A6 Rebooted

[OneRound]

Hi Spitfire,

I don't do Facebook.

Anything particularly significant to report?

Love,

Caz
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Hi Caz,

Further to the comments reported by Spitfire, this one - from a Benny Lloyd - also caught my eye:
''Hanratty was in Rhyl - he showed a gun to several people in the West End Club by the Fairground. He left a day before the alibi he used. 100% guilty ''.

Best regards,

OneRound

[caz]

Cheers OneRound.

Hmmm, interesting. Hanratty was provably in London on 21st, but do we know what he was up to during the following day, if we presume he wasn't on a train to Liverpool? Could he have gone to Rhyl instead, with his new toy, before returning south by the evening of the 22nd, itching to try out its 'pulling' power?

Or might he have been in Rhyl the previous week, showing it off? He does seem to have done a fair bit of moving around from place to place and far and wide.

Have a great weekend all.

Love,

Caz
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[cobalt]

Further to the comments reported by Spitfire, this one - from a Benny Lloyd - also caught my eye:
''Hanratty was in Rhyl - he showed a gun to several people in the West End Club by the Fairground. He left a day before the alibi he used. 100% guilty ''.

A pity the prosecution was not able to track down Benny Lloyd before the trial in 1962 so that either he, or the rest of the crowd who witnessed Hanratty with the gun, could have established a link that was not fully established at the time.
Except it is safe to assume Benny Lloyd is reporting hearsay, and may not even have been alive at the time. His assumption that if Hanratty had a gun in Liverpool therefore he must have been the murderer, is a reminder of the limited logic of our fellow man.

[OneRound]

Further to the comments reported by Spitfire, this one - from a Benny Lloyd - also caught my eye:
''Hanratty was in Rhyl - he showed a gun to several people in the West End Club by the Fairground. He left a day before the alibi he used. 100% guilty ''.

A pity the prosecution was not able to track down Benny Lloyd before the trial in 1962 so that either he, or the rest of the crowd who witnessed Hanratty with the gun, could have established a link that was not fully established at the time.
Except it is safe to assume Benny Lloyd is reporting hearsay, and may not even have been alive at the time. His assumption that if Hanratty had a gun in Liverpool therefore he must have been the murderer, is a reminder of the limited logic of our fellow man.

Hi Cobalt,

I am in no position to comment on the validity or otherwise of Benny Lloyd's Facebook post. Simply, it just, as I said before, caught my eye.

I am surprised you see the need to protest so much.

Regards,

OneRound

[cobalt]

I hope I did not protest too much. Anything from a local perspective is always interesting, even if of dubious veracity. So thanks for putting it up. The failure to specify the type of gun being displayed in the club is quite telling, I think; criminals are usually very precise about weaponry. The story sounds like an urban legend that Liverpool police chief Bert Balmer would have been happy to spread about.

A bit like the one about the Kray twins arriving by train in Birmingham or Manchester or Liverpool (take your pick) and a posse of local mobsters (united for the occasion) fronting them off at the platform and sending them scurrying back to London. The Krays were never known to travel by train, and were home birds by instinct, but it makes a good tale.

[moste]

Does anybody remember if the remnants of the bullets fired 'through and through' were ever discovered? There were discussions some time ago about the possibility of the bullets whistling through the open window of the car, leading one to conclude that the trajectory of the bullets could not have been as miss Storrie had portrayed,( ie. from the back seat)
What did we deduce from this? was it simply the case that, no spent bullets were found but the scenario was accepted as miss Storrie had explained, just because... she was the only witness.
Also, we were shown men with metal detectors on the newsreel film footage, were any bullets that missed the lady ever recovered in order to confirm the statement that the killer fired numerous shots that missed her.

[NickB]

2 bullets were fired at Mike. Both these bullets were found in the car, one wedged in the floor and the other embedded in the glove compartment.

Then 4 bullets were fired at Valerie. After that the gun was reloaded; all 6 cartridge cases emptied at this point were found at the scene.

Then 3 further bullets were fired at Valerie. In hospital 2 bullets were removed from under Valerie’s skin - the remaining 5 were found at the scene.

Valerie had 5 bullet wounds, so 2 bullets had missed her.

When the gun was recovered it had been fully reloaded.

[cobalt]

A reminder of how cold blooded the attempted execution of Valerie Storie was.
It lacks the authority of a professional killer who would presumably have shot from closer range and had no need to re-load.

Any thoughts on why the murderer subsequently fully re-loaded the murder weapon?

[OneRound]

A reminder of how cold blooded the attempted execution of Valerie Storie was.
It lacks the authority of a professional killer who would presumably have shot from closer range and had no need to re-load.

Any thoughts on why the murderer subsequently fully re-loaded the murder weapon?

Hi Cobalt - as you say, the attempted murder lacks the authority of a professional killer. A badly bungled attempt.

I don't see anything particularly significant concerning the murderer subsequently fully re-loading the murder weapon. To the extent that he gave it thought, my take would be that he had further bullets and wanted to be immediately and fully prepared in case he had to shoot again; for example, in escaping a possible arrest. There again, the re-loading could have been done without almost any thought - just an action (or reaction) stemming from his awareness that the gun was no longer fully loaded and him having spare bullets.

Am I missing your point?

Best regards,

OneRound

[cobalt]

Hi OneRound,

No, I had no particular thoughts on the matter and was genuinely interested in any suggestions. What you say seems sensible enough to me; after shooting Gregsten, the killer has crossed a line and, consciously or unconsciously, sees himself as a desperate outlaw ready for a James Cagney type shoot out with the cops. That explains re-loading the weapon.

On the drive back to London (whatever route was taken) the killer is relieved not to be followed by screeching sirens, and realizes that with both the victims dead (as he presumably believes) there is nothing to tie him to the crime and he might avoid the gallows. So, no need for a shoot-out. He can park the car in a London side street and calmly walk to the nearest underground. On the surface that scenario makes sense, and possibly remains the most likely train of events.

There are a couple of problems though. First of all, the killer could not have anticipated that the subsequent forensic examination of the car would turn up absolutely no significant evidence, so even when walking away he would have feared some incriminating fingerprint/hair/fibre evidence perhaps being left behind.

Second, the murder weapon was later found on a London bus, a place the person hiding it knew would be discovered within a matter of days. It would obviously have made more sense to ditch the gun somewhere on the route home- a river, a culvert- where it might have lain undiscovered for years. Perhaps the anxiety of the killer was such that he could not think clearly as he drove, but he certainly missed an opportunity to dispose of the weapon.

In fact, it would have made more sense simply to leave the gun in the car rather than plant it on a bus. The gun was a link between him and the murder, as was the car of course, so the quicker he broke these links the safer he would be. It would have made better sense to break both these links at the same time, since police linking the gun to the car was an inevitability anyway. No point taking the risk of carrying a gun and a sizeable amount of ammunition across the city, a weapon which has just been used in a brutal act of murder, simply to stash it under the back seat of a bus. Hanratty, for example, was a well-known ‘face’ to the police who I assume must have ‘pulled’ him occasionally on suspicion.

Do we know much about the murder weapon before it was used in this harrowing case? Was it ever used before in pursuance of a crime? Who owned it, or even who was rumoured to own it? Who was it originally sold to when manufactured?

[NickB]

I don’t know the history of the gun, but there is a photo of it here with an ammunition box.

[OneRound]

Hi again Cobalt,

As to the problems you highlight, it does seem remarkably odd that the car could be so thoroughly cleaned as to remove all meaningful forensic evidence and particularly when the cleaner(s) must have been working at breakneck speed in order that it could then be immediately driven on and abandoned. I recall Graham highlighting concerns as to the forensic testing and nil findings.

As regards your suggestion for the gun to have been ditched along the route to where the car was abandoned or even left in the car, I agree that would have been more sensible than under the backseat of a London bus. We are though looking at matters with hindsight and, as you touch on, a calmness which the killer might by then have lost.

Two further aspects which may have influenced the killer in delaying the hiding of the gun and the hiding place ultimately chosen:

1. If the killer had borrowed the gun, he might have felt compelled to ask the lender what to do with it before being told in no uncertain terms, ''get rid of it, get rid of it anywhere, just do it now!''.

2. There might just have been an element of low life cunning involved in where the gun was left. It was not certain that the gun would be found by the bus cleaner. If the gun had been found by a petty criminal looking for discarded swag (as did happen), he might have made the potentially disastrous decision to keep it. If arrested some time later for some other crime and the gun found on him or at his gaff, I'm not convinced how readily acceptable would have been his cry of ''I got it from the backseat of a bus, Mr Acott, honest!''.

Best regards,

OneRound

[moste]

A reminder of how cold blooded the attempted execution of Valerie Storie was.
It lacks the authority of a professional killer who would presumably have shot from closer range and had no need to re-load.

Any thoughts on why the murderer subsequently fully re-loaded the murder weapon?

I'm puzzled by the whole chain of events. Gregsten being dispatched with the tried and proven method of an assassin.
Then Storrie, attacked with what can only be imagined as some kind of frenzy,
I believe something happened after the Gregsten murder, either during the sexual event or immediately after, that sent this nutcase into a rage. She is supposed to have said 'he said to me after the rape," you haven't done this very often have you"? but maybe it was her that said that, and just to complete the insult belittled his manhood. Who knows, I don't believe, his intention was to kill her at all initially. If it was on the other hand, simply that he decided that since she had seen him in the headlights of a passing car, he was going to have to kill her, then after forcing her to pull Gregsten out of the car and over to the edge of the lane, I think he would have just shot her the same way he had with Gregsten.
I was musing over 'why didn't the killer leave the gun in the car, then realised you had alluded to it. Good point, rid himself of everything associated with the crime, then jump on a train at Redbridge. people might say 'ohh he was probably in a panic,' but you don't stay in a panic that long.
I've always thought the gun under the seat thing, smacked of 'Mr. France skulduggery.
Interesting, Nick reminding us of the final resting place of the two bullets that killed Gregsten. I have in my pc library a Photo taken by the eminent pathologist Keith Simpson, passed on by a friendly poster. It depicts the close up effects that the two shots had on the head, on entering ,and on the other side of the head on exiting. My interest lies in the trajectory of the bullets, since it can be seen that the both bullets ran a very straight course all the way through and were the same distance apart on exiting, its hard to figure how the spent bullets wound up where they did, given the information from Storie re Gregstens quarter turn ,(he would have been pretty much facing her when the gun was fired,)people may say' ricochet!, but ricochet off what? The bullets should have been embedded in and around the central clock of the dash board.
Speaking of ricochet, it was reported that Storie was operated on at the time of Simpsons visit to her in Guys hospital, he maintained that 'Valerie had two of the bullets removed from her body by Doctor Rennie, on sept 22nd. 2 days later on the 24th she was fit enough to do the Alphon ID parade.
some reports said the operation to remove the bullets which were just under the skin, was performed by local anaesthetic.
Just under the skin ,local anaesthetic? Referencing the 32 caliber weapon that had killed Gregsten 3 weeks before, Simpson in Bedford hospital had stated in his book, that "She had similar"(that's right he said similar) "through and through wounds, one of the neck, and four drilled- in holes in over her left shoulder and down over her arm. I thought probably all five shots, which were in a line, had been fired in quick succession and beyond arms reach" he stated "she was lucky to be alive". I on the other hand deduced she was very unlucky to have been paralysed, the one bullet that missed her arm and passed through her neck, clipping her spinal chords was the only bullet to do any serious damage.

[Alfie]

It would obviously have made more sense to ditch the gun somewhere on the route home ... [or] to leave the gun in the car rather than plant it on a bus.

Hi cobalt

I think it all depends on when the gunman heard that he'd left behind a witness. Until then he'd have thought there was nothing to link him to the murder and therefore little risk in holding onto the weapon.

The fact that he didn't ditch the gun in the Thames or some place similar suggests to me that he was holed up somewhere and didn't hear the news till the following day. And by then time was short. He had to get up to Liverpool to establish an alibi. No time to get down to the Thames (where a person chucking a gun in the river would hardly go unnoticed) or to take a trip into the countryside. Quicker and easier to just hop on a bus and use the usual hiding place. Sorted.

Except it wasn't of course. Poor Jim just happened to pick a bus whose cleaner made a habit of checking under the back seat.

[caz]

Two further aspects which may have influenced the killer in delaying the hiding of the gun and the hiding place ultimately chosen:

1. If the killer had borrowed the gun, he might have felt compelled to ask the lender what to do with it before being told in no uncertain terms, ''get rid of it, get rid of it anywhere, just do it now!''.

2. There might just have been an element of low life cunning involved in where the gun was left. It was not certain that the gun would be found by the bus cleaner. If the gun had been found by a petty criminal looking for discarded swag (as did happen), he might have made the potentially disastrous decision to keep it. If arrested some time later for some other crime and the gun found on him or at his gaff, I'm not convinced how readily acceptable would have been his cry of ''I got it from the backseat of a bus, Mr Acott, honest!''.

Good points, OneRound - and Alfie.

As you know, I have also speculated that Hanratty left the gun in one of his usual hiding places - the London bus - just before haring up to Liverpool, with the express purpose of putting as much distance, but as little time as possible between the two events. As it happened it would nearly have worked, since the discovery was made in London at around the same time he was sending that telegram from Liverpool. Assuming he was the gunman, and never set out to use it, it was all about setting up alibis for himself from that night onwards: one for all the time spent with the couple; another for the drive back down to London; and one for luck - the deliberate disposal of the gun there. If there had been reasonable doubt that he could have been in London at all that week, after the Monday, there would have been reasonable doubt that he was ever on that bus, hiding the murder weapon.

Naturally, had your petty criminal found and made off with the gun instead, Hanratty would have been better off in the long run if it was later found on that person, or found with that person's fingerprints on it.

Love,

Caz
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