A6 Rebooted

[cobalt]

We still have a problem though Moste. We can discredit the random meeting in the cornfield with an armed robber as stretching credulity. That much is easy enough to do. But if there was a planned rendez-vous at Deadman’s Hill, then we have to ask why it took about 5 hours to get there. And for what purpose? What made this place so significant? It makes little more sense at face value than the deranged gunmen who appeared in a cornfield, unseen by anyone until that moment.

We have to abide by our own logic. We have long pointed out that an armed robber could have simply forced the couple out of the car at gunpoint in Taplow and driven home, presumably to London. But if he was carrying a weapon and was prepared to use it, why not just carry out the terrible crime in the Taplow cornfield ?

Regarding the ‘kip’ it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and it is a part of the Valerie Storie narrative that surely had police detectives at the time scratching their heads. They must have asked her, as she presumably had asked the murderer, what on earth his intentions were after he awoke with daylight starting to break through. Gregsten and Ms Storie must have pointed out the sheer folly of this to their kidnapper although he could hardly have been blind to that himself.

[moste]

I've always been interested in the information about the two turn offs after Silsoe a mile or two before Deadmans Hill, as provided by Valerie.Checking back on the ongoing upgrading of the A6 trunk road , it appears that the highway didn't bypass Silsoe until 1981 so the high street would have been the A6, After the village there are in fact two turn offs, Newbury lane with just a few houses ,and about a hundred yards past a lane which seems to be a farm access.there doesn't appear to be any left turns until Clophill. I got to considering Valerie's statement regarding the carjackers silly idea about needing to kip,and the preposterous notion that he will need to tie them both up. I think it more than likely that the intruder was in fact searching for the location which he finally found on Deadmans hill . remember Valerie said Mike was told to turn in where the RAC box was and he drove past, at which the assailant became irate and demanded that Mike should turn around.Regardless , the series of events prior to arriving at the final destination leads me to believe that something previously planned was in the offing. Valerie made very few remarks with regard to what she read into what was going on,(apart from 'I don't think Jim was his real name.)If I'm right about some kind of plan being involved, I think its just one more incident that exonerates Hanratty.

[ansonman]

"If the Matthews Report were published it might clarify the reasons for his confidence, even if it was misplaced."

Hear hear,

[moste]

Yes there are quite a number of them One of my favorites is, as woffinden reveals ' The census point devised ironically by the road research scientists at Deadmans hill, was manned by John Kerr. That person as we know started shift at 6 am. John Smith and Michael Black should have been numerating traffic at this location from midnight on. "For some extraordinary reason,which no one could now recall, the census taking point was moved to a location 1/2 a mile south of Silsoe, back down the A6. A car was spotted by Smith at this location though at about 4am. accelerating away from the vicinity, and told Black' he thought it was a Morris Minor" .

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.

[cobalt]

A few other possibilities might include:

A statement made by Mrs. Lanz, landlady of the Taplow Inn, to the effect that she recognised Peter Alphon as being a regular customer prior to the murder. She later claimed to have told the police this - once even claiming Alphon was there on the evening preceding the crime- but I don’t think any statement of this sort has surfaced.

A police record of why detectives visited a Swiss Cottage shopping arcade to make enquiries at a photographer’s, a dry cleaner’s and a florist’s.

Any possible statement made by Mr. William Ewer.

Any police enquiries into the sums of money paid into Peter Alphon’s bank account.

[djw]

Among the matters not in the public domain since the Matthews report (or the Stickler book) include;

• the forensics in the car, who the fingerprints matched etc.
• There may be more of Valeries statement about the conversation of the gunman
• The final letters of charles france

[caz]

In that case Moste, we’d have to explore the reasons why Valerie Storie’s version of events was doctored and why she was prepared to go along with it.

I agree the random stranger in the cornfield is hard to make any sense of. If Hanratty was going to be ‘a stick up man’ I can’t see why he couldn’t find richer pickings in the London area instead of coming to Taplow, a place he scarcely knew. Unlike burglary, where you can slip in and out without being noticed, armed robbery needs a sudden threat followed by a fast set of wheels. If Hanratty was casing possible targets in the area then he needed the option of a fast getaway, yet he seems to have been wandering around on foot instead of cruising the area in a car. It’s a bit late to nick one after you’ve done the deed.

If the victims actually picked up by arrangement the person who later tried to murder them both, that would explain why there was no sighting of him in Taplow. The hitch hiker theory and the ‘man from near Slough’ both featured in early news reports but their accuracy is questionable. However we do know of one man who, by his own account, was in Slough that evening.

Might Hanratty not have wanted to avoid any areas where he had 'form' for housebreaking and car theft, since this time he had a gun to experiment with, and didn't want to be connected with any crime he committed due to his record and the location?

When he saw the car, he would have had an opportunity to use his weapon to deprive the couple inside of their belongings, before forcing them out of the vehicle and using it to drive himself wherever he wanted to go. But when he finally did the latter, he had to ask Valerie how to work the gears, which might suggest he guessed this would be a problem for him from the start.

What has never really been explained is how Hanratty's mucus-stained hankie ended up with the gun, if Peter Alphon had been the killer. Apart from Alphon's word, has there ever been any actual evidence connecting the two men before they both happened to stay at the Vienna Hotel? Presumably there would need to have been a third party with connections to both men, which Hanratty was unaware of, because if he was innocent and had known Alphon even slightly, he would surely have joined the dots and realised he was being set up and by whom. How would he not have shouted it from the rooftops if he knew someone else had hidden the murder weapon on the bus and planted the cartridges in his hotel room?

Love,

Caz
X

[cobalt]

Matthews was reported as saying a couple of things which I think have been melded together. One was quoted here:

' any determined investigator could have found out pretty much every thing about this case in the last 30 odd years.'

I would read that as meaning an investigator having access to all the relevant material as he did: not Joe Public.

He also said that much of that material was already in the public domain. This was a puzzling comment since most of us here have spent years reading what has been in the public domain but reached widely different conclusions! And very few of us share Matthews' certainty, no matter which side of the argument we sit on.

If the Matthews Report were published it might clarify the reasons for his confidence, even if it was misplaced.

[NickB]

Enough of Matthews views were given to the Independent and Mail to show that he thought Alphon did it. Therefore the three people he told Natalie's friend he thought were involved would have been Alphon, Ewer and France if he subscribed to what we might call the 'original' theory. Matthews said that anyone could have come to the same conclusion with information already in the public domain, so I don't know where the idea comes from that he based it on anything new.

However by the time Woffinden's book came out expounding strongly the 'original' theory, Foot was moving away from it. By the time of the 2002 Appeal the defence including Michael Hanratty had come to the conclusion that Alphon did not do it, effectively siding with Foot and the post-Alphon case. One of the appeal points even mentions that Alphon was unfairly framed by the police. So if Woffinden and Matthews were still Alphonites at the time of the Appeal, even if their information was used their conclusions were not.

[ansonman]

A couple of posts from Derrick, a committed Hanrattyite if ever there was one, on the Matthews report are worth quoting here:






I would attach special emphasis on the sentence, "Everything Matthews found was presented at the appeal in 2002, and some."

We will have to ask Derrick how he knows that everything in the Matthews report was presented on appeal!

I'll second that!

[Spitfire]

A couple of posts from Derrick, a committed Hanrattyite if ever there was one, on the Matthews report are worth quoting here:

As I said on another thread, libel has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with it.

Everything Matthews found was presented at the appeal in 2002, and some.

That doesn't mean that it was treated with any fairness...don't get me wrong on that eh?

Remember Hawser?

Del

Hi Spitfire

All I can say here is to reiterate what Roger Matthews said in 1999 which was to the effect of any determined investigator could have found out pretty much every thing about this case in the last 30 odd years.

HTH
Del

I would attach special emphasis on the sentence, "Everything Matthews found was presented at the appeal in 2002, and some."

We will have to ask Derrick how he knows that everything in the Matthews report was presented on appeal!

[ansonman]

Hi all,

This is a rather basic question and I feel I should already know the answer. However, I don't and my apologies if I've forgotten or overlooked something.

When Mansfield led Hanratty's posthumous appeal, did he have access to the Matthews report?

Many thanks,
OneRound

I very much doubt it. I haven't read any reference to it in the appeal.
It would seem that the police investigations leading up to the appeal had pretty much ignored Matthews report.

"Detective Inspector Stewart Trail, who led the Metropolitan Police team which reviewed all the original evidence in preparation for the appeal, said: ``We hope the result will finally draw a line under the speculation which has surrounded this case for nearly 40 years".

[OneRound]

Hi all,

This is a rather basic question and I feel I should already know the answer. However, I don't and my apologies if I've forgotten or overlooked something.

When Mansfield led Hanratty's posthumous appeal, did he have access to the Matthews report?

Many thanks,
OneRound

[moste]

The following is part of a private exchange that I had with a member of the forum more than eight years ago. I have recently tried to contact this person but to no avail. It is worth a look:

"Had very interesting chat with childhood friend who was in flying squad-now retired.He bellowed at me about Hanratty and the DNA proving his guilt.I mentioned the findings of Roger Matthews the senior detective at Scotland Yard who ,leading a team of 20 detectives said he not only believed Hanratty had nothing whatever to do with it ,through having poured through documents,seeing files never made public etc etc but that he should never even have been charged.So my friend rang him as he was a very dear colleague of his.Matthews who was educated at cambridge University, said he still maintained that Hanratty had nothing to do with the A6 murder.That three people were involved-and he named two of them to him ,but my friend has not told me who they were ."

What I find strange is that nothing of what Matthews reported has ever entered the public domain. Even if he signed the OSA surely he could have passed some information to someone who hadn't and thereby allow the key findings of the report to see daylight. If the poor man is now on his deathbed what's he got to lose by giving the whole report to the likes of the Daily Mail? It's a bloody outrage that this cover up has been allowed to continue for so long.

Hi Ansonman. Of the number of various confusions in the A6 murder saga which stitch together a quilt of squares ,each with its own question, like’ why did they do that’ ‘what was going on here ‘doesn’t this sound really fishy’ and so on, the Mathews itch that can’t be scratched must put the old tin lid on it all.

[ansonman]

The following is part of a private exchange that I had with a member of the forum more than eight years ago. I have recently tried to contact this person but to no avail. It is worth a look:

"Had very interesting chat with childhood friend who was in flying squad-now retired.He bellowed at me about Hanratty and the DNA proving his guilt.I mentioned the findings of Roger Matthews the senior detective at Scotland Yard who ,leading a team of 20 detectives said he not only believed Hanratty had nothing whatever to do with it ,through having poured through documents,seeing files never made public etc etc but that he should never even have been charged.So my friend rang him as he was a very dear colleague of his.Matthews who was educated at cambridge University, said he still maintained that Hanratty had nothing to do with the A6 murder.That three people were involved-and he named two of them to him ,but my friend has not told me who they were ."

What I find strange is that nothing of what Matthews reported has ever entered the public domain. Even if he signed the OSA surely he could have passed some information to someone who hadn't and thereby allow the key findings of the report to see daylight. If the poor man is now on his deathbed what's he got to lose by giving the whole report to the likes of the Daily Mail? It's a bloody outrage that this cover up has been allowed to continue for so long.