A6 Rebooted

[moste]

No, I have had no further news Moste about Roger Matthews. It is my understanding that several years ago Roger was planning to write an autobiography in which he was intending to reveal some of the crucial findings his investigative team had uncovered in their searching inquiry into the A6 Murder case which led them to their firm belief that James Hanratty was totally innocent of the murder of Michael Gregsten. Being the conscientious and honest policeman he was, he was in effect about to 'rock the police boat', It seems that much external pressure was applied to him from within the police force, not to go ahead with his book if he wanted to safeguard his pension rights. Consequently Roger found himself placed in a very unenviable prediament. The autobiography never materialised.

Well ,Sad, but thanks for this anyway.

[Sherlock Houses]

Anything new here SH ?

No, I have had no further news Moste about Roger Matthews. It is my understanding that several years ago Roger was planning to write an autobiography in which he was intending to reveal some of the crucial findings his investigative team had uncovered in their searching inquiry into the A6 Murder case which led them to their firm belief that James Hanratty was totally innocent of the murder of Michael Gregsten. Being the conscientious and honest policeman he was, he was in effect about to 'rock the police boat', It seems that much external pressure was applied to him from within the police force, not to go ahead with his book if he wanted to safeguard his pension rights. Consequently Roger found himself placed in a very unenviable prediament. The autobiography never materialised.

[gallicrow]

It was pretty obvious who the bloodstains belonged to so there was no need to present swabs from this at the trial to show that Gregsten had been murdered in the car.
The police would have been after semen, hair or fibres from clothes left by the rapist/murderer. No such evidence was presented at the trial, so either there wasn't any, or there was and it didn't match Hanratty, and so was discarded.

[ansonman]

if you zoom into the photo you can see the extent of bloodstains on the floor of the passenger seat and to the back of the passenger seat and floor beneath. This was hardly a professional post crime valet of the interior and so one would have assumed that there must have been DNA available and yet none appears to have been found.

[ansonman]

Photos of the inside of the car were published in Sticklers book "The long silence" last year. One would not think that a murder took place in it.

[cobalt]

William Lee was an interesting witness but no more than that. As I understand he only contacted the police regarding the registration number after it had been broadcast on TV. He was unable to find the original piece of paper he had scribbled down the number on. I think he was an honest man but like Valerie Storie, maybe his evidence was not as strong as we like to think.

The pom pom hat introduces a Monty Python element into the crime. Why was it worn, if at all? Was it to hide Hanratty's appalling hair dye? But why do this in darkness? There are other dubious witnesses who can confirm the pom pom hat with the car. And were no follicles retrieved, as you have suggested should have been? No one on this site has ever seen a photo of the intriguing pom pom hat, in either colour or black and white, as far as I know. Yet its existence is acknowledged. Quite perplexing , as is the lack of DNA from the murder car itself. No photos have emerged of that either so far as I am aware.

Unlike the famous handkerchief, it seems the pom pom is immune to DNA. Every time Caz brings up the handkerchief in future, I will feel obliged to mention the pom pom hat. What happened to it?

[djw]

Buddle writes

William Lee was an HGV lorry driver and on 23rd August at around 6.30am was driving his lorry south on the A6 approximately 100 miles north of Bedford when a Morris Minor car pulled out from a junction causing him to take evasive action to avoid a collision.
So outraged was Mr Lee that he followed the car noting its registration number. Stopping for a break he learned of the murder which had occured further south on the A6 and the number of the car involved. He called the police and gave a statement. The CCRC discovered this statement in 1998 and Mr Lee was traced and interviewed. He repeated verbatim what he had said in his original statement including the fact that the driver of the Morris Minor had been wearing a green woollen hat with a pom pom on it.
Later in their investigations the CCRC obtained a file containing photographs which included coloured images of the interior of the car and the boot. When those photographs are enhanced and enlarged, a green woollen hat with a pom pom on it, exactly as described in Mr Lee's statement to Derbyshire police in 1961, could be seen in the boot of the car.

Is this discussed anywhere else? Woffinden doubts some of the eyewitnesses to the getaway journey (Skillet, Trower, Blackhall). Perhaps Matthews can advise if any dyed hair was on the hat. Also, I previously mentioned this, but it would be interesting to see what time of train to Liverpool that Matthews thought that Hanratty took.

[cobalt]

djw,

The politics of road building was raised a few years back as a possible motive in the A6 Case. Rather than being honest civil servants about to blow the lid on dodgy contracts or dubious safety certificates, the theory was that Mr. Gregsten and Ms, Storie were attempting a bit of blackmail to help fund their setting up house together.

It remains no more than that: just a theory. There is nothing I have been able to find that would support that line of thinking. Nothing as suspicious as what are known as the ‘Marconi Murders’ which many believe might be linked to industrial espionage.

From what little can gather, Matthews seems to have concluded that the motive in the A6 Case was domestic rather than political.

[moste]

Quote::. What was the great secret that Valerie Storie nearly died for and took to her grave when in a wheelchair? At no time in her reasonably long life did the political fog clear so that she could voice the greater truth? I think you are looking for a high level political motivation that does not seem to exist.

If not a high level political motivation ,then lets have the Mathews report! We'll never get it because it wouldn't be in any party's interest. All of the years of dragging feet and procrastination's by both main party's home secretary's, until some bright bugger could come up with some phony scientific way of proving it was Hanratty after all.
The utter anguish that Mr.Hanratty and his family were put through all those years was pure politics. Its very possible there is a strong link between the will of the politicians in this regard, and Stories secret

[caz]

The biggest change to the fabric of British society from the 1960s to today is arguably car dependency - perhaps it was in the interests of Big Oil/British motoring to usher in this era. Their man Ernest Marples operated at the very top, cabinet-level, and a couple of dedicated independent-minded civil servants in the Road Research Laboratory in Slough were not going to get in their way. An unfavourable report could have undermined plans for vast amounts of motorway construction, and ‘upgrading’ of roads (including the A6). The affairs of Gregsten were an open secret at work, and a perfect opportunity to threaten, blackmail or discredit him. A petty crook would be hired from the seedy London underworld to scare the couple. Any fallout could be portrayed as a romantic entanglement gone wrong. At midnight, the hired man would report back at the Regent Oil garage near London airport. Things didn’t go to plan, the gunman, in his stupidity, arrived with the couple still hostage, only shooting them much later, at a quiet low-traffic layby of the A6. It was a traffic surveyor who rescued Valerie (and later lied about with false manufactured evidence in court) and a false witness provided from another petrol station. The picture was subsequently painted (in a press reliant on motoring advertising) of a car-less hitchhiker or car-thief boy-racer who could not use manual gearboxes, travelling on foot/train, to kidnap and murder responsible motorists and road scientists planning a motor rally followed by a long joyride. The Home Office subsequent enquiries were leant on by the compromised Ministry of Transport protecting the cover up, road building proceeded unimpeded and sustainable transport was kept out of Britain for decades since.
This isn’t a serious theory of mine for the A6 murder, but I hope as a conspiracy theory it is creative and consistent.

Thank Christ it wasn't a serious theory, djw! It was certainly creative, and I was going to say something about it all being in the small print.

Love,

Caz
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[caz]

Caz is still pushing her cornfield narrative but it is barely worth reply. A villain from Shakespearean tragedy, armed and extremely dangerous, makes an appearance in a cornfield to steal a car. It’s like a character from Macbeth has wandered on to the set of a Terry and June sitcom. It’s not far off satire. Be careful we don’t go down the same route.

I thought it was more Valerie's narrative than mine, cobalt.

But what did she know? She was only there. We were not.

Love,

Caz
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[djw]

The biggest change to the fabric of British society from the 1960s to today is arguably car dependency - perhaps it was in the interests of Big Oil/British motoring to usher in this era. Their man Ernest Marples operated at the very top, cabinet-level, and a couple of dedicated independent-minded civil servants in the Road Research Laboratory in Slough were not going to get in their way. An unfavourable report could have undermined plans for vast amounts of motorway construction, and ‘upgrading’ of roads (including the A6). The affairs of Gregsten were an open secret at work, and a perfect opportunity to threaten, blackmail or discredit him. A petty crook would be hired from the seedy London underworld to scare the couple. Any fallout could be portrayed as a romantic entanglement gone wrong. At midnight, the hired man would report back at the Regent Oil garage near London airport. Things didn’t go to plan, the gunman, in his stupidity, arrived with the couple still hostage, only shooting them much later, at a quiet low-traffic layby of the A6. It was a traffic surveyor who rescued Valerie (and later lied about with false manufactured evidence in court) and a false witness provided from another petrol station. The picture was subsequently painted (in a press reliant on motoring advertising) of a car-less hitchhiker or car-thief boy-racer who could not use manual gearboxes, travelling on foot/train, to kidnap and murder responsible motorists and road scientists planning a motor rally followed by a long joyride. The Home Office subsequent enquiries were leant on by the compromised Ministry of Transport protecting the cover up, road building proceeded unimpeded and sustainable transport was kept out of Britain for decades since.
This isn’t a serious theory of mine for the A6 murder, but I hope as a conspiracy theory it is creative and consistent.

[cobalt]

OK Moste, but we are creating more problems than we solve. What was the great secret that Valerie Storie nearly died for and took to her grave when in a wheelchair? At no time in her reasonably long life did the political fog clear so that she could voice the greater truth? I think you are looking for a high level political motivation that does not seem to exist.

Maybe there was protection for Alphon and Ewer due to their assumed right wing political affiliations. Ewer’s war record is a matter of assumption since nothing has ever surfaced. Maybe Alphon’s father, modestly described as a clerk at Scotland Yard, was stamping visas for ex-Nazis fleeing the Berlin Wall, a guilty secret that no one in the UK government wanted to admit. Bu that, even if valid, could only explain the cover up: it does not explain the crime itself.

Caz is still pushing her cornfield narrative but it is barely worth reply. A villain from Shakespearean tragedy, armed and extremely dangerous, makes an appearance in a cornfield to steal a car. It’s like a character from Macbeth has wandered on to the set of a Terry and June sitcom. It’s not far off satire. Be careful we don’t go down the same route.

[moste]

Cobalt. It only makes no sense if we accept the time frames offered up by Valerie.For instance,let us imagine for a moment that Gregsten had arranged a meeting with someone.,The whole thing may have been over by midnight, Gregsten may have been up to something sinister and was lured away to his death.Why Deadmans Hill,? because the man lived in Bedford Why 5 hrs. ? Because it had to look like a deranged crack pot was taking them on an excursion all over Gods creation. (If they had sped up to Bedford in two hours it would look too purposeful )Why the lies? Because she was protecting a secret which would go with her to her grave. What secret? Well Acott knew it well enough, and so did the Home Office Therefore ,we will all be enlightened one day but will have to wait 75 years or some such time to find out,by which time no one on this planet will give a hoot in hell! Anyhow, this is all a 'for instance'
Caz. Even a passing consideration of how Hanratty moved around tells us that he is a very poor candidate for the accepted story of a 5 hr. jaunt. Ants in his pants,has to be on the go, is my impression. I'm not convinced by the 'Alphon did it crew' , but he would be much more the type than Jim.

[caz]

The business of the car in the field and Hanratty being in the area checking out pastures new. Having done the necessary reconnoitering and now, since the time had got away from him ,and being now armed with his new gun ,he spots a lonely car in a field , and rather than bullying the people out of the vehicle, so that he now has wheels back to London, he goes on this fantastic 5 hour bla bla bla .I mean lets dream up some much more likely conspiracy theory.

How would 'this fantastic 5 hour bla bla bla' make more sense with Alphon or A.N.Other?

Yes, the stick-up man had wheels if he had wanted to drive himself away, after scaring the couple and leaving them in the field with no transport and no money. But if you recall, he had to ask Valerie how the gears worked, after having watched Michael driving all that way, so it may not have been as simple as you suggest.

I also don't think the man was very bright. Either that, or he didn't have a specific plan in mind when he spotted the car in the field, and just saw some vague opportunity opening up ahead, due to his criminal instincts and car stealing experience, plus the gun he could use to his advantage - whatever that advantage might turn out to be. It was short-lived in the end, because his lack of experience with live victims and a lethal weapon led to his failure to finish off the only witness with it.

Love,

Caz
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