A6 Rebooted

[Limehouse]

I wouldn't call Janet Gregsten a raving beauty, but that's just my opinion. She looks rather ordinary. However, maybe compared to Bill Ewer's wife she was a goddess. (By the way I have never seen a photo of Bill Ewer's wife so I am just posing the question). Plus the grass is always greener on the other side - Michael Gregsten obviously thought so.

If the gunman was on drugs, as OneRound suggests, that would make his behaviour more understandable. Either that, or he was a very odd person indeed (with a personality that would sound very much like Alphon's).

As for Hanratty being on drugs, who knows, but he didn't even smoke. I don't remember reading that Hanratty was a constant chatterer or had any other of the 'symptoms' listed.

Valerie Storie only mentioned 'bulging eyes' when she changed the description to fit Hanratty, didn't she? Her original description (and for my money the most likely-to-be-true one) says something like "he had deep set eyes".

Hi Louisa,

Personally, I would say it is 99% certain that Hanratty did not take recreational drugs - and as you say - he was a non-smoker, very unusual for a working class lad in those days.

Hanratty was a charmer, certainly, but I would say he was not comfortable with people he did not know well or who were out of his social experience. He always burgled empty homes and did not want the obvious risk of a more confrontational sort of crime - but more than this I think he did not want to think about the 'real' people he was robbing. He had to think in terms of the insurance money they could claim as a result of the theft of their possessions and not of the anger and hurt and sense of violation they might suffer as a result of his invasion of their home.

The 'bulging' eyes could, again, be the result of medication or a medical condition (such as hyperthyroidism).

You are right to say the gunman was an very odd person indeed and the results make that obvious. To me, it doesn't point 100% to Hanratty.

[Limehouse]

Thanks, Julie. Same also to you, Natalie, for your response.

I was actually wondering more if it might have been an early dalliance with recreational drugs which resulted in such dreadful consequences. Would they have been around then? They certainly were by the mid 1960s.

Best regards,

OneRound

PS Still working on my 'Doubts about the DNA' article - not forgotten.

Hi OneRound,

As Norma has said, there were most certainly recreational drugs around at that time. The best Hanratty could have hoped of getting hold of would have been something like speed and perhaps what we used to call 'pot'.

Other stuff was mainly used by students, academics, middle class bohemian types etc.

However, I think the idea of the gunman possibly being on prescribed medication, or having been on prescribed medication is interesting. Someone who has stopped taking medication for certain mental health conditions can become psychotic and paranoid and can vary between euphoria and apathy very quickly.

[louisa]

So we've narrowed the field into three possibles:

A person unknown to us, whose mind was unbalanced because he was on some kind of medication. Or maybe he wasn't on drugs but was just a plain old fashioned psychopath.

Hanratty.

Alphon.


The first theory - the unknown person - would have had to have dumped the gun under the seat of a 36A bus, or maybe given it to Charles France to put there.

[OneRound]

So we've narrowed the field into three possibles:

A person unknown to us, whose mind was unbalanced because he was on some kind of medication. Or maybe he wasn't on drugs but was just a plain old fashioned psychopath.

Hanratty.

Alphon.


The first theory - the unknown person - would have had to have dumped the gun under the seat of a 36A bus, or maybe given it to Charles France to put there.

We've almost cracked it, now then ;-)

OneRound

[louisa]

Yep.

[Limehouse]

So we've narrowed the field into three possibles:

A person unknown to us, whose mind was unbalanced because he was on some kind of medication. Or maybe he wasn't on drugs but was just a plain old fashioned psychopath.

Hanratty.

Alphon.


The first theory - the unknown person - would have had to have dumped the gun under the seat of a 36A bus, or maybe given it to Charles France to put there.

What about an unknown person, unstable at times, given the task (or taking that task upon himself) of unnerving the couple in the car? The only problem with this as an option is that he didn't actually, as far as we know, comment on their relationship (but then, if this relationship was being hidden anyway, initially from the police, but later from the defence/prosecution/jury, then such comments would not have been reported, would they?)

[louisa]

I wondered about that.

This is something that I have often wondered about though........in her testimony Valerie Storie states that after the gunman got into the car he chattered non stop for hours before requesting Michael to drive off. There is no mention in either Paul Foot's book nor that of Bob Woffinden, as to what the gunman said. I think Valerie simply said that he was 'talking rubbish'.

Now I can't help but wonder if the gunman was in fact ranting about the pair of them - about how immoral their relationship was, etc. I suspect that this wouldn't be the kind of thing that Miss Storie would want to put in her statement for public consumption.

I also wonder if Valerie and Michael were actually in the back seat at the time (wouldn't that be more likely?) and maybe she didn't want to admit this either. Just suppositions.

[Limehouse]

I wondered about that.

This is something that I have often wondered about though........in her testimony Valerie Storie states that after the gunman got into the car he chattered non stop for hours before requesting Michael to drive off. There is no mention in either Paul Foot's book nor that of Bob Woffinden, as to what the gunman said. I think Valerie simply said that he was 'talking rubbish'.

Now I can't help but wonder if the gunman was in fact ranting about the pair of them - about how immoral their relationship was, etc. I suspect that this wouldn't be the kind of thing that Miss Storie would want to put in her statement for public consumption.

I also wonder if Valerie and Michael were actually in the back seat at the time (wouldn't that be more likely?) and maybe she didn't want to admit this either. Just suppositions.

There are some records of the nature of the conversation - such as the gunman telling them his name was Jim and that he'd 'done the lot' (ie experienced the whole range of prison-type punishments available at the time). He also told them he'd been locked in a cellar with only bread and water for food and drink. It does sound rather erratic. Of course, the gunman also uttered the words 'be quiet will you? I'm finkin'.

It has bee speculated before as to where in the car the couple were sitting. It has been previously suggested they may have been in the back. I think Jean Justice came to that conclusion and he claimed that Alphon forced the couple to have sex and watched them. If you read Justice's book, his descriptions of Alphon's speech at times comes across as rather hysteric and erratic.

[Natalie Severn]

How funny that you should mention this Julie.Some years ago a friend and I were having a natter after the teaching day ended when another teacher joined us who had had a breakdown.His illness was later explained as schizophrenic psychosis but all we knew was that he had become very violent with some other friends of ours who were lodging with him and it had frightened them so much they got the doctor etc.[the police were called too]Anyway,he began talking some very weird stuff about his animus and his wife's anima and all this was interspersed with some very intimate and inappropriate comment about him and his wife.My friend and I became very uncomfortable.We realised the poor chap was not very well but there was no stopping him-it was like he was tripping on the memory of his life with his [ex] wife.So you can see why the doctors took LSD to help them understand what makes those with this bewildering illness tick.Our friend knew we were uncomfortable about hjearing all this and seemed to enjoy our discomfort btw.

[louisa]

The book by Jean Justice is in French isn't it?

I thought that although Valerie Storie recalled some of the conversation they had with the gunman during the journey, when she was asked specifically about what was said in the cornfield didn't she just say 'he was rambling'? I could be wrong about this but it's a point that I seem to remember because I thought it sounded a bit odd.

[caz]

Everything about the gunman's reported behaviour suggests to me someone who was very much out of his comfort zone, or not in his usual frame of mind. His biggest mistake by far was leaving his female victim alive - just - to tell the tale. Presumably panic set in, rendering him unable to check if she was dead or not before getting the hell away from the scene.

I wonder if he assumed the vehicle had been abandoned when he first saw it in the cornfield, and was himself surprised when he peered in and saw two people cuddling, possibly horizontal on the back seat. Certainly this was no professional job, if the idea was merely to frighten them into separating! The only professional bit would have been tracking them down in the first place, if the gunman was on foot and their move to the cornfield was a spur of the moment decision.

To me, this all smacks much more of an opportunist Hanratty making a pig's ear of "fings" he had no time to "fink" through properly, than the crafty, smooth-talking Alphon, who seemed comfortable in a permanently oddball skin.

Love,

Caz
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[louisa]

If I saw a car in a cornfield at dusk/night I think I would assume it was a courting couple. If a car had been abandoned in a cornfield then I would assume it was one that had been dumped and wasn't in working order, so wouldn't have been worth bothering with. There would have been plenty of cars parked along the roadside that Hanratty could have chosen and I'm sure he could have got into most of them without too much fuss.

If the gunman (whoever it was) had killed Valerie Storie then Hanratty wouldn't have been hanged.

Alphon was the man that Acott was after.

[Natalie Severn]

Everything about the gunman's reported behaviour suggests to me someone who was very much out of his comfort zone, or not in his usual frame of mind. His biggest mistake by far was leaving his female victim alive - just - to tell the tale. Presumably panic set in, rendering him unable to check if she was dead or not before getting the hell away from the scene.

I wonder if he assumed the vehicle had been abandoned when he first saw it in the cornfield, and was himself surprised when he peered in and saw two people cuddling, possibly horizontal on the back seat. Certainly this was no professional job, if the idea was merely to frighten them into separating! The only professional bit would have been tracking them down in the first place, if the gunman was on foot and their move to the cornfield was a spur of the moment decision.

To me, this all smacks much more of an opportunist Hanratty making a pig's ear of "fings" he had no time to "fink" through properly, than the crafty, smooth-talking Alphon, who seemed comfortable in a permanently oddball skin.

Love,

Caz
X

No Caz, Alphon was a weirdo full stop.As reported by his landlady in Lupus Street
who had discovered he was into strange religions with a hot line to one or other deity . The folk in the Alexandra Ct Hotel in Finsbury Park found nothing whatever cool about him or that he seemed to be 'comfortable in his own skin' or crafty ---far from it.On 27th August when he was first alerted to the police and hauled in for questioning about the A6 murder ,his behaviour was anything but cool or crafty since he had been rambling to himself and making no sense all night long [possibly hearing voices and answering them] as well as moving furniture, clanking chains and and other things about throughout the night-acting in fact as though he had lost control completely and this was reported by several guests at the hotel not just one or two.Nor was it the only time either as Lord Russell of Liverpool recorded hundreds of nuisance calls Alphon kept pestering him with during which he rambled on and on .Russell eventually had him stopped---but this making of nuisance calls is completely typical of a person suffering symptoms of paranoia and other delusions -Lord Russell was not the only one either who suffered abuse in this regard from Alphon but he brought a legal action against him and stopped it.

[louisa]

It's always struck me as odd that Alphon got off virtually scott free with these harassments of other people. Could it have been that Scotland Yard wanted no public scandals concerning Alphon, since he had been officially cleared of the murder? (Thanks to Valerie Storie not picking him out of Acott's original line-up).

[caz]

Hi Nats,

I said comfortable in his 'oddball' skin - meaning a permanent weirdo, yes indeed, rather than someone only temporarily mad enough to do what the A6 rapist and gunman did. This was very much a one-off crime, and Hanratty - who was hanged for it - gives us the obvious explanation. The guilty man was taken out of society.

You need Alphon to have been very crafty if you want him to have committed this singularly shocking crime, then managed to control himself sufficiently not to do the like again, while rambling on about his involvement yet pulling the wool over smarter eyes than his own.

Love,

Caz
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