A6 Rebooted

[Alfie]

I’ve said here many times before: a pub landlady is very good on faces. That is the nature of their trade. That does not of course make Mrs Lanz infallible some years after the event. But unlike Fox and his associate we can assume Mrs. Lanz had no homosexual leanings towards Alphon, nor was her testimony bought. She is a credible witness.

No police statement from Mrs. Lanz? Well the thundering question should be why not? Why on earth not? Her pub was the last place the victims were seen before being shot. And there is no statement. Does this not strike even a thumbsucker as odd? Are we awake on this crime?

It is no good ascribing an agenda upon Fox: what about the motives of the police who never took, or maybe never revealed, a statement from Mrs. Lanz? What does that reveal about them and their ‘investigation?’ I have put this in quotation marks to echo Graham’s use in Fox’s ‘interview’ of Mrs. Lanz.

Lanz did make a statement to police, on Thursday, Aug 24, ie the day after the murder.

Hawser: "After referring to the visit of Mr Gregsten and Miss Storie, she said that two strange men left either shortly before or shortly after them. She described these men - neither would appear to have resembled Mr Alphon or Mr Hanratty. She said there were quite a number of people in the bar that night, many of them strangers. She refers to no-one else."

[cobalt]

Are you suggesting Hanratty was creating an alibi? If so he could surely have established a better one, even given the time constraints, than he did. Otherwise his journey was a waste of time. He’d have been better going back into the smoke and lying low for a while.

[Spitfire]

I suppose that railway timetable will also show the overnight return journey. According to Hanratty it left just after midnight, stopped at every station and arrived at 5.20.

The five past midnight train from Lime Street arrived at Euston at 6.16 am, and as can be seen, it was the sleeper. It cannot be said that this train stopped at every station but it stopped at Stafford, Nuneaton and Rugby on its way south.

The only other train round about this time was the 11.45 from Lime Street which arrived at Euston at 5.25am but this was not a through train as it would have necessitated a change of trains at Crewe.

As I have mentioned earlier it is my belief that Hanratty travelled up to Liverpool on the 2.15 from Euston on Thursday 24 August arriving at 6.50pm and then got the next available through train back to the Smoke which would be the 00.05 Sleeper.

[cobalt]

I’ve said here many times before: a pub landlady is very good on faces. That is the nature of their trade. That does not of course make Mrs Lanz infallible some years after the event. But unlike Fox and his associate we can assume Mrs. Lanz had no homosexual leanings towards Alphon, nor was her testimony bought. She is a credible witness.

No police statement from Mrs. Lanz? Well the thundering question should be why not? Why on earth not? Her pub was the last place the victims were seen before being shot. And there is no statement. Does this not strike even a thumbsucker as odd? Are we awake on this crime?

It is no good ascribing an agenda upon Fox: what about the motives of the police who never took, or maybe never revealed, a statement from Mrs. Lanz? What does that reveal about them and their ‘investigation?’ I have put this in quotation marks to echo Graham’s use in Fox’s ‘interview’ of Mrs. Lanz.

[Graham]

Proved what?

Graham

[moste]

Mrs Lanz said she had seen Gregsten and Valerie on several occasions in her pub, and that sounds perfectly all right as far as I'm concerned, because they did go there for a drink from time to time. However, with regard to Mrs Lanz seeing Alphon at the Old Station Inn, this is down to Justice - he claimed to have 'interviewed' Mrs Lanz and he claimed that she told him she had seen a man resmbling Alphon on at least one occasion. Nonsense - that really was Justice's bent 'imagination'. Almost as vivid as Alphon's, in fact......

Graham

And Woffinden proved this . Did he?

[moste]

Quote: But apart from his visits to the dog-track, it seems that Alphon had no knowledge of Slough, and in fact Woffo states this.

APART from his visits . Well I would say if he was a regular patron of the ‘Dolphin’ stadium, and had been for some time ,that’s a very good reason to suspect that he was familiar with more than just the immediate down town area.

Quote: And as I mentioned earlier, Woffo does describe in some detail Alphon's troubled past and his unstable personality - no-one in their right and mind would have trusted him with a box of Bonfire Night fireworks, let alone a revenge murder as a (presumably paid) assassin.

But I would interject, that the assassin, was in fact of an unstable personality, and almost certainly of a troubled past!

[Graham]

And how much reliance can we place on Mrs Lanz, the landlady Of The Station Inn, with a statement of Alphon frequenting that Pub? Was it really Just a figment of Justice’s Imagination, Or had Foot\Woffinden heard enough from her, that they believed there was something very real in what she had to say? I would say her evidence of any link between Alphon and Taplow is absolutely vital

Mrs Lanz said she had seen Gregsten and Valerie on several occasions in her pub, and that sounds perfectly all right as far as I'm concerned, because they did go there for a drink from time to time. However, with regard to Mrs Lanz seeing Alphon at the Old Station Inn, this is down to Justice - he claimed to have 'interviewed' Mrs Lanz and he claimed that she told him she had seen a man resmbling Alphon on at least one occasion. Nonsense - that really was Justice's bent 'imagination'. Almost as vivid as Alphon's, in fact......

Graham

[moste]

It’s an interesting observation. Most of us would subscribe to the notion that a criminal will prefer to act in area he is familiar with, but a 30 year old man will not feel so at home with a place he knew only from boyhood, if that. Wandering through corn fields as a boy is not quite the same as skulking through fields in the dusk with a revolver, especially after a 20 year gap.

Foot’s point does not support Alphon’s claim that he was approached to break up a relationship. If Alphon was approached, it could hardly have been for his knowledge of Taplow which was obsolete. At most it was merely another coincidence.

However I will add two points for the defence. Someone resembling Alphon was seen in the area prior to the murder by three separate witnesses. And whatever Alphon’s knowledge of Taplow was it could not have been less than that of Hanratty who was never known to have visited the area.

And how much reliance can we place on Mrs Lanz, the landlady Of The Station Inn, with a statement of Alphon frequenting that Pub? Was it really Just a figment of Justice’s Imagination, Or had Foot\Woffinden heard enough from her, that they believed there was something very real in what she had to say? I would say her evidence of any link between Alphon and Taplow is absolutely vital

[Graham]

It’s an interesting observation. Most of us would subscribe to the notion that a criminal will prefer to act in area he is familiar with, but a 30 year old man will not feel so at home with a place he knew only from boyhood, if that. Wandering through corn fields as a boy is not quite the same as skulking through fields in the dusk with a revolver, especially after a 20 year gap.

Foot’s point does not support Alphon’s claim that he was approached to break up a relationship. If Alphon was approached, it could hardly have been for his knowledge of Taplow which was obsolete. At most it was merely another coincidence.

However I will add two points for the defence. Someone resembling Alphon was seen in the area prior to the murder by three separate witnesses. And whatever Alphon’s knowledge of Taplow was it could not have been less than that of Hanratty who was never known to have visited the area.

Woffo goes to some length to describe Alphon's past - his parents seemed to move their always-rented accommodation every couple of weeks! But apart from his visits to the dog-track, it seems that Alphon had no knowledge of Slough, and in fact Woffo states this.

With regard to the 'someone' resembling Alphon seen in the area prior to the murder, Michael Fogarty-Waul said that this 'someone' resembled the-then popular actor Sidney Tafler. Now, it has to be said that there was a passing resemblance. But I wonder if Fogarty-Waul made this point before or after pictures of Alphon were published....? Two other people said that they saw someone in the area prior to the murder, but it seems that the poilce didn't take this seriously, as obviously anyone who felt like it was perfectly free to take a constitutional along Marsh Lane if he so wished. There really isn't any hard evidence to support (a) someone who might have been Alphon being seen in the area prior to the murder; and (b) that Alphon (or anyone else, for that matter) was aware that Gregsten and Valerie sometimes parked in the corn-field. As far as I'm aware, only Gregsten and Valerie knew that.

Foot eventually confessed that he had over-rated Alphon's claimed knowledge of the A6 crime both before, during and after its execution. At the same time he admitted that, once he had actually met her, Janet Gregsten was not the vengeful harpie he had once assumed her of being.
And as I mentioned earlier, Woffo does describe in some detail Alphon's troubled past and his unstable personality - no-one in their right mind would have trusted him with a box of Bonfire Night fireworks, let alone a revenge murder as a (presumably paid) assassin.

Graham

[NickB]

I suppose that railway timetable will also show the overnight return journey. According to Hanratty it left just after midnight, stopped at every station and arrived at 5.20.

[cobalt]

It’s an interesting observation. Most of us would subscribe to the notion that a criminal will prefer to act in area he is familiar with, but a 30 year old man will not feel so at home with a place he knew only from boyhood, if that. Wandering through corn fields as a boy is not quite the same as skulking through fields in the dusk with a revolver, especially after a 20 year gap.

Foot’s point does not support Alphon’s claim that he was approached to break up a relationship. If Alphon was approached, it could hardly have been for his knowledge of Taplow which was obsolete. At most it was merely another coincidence.

However I will add two points for the defence. Someone resembling Alphon was seen in the area prior to the murder by three separate witnesses. And whatever Alphon’s knowledge of Taplow was it could not have been less than that of Hanratty who was never known to have visited the area.

[Alfie]

Foot (p. 403-4) lists 14 reasons to suspect Alphon of the crime. No 3 is: "Alphon spent much of his childhood in the Slough and Taplow area, and knows it very well."

Has anybody come across any evidence of this? I ask because Acott when interviewing Alphon asked him, "Do you know Slough?" and Alphon replied: "I know it a little. I was stationed in the Air Force at Marlow, and I used to go to the dogs at Slough."

Woffinden tells us that he was born in 1930 in Croydon, although his parents were living in Paddington at the time, and that he won a scholarship to Mercer's public school in Holborn - I presume aged 11, ie 1941. We learn that he went to Horsham, West Sussex, when the school was evacuated during the war. And that he finished his schooling at Quintin Kynaston state school in St John's Wood. Also, while looking into his background, the police interviewed people who lived at the same address as the Alphons did in Hammersmith, from 1942, when Alphon was aged 12, until the family left "three or four years ago", ie, in c.1957-8.

That leaves the years 1930-41 unaccounted for, but nowhere can I find anything to suggest he or his family spent them in the Slough and Taplow area.

[NickB]

Only if the 12.15 was not delayed. Foot also gives a different (earlier) arrival time for the 10.20, so may have been using actual arrival times.

[Spitfire]

If the defence accepted that the 12.15 arrived in Liverpool about half an hour late there would be no need for witness evidence on that point. Also at the trial Hanratty said his train arrived in Liverpool at about 4.30, so there could further have been a consensus on which train it was.

However it appears the prosecution did not reveal the 6.00 timing of the last bus to Rhyl, so did not ask the pertinent question: 'How did he do everything in the time?'. This is a question Woffinden completely ignores, though he goes for an even later arrival. Foot at least attempts to answer it for the period before 10.20, but it is interesting that when Woffinden makes an estimate of his arrival at Euston he comes up with 10.45. And that assumes that he did not visit Anderson that morning, as she testified.

True. The prosecution at the trial was caught unaware as to how critical the timing of the trains might have been. The case would have been prepared on the basis that it did not really matter what time Hanratty arrived in Liverpool and it was only when Hanratty altered his alibi that it would have become of some importance.

However the Court of Appeal did take the point in para 188 of its judgement that Hanratty only had 75 minutes to accomplish that which he said he did, whereas the true amount of time was 105 minutes.