A6 Rebooted

[caz]

Semantics and semen antics - but Limehouse, leaving aside whether the gunman was a trigger happy twit or just a twit with a gun, how do you think anyone, in 1961 or today, could have removed every last trace of the killer from that car, inside and out, but left innocent sets of fingerprints on/in it? Or have I got that wrong? Did they in fact find nobody's prints either? And wouldn't that have been mighty suspicious?

Love,

Caz
X

[Derrick]

Valerie was laying on top of her slip and skirt, and the excess semen leaked onto that (as referred to in the Appeal Judgement).

Wrong

All that was found on the slip was Valerie Stories own blood.

Derrick

[Natalie Severn]

Sigh - do you misread my posts on purpose Nats? I thought you had a decent degree in linguistics!

I said 'the' trigger happy twit - you remember, the one who went on to rape and shoot Valerie after shooting dead her lover and stupidly not checking she was also dead when he left the scene. You may not like or agree with the DNA evidence and Valerie's own testimony for Hanratty being the rapist, but you are surely not arguing that the gunman was not a trigger happy twit, or that he did the shooting while someone else carried out the rape - are you?



But once again, how can you state that the tiniest traces of semen scraped from Hanratty's fly accidentally contaminated the knicker fragment, when you state in the next breath that the DNA could not have survived for forty years to provide a reliable match with the hanky and the man's human remains? Can you not see the glaring contradiction here?

And how would you explain the lack of any semen found in the car itself? Are you suggesting someone cleaned up every trace to protect the real rapist? That Valerie was lying about being raped in the car? I don't get where this one can go, because assuming there was a rapist, the fact that no semen was found doesn't clear Hanratty any more than it could clear or incriminate anyone else.

Love,

Caz
X

Caz,
To my way of thinking,when you call Hanratty 'trigger happy' you imply a sense of continuity-a before and after if you like , whether or not you are referring here solely to the A6 shooting for which he was accused.

As I understand it LCN DNA testing is controversial precisely because it attracts contaminants to such a piece of cloth like bees round honey.
During the low copy number testing ,just a tiny amount will 'travel' to a spot and multiply itself thousands of times which is what could easily have happened here.A tiny amount could have transferred itself onto the knickers when all were being transported to and fro in the Bedfordshire police van from the police station to Ampthill magistrates court for the committal in November 1961 or as the police laid out the knickers alongside the trousers and Hanratty's 'intimate samples' or when they collected same at the end of each day--5 or 6 weeks before the scrapings by the pathologist in the lab which was another time when contact could have easily been made.
I do not believe Mr Whitaker was able to see two acts of sexual intercourse in the LCN DNA he obtained from the 43 year old piece of cloth.
We have no independent scientist observing this no impartial witness to verify the process as it happened or the results. Mr Whitaker conducted the tests, this is accepted, and nobody is denying Hanratty's DNA found its way to this piece of cloth. What is being challenged is how and when this DNA got there---oh and whether it was even DNA that came from semen.As I understand it this is another contentious claim by Mr Whitaker.

I have similar suspicions about the hanky.All it was was a hanky kept in a drawer in Bedford Police Station that had apparently belonged to Hanratty.Where is the proof it was the one wrapped round the forensic free gun and 60 cartridges?

Why it could easily have been a trophy the police had kept from the cells on the day Hanratty was sentenced to die.Or one that Charles France had given them for other reasons.

[babybird67]

Wrong

All that was found on the slip was Valerie Stories own blood.

Derrick

Wrong.

From article 106 of the appeal judgement:

We turn to the DNA evidence. As already noted seminal fluid was found on Valerie Storie’s knickers and one of her slips.

[Natalie Severn]

but left innocent sets of fingerprints on/in it? Or have I got that wrong? Did they in fact find nobody's prints either? And wouldn't that have been mighty suspicious?

There were twelve sets of fingerprints found but none of them were Hanratty's.

[babybird67]

that's the point Nats

There were twelve sets of fingerprints found but none of them were Hanratty's

How could anyone have known whose fingerprints they were erasing and whose they were leaving? The fact that there were disparate fingerprints found proves the car was not meticulously cleaned by anybody so as not to incriminate anyone.

[Natalie Severn]

How could anyone have known whose fingerprints they were erasing and whose they were leaving? The fact that there were disparate fingerprints found proves the car was not meticulously cleaned by anybody so as not to incriminate anyone.

So?
Surely to goodness you can at least accept that there was in fact NO forensic link to Hanratty?Not a fingerprint,not a hair,not a fibre---a complete miracle in fact after an act of rape---which involved the opening and closing of the fly and therefore a great likelihood of fibre being found from the trousers.But none was found........

[babybird67]

So?
Surely to goodness you can at least accept that there was in fact NO forensic link to Hanratty?Not a fingerprint,not a hair,not a fibre---a complete miracle in fact after an act of rape---which involved the opening and closing of the fly and therefore a great likelihood of fibre being found from the trousers.But none was found........

So?

There was no forensic link to ANYBODY, Nats, are you telling me there was no rape or murder in that car because the forensics must have been there otherwise?

And anyway that's not strictly true is it. There was a forensic link to Hanratty in the car...on the victim's knickers, and slip, which were IN the car at the time.

[Natalie Severn]

So?

There was no forensic link to ANYBODY, Nats, are you telling me there was no rape or murder in that car because the forensics must have been there otherwise?

And anyway that's not strictly true is it. There was a forensic link to Hanratty in the car...on the victim's knickers, and slip, which were IN the car at the time.

So Jen,there was no proof whatever that Hanratty had been anywhere near that car .

See post below---I repeat the reason Hanratty's DNA was found on these items is very likely to have been due to contamination.

[Natalie Severn]

As I understand it LCN DNA testing is controversial precisely because it attracts contaminants to such a piece of cloth like bees round honey.
During the low copy number testing ,just a tiny amount will 'travel' to a spot and multiply itself thousands of times which is what could easily have happened here.A tiny amount could have transferred itself onto the knickers when all were being transported to and fro in the Bedfordshire police van from the police station to Ampthill magistrates court for the committal in November 1961 or as the police laid out the knickers alongside the trousers and Hanratty's 'intimate samples' or when they collected same at the end of each day--5 or 6 weeks before the scrapings by the pathologist in the lab which was another time when contact could have easily been made.
I do not believe Mr Whitaker was able to see two acts of sexual intercourse in the LCN DNA he obtained from the 43 year old piece of cloth.
We have no independent scientist observing this no impartial witness to verify the process as it happened or the results. Mr Whitaker conducted the tests, this is accepted, and nobody is denying Hanratty's DNA found its way to this piece of cloth. What is being challenged is how and when this DNA got there---oh and whether it was even DNA that came from semen.As I understand it this is another contentious claim by Mr Whitaker.

As I said above, during low copy number DNA testing the most miniscule flake of semen could have amplified itself and so covered that fragment of cloth like a rash of blots on blotting paper.

[babybird67]

So Jen,there was no proof whatever that Hanratty had been anywhere near that car .

See post below---I repeat the reason Hanratty's DNA was found on these items is very likely to have been due to contamination.

No Nats that doesn't wash.

The rapist's semen was on the knickers when the crime was committed. The Appeal Judgement states that the semen found during the DNA tests was there from primary transfer not secondary (ie not contamination). It was in a distribution consistent with sexual intercourse having taken place. Where would all the semen that was there from the rapist originally have gone by the way?

The proof is:

The victim identified him

The DNA on her knickers made a ghostly appearance forty odd years later and testifies as a silent witness that she was quite correct.

So there is ample proof.

[babybird67]

As I said above, during low copy number DNA testing the most miniscule flake of semen could have amplified itself and so covered that fragment of cloth like a rash of blots on blotting paper.

Yet at the same time all the hundreds of flakes of DNA from the actual rapist contained in the mass of semen contained in an ejaculate were all somehow erased and not magnified even once to provide anyone else's DNA profile?

How strange. Hanratty must have had one hell of a superhuman flake of DNA on that alleged wash from allegedly his trousers!

[Limehouse]

How could anyone have known whose fingerprints they were erasing and whose they were leaving? The fact that there were disparate fingerprints found proves the car was not meticulously cleaned by anybody so as not to incriminate anyone.

The simple answer to that is that the surfaces touched by the killer were wiped over and those not touched by the killer were left. So - yes- finger prints were found of other people who had touched the car at various times.

[babybird67]

The simple answer to that is that the surfaces touched by the killer were wiped over and those not touched by the killer were left. So - yes- finger prints were found of other people who had touched the car at various times.

The simple question you need to answer if you're arguing that's the case is, if someone was trying to frame Hanratty, how would they know where the real killer had touched in the car? I believe fingerprints were missing because the real killer wore gloves and possibly did try to erase his presence as well.

[Limehouse]

The simple question you need to answer if you're arguing that's the case is, if someone was trying to frame Hanratty, how would they know where the real killer had touched in the car? I believe fingerprints were missing because the real killer wore gloves and possibly did try to erase his presence as well.

The real killer wiped places he had touched in the car. Yes - he wore gloves according to Valerie's testimony - and he took one off just prior to the rape.