A6 Rebooted

[Spitfire]

Ingledene aka 60 Kinmel Street was put up for sale earlier this year.

It appears to have been given a new bathroom.

Ingledene For Sale

[Spitfire]

The skylight in the roof of Ingledene belonged to the bathroom which housed the famous green bath. I think that this could fairly be described as an attic room. As far as I can recall this was the only bathroom, but there was a WC room on the first floor.

I wonder how Mrs Grace Jones would have faired in Four in a Bed, no en-suite and one toilet shared by all the guests and permanent residents, with the only bathroom off limits to the guests, unless it had been let as a bedroom.

[Graham]

Ingledene aka 60 Kinmel Street was put up for sale earlier this year.

It appears to have been given a new bathroom.

Ingledene For Sale

I could move in tomorrow, no problem!

Graham

[Alfie]

Peter Alphon and Jean Justice

Just finished reading the Alphon section of Paul Foot's book. Don't know about you, but to me it seemed obvious that Alphon was smitten by Justice and concocted a weird mutual dependency between them by pretending to be what Justice desperately wanted him to be - the A6 killer.

And thus was a conspiracy theory born that is still gathering adherents to this day.

Poor old Foot. Imagine spending the untold hours that he did listening to the ramblings and ravings of that miserable little fraud. And to what purpose, apart from displaying to the world how gullible he'd been?

[NickB]

Yes but to be fair to Foot he did eventually see the light.

“In the years I was preparing my book, I tried to concentrate on the evidence which exculpated Hanratty. I was constantly diverted by interminable phone calls from Peter Alphon” he wrote later. “His story endlessly shifted. Whenever it seemed that he was going to produce definite proof of his complicity, he veered away.”

Then Janet Gregsten contacted him. “When I arrived at her Penzance flat on 30 December 1994, she waved contemptuously towards a letter written in the familiar and careful handwriting of Peter Alphon. The letter was an invitation to her to spend a few days with Alphon and Jeremy Fox at a luxury hotel near Dublin. Alphon offered her Ł2,000 if she accepted the invitation. Janet Gregsten was disgusted by the letter. Alphon explained to me later that he wanted to interrogate her about the A6 murder.”

If Foot had contacted Janet while researching the book he could have saved himself a lot of trouble. After his visits to her and more talks with Alphon, Foot turned against the idea that he was involved. He supplied Woffinden with his findings and I can only presume that he advised Woffinden against saying Alphon was the murderer in his book, but perhaps it was too far advanced to be changed.

[Graham]

Hello Nick and Alfie,

yes, Alphon led Justice, Fox, Foot and others right down the garden path, master-manipulator that he was. You only have to watch his televised Paris interview to see just how credible he came over to anyone even slightly gullible.

Foot, though an admirable investigator did, unfortunately, have something of a political agenda. As a member of the Socialist Workers Party he felt it his duty to make every attempt to uphold the inalienable rights of the 'little man' against those he felt to be responsible for class- and state-repression. It was a failing, but as time went on he softened. When Private Eye was worth buying his was the first column I turned to, and over the years I detected something of a shift away from his old hard-line leftism.

Foot himself admitted that right from the start he had labelled Janet Gregston as representative of the bourgeoise 'middle class' he claimed to hate, and it wasn't until long after Michael's murder that he actually met her. When he did, he realised, and was big enough to admit it, that he had been totally wrong about her, and that she was not the vengeful harpie he had long imagined her to be. As Nick says, he should have contacted her long before.

Nick, I wonder if you could kindly let me have the source of Foot's comments as you posted? I'd love to read more. He did make some brief remarks in Private Eye to the effect that he might have been wrong in certain areas regarding the A6 Case, but your post is the first I've heard regarding Alphon's offer to Janet of a lucrative interview. I've wound down a good deal regarding my interest in the A6, and I wonder if I've missed a lot of newly-published information.

Any sign of a revised edition of Woffinden's book, as was promised?

Graham

[NickB]

Hi Graham,

They were from the 'London Review of Books' and Foot's review of Woffinden's book. Any revised edition would be laughed out of court unless it was radically rewritten.

Another book Foot reviewed was a biography of his old housemaster at Shrewsbury school, Anthony Chenevix-Trench. Foot started his review of the book thus:

“In his Foreword to a new biography of Trench, Sir William Gladstone writes that Trench’s ‘interest was in drawing out the best from boys as individuals’. Another interest, not mentioned by Sir William, lay in drawing down the underpants of boys – as individuals – before ordering them to lie on his sofa while he spanked their bare buttocks. In his Introduction, the author Mark Peel pays tribute to Trench’s ‘common touch’ without referring to his most common touch of all: the sensuous fingering of his pupils’ buttocks before and during the interminable beatings.”

In response someone wrote in:

“In reading and admiring Foot’s searing pieces, I have sometimes wondered where all this fury comes from. Perhaps the answer is, after all, the wretched Trench; in which case, Foot stands convicted of the same posterior obsession as his tormentor.”

[caz]

Poor old Foot. Imagine spending the untold hours that he did listening to the ramblings and ravings of that miserable little fraud. And to what purpose, apart from displaying to the world how gullible he'd been?

Hi Alfie,

This reminds me so much of the poor old devils who are still being taken in by the former ramblings of a certain Michael Barrett when wearing his master forger hat, after downing two bottles of Scotch.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Yes but to be fair to Foot he did eventually see the light.

“In the years I was preparing my book, I tried to concentrate on the evidence which exculpated Hanratty. I was constantly diverted by interminable phone calls from Peter Alphon” he wrote later. “His story endlessly shifted. Whenever it seemed that he was going to produce definite proof of his complicity, he veered away.”

Goodness, that's exactly like Mike Barrett!

Right, I'll stop now. Apologies for the diversion, but Alphon and Barrett do sound like clones.

Love,

Caz
X

[Graham]

Hi Nick,

thanks for the head-up. I obviously missed it. In fairness to Foot, he wasn't the only biographer/reviewer to say similar things about Chevenix-Trench! Shrewsbury was the alma mater of several of Private Eye's original leading-lights.

I was hoping a touch of irony came through in my question regarding a new edition of Woffinden's book......to be honest, my feeling is that 58 years after the event any radical new evidence will now be difficult/impossible to find, even for Bob Woffinden.

Hi Caz,

Couldn't agree more re: Alphon and Barrett - they'd have made a great music-hall act.

Cheers,

Graham

[Alfie]

Alphon and Justice

Thanks for the feedback folks.

So are we all agreed - Alphon was almost certainly a homosexual who was likely as capable of raping Valerie Storie as I would be of out-sprinting Usain Bolt?

[Graham]

Thanks for the feedback folks.

So are we all agreed - Alphon was almost certainly a homosexual who was likely as capable of raping Valerie Storie as I would be of out-sprinting Usain Bolt?

If you believe Woffinden (and I see little reason not to) Jean Justice (who was gay at a time when being openly homosexual was illegal) made up to Alphon, who appeared not to reject his approaches, probably because he enjoyed the attention and also the lavish entertainments showered upon him by Justice. Whether they actually went any further than this is not clear, but I somehow doubt it, as Justice was in a close long-term relationship with Jeremy Fox. Alphon, however, knew a good thing when he was onto one. I rather suspect he was asexual.

Graham

[Derrick]

Thanks for the feedback folks.

So are we all agreed - Alphon was almost certainly a homosexual who was likely as capable of raping Valerie Storie as I would be of out-sprinting Usain Bolt?

Oh dear Alfie.
You really don't know much about what rape really entails. It has nothing to do with your conception, but that of power.
To reiterate, RAPE IS NOT SEX BUT POWER.
I'm shocked by your naiveté on this point and thus unconvinced by any of your reasoning that springs forth from it.

[Alfie]

Oh dear Alfie.
You really don't know much about what rape really entails. It has nothing to do with your conception, but that of power.
To reiterate, RAPE IS NOT SEX BUT POWER.
I'm shocked by your naiveté on this point and thus unconvinced by any of your reasoning that springs forth from it.

You're easily shocked is all I can say.

I've never heard of a gay man raping a woman. You can cite a few cases where this has occurred, can you?

[NickB]

The bottom line is that Alphon fooled both Foot and Woffinden. They in turn fooled their more gullible readers.

Putting myself in Woffinden’s shoes I can see his dilemma. It is easy for Foot to be more critical of Alphon in articles dealing with aspects of the case, but difficult for Woffinden to do this in a book on the case overall without blunting the conclusion.

Imagine if Foot had ended his book this way:

“Either he committed the A6 murder, or he has been leading all of us, and me in particular, a fantastic dance. After further investigation I have come to the conclusion that he has been leading us a fantastic dance.”