A6 Rebooted

[moste]

It would explain a great deal if we consider a prearranged meeting ,rendezvous,with someone known to Gregsten. Where some kind of ongoing arrangement was coming to a head, I would add quite possibly involving a financial agreement, which obviously went tragically awry.
All of this would mean that there was a conspiracy involved, and as we all know the honesty and outstanding policing of the Met. In the early 60s, was beyond reproach.

[cobalt]

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.

[moste]

Quite right, and that someone was at the Dolphin racetrack that evening which by coincidence was on the route the car took , vis -a -vis the A4, Bath road.How much more of a coincidence is it though that this person in question shared the one in a million hotel only 24 hrs. apart with the man ultimately charged with the murder ?

[moste]

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

which ultimately means a conspiracy existed.

[moste]

I have it on good authority Ansonman that Roger Matthews was very ill in hospital several weeks ago, I know nothing more than that at present.

Anything new here SH ?

[moste]

I Emailed this to my MP for Manchester Withington . I’m writing from west Canada so that may be an issue Dear Jeff Smith,
I have corresponded with you on another matter in the past ,I wondered if you could be of help with a completely different issue. I have been involved with a forum called’ A6 rebooted ‘since 2013. One of our members have been trying to get some information from the Home Office. It involves what we believe to be a serious miscarriage of Justice back in 1961. At this time James Hanratty was hanged for the murder of Michael Gregsten, you may well have heard of the case. We on the forum are at a stumbling block which requires information concerning one Chief Superintendent Roger Mathews who back in the early 1990s carried out at the request of the home office an in depth investigation which spanned over a 12 month plus period and involved also 20 detectives to be available for C.S. Mathews.The results of this investigation prompted C.S. Mathews to announce that James Hanratty had nothing to do with the murder that he was subsequently hanged for , and further the actual crime was committed by possibly the involvement of at least three persons. Can the report of the police officer be released into the public domain under the freedom of information act , and if not why not? Â
Some of our forum members have tried to contact C.Sup. Mathews and have some kind of statement from the man himself, but to no avail. The last heard was that he was in hospital quite seriously IllÂ
Any help at all in this matter would be greatly appreciated. And thank you for considering our endeavours.

ps. The letter I sent didn’t have the weird hieroglyphics.

[cobalt]

Regarding Valerie Storie’s original accounts I think the police must have smelled a rat from day one. This was not a random crime but more what was later described as a ‘gas meter job.’ The Matthews report, still unpublished today, probably starts to undermine the official verdict if the daily logs can be found.

Any police informers must have been in line for a big police bonus for information received in such a high level crime, a crime which neither the police nor the criminal fraternity relished. And who is served up first by them, allegedly on his odd behaviour in a hotel, but Alphon? More likely he had been fingered as a man who had been talking about about certain ‘work’ that might come his, or others’, way. He was not a random pull. He was a damn good suspect on the basis of information received. The police were not stupid as some here seem to think. They had their reliable snouts. I assume all that is somewhere in the Matthews Report.

After the failed ID parade, Hanratty became the fallback and paid the price. That cost the police little.

[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.

[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.

[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

[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".

[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]

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!

[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.

[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.