A6 Rebooted

[cobalt]

I don’t think there was anything special about Taplow. Hanratty had already found a place, presumably in the London area, to practise a few shots with his gun. I’m not aware of any link between Hanratty and the Taplow area before the night of the crime. We would expect a person engaging in illegal behaviour, tentatively and for the first time, to operate in area that felt reassuring to them.

Hanrattty’s mental capabilities had been questioned on two occasions when he was incarcerated. One opinion came from an ‘observer’- whatever that is- and the other from a medical doctor. Both concluded that Hanratty was low on empathy and potentially psychopathic. This sounds pretty damning at first sight, but then we must remember that the word ‘psychopath’ is used loosely today to refer to any type of violent criminal. What was being diagnosed, I believe, was not any propensity to violence at all otherwise this would have been mentioned; rather the diagnosis was logging Hanratty’s emotional immaturity and failure to appreciate the long term consequences of his decisions. For me that does not exclude Hanratty from the frame, so to speak, but it hardly puts him in the back seat of a Morris Minor with a firearm.

The killer’s desire to ‘have a kip’ is usually skimmed over as a prelude to the unpleasant violence which soon unfolded. Maybe it is worthy of more attention. If a man is in a high state of anxiety, or tension, or thriving on his new found power over others, deciding he wants to sleep is a bizarre request. Far from wanting the feeling of power to continue, it seems he wants to shut it off, temporarily at least. That is before we consider the practicalities of confining two adult hostages in a car while he takes forty winks, with daybreak only a few hours away. Falling asleep with a gun on your lap is so clearly a bad idea that you have to question whether the killer was ever serious about doing so. In a perverse way it might heighten a sense of effortless control, but carries so much risk as to be unworthy of consideration.

The best explanation I can offer is that the killer, as claimed by Alphon, had been sent to make an ultimatum and was theatrically ‘having a kip’ until he received the answer he wanted. Alphon himself played a high risk game of his own during the infamous Paris interview where he lounged around on a bed while taunting the UK legal system, although short of ‘having a kip’ it is true and not quite admitting his guilt. As has been stated before, if we were trying to make psychological sense of the killer’s behaviour of the night of the A6 murder, then it makes more sense to start with Alphon rather than with Hanratty.

[Graham]

A fact that I don't think is fully appreciated by everyone is that Alphon was 'caught up' in the A6 Case purely out of coincidence. The manager of the Alexandra Court, where Alphon was staying, responded to the police request to hotels and boarding-houses to report any peculiar behaviour on the part of any guest. Alphon was all-round peculiar, so the strange sounds coming from his room, along with the fact that he rarely left it, were not unusual for him. He was perfectly open about his staying at The Vienna on the crucial night, and gave the police his real name. It was only when the cartridges were found at The Vienna that the police realised that they had already interviewed a man in the course of the A6 investigation who made no secret of the fact he had stayed there. Also, it should be remembered that Alphon voluntarily handed himself in to Scotland Yard, after Acott made the unusual step of publicly naming him as a man they wished to interview. Alphon made the most of his sudden notoriety, ref: Justice and Fox, and as far as his Paris 'confession' was concerned, there was no real risk as he knew he could not be charged with the A6 murder.

The police did indeed start with Alphon, as there was no-one else in their sights and they were under heavy pressure to close the case.


Graham

[Herlock Sholmes]

If Hanratty has been sleeping rough as he’d said and we postulate that he was in the area for the purpose of robbing a house or houses then couldn’t we ask how he’d intended to fence the goods? On his home turf this would have been no problem as he’d have known all the likely ‘customers,’ but in a strange area?

I had wondered whether Hanratty was loitering around watching for courting couples (especially if he’d found out that the area was well know for it) but if his motive was sexual it’s almost impossible to explain the 6 hours when he could have killed Gregsten straight away. The rape does appear to have been a spur-of-the-moment thing.

Did anyone hear the shots by the way?

[Graham]

Hanratty said that burgling was 'all spent out', and he wanted to become a 'stick-up artist' (his words, I believe). My take on this was that he was after hard cash, jewellery, watches, and other valuable personal belongings. Small stuff he could conceal on his person when he melted back into the night.... I suspect that hard cash was top of his list of desirability.

It's known that he slept rough in his earlier days (when he was in Brighton, and suffered from malnutrition and exposure as a result; whilst in hospital he underwent a craniotomy during which no damage was found, but nevertheless doctors described him as being 'mentally defective') but I can't recall any evidence of his doing so in later years. (Unlike Alphon, who freely admitted that he slept under Southend Pier when short of cash).

I'm fairly sure he saw courting couples in cars as easy pray, especially when taken by surprise. However, he must surely have realised that the average driver of Morris Minors wouldn't normally have a fat roll in his back pocket, or a gold Rolex and loads of gold jewellery. Maybe he was out of cash and was looking for whatever he could get, however petty. And to respond to HS, I don't think his original motive was either murder, or sexual, or both. Tragically, though, that's how it turned out.

I've visited the area of the lay-by (the original lay-by is now covered by the northern lane of the A6), and apart from the two houses visible in photos of the crime-scene, there's not a lot in the way of local habitation. Being a rural area, there'd be gunfire going off not infrequently, and any locals within hearing distance would very likely take no notice. No-one, not even John Kerr at his traffic-census position a few hundred yards away, heard the shots - or if they did, thought nothing of them.

Graham

[Alfie]

John Kerr arrived at the murder scene hours after the shooting.

Anybody got an answer to my query about Hanratty having tattoos?

[cobalt]

So far as I know, no explanation has been offered for the killer’s remark about sleeping rough in the Oxford area. He seems to have been keen to present himself to the couple as a desperate man, which is understandable behaviour for a hostage taker, yet why claim he was sleeping rough when it was, so far as Valerie Storie could see, patently untrue? And why choose Oxford area?

Given the amount of ammunition the killer was carrying I have explained why I think it highly improbable he was attempting to burgle any houses that night. I could accept that he might have had his eyes on the Taplow Inn around closing time or the cash counter at the railway station, but he was not going equipped to burgle from what we know.

I’m not aware that the cornfield was a known area for courting couples although I think it had been used by Gregsten and Ms. Storie previously. Hanratty seems to have been a fairly unexceptional character in relation to his romantic activities, and thus an unlikely voyeur. In the half century since the A6 Case came to light we have so far been spared theories of Hanratty as repressed homosexual, embittered former rent boy, blackmailer of William Ewer, or secret lover of Louis Alphon at that gay cottage, the Vienna Hotel; but judging by another site, it may be early days yet.

BTW, HS, although Ms. Storie's ordeal lasted over 5 hours, I think Gregsten was killed around 4 hours after the killer entered the car.

[caz]

I don’t think there was anything special about Taplow. Hanratty had already found a place, presumably in the London area, to practise a few shots with his gun. I’m not aware of any link between Hanratty and the Taplow area before the night of the crime. We would expect a person engaging in illegal behaviour, tentatively and for the first time, to operate in area that felt reassuring to them.

Or somewhere he felt completely anonymous, well away from friends, family, criminal associates or anyone else who knew him, so he could experiment at his leisure with his new toy?

Hanrattty’s mental capabilities had been questioned on two occasions when he was incarcerated. One opinion came from an ‘observer’- whatever that is- and the other from a medical doctor. Both concluded that Hanratty was low on empathy and potentially psychopathic. This sounds pretty damning at first sight, but then we must remember that the word ‘psychopath’ is used loosely today to refer to any type of violent criminal. What was being diagnosed, I believe, was not any propensity to violence at all otherwise this would have been mentioned; rather the diagnosis was logging Hanratty’s emotional immaturity and failure to appreciate the long term consequences of his decisions. For me that does not exclude Hanratty from the frame, so to speak, but it hardly puts him in the back seat of a Morris Minor with a firearm.

Maybe not, but his own admission, that he had been thinking of switching from simple burglary to stick-ups, gives him a motive for getting a firearm, while his emotional immaturity and failure to appreciate the long term consequences of his decisions could put him practically anywhere he'd be wiser not to go. It's a rather precarious combination, isn't it?

The killer’s desire to ‘have a kip’ is usually skimmed over as a prelude to the unpleasant violence which soon unfolded. Maybe it is worthy of more attention. If a man is in a high state of anxiety, or tension, or thriving on his new found power over others, deciding he wants to sleep is a bizarre request. Far from wanting the feeling of power to continue, it seems he wants to shut it off, temporarily at least. That is before we consider the practicalities of confining two adult hostages in a car while he takes forty winks, with daybreak only a few hours away. Falling asleep with a gun on your lap is so clearly a bad idea that you have to question whether the killer was ever serious about doing so. In a perverse way it might heighten a sense of effortless control, but carries so much risk as to be unworthy of consideration.

Now you do have a point there. But if, as you previously argued, the thrill would have been 'wearing a bit thin' for him after several hours of this aimless charade, not really having a game plan beyond being in charge, and no particular place to go [like Chuck Berry], the initial adrenaline rush may finally have given way to near exhaustion, which could also have caused him to 'snap to' and overreact when Gregsten made a sudden movement.

The best explanation I can offer is that the killer, as claimed by Alphon, had been sent to make an ultimatum and was theatrically ‘having a kip’ until he received the answer he wanted. Alphon himself played a high risk game of his own during the infamous Paris interview where he lounged around on a bed while taunting the UK legal system, although short of ‘having a kip’ it is true and not quite admitting his guilt. As has been stated before, if we were trying to make psychological sense of the killer’s behaviour of the night of the A6 murder, then it makes more sense to start with Alphon rather than with Hanratty.

I'm sorry, but I find this 'ultimatum' theory wholly implausible, especially if it involves anyone choosing to send the likes of Alphon to see it through. I don't suppose shooting Gregsten dead and raping Valerie was part of his brief, and there is no more evidence that Alphon ever had a gun or was capable of putting a bullet through anyone, or capable of rape, than there was for Hanratty. Nothing to tie Alphon forensically to the car or to Valerie, and no recognition on her part. At least Hanratty admitted he had talked about getting a gun, and there'd have been little point in discussing it if he knew he could never shoot anyone. And, crucially, only Hanratty's DNA was found on the hankie which turned up with the murder weapon on the London bus. How was Alphon, or whoever had briefed him to make this botched ultimatum, meant to have engineered this little party piece, and to what purpose, in an era long before DNA had been heard of, or the hankie could have been connected back to Hanratty by any other means?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Thinking about it, I can't imagine a guilty Alphon would have been too popular with his Mr. Big when news of the murder and rape emerged, with Valerie surviving to tell the tale. About as popular as small pox when suspicion initially fell on such a loose-lipped liability. So the question would then be who had access to Hanratty's snot rag, who also needed to limit Alphon's damage while avoiding any association with him like the plague? And how was that going to be achieved by taking the murder weapon off Alphon's guilty hands and putting it on a bus with a hankie which might as well have been Alphon's as Hanratty's, for what use it would be in clearing one or framing the other? None of it makes any sense to me.

Has there ever been any evidence that Alphon knew Hanratty, and could have successfully framed him without help or hindrance from a third party? If they made a tv drama with such a storyline, it would come across as utter tosh, surely?

Love,

Caz
X

[Graham]

John Kerr stated that he was dropped off at the census point at 5.40am - very likely no more than 2 hours after Valerie was shot, but the precise time this happened is not known. She was discovered at about 6.30am by Sidney Burton, a farm-hand walking along the A6 on his way to work. He notified Kerr. Yes, I concede that Kerr couldn't have heard the shots, but I understand that he replaced another census-taker who most certainly was at his post at the time of the shootings. Blowed if I can remember his name, but I'm sure it's been published somewhere.

As far as is known, contrary to suggestions made in the past, there is no evidence at all that Alphon and Hanratty consciously knew each other prior to the crime.

Graham

[Herlock Sholmes]

Apart from the Woffinden book which I’m reading now are there any others worth getting? I’m assuming that there’s nothing in Foot’s book that’s not in Woffinden? What about The Inconvenient Truth by Alan Razen?

Does anyone know if there’s some kind of online resource for photos and maps of the case? I always like to put faces to names and see the locations? Cheers.

[cobalt]

I have never been comfortable playing armchair psychologist in this case, but I am willing enough to respond to what others put forward. When I suggested that, psychologically speaking, Alphon was a better candidate than Hanratty as the A6 killer, Caz suddenly dropped her psychological profiling and started on about a snotty handkerchief found on a bus.

I will stick purely with the psychology for the time being. The killer was playing some kind of cat and mouse game with his captives, on one occasion allowing Gregsten out of the car to obtain milk and cigarettes. On another occasion he demanded they stop and fill up with petrol. There is a similarity here with Alphon’s televised interview where he is clearly playing a game with the questioner, one where he almost takes the bait but clearly enjoys his overall control of the situation. This is a situation he has set up, turning up for a self-styled press conference in Paris for no more obvious reason than the killer turned up in a cornfield. Alphon’s dealings with Fox and Justice reveal a similar type of game playing; with Paul Foot as well.

Alphon’s odd behaviour immediately following the murder led to the police being alerted to his presence in a hotel by its manager. Graham has suggested that since Alphon was a rather eccentric character this is of little significance. I am not so sure about that. Had Alphon’s behaviour previously raised concerns in a hotel then maybe I would be inclined to agree with him, but so far as I know there is no record of this. He stayed at hotels fairly regularly so had ample opportunity to display his erratic behaviour, presumably around the time of the Padola case which is when Acott first latched on to the idea of asking hotels and boarding houses to watch out for odd characters.

Regarding the issue of the killer wanting a ‘kip,’ I fear we are engaged in circular logic. I suggested that the killer would have tired of his game of cat and mouse, so Caz has taken me literally and suggested he was suffering from fatigue! If I read her correctly, the killer’s tiredness has the effect of making him more nervous than when he entered the car and started babbling away about nothing. My point was that the killer must have had some sort of idea of how he was going to conclude his evening’s work and that falling asleep was scarcely going to be part of that plan. Most of us agree that murder was not originally on the agenda either, so after four hours driving around in the dark some sort of decision was going to have to be made before day broke.

The screamingly obvious decision was to chuck the couple out of the car and drive back home alone. Unless the killer could not drive of course, in which case that would not have been an option he considered prior to the shooting.

[Spitfire]

John Kerr arrived at the murder scene hours after the shooting.

Anybody got an answer to my query about Hanratty having tattoos?

I have never heard of Hanratty having a tattoo of any description. Which papers of the weekend 7/8th October 1961 referred to a tattoo?

[Graham]

Apart from the Woffinden book which I’m reading now are there any others worth getting? I’m assuming that there’s nothing in Foot’s book that’s not in Woffinden? What about The Inconvenient Truth by Alan Razen?

Does anyone know if there’s some kind of online resource for photos and maps of the case? I always like to put faces to names and see the locations? Cheers.

There are some photos here: https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/ha...l?blackwhite=1 and probably more on Alamy if you have a look round. Woffinden's book is pretty thin on photos, Foot's is much better. There are probably still photos on this Forum going way back. A poster called Steve put on a whole lot of quality photos of many of the places in the case, but I don't know if they're still available.

I began to read Alan Razen's book, but found it unconvincing and also badly written. There is also 'Shadows Of Deadman's Hill' by Leonard Miller, which gets the Hanratty supporters' blood boiling (!), but as only 1000 copies were printed (by Zoylus) it's now hard to get, but you may be lucky on the net. To counter this, former poster Natalie Severn, very much a Hanratty supporter, wrote a couple of pamphlets, but I don't know if these are still available. Her real name is Norma Buddle and she has an internet blog.

Graham

[Herlock Sholmes]

There are some photos here: https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/ha...l?blackwhite=1 and probably more on Alamy if you have a look round. Woffinden's book is pretty thin on photos, Foot's is much better. There are probably still photos on this Forum going way back. A poster called Steve put on a whole lot of quality photos of many of the places in the case, but I don't know if they're still available.

I began to read Alan Razen's book, but found it unconvincing and also badly written. There is also 'Shadows Of Deadman's Hill' by Leonard Miller, which gets the Hanratty supporters' blood boiling (!), but as only 1000 copies were printed (by Zoylus) it's now hard to get, but you may be lucky on the net. To counter this, former poster Natalie Severn, very much a Hanratty supporter, wrote a couple of pamphlets, but I don't know if these are still available. Her real name is Norma Buddle and she has an internet blog.

Graham

Thanks for that Graham

[Alfie]

I have never heard of Hanratty having a tattoo of any description. Which papers of the weekend 7/8th October 1961 referred to a tattoo?

Daily Mail, Oct 7: "Scotland Yard believes that a tattooed man of about 25, who had dyed his ginger hair black, can help in their inquiries ..."

The Daily Telegraph reported that the tattoos were of a picture of a snake and the word 'Bett', an abbreviation of 'Betty'.

The Daily Herald differed, saying "The man ... has the word 'snake' tattooed on one arm and the word 'Bert' on the other".