A6 Rebooted

[Natalie Severn]

I can see babybird messaging---and I can see Victor looking at the A6 Rebooted thread! Hi Victor!

[jimarilyn]

I can see babybird messaging---and I can see Victor looking at the A6 Rebooted thread! Hi Victor!

Well spotted Norma. It's clear that Vic's not too far away. Brighton I think.

[Natalie Severn]

Cheers James.......it was quite a surprise to see him there.........

[jimarilyn]

Is 22 multi-quotes a new world record, Norma ?

[Derrick]

From the CPS link I gave above:

Appendix B lists the internal validation and peer review process LCN has undergone within the FSS. Various methods are being developed to profile and interpret small quantities of DNA. The FSS process is accepted by the international, operational forensic community, some of whom are developing other ways to address these issues.

My emphases.

Hi Babybird

If you had actually read annex B (http://www.cps.gov.uk/publications/p...g_annex_b.html) you would find it is clearly stated at bullet point 6 (not actually numbered) that;

In 2007, an external review was commissioned by an ACPO chaired working group. The review accepted that the FSS LCN method was validated according to the processes that were in force within the FSS at the time, although currently not against any internationally or nationally recognised technical standard.

Derrick

[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.

Hi Babybird

The appeal ruling is wrong. Nigel Sweeney told the appeal judges that the stain on the slip was Valerie Stories blood from after she was shot. Dr Evison agreed with this.

Derrick.

[caz]

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.

I thought it had been argued by one or two Hanratty defenders that the DNA identifications themselves were unreliable. If we are all agreed that it was indeed Hanratty's DNA on the victim's underwear (and by extension the hanky because the profiles were matched with each other and his human remains) that looks like progress to me.

But then we go backwards with the extraordinary straw-clutching that argues for a possible hanky switch! How many more of those involved with the case are going to be accused of breathtaking incompetence, or condemned for far worse, by the same people who shout the loudest about the presumption of innocence where proof is lacking or there is the slightest doubt? It's laughable.

...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.

Although forensics then was not as developed as it is now, procedures were in place regarding the handling of exhibits. It is extremely doubtful that they were handed around willy nilly being handled by all and sundry. To further evidence that this was not the case, there is the total absence of anybody else's DNA on either the knickers or the handkerchief, especially since one of your concerns about LCN is that is multiplies even one tiny speck of DNA. To argue that, and also to argue not only that everybody else's DNA other than Hanratty's must have just disappeared, including the (what must be) billions of specks of DNA contained in the entire ejaculate of the rapist, spreading five inches up Valerie's knickers, all just somehow got wiped out, using a process you wish to argue multiplies it, is just illogical and inconsistent, and, I would argue, scientifically impossible.

Well said, bb.

In addition, no professional was going to take pains to scrape semen from Hanratty’s fly for comparison purposes with the rapist’s semen on the knickers if the trousers and knickers could have come into direct contact before or during the process and completely invalidated a potential match. We are talking forensic analysis in the late 20th century, not the alchemy of the Dark Ages.

So I’m afraid Nats must stick with her frankly fanciful speculation that the trouser semen arrived on the knicker fragment during their subsequent storage years, amplifying itself and covering the cloth, and that every trace of this alleged handling of exhibits in the early days was blotted out, while underneath it all VS’s DNA and the one remaining profile attributed to MG survived.

She quotes Professor Budowle:

'With increased sensitivity of detection there is a concomitant increased risk of contamination.'

Now that is fair enough in principle, except that in the case we discuss it is the convicted man's DNA on the knicker fragment that is held up as the sole ‘evidence’ of this phenomenon in action - a circular argument if ever there was one. There were no unidentified, unexpected or unattributed DNA profiles (above and beyond the three obtained and accounted for by the activities of victim, lover and rapist) that might otherwise have lent support to Hanratty’s being one such ‘rogue’ element, with the real rapist’s hiding in amongst the others. The fact that the hanky only yielded the one profile - Hanratty’s - rather tends to destroy an already shaky case for contaminants having been attracted willy-nilly from a variety of human sources to confound the testing process and make any conclusions unsafe.

No - such specific findings can hardly be explained away by invoking the multiple contaminant phenomenon; the only way would be to claim the DNA evidence was fabricated from scratch and be done with it. But in that case, none of the arguments about mishandling, poor storage or unreliable testing methods would need to enter the equation, since the various ‘authorities’ involved would have made it all up from whole cloth.

The Scientific International Community makes clear it views LCN DNA testing as dangerous and likely to attract contaminants .

As said, this is meaningless without some evidence that contaminants were attracted to the knickers and/or hanky.

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.

Let’s get real here shall we, Limehouse? The awkward, not-so-simple reality is that it wouldn’t just be prints left on various inner and outer surfaces that the gunman would have needed to avoid/wipe clean, but all the airborne stuff like fibres and hairs - impossible to track down every last one to its eventual resting place and identify it as one’s own, let alone remove. You’d have to argue that the whole vehicle had been scrubbed spotless, but that’s not what the evidence indicates.

Also, the two semen deposits were examined, described and blood typed early on and attributed accordingly to rapist and lover, so there's not much point in arguing where each was 'much more likely' or 'extremely unlikely' to have ended up - they established it scientifically!

And presumably the semen scraped from Hanratty's fly proved consistent with one of those deposits at the time, or that would have been that. Any idea that a conspiracy was brewing back then to frame an innocent Hanratty has to be nonsense, or the trousers with any inconsistent semen would have been quietly disposed of along with any related documentation.

Love,

Caz
X

[Derrick]

The piece of cloth was then kept for thirty years in non sterile conditions for DNA testing at a police lab.

It wasn't kept for DNA testing. It was put away and forgotten about. Nobody knew about DNA in the 60s since it wasn't discovered until the 80s.

The file was accessed many times before it was supposedly "found" in 1991. Cyril Lewis Hawser had it in his possession for a time in the late 1970's.

Even after 1991, Superintendent Roger Matthews had it in his office, among other case papers, for a number of months in late 1994, early 1995 during the review under the direction of Commander Roy Ram.

Derrick

[caz]

Frankly I'm surprised they didn't "lose" it instead, if they knew, or were worried that there might be evidence surviving of an accidental screw-up or deliberate frame-up. Not sure what team Hanratty could have done if all the physical evidence for a potentially unsafe conviction was gone.

Love,

Caz
X

[Derrick]

And put them straight back on afterwards. Leaving them on her person to catch the semen leaking from her after the act of intercourse.

I don't accept that. She put her knickers back on after the rape, therefore the knickers would have been covered in the rapist's semen.

How do we know she had her knickers on when Gregsten made love to her?

And yet Gregsten's went up the back for some reason? But Hanratty's couldn't? I think it is more likely she was still half lying down in the back seat, so the semen spread on areas of the knickers it might not usually go on.

Hi Babybird

Nigel Sweeney told the appeal court that there was another persons DNA on the knickers;

that is another person, neither the appellant, nor Miss Storie, which, as it happens, would be consistent with finding Mr Gregsten's DNA, there having been intercourse between him and Miss Storie some two days before the fatal event.

The knicker fragment was 1cm square when found in 1991. It had been cut from the lower crutch.

This was divided into 4 5mm sqaure pieces in 1995. Only 3 were tested then because a clumsy scientist dropped 1 onto the testing rack. This piece was packaged and not tested then.

The 1995 tests provided no results, yet it had used up 3 quarters of the available material.

Later tests used the remaining dropped piece (5mm square) and re-extractions from the test tubes used in 1995. Half of the LCN tests again provided no result. Mr Sweeney did not spend any more time on explaining why this should be. Unfortunately Mr Mansfield didn't mention it either.

Peter Alphon's referential profile had the sexing gene reported as XX, ie female, which brought the cry of "mistake" from behind Mr Sweeney.

Derrick

[Natalie Severn]

.

But then we go backwards with the extraordinary straw-clutching that argues for a possible hanky switch! How many more of those involved with the case are going to be accused of breathtaking incompetence, or condemned for far worse, by the same people who shout the loudest about the presumption of innocence where proof is lacking or there is the slightest doubt? It's laughable.

No Caz,the only thing thats laughable---that is if you are into laughing about any of this------is the alarming regiment of liars ,convicts and con artists that Acott and Oxford produced as their prosecution witnesses at the trial.
And how crucial evidence was deliberately withheld that would have shown there could have been a motive.
And how there were NO witnesses who said they saw Hanratty that were not
either roundly contradicted such as Skillett by Blackhall/Trower by Paddy Hogan or Valerie by her own admission that she had only caught a passing glimpse----a glimpse which led her directly to her first identification which was to wrongly identify Michael Clark as Gregsten's killer and her rapist.
And how handwriting tests revealed visible signs of alteration making Hanratty appear to have lied when he was telling the truth.


Now we have two forensic scientists from the Brum,endeavouring to challenge the International community of scientists with their very own 'home grown' version of LCN DNA testing! And what they did in the case of James Hanratty and the 43 year old cloth,that was far too degraded to be used for conventional DNA testing ,was to totally ignore the tried and tested methods of the International Community of Forensic scientists and rely instead on their very own ,'home grown' LCN DNA testing where there is a much greater liklihood of it giving a rogue reading [due to LCN's very propensity to attract contaminants.
Argue all you like.Its no surprise to me that Mr Whitaker and his apprentice were wheeled out to do their big performance with their 'unconventional testing technique'!

Btw,the FSS is hitting the headlines quite a bit lately have you been reading about any of the scandal Caz?[some very 'unconventional' goings on with Mr Patel and co]!

Best
Norma

[Natalie Severn]

Some really outstanding and remarkable findings Derrick,congratulations.

[Derrick]

Frankly I'm surprised they didn't "lose" it instead, if they knew, or were worried that there might be evidence surviving of an accidental screw-up or deliberate frame-up. Not sure what team Hanratty could have done if all the physical evidence for a potentially unsafe conviction was gone.

Hi Caz

Why didn't the home office and the police destroy everything they had on the case then?

Both the Matthews report and the CCRC review under Baden Skitt knew that Hanratty had been fitted up. The genie was now out of the bottle.

Bob Woffinden had already had access to the non-disclosed papers held by Bedfordshire Police and had made a film about the case before the first DNA tests were done in 1995.

But maybe they did because at one time or another between 1961 and 1991 there were at least one bullet, maybe 3 on the file. What has happened to them. They couldn't have pointed to Hanratty surely.

Also there were 6 hairs on the file in 1991 which had become 10 once the FSS had finished with it in 2000. This was after a number had been tested for mtDNA. Where did the extra hairs come from. Most likely a FSS's **** up in mixing up different samples from different cases. Ask Roger Mann of the FSS, he was the one who repackaged the hairs and put his name on it, RLM1 and RLM 2 are the bags. But he couldn't explain it when cross examined at the appeal.

The Hanratty family only pushed for DNA testing because of what was found in 1991 and it was only the limitations of DNA science that made the 2002 appeal so protracted.

If no evidence that could have yielded any DNA had been found in 1991 then the Hanratty family would have had their appeal earlier and would have been successful, based on the findings of Matthews which showed that Hanratty had been fitted up.

Go figure.

Derrick

[jimarilyn]

The knicker fragment was 1cm square when found in 1991. It had been cut from the lower crutch.

About the size of my small finger nail, wow ! And here's silly me thinking it was about ten times that size. Could have been any old piece of blue material for all we know.

[Limehouse]

Some really outstanding and remarkable findings Derrick,congratulations.

Yes - I agree totally - fantastic work Derrick.