A6 Rebooted

[Black Rabbit]

It's called free speech, Black Rabbit.

I think you'll find it's called 'DISCRIMINATION'

[Black Rabbit]

If you feel so dreadful about being associated with Bedfordshire, my advice would be to deny it.

Where do you get that idea from???

On the contrary, I'm proud to be from Bedfordshire, John Bunyans own County.

[caz]

when V.S.later identified Michal Clark as her rapist Alphon was released. Hey presto! Abracadabra!

So how is that evidence that Alphon was the man who raped VS?

What magic trick could Acott have used to pull that one out of the hat and distract her from the man who supposedly spent hours with her in a tiny car before raping and shooting her?

I adore your funny little joke about me being the gullible one. I would simply ask you why you believe Alphon, the hopeless liar, who only claimed to be involved when there was no chance of it coming back on him and every chance of making big bucks if enough gullible twits fell for it. That's precisely what happened, isn't it? With no hint of any incriminating evidence, either from a reliable source or the mouth of the conman himself, he did very nicely out of it thank you, while knowing his 'confession' would leave him as safe as houses in the long run. There's usually someone linked to any high profile case, who sticks around like glue when there's the chance of a risk-free gain. The genuinely guilty tend to confess for real and face real consequences, or get the hell out and stay out when someone else has paid for their crime. Do you know of any other example of a guilty man playing at confessing in a bid to keep the world guessing?

I believe Hanratty did it because the victim is certain; any innocent man with a hap'orth of sense would have shouted Rhyl from the rooftops had he really been there; and the only forensic evidence screams support for the victim's certainty, while not even whispering the name of the man she didn't know from Adam (Alphon), never mind anyone else. I also believe that the police would have made a case against Alphon if that had been possible, and it would have been made to stick if he had actually been guilty - but fallen apart otherwise.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Where do you get that idea from???

On the contrary, I'm proud to be from Bedfordshire, John Bunyans own County.

I don't really get the 'pride' thing, concerning where one just happens to be from. What about the poor sods born in dog poo alley?

But if you are proud of your fate, why does it matter what anyone else would think of it? Why so touchy if you are the lucky one?

Genuinely mystified of Croydon
X

[caz]

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

I don't understand this. You are saying that Alphon took it upon himself to go out with a loaded gun, use it to get in that car, shoot the man dead, rape the man's lover then shoot her and leave her for dead, then went on to blackmail someone else, who had done none of those things, and to the tune of £800,000 in today's money?? And then he blabbed to all and sundry about the payments??? Are you having me on?

Again, have you any examples of anything like this ever happening in the real world? Alphon would have been left alone with the consequences of his crime and your mythical blackmail victim would simply have washed his hands of the buffoon. What could he do - go to the police and whinge about Mr X not paying him what he was due? Come on Nats, you have a far better brain in your head than this.

Love,

Caz
X

PS By the way, I don't think the jury members were all that dim for convicting Hanratty. But each to his own.

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Caz,

So how is that evidence that Alphon was the man who raped VS?

It wasn"t although it is very interesting that when Valerie was questioned by Michael Sherrard she agreed she had said she though Michael Clark had "looked like Alphon".

What magic trick could Acott have used to pull that one out of the hat and distract her from the man who supposedly spent hours with her in a tiny car before raping and shooting her?

The mere fact that,in a capital case, Valerie was able to mistakenly "identify" a man who she had thought "looked a bit like Alphon" as her rapist ought,I would have thought, give pause for thought.I mean this wasn"t a game of "Blind Man"s Buff".Either Valerie was "certain beyond all doubt" or she wasn"t and in my view the fact she identified another man,in the first instance, is evidence that she was not certain of what the man looked like.I am not blaming Valerie for that,I can understand that it must have been difficult to remember what the man looked like since she only caught "a fleeting glimpse" of his face in the headlights of a passing car.Listening to his voice for hours would not help her to gain certainty of his identity when she heard him speaking in a situation of major stress and fear.

There's usually someone linked to any high profile case, who sticks around like glue when there's the chance of a risk-free gain

Yes, and its often the murderer,who needs to relive the event.

I believe Hanratty did it because the victim is certain; any innocent man with a hap'orth of sense would have shouted Rhyl from the rooftops had he really been there;

re Valerie"s identification;Victim certainty is not proof Caz and has been shown time and again to be fraught with error.
I don"t see why Hanratty had to "immediately shout Rhyl from the roof tops" Who did he know in Rhyl who would stand up in a murder trial and say they had seen him in Rhyl ? Ok there were people who believe they saw him in Rhyl,all eleven of them but he knew none of them personally and couldn"t remember their names or the name of the street---though he described Kinmel Street in his cell to his solicitor with total accuracy and remembered exactly correct details the layout of Mrs Jones"s B&B including the front entrance direct from the street and the back yard that was "paved" and the gren bath that was in the attic and that for two nights it cost him 25 shillings. Hanratty himself said,"I rang Acott and told him I could provide an alibi in liverpool.In the event none of his mates wanted to turn up and testify on oath at his murder trial they were in the habit of receiving Hanratty"s or anyone else"s "stolen goods" .And actually,he did,in so far as Mrs Dinwoody was concerned.She agreed she had tried to help a young man who had called in her shop asking for directions.OK she also said she knew it was 21st August because her granddaughter was with her at the time, helping her when the man called but that she was not with her on the Tuesday and that was why she "knew" it was Monday.However Paul Foot discovered that her granddaughter was with her between 4 and 5 pm on the 22nd August also---the crucial time,and that her friend and the granddaughter confirmed it.They told Foot that although that day she did not serve as a helper,she did go behind the counter to sell sweets to children.
As far as this LCN DNA goes I suspect that broken vial had a lot to answer for.
Nx

[Natalie Severn]

[QUOTE=caz;168557]I don't understand this. You are saying that Alphon took it upon himself to go out with a loaded gun, use it to get in that car, shoot the man dead, rape the man's lover then shoot her and leave her for dead, then went on to blackmail someone else, who had done none of those things, and to the tune of £800,000 in today's money?? And then he blabbed to all and sundry about the payments??? Are you having me on?[QUOTE/]

Caz, I am suggesting Alphon may have been assigned a task and that that task went pear shaped.Only he and the guy who hired him and possibly France [and possibly someone else France knew], knew about the deal ,so yes,Alphon could have blackmailed the guy if he didn"t want to pay him.Moreover, Alphon did not blab initially, at all. He kept very quiet until he knew Hanratty was going to be hanged.

Alphon has,as I have said before,all the traits of a schizoid personality---the very personality that is required to execute such crimes in cold blood as there is an inbuilt sang froid and a lot of willingness to shed blood on behalf of some fanatical "cause" such as fascism or in this case "immorality".Like any other personality the person can be tipped into breakdown by sufficient stress and I believe that may have been what happened since the man "crossed the line" and lapsed into talking gibberish for five hours in that car that was going nowhere. This is absolutely symptomatic of someone on the edge of breakdown.Alphon "lost it" as Juliana Galves and Miss Perkins and others witnessed. But he recovered and once he returned to a stabler environment and realised an innocent man might die for the A6 fiasco he tried to make amends---whatever the role he played,Alphon is in there somewhere I am convinced of it.
Some of this is classic, text book stuff .The sharp conscience, the chillingly emotionless personality,Alphon the phone pest .Oddball behaviour but punctuated with astute deals .

Nx

[Black Rabbit]

I don't really get the 'pride' thing, concerning where one just happens to be from. What about the poor sods born in dog poo alley?

But if you are proud of your fate, why does it matter what anyone else would think of it? Why so touchy if you are the lucky one?

Genuinely mystified of Croydon
X

Please accept my humblest apologies for being offended by insults!

[RonIpstone]

[QUOTE=Natalie Severn;168580]

Oddball behaviour but punctuated with astute deals .

... but not punctuated with apostrophes.

[Limehouse]

[QUOTE=RonIpstone;168617]

... but not punctuated with apostrophes.

As ever Ron - you add so much to the debate.

[RonIpstone]

[QUOTE=Limehouse;168645]

As ever Ron - you add so much to the debate.

All the quotes in our posts have become out of sync. We are attributing the quote to person posting in the previous post to the quote. It's (it"s) like the Two Ronnies' Mastermind sketch, answering the previous question to the one asked.

I now know how Jim felt fending off Acott's questioning. He was giving the alibi he had previously thought of, not the one currently in his mind.

[Limehouse]

[QUOTE=RonIpstone;168663]

All the quotes in our posts have become out of sync. We are attributing the quote to person posting in the previous post to the quote. It's (it"s) like the Two Ronnies' Mastermind sketch, answering the previous question to the one asked.

I now know how Jim felt fending off Acott's questioning. He was giving the alibi he had previously thought of, not the one currently in his mind.

That is actually quite funny Ron (well the first bit mainly) and it has quite cheered me up - so thanks.

[caz]

Hi Nats,

When I mentioned people linked to high profile cases, who stick around like glue when there’s a chance of a risk-free gain, I was obviously not including murderers whose only gain would be to ‘relive the event’, which would hardly amount to a risk-free treat, back in 1961/2, when a verifiable confession would have meant a one-way ticket to swing. So how could my observation possibly apply to a guilty Alphon?

Alphon was a murder suspect, first and foremost, but was cleared. He evidently enjoyed the infamy so much that he played on it and made a small fortune on the back of the sensational and controversial nature of the case. This is not a typical case of a murderer needing to relive his crime and weighing up the risks. It would have been suicide had Hanratty not been charged and found guilty, and had the evidence swung in Alphon’s direction instead.

You always detest your own words being taken out of context, so I wonder why you have done it to me here? I gave you my main reason for believing Hanratty did it beyond reasonable doubt, and it was three-fold, ie the certainty of the victim plus the subsequent forensic support for her certainty (and no forensic support at any time for anyone else’s guilt) plus the identified man’s unaccountable failure to state from the off that he was in Rhyl and therefore couldn’t have been the gunman.

Yet you came back with:

‘re Valerie"s identification;Victim certainty is not proof Caz and has been shown time and again to be fraught with error’

implying that I had claimed it was proof, by itself. That wasn’t fair of you, Nats.

As for who would have stood up in Hanratty’s murder trial and said they had seen him in Rhyl, I should have that was obvious. You yourself believe that no fewer than eleven people had seen or talked to him there on the crucial date, and they would just be the ones who had cause to remember him and recognise him as the man then on trial for his life. What would you do, if you needed an alibi to save your life, and you had not one but two, because you had been to Liverpool on dodgy, but far from murderous business, with dodgy associates who were likely to be wary of speaking up for you, then gone on to Rhyl and interacted innocently with that many strangers? Would you shrug and say to yourself: “Well there’s no chance of a single one of those people in Rhyl remembering me and saving my bacon, so I won’t even bother mentioning my stay there”? I’m afraid it amounts to only one of two things: a stupid and fatal omission when asked to account for all his movements; or a desperate and fatal lie when he couldn’t account for his movements truthfully.

If Alphon was assigned a ‘task’, it went more than ‘pear shaped’, Nats. He took it to vile extremes with a crime punishable by death. How on earth could he have gone on to blackmail the person who had hired him, whatever the original task might have involved? You are not thinking this one through. What would a guilty Alphon have had on this person, that was anywhere near as bad as what was in store for him if he revealed what he had really been hired for? The payments were made to Alphon after he had become a major suspect in the case. I have seen no evidence for a down payment, for example. So what could he possibly have threatened a blackmail victim with, without threatening his own neck in the process?

Love,

Caz
X

[Natalie Severn]

Thanks Caz,

Alphon was a murder suspect, first and foremost, but was cleared. He evidently enjoyed the infamy so much that he played on it and made a small fortune on the back of the sensational and controversial nature of the case. This is not a typical case of a murderer needing to relive his crime and weighing up the risks. It would have been suicide had Hanratty not been charged and found guilty, and had the evidence swung in Alphon’s direction instead.

I accept that this is one scenario,indeed it may be THE scenario, but what seems to escape you,Caz, is that Alphon demonstrated on several occasions that he had a sharp conscience concerning the death of Hanratty.We don"t yet know why that was but his behaviour may not have followed a course which you recognise as rational or logical . It is my contention ,as I have stated before,that Alphon had all the symptoms of a Schizoid personality and that he bordered at times ,as Miss Perkins and others at the Alexandre Hotel witnessed on the 23rd to 27th August 1961, on the bizarre and frightening-all quite in keeping with typical paranoid schizophrenic behaviour during a psychotic episode [or one that borders on a psychotic episode].This is a recognised medical condition as you know and such a condition or state of mind may not follow the laws of logic .The person may be responding to his voices or commandsand such orders from his higher power are likely to contain pretty bizarre signals and commands .
In other words,Alphon could easily have rationalised making money out of his arrest etc while ensuring he avoided the noose by fudging details of his confession.For all we know he may have been commandedby his voices to confess!!!! It may have had very little to do with enjoying publicity or anything logical.
Best
Norma

[Natalie Severn]

Yet you came back with:

‘re Valerie"s identification;Victim certainty is not proof Caz and has been shown time and again to be fraught with error’

implying that I had claimed it was proof, by itself. That wasn’t fair of you, Nats.

My apologies, Caz.All I can say is that it wasn"t intended.
I don"t accept the forensics on a piece of cloth,found after 30 years,that had been cut from knickers that were handled by numbers of people in November 1961, at Ampthill magistrates Court where they were carried to and fro as exhibits among other exhibits,the fragment of cloth cut from them at the end of December 1961 , later being wrapped in cellophane-a porous fibre and put in a brown paper envelope and kept in a file where a rubber stopper and a broken vial were found---thought to have contained a liquid wash of seminal fluid.
There were absolutely no forensics to link Hanratty to the murder car.
nx