A6 Rebooted

[Graham]

I will , If first you will benefit us all with your far superior knowledge , and give us the answers you had for those questions ,pre DNA.!

So if I show you mine, you'll show me yours?

Graham

[Graham]

Nice one, Spitfire....

G

[cobalt]

Spitfire’'s defence of the status quo has thrown up the odd strawman amongst his ironical observations,

First of all, I am not aware of anyone who believes Valerie Storie knowingly gave false testimony against James Hanratty. She had no reason to identify anyone other than the man who killed her lover and paralysed her, so she clearly gave her evidence in good faith. She may have been mistaken or she may have been correct, but if she made a mistake it was an honest one.

I have never heard anyone claim William Ewer knew either the Kray twins or Frankie Fraser. So far as I am aware Ewer was a law abiding citizen. He may have known Dixie France since France- and this is according to a statement made by Ewer- came into his shop to offer condolences on the death of Gregsten. That Ewer had influence is beyond doubt: the embargo in relation to his libel action against the Sunday Times is clear evidence of that. If Spitfire can explain this embargo- which normally applies only to matters of state security- then I will be all ears. Until then I will assume he is desperately trying to smear the defence case with crude strawman arguments that have never been used on this site.

Why did France put Hanratty in the frame and not Alphon? Because that is what he was coerced into doing. France supplied the murder weapon whose provenance the police were capable of tracing. If France had been asked to put Alphon in the frame, instead of Hanratty, then that is what he would have had to do to save his own skin.

The impression I have from reading posts like Spitfire’s- they are hardly unique- is that he believes deep down that no innocent man has ever been found guilty in a UK court. That anyone who believes otherwise is some kind of conspiracist. Maybe I misjudge him, and he accepts that there have been miscarriages of justice, although I would be very interested to know what these have been in his opinion. In light of which, a man is now going around openly admitting he was involved in the Birmingham bombings in 1974 for which others were wrongly imprisoned. This claim has been confirmed by the IRA. He has not quite gone full Alphon on this but- and I suppose the question has to be put to Spitfire- is he some kind of fantasist? This man, name of Hayes was, rather like Alphon, arrested in the aftermath of the crime and then released. Had the Birmingham Six been executed- as the trial judge said he wished they had been- then I doubt we would ever have heard of Mr. Hayes.

[Alfie]

... anyone who believes otherwise is some kind of conspiracist.

Anyone who believes Hanratty was framed is ipso facto a conspiracist.

[cobalt]

I won'’t dispute your logic, but maybe being a conspiracist is not always such a bad thing. In the mid 1970s I never questioned the verdicts in the cases of either the Guildford Four or the Birmingham Six. I would imagine most members of the public felt the same as I did back then. It was only in the 1980s when investigative reporters began to highlight some of the anomalies in the evidence that I came, gradually, to the conclusion that the police had conspired to fabricate evidence against innocent persons.

As it turns out that is now the official view, ipso facto I am no longer a conspiracist in regard to these two cases. That does not mean my suspicions about the A6 Case are correct of course and one advantage of posting on this site is that those who believe in Hanratty'’s guilt often provide good supporting arguments. For example, a possible reason for Hanratty going to the wrong railway station, that he failed to notice a bookmaker’s shop near to his accommodation in Rhyl, that he might have been engaged in an aborted planned robbery elsewhere before stumbling across a car in Taplow, have all given me pause for thought.

Consequently, I think I am not likely to put forward wild, conspiracy theories which I appreciate can be tiresome. However, though still not convinced of Hanratty'’s innocence, I remain even less convinced of his guilt and that entails attempting to unravel what probably was a conspiracy against him.

[Alfie]

I won'’t dispute your logic, but maybe being a conspiracist is not always such a bad thing. In the mid 1970s I never questioned the verdicts in the cases of either the Guildford Four or the Birmingham Six. I would imagine most members of the public felt the same as I did back then. It was only in the 1980s when investigative reporters began to highlight some of the anomalies in the evidence that I came, gradually, to the conclusion that the police had conspired to fabricate evidence against innocent persons.

As it turns out that is now the official view, ipso facto I am no longer a conspiracist in regard to these two cases. That does not mean my suspicions about the A6 Case are correct of course and one advantage of posting on this site is that those who believe in Hanratty'’s guilt often provide good supporting arguments. For example, a possible reason for Hanratty going to the wrong railway station, that he failed to notice a bookmaker’s shop near to his accommodation in Rhyl, that he might have been engaged in an aborted planned robbery elsewhere before stumbling across a car in Taplow, have all given me pause for thought.

Consequently, I think I am not likely to put forward wild, conspiracy theories which I appreciate can be tiresome. However, though still not convinced of Hanratty'’s innocence, I remain even less convinced of his guilt and that entails attempting to unravel what probably was a conspiracy against him.

Except for the last sentence, I can't argue with any of that

[Yossel]

Hi everyone. I am new here so am looking for some assistance.

I was 12 years old when the murder was committed but remember it well from the coverage in the media. Some years later I used the case and Paul Foot's book as the basis for a course I was teaching in Newham. After that, I pretty much forgot about it except when it cropped up in the press, usually as a result of Foot's campaigning. My impression was always that he had it about right when he indicated that although it was not possible to prove Hanratty's innocence, it was very unlikely he committed the crime. I was therefore surprised by the result of the DNA investigation, but simply assumed I must have got it wrong.

Since discovering this site a few weeks back I have gone over the case in my mind a good deal and am now more than ever convinced he was innocent of the murder, and if he had any involvement at all it was peripheral.

There are too many posts for me to trawl through so I would like to ask a few questions which I am sure would have been covered at some point but which would be difficult for me to find quickly.

Can anybody tell me something about Ewer, his background and whether he was formally questioned at all? Some posts seem to suggest he was respectable and law-abiding, others that he was a serious underworld figure. I grew up in the East End at the time of the Krays and their names were well known. I never met them, although I once boxed as a schoolboy at their club, Repton. I also heard of the Richardsons but they came later and I had moved out of the East End by then. I think they covered a different patch anyway. I never heard of any William Ewer, which is surprising if he was a significant gangster. Although I was never involved in such matters, I did work for a year in a North London garage where there were some distinctly dodgy goings on and one tended to know who the local villains were, but until I read Foot's book I didn't know of any Ewer, underworld villain or otherwise. I see he ran an umbrella repair shop in Swiss Cottage. It is not unknown for crooks to have a legitimate 'shop front', but umbrellas?! Just how much business did he do?

What is the evidence concerning the rape? I understand that no charge was brought and I guess it was widely supposed this would have been to avoid unnecessary distress for Miss Storie, especially in view of the murder charge. Am I alone in wondering whether it actually took place and was not an embellishment after the event? I ask because it seems to me that when she was admitted to hospital in a critical condition she would have undergone a very thorough examination and any sign of rape would probably have been noted and commented upon by the medical staff. Personally, I always find rape a difficult crime to comprehend because I find the idea of sex with an unwilling partner unattractive and bizarre. In this case there was also the presence of a gorey dead body in the car which even in more propitious circumstances would have been a bit small for that kind of activity. Did anybody ever check out the rape story, or was the victim's word simply accepted at face value?

That will do for now. My thanks to all contributors to this fascinating site for helping to shed light on this extraordinary crime.

I look forward to all responses.

Warm regards to everyone.

Yossel.

[Graham]

Hi Yossel - welcome to the boards.

Ewer was actually Janet Gregsten's brother-in-law, as he was married to her sister. What he did before opening his 'umbrella repair shop' is unknown to me - but rest assured he didn't just fix umbrellas. He was a quite successful antiques dealer and had a shop in Petticoat Lane I believe. I honestly do not believe he had any ties with the gangster world, but some of James Hanratty's supporters have insisted on this over the years.

Peter Alphon was an unstable nutcase who, for all that, seemed to have the ability to attract money. He was an inveterate backer of dogs and horses. Alphon showed Paul Foot his accounts for 1961 and 1962, and between October 61 and June 62 a total of £7569 was paid in, most of it in the first two months in block payments. He spent it almost as quickly as he received it. Of course, the A6 Conspiracy Theorists jumped on this, and claimed that the bulk of this money came from William Ewer as payment for Alphon killing Michael Gregsten. The fact that much of Alphon's money at that time came from settlement of libel committed by several newspapers is discounted. It has been confidently stated that Ewer paid Alphon the colossal sum of £5000 for the 'job'.

I can recall Frankie Fraser, speaking a long, long time ago about the murder of Jack 'The Hat' McVitie, who was 'engaged' by the Krays to get rid of a certain Leslie Payne, who had offended the Krays. McVitie's payment - and he was a professional mobster, enforcer and hitman, remember - was to be £500 in advance and £500 when the deed was done. McVitie screwed up, Palmer survived, and later was himself done to death by Reggie Kray. Note that the two most notorious and brutal mobsters in London paid only £1000 for a professional 'hit' - yet here according to some is Ewer giving five times that amount to a man whose sole criminal activity prior to getting mixed up in the A6 was taking a motor-cycle without permission!

Ewer may well have been involved in dodgy dealings in the world of antiques, and as we all know he did live for a while after her husband's death with Janet Gregsten; but to cast him as a 'gangster' willing to pay serious money to an unknown loose-mouthed wanderer through life like Alphon is simply not acceptable. Paul Foot at one time thought him the 'evil genius' behind the Crime, but towards the end of his life changed his views somewhat - about both Ewer and Janet Gregsten.

Maybe someone can throw a little light on Ewer's life prior to the A6 Crime, and also after he and Janet split up. I've found virtually nothing about him on the net. I'm not surprised you never heard of him when you worked in North London, Yossel!

Graham

[cobalt]

Hi Yossel,

Paul Foot was a respected investigative journalist but he perhaps should have spent more time on delving into the background of William Ewer. As Spitfire recently cautioned us, because of the paucity of information relating to Ewer it can be tempting to ascribe to him all kinds of power and influence for which there is actually no evidence.

I agree with Graham that a gangster link is unlikely. The traditional ‘front’ for a successful criminal was a scrapyard or snooker hall, not an antiques shop. It is entirely possible Ewer met dodgy characters in that line of work and given the fact that Hanratty was known to move around the Swiss Cottage area, and was friendly with one of Ewers's business associates, equally possible their paths had crossed briefly. However no definite link has ever been established between Ewer and either Hanratty or Alphon prior to the crime.

We have been able to pick up information about the war record of Alphon'’s father, and also the inglorious National Service undertaken by Hanratty and Alphon; however we do not seem able to find out what William Ewer was doing during WW2. There has been a suggestion- it is no more that I'’m afraid- that Ewer is a relative of William N Ewer who was a prominent Daily Herald journalist in his day and would have been around the correct age to be his father or uncle. William N Ewer was a man very close to the levers of power, writing for what was effectively the Labour Party newspaper and himself supporting the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. He later denounced Trotsky during the show trials in the 1930s but was, confusingly, highly regarded as a journalist by Adolf Hitler who was very sensitive to criticism from the UK Press. I think Ewer had a brief audience with Hitler as an invited journalist sometime in the 1930s. William N Ewer ended his days writing anti-Stalinist articles in the Daily Herald before its demise in the late 1950s, but mid century his paper had been the biggest selling tabloid in the UK.

So, William N Ewer was clearly a man of significant reach and influence but his relationship, if any, with our William Ewer is so far unknown. Nontheless William Ewer gained access to reporters to give a version of the events at Swiss Cottage which he was later to deny, suggesting confidence in his dealings with the press. He also had the confidence and the wherewithal to successfully sue the Sunday Times in regard to his involvement in the A6 Case. And for me, most significantly, he was able to keep from public view the legal papers in regard to his libel action for something like 80 years, at which time most of us on this site will have shuffled off our mortal coil.

[Yossel]

Hi Yossel - welcome to the boards.

Ewer was actually Janet Gregsten's brother-in-law, as he was married to her sister. What he did before opening his 'umbrella repair shop' is unknown to me - but rest assured he didn't just fix umbrellas. He was a quite successful antiques dealer and had a shop in Petticoat Lane I believe. I honestly do not believe he had any ties with the gangster world, but some of James Hanratty's supporters have insisted on this over the years.

Peter Alphon was an unstable nutcase who, for all that, seemed to have the ability to attract money. He was an inveterate backer of dogs and horses. Alphon showed Paul Foot his accounts for 1961 and 1962, and between October 61 and June 62 a total of £7569 was paid in, most of it in the first two months in block payments. He spent it almost as quickly as he received it. Of course, the A6 Conspiracy Theorists jumped on this, and claimed that the bulk of this money came from William Ewer as payment for Alphon killing Michael Gregsten. The fact that much of Alphon's money at that time came from settlement of libel committed by several newspapers is discounted. It has been confidently stated that Ewer paid Alphon the colossal sum of £5000 for the 'job'.

I can recall Frankie Fraser, speaking a long, long time ago about the murder of Jack 'The Hat' McVitie, who was 'engaged' by the Krays to get rid of a certain Leslie Payne, who had offended the Krays. McVitie's payment - and he was a professional mobster, enforcer and hitman, remember - was to be £500 in advance and £500 when the deed was done. McVitie screwed up, Palmer survived, and later was himself done to death by Reggie Kray. Note that the two most notorious and brutal mobsters in London paid only £1000 for a professional 'hit' - yet here according to some is Ewer giving five times that amount to a man whose sole criminal activity prior to getting mixed up in the A6 was taking a motor-cycle without permission!

Ewer may well have been involved in dodgy dealings in the world of antiques, and as we all know he did live for a while after her husband's death with Janet Gregsten; but to cast him as a 'gangster' willing to pay serious money to an unknown loose-mouthed wanderer through life like Alphon is simply not acceptable. Paul Foot at one time thought him the 'evil genius' behind the Crime, but towards the end of his life changed his views somewhat - about both Ewer and Janet Gregsten.

Maybe someone can throw a little light on Ewer's life prior to the A6 Crime, and also after he and Janet split up. I've found virtually nothing about him on the net. I'm not surprised you never heard of him when you worked in North London, Yossel!

Graham

Thank you Graham. That confirms a good deal and adds some new stuff for me.

An antique dealer in the East End is unlikely to be naive, or as pure and clean as the driven snow, but neither should it be assumed he would be a gangster and unless somebody can direct me to some evidence to that effect I shall continue to view Ewer with an open mind.

I remember reading that Alphon was said to have been living on the proceeds of an inheritance and gambling winnings at the time of the murder and I scoffed at the idea. Inheritances are traceable and do not come along on a regular basis. As for being a successful gambler, my father was one and on my retirement I continued the family tradition to the extent of being able to top up a modest pension with profits of about five to ten thousand a year until I packed it in recently. Ninety-eight per cent of all gamblers lose money and the 2% that my Dad and I represented mostly achieve their results through hard work and persistence. In fact all the serious successful punters I have known have been sober, stable citizens, with regular habits and a business-like approach to their work. Whatever the source of Alphon's money, it is unlikely to have been the track, although he may well have used gambling as a means of laundering funds from other sources.

I scoffed even more at the idea of a £5,000 payment for a hit job. About twenty years ago a friend made enquiries into the cost of hiring such a man and was told £1,000 for a severe beating and £3,000 for a killing. I am glad to report he didn't take the matter any further but the figures sounded about right to me at the time, and are broadly consistent with the figures you quoted in respect of McVitie, once you take account the value of money over the periods in question.

The name Frankie Fraser is perfectly familiar to me and I wouldn't trust a word he said.

It would be interesting to know why Foot changed his views on Ewer (and Mrs G) as he provides the link between the victims and the two main suspects, Alphon and Hanratty. Without such a link, the crime lacked motive and would appear to have been a random attack on victims previously unknown to the attacker. On a Board of this kind, it hardly needs to be emphasised just how rare such crimes are. Ewer evidently knew Alphon and if he didn't know Hanratty personally, he certainly knew people connected to him. He therefore provides both a connection and a motive. I would expand on this but expect it has been covered amply already in the thousands of posts that have preceded this one. Suffice to say that the Ewer connection make it spectacularly improbable that the crimes committed that night by the A6 were the work of a solitary psychopath.

Good nite, and thanks again for the help.

Yossel

[Yossel]

Hi Yossel,

Paul Foot was a respected investigative journalist but he perhaps should have spent more time on delving into the background of William Ewer. As Spitfire recently cautioned us, because of the paucity of information relating to Ewer it can be tempting to ascribe to him all kinds of power and influence for which there is actually no evidence.

I agree with Graham that a gangster link is unlikely. The traditional ‘front’ for a successful criminal was a scrapyard or snooker hall, not an antiques shop. It is entirely possible Ewer met dodgy characters in that line of work and given the fact that Hanratty was known to move around the Swiss Cottage area, and was friendly with one of Ewers's business associates, equally possible their paths had crossed briefly. However no definite link has ever been established between Ewer and either Hanratty or Alphon prior to the crime.

We have been able to pick up information about the war record of Alphon'’s father, and also the inglorious National Service undertaken by Hanratty and Alphon; however we do not seem able to find out what William Ewer was doing during WW2. There has been a suggestion- it is no more that I'’m afraid- that Ewer is a relative of William N Ewer who was a prominent Daily Herald journalist in his day and would have been around the correct age to be his father or uncle. William N Ewer was a man very close to the levers of power, writing for what was effectively the Labour Party newspaper and himself supporting the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. He later denounced Trotsky during the show trials in the 1930s but was, confusingly, highly regarded as a journalist by Adolf Hitler who was very sensitive to criticism from the UK Press. I think Ewer had a brief audience with Hitler as an invited journalist sometime in the 1930s. William N Ewer ended his days writing anti-Stalinist articles in the Daily Herald before its demise in the late 1950s, but mid century his paper had been the biggest selling tabloid in the UK.

So, William N Ewer was clearly a man of significant reach and influence but his relationship, if any, with our William Ewer is so far unknown. Nontheless William Ewer gained access to reporters to give a version of the events at Swiss Cottage which he was later to deny, suggesting confidence in his dealings with the press. He also had the confidence and the wherewithal to successfully sue the Sunday Times in regard to his involvement in the A6 Case. And for me, most significantly, he was able to keep from public view the legal papers in regard to his libel action for something like 80 years, at which time most of us on this site will have shuffled off our mortal coil.

Thank you, Cobalt.

Scrapyards? Yes, I can confirm that from personal experience! Snooker halls I am less sure about but expect you are right.

It seems I was under a misapprehension in thinking that Ewer was acquainted with Alphon before the murder.

As regards William N Ewer, it is all very interesting, tantalisingly so, but in the absence of clear evidence it would surely be wrong to assume a link with our man at Swiss Cottage.

Warm regards

Yossel

[Graham]

Actually, William N Ewer isn't the only Ewer that pops up on the internet other than our friend Bill....whose only mention on the net as far as I can find is either via Casebook or the various A6 articles that have been posted over the years. If there was any relationship between William N and our Bill, I've yet to hear of it, but of course it can't be ruled out. However, as I mentioned earlier, Bill Ewer and his wife who was Janet Gregsten's sister lived in the same large house, split into apartments, as Janet Gregsten. I kind of get the impression that Bill Ewer came from a fairly humble background.

Ewer knew, and dealt with, Louise Anderson, another (and possibly slightly more iffy than Bill) antique dealer who had a shop in Greek Street, Soho. Hanratty knew her as well, and from time to time fenced crime proceeds with her. But I don't believe there is any evidence that Hanratty and Ewer actually met and knew one another prior to the A6 Crime.

I don't think that Alphon played the tables, Yossel. Rather he was doggies and gee-gees, and given that he sometimes lived quite well in various hotels and boarding-houses, and sometimes by his own admission was forced to sleep under Southend Pier, he was probably not, overall, too successful. In fact, he also admitted sponging off his mother, and also to selling Old Moore's Almanacs to put bread on his table.

If Alphon and Ewer knew one another before the crime, then I would like to see proof of that. Check out the 15-point statement that Ewer wrote for, and was published by, the Sunday Times: Point 10: I would like to place on record that I never at any time met James Hanratty or Peter Louis Alphon, who appears to be a raving lunatic and made my life intensely disagreeable with persistent telephone calls, some of them of a threatening nature. And of course, largely due to this 15-point statement, Ewer won undisclosed but considerable libel-damages from the Sunday Times. I'd say that had he seriously had anything to do with the A6 Crime, he wouldn't have taken on a wealthy and powerful organ like that particular newspaper. He'd have kept very, very quiet.

There was, of course, the rather strange and bizarre She Saw Him At The Cleaners episode; but more of this later.

Graham

[Yossel]

Thanks again, Graham.

"In fact, he also admitted sponging off his mother...."


Do we know anything of Alphon's father? I seem to recall he was something senior in the Police but again there's seems to be a dearth of solid information.

By the way, nobody has responded yet to the 'rape' aspect of my original post. Too distateful to discuss, or do we accept it actually happened as Storie testified?

Regards

Yossel

[Graham]

Alphon's father was a clerk at Scotland Yard...not a 'senior' figure at all. Acott interviewed him - twice, I believe- but nothing came of it.

If Felix Alphon, Peter Alphon's father, was really a 'senior figure' at Scotland Yard, then I doubt if he and his wife Gladys would be living in two rooms in a house behind Streatham Common railway station. Another little myth about the A6 Case that has crept in over the years....

Regarding the rape, I see no reason to believe that it happened in any way other than Valerie Storey testified.

Graham

[Yossel]

Alphon's father was a clerk at Scotland Yard...not a 'senior' figure at all. Acott interviewed him - twice, I believe- but nothing came of it.

If Felix Alphon, Peter Alphon's father, was really a 'senior figure' at Scotland Yard, then I doubt if he and his wife Gladys would be living in two rooms in a house behind Streatham Common railway station. Another little myth about the A6 Case that has crept in over the years....

Regarding the rape, I see no reason to believe that it happened in any way other than Valerie Storey testified.

Graham

Noted with thanks again, Graham.