rd August 1961?
The other,and probably much more reliable and honest witness at the Vienna Hotel, Juliana Galves, the manager, was not even present in the Vienna that night as it was her night off so she didn"t see Alphon arrive nor did she see him at breakfast on 23rd -which he did not take.She did not see him in fact until 11.30 am,on 23rd Augiust ,ie 8 or more hours after the murder ,when she said, she knocked on his door to remind him he needed to leave and saw him in a disturbed dishevelled state and alsonoticed a pair of black nylon gloves lying on top of some dirty clothing in a suitcase he was moving to close!
Norma

[Natalie Severn]

Ron or RonIpstone said:

Alphon was not prosecuted over the Meike Dalal incident due to insufficient evidence, namely they did not have evidence that would persuade a jury, even a Bedfordshire one, that Alphon was guilty beyond reasonable doubt.

So Meike Dalal"s positive identification of Alphon ,as the man who had attacked her and shouted that he was the A6 killer, was considered "insufficient evidence" yet Valerie"s positive identification of Hanratty ,which most people believe was the determining factor in the jury"s guilty verdict, is considered "sufficient " evidence----even though she identified another man in the first instance, drew up an identikit choosing a dark slide to compose his eyes and a hairline he could not even achieve no matter how hard he tried to brush back due to the widows peak , and a jaw line that resembles Alphon"s [in both the identikits] etc etc etc

Talk about inconsistency .

Ofcourse an all male,all white,middleclass, hang "em and flog "em jury such as Hanratty had to suffer, might well have let Alphon off,due to him having the right school tie!
But like Black Rabbit,I wonder why you suggest these people were "dim"---- they were somewhat prejudiced I believe, but surely you are not suggesting they too had mental health issues?

[Black Rabbit]

Alphon was not prosecuted over the Meike Dalal incident due to insufficient evidence, namely they did not have evidence that would persuade a jury, even a Bedfordshire one, that Alphon was guilty beyond reasonable doubt.

Ron

RonIpstone

I find your repeated, unwarranted, unjustified, bigotted, derogatory remarks regarding the people of Bedfordshire (my County) highly offensive.

[caz]

It's called free speech, Black Rabbit.

If it makes you feel any better, feel free to call 'the people' of Croydon (whatever you think that actually means) all the morons under the sun. You'd be in good company. I live in Croydon and many of 'the people' here are morons.

If you feel so dreadful about being associated with Bedfordshire, my advice would be to deny it. Pretend to be from Essex instead. Way more classy.

Love,

Caz
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