A6 Rebooted

[Graham]

According to Woffinden, the gun was found on the bus by Edwin Cooke at about 8.40pm on Thursday 24 August. That is, at about the same time Hanratty sent his telegram to the France family from Liverpool. Obviously the gun could have been planted on the bus at any time during the preceding approx. 24 hours, which would have given Hanratty time to plant the gun and get to Liverpool.

As far as I recall, the possibility of the gun being placed in the bus while it was at the garage was dismissed both by London Transport and Woffinden as not practically possible.

As for the hankie, I should think that the gun and the bullets that had been loaded into it would have been subjected to an extremely rigourous cleaning to rid it of fingerprints, hair, etc. Obviously we don't know if the gun was carried onto the bus in pockets or in a bag, but the hankie was undoubtedly used to handle it and the boxes of cartridges when being deposited under the back seat.

The only other way to safely handle the gun would have been using gloves, and perhaps it was thought that anyone seen wearing gloves in August would have been noticeable.

Graham

[caz]

Hi All,

Another point is that the hankie proves Hanratty's involvement, whether as an active participant in the crime, or the completely innocent victim of a successful attempt to frame him by someone known to him with access to one of his hankies.

I don't think this can be said too often. But is he also supposed to have been a completely innocent victim of: Valerie Storie's lies and misidentification; flawed witness testimony on both sides; a police stitch-up; forensic skulduggery either at the time or when the DNA testing was done, or at least accidental contamination of the knicker fragment, or misattribution of the DNA profiles picked up; and sheer bad luck for sharing his blood group with the rapist [which the person framing him would almost certainly not have known] and - the clincher - for having to lie because he had no way to prove he was elsewhere?

We've said this before too, but if it wasn't for bad luck, Jim would have had no luck at all.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

As for the hankie, I should think that the gun and the bullets that had been loaded into it would have been subjected to an extremely rigourous cleaning to rid it of fingerprints, hair, etc. Obviously we don't know if the gun was carried onto the bus in pockets or in a bag, but the hankie was undoubtedly used to handle it and the boxes of cartridges when being deposited under the back seat.

The only other way to safely handle the gun would have been using gloves, and perhaps it was thought that anyone seen wearing gloves in August would have been noticeable.

Good point, Graham!

Love,

Caz
X

[Graham]

Another point is that the hankie proves Hanratty's involvement, whether as an active participant in the crime, or the completely innocent victim of a successful attempt to frame him by someone known to him with access to one of his hankies.

Absolutely correct, Caz! There is no doubt in my mind that had the hankie been identified as his by Hanratty, then his trial wouldn't have lasted the record-breaking 22 (?) days that it did.

Well, as for access to one of his hankies, who sometimes did his laundry for him?

Rgds,

Graham

[NickB]

Enclose another page from the Sunday Times magazine feature in 1966 ...

[moste]

I raised the Bert Balmer link to the A6 Case because it may well be relevant. Hanratty wanted, initially at least, a Liverpool alibi, yet seeking an alibi when Bert Balmer held sway in the Merseyside Police was probably something of a fool’s errand.

The Liverpool criminal fraternity believed in 1961 (with some justification if you read about the controversial cases) that Bert Balmer had sent three innocent men to the gallows. Not just ‘fitted them up’ for robbery- as payback for the half dozen which they had committed and escaped detection- but had actually conspired to legally execute them for crimes they had not committed. That was the perceived power of the man in some quarters.

Balmer had spent at least 10 years as a younger policeman assigned to the Liverpool magistrate’s court, so was very familiar with taking statements, arranging witnesses, ensuring that prosecutions obtained a result. The feeling was that, through bullying, threats and and deals, he could elicit damning (if dubious) testimony from associates and gang members which would stand up in court, even in a capital crime. As a result, he was loathed, but also feared by the Liverpool underworld. Balmer was very much old school and would have taken Hanratty’s claim of a Liverpool alibi as a personal affront, since he viewed himself as Lord of his Merseyside Manor and did not want cheapskate Cockneys queering his pitch.

Therefore, it would have been a brave Merseyside villain who supported Hanratty’s alibi. If he had, he might have shared the same fate as Kelly, Burns and Devlin, and ended up swinging from a rope. These executions had happened ten years earlier when Balmer was merely a leading detective. He was, by1961, pretty much unchallenged as the senior policeman in the Merseyside area.

Similar pressure may have been applied to Joe Gillibanks (right spelling I hope), the private investigator who was detailed to confirm Hanratty’s alibi in Rhyl. He was an ex-policeman whose path must have crossed that of Balmer at some point in his career. His careless method of showing photographs of Hanratty to potential alibi witnesses has been criticized on this forum, and it is possible he was warned off by Balmer not to obtain an alibi. Then again, for all I know, Joe Gillibanks perhaps loathed Bert Balmer and was so keen to embarrass his reputation that he was too enthusiastic in his actions.

In conclusion, there were better places to seek alibis than Bert Balmer’s Merseyside.

Well said and all very likely, I've read about Bert Balmer, myself, and watched a youtube interview, really unsavoury unscrupulous individual I believe.
Regarding what you say about the local hoods and them not being prepared to help Hanratty, we could go even further and add that, he may have been warned, 'it would go particularly bad for him if he so much as breathed a word of his involvement' with any of his acquaintance's.
Interesting thought . The perfect set up for framing a real 'nit wit'. send him up to Balmer territory for a couple of days, where he wouldn't have a snow balls chance in hell of securing an alibi.

[NickB]

Hanratty made it quite clear throughout his evidence that he had made up the alibi about the 3 men in Liverpool. They did not feature in his revised alibi.

[Graham]

Hi Nick,

your newspaper and magazine repros pertaining to the A6 are always very interesting - but some of them are so faint as to be unreadable, at least on my laptop. I've adjusted my screen settings but the last one you posted is very faint and hazy. Is there anything you could do at your end to improve?

Thanks in advance,

Graham

[NickB]

Sorry Graham. I can read the extracts, but that may be because I have read them before.

I would be grateful for any advice about how to download more clearly.

At the British Library I downloaded pdf files of over 1,000 kb, but this site only allows files of up to 293 kb. Even with snipping it is difficult to bring them down below 293 kb in pdf format, so I transfer them to jpg files – which is probably when the loss in clarity occurs.

For example the pdf file below looks small but is 193.2 kb and doesn't display properly.

[Graham]

Hi Nick,

thanks for coming back to me. 293 kb is very small, agreed. I sometimes download sheet music, and found some time ago that jpg files lose clarity - don't know why. The link you provided in PDF is clear as a bell, though.

Bit of a puzzle, and also disappointing, especially as you have access to published A6 stuff that I certainly haven't seen before. Let's hope someone can come up with a fix.

Cheers,

Graham

[moste]

Good stuff Nick. It seems quite possible then that Hanratty backtracked on using the three men as alibis, as at some point before his arrest he had been told to do so would be very ill-advised. I don't think he was lying to Acott about having people he could rely on as alibis, he maybe changed his mind about naming names ,and just lied about lying ,believing he could get through this mess without their involvement

[OneRound]

Good stuff Nick. It seems quite possible then that Hanratty backtracked on using the three men as alibis, as at some point before his arrest he had been told to do so would be very ill-advised. I don't think he was lying to Acott about having people he could rely on as alibis, he maybe changed his mind about naming names ,and just lied about lying ,believing he could get through this mess without their involvement

Surprising that wasn't all ok then.

OneRound

[NickB]

Swanwick : 'Are you suggesting that a day or two ago is the first time you have ever realised that in a case of this nature you ought to tell the truth?'

Hanratty : "I want to make this quite clear; it was put to me the other day that if I did not tell the names and addresses of the three men at Liverpool my life was at stake."

This ties in with what Sherrard said in his autobiography, that it was when he warned Hanratty that when questioned in court about the Liverpool alibi he “would have to give answers” that Jim changed his alibi.

[cobalt]

The trial excerpts certainly reinforce, for me at any rate, two opinions of Hanratty’s performance in the dock.

One is the ‘cockiness’ mentioned by Kerr, the census taker, when Hanratty claims he could have ‘had’ a woman in the West End for a fortnight. His language is not helpful to him since he is basically suggesting he can hire a woman, rather like a car, with his ill-gotten gains. It creates the impression of man comfortable with base transactions.

The other element is his ability to bandy words very successfully with a QC. The issue of the telegram on the 24th is being presented by Swanwick as a cack-handed attempt at an alibi, and when pressed on the date Hanratty very shrewdly points out that a telegram on the 22nd would have been equally worthless. This is very true- after all anyone can send a telegram and claim to be Hanratty- and rather cleverly undermines Swanwick’s line of argument. Whether it made any of the jury think that Hanratty was too sharp by half we cannot know.

Regarding the change of alibi, if I understand moste correctly, he is suggesting that Hanratty’s initial alibi was in fact the genuine one, but turned out too dangerous to run. When Hanratty says his life is on the line and he has decided to change it to Rhyl, he may be appreciating the impossibility, if not indeed the mortal danger, of trying to run an alibi in Merseyside given the track record of Deputy Chief Constable Bert Balmer as perceived by the criminal community.

Perhaps Caz and those who scoff at the Rhyl alibi are correct; it was concocted at the last minute when Hanratty realized his genuine alibi of being in Liverpool was a non-runner.

[moste]

The trial excerpts certainly reinforce, for me at any rate, two opinions of Hanratty’s performance in the dock.

One is the ‘cockiness’ mentioned by Kerr, the census taker, when Hanratty claims he could have ‘had’ a woman in the West End for a fortnight. His language is not helpful to him since he is basically suggesting he can hire a woman, rather like a car, with his ill-gotten gains. It creates the impression of man comfortable with base transactions.

The other element is his ability to bandy words very successfully with a QC. The issue of the telegram on the 24th is being presented by Swanwick as a cack-handed attempt at an alibi, and when pressed on the date Hanratty very shrewdly points out that a telegram on the 22nd would have been equally worthless. This is very true- after all anyone can send a telegram and claim to be Hanratty- and rather cleverly undermines Swanwick’s line of argument. Whether it made any of the jury think that Hanratty was too sharp by half we cannot know.

Regarding the change of alibi, if I understand moste correctly, he is suggesting that Hanratty’s initial alibi was in fact the genuine one, but turned out too dangerous to run. When Hanratty says his life is on the line and he has decided to change it to Rhyl, he may be appreciating the impossibility, if not indeed the mortal danger, of trying to run an alibi in Merseyside given the track record of Deputy Chief Constable Bert Balmer as perceived by the criminal community.

Perhaps Caz and those who scoff at the Rhyl alibi are correct; it was concocted at the last minute when Hanratty realized his genuine alibi of being in Liverpool was a non-runner.

Precisely my line of thinking.