A6 Rebooted

[Derrick]

Hi Babybird

What? How can you assert such a thing with absolutely zero evidence to back that up?

The zero evidence you state is actually the evidence that France gave as a prosecution witness saying that Hanratty told France that under the upstairs back seat of a bus was a great place to get rid of unwanted stolen goods. If France hadn't said this, then what?

No wonder the poor man commited suicide when he is condemned without a single shred of evidence that he had any involvement whatsoever with any gun or anything to do with the A6 other than his misfortune to had met and let into his home a rapist and murderer.

Are you saying France topped himself because Hanratty was the A6 murderer? Surely he did his public duty to dob in such a beast eh?

Don't you think Alphon's incessant phone calls may have had something to do with his suicide?

Beside, why did France go to Ewer's shop after the murder to apologise to him? It couldn't have been because of Hanratty surely because France could have gone straight to the old bill.

Thank God the Julie/Norma/Jim school of justice doesn't have hold in the UK.

Now now!

Derrick

[Limehouse]

[QUOTE=babybird67;165014]What? How can you assert such a thing with absolutely zero evidence to back that up?
QUOTE]

When I state that France 'metaphorically' places the gun in Hanratty's hand I mean that he testified in court that Hanratty had said that under the back seat of the bus was a good place to hide loot from a robbery. He makes the connection between Hanratty and the gun.

Incidently - when questioned about the conversation - Hanratty admits that he did say this was a good place to hide unwanted loot from robberies. He goes on to say that was talking about unsaleable items - not a gun. "I didn't mean a gun" said Hanratty.

Now -this could mean two things:

1. I would never hide a gun from a crime like that under the back set of a bus.
2. I have never thought about hiding a gun. I haven't previously used a gun.


I also want to remind readers of a quote within today's long post and keep it in mind:

Not everyone will like my proposals - but I ask you to consider them as just possibilities that I have been turning over in my mind. They are not supposed to be my absolute word on the events.

I think there are very real questions to be answered about the true motive for this crime and who else may have been involved.

[Natalie Severn]

Brilliant, Vic.
The lesson for today for Norma and co is never believe the word of a conma... sorry, character as unstable, talkative, needy and frankly odd as Alphon was, especially if the only 'support' for his nasty, teasing 'did I or didn't I cheat the hangman and allow an innocent man to hang instead' came from the criminal end of the spectrum. Alphon made a lot of money out of the gullible. At least he can't do that any more, but he is still able to waste people's time and energy from beyond the grave - if you let him.

Hi Caz,
Alphon had many of the traits of a paranoid schizoid personality.He does not appear to have the traits of a psychopath.
"Any individual who is observed in an endeavour beneath his intellectual and educational background should be suspected of being a schizoid personality."[Campbell,Everyday Psychiatry]. "He or she may be serious,evasive,coolly sensitive,irritable,sullen,suspicious,resentful,eg ocentric,unsociable,intelligent,arrogant,stubborn and visionary.He[the person with a schizoid personality] maintains a callous, stern emotional reaction,even in the presence of a sad situation.
He is characteristically a lone wolf,likely to become a crusader.In the name of some fanatical ideal he may convince himself that bloodshed is trivial.Some of the most gruesome murders described in the daily news are committed by this type of personality.In order to conceive of a personality type that may be both conscientious and cruel one must remember the combination in a schizoid of a sharp conscience with a dull, inadequate,cold,emotional reaction.As John Brown put it:
"It is only by the shedding of blood that we can purge ourselves of sin."[Campbell]

"First the schizoid adopts his moralistic principles to satisfy his conscience, and then, in his emotionless manner,he crusades for his moralistic principles"[Campbell,Etiology of schizoid personality]
There are echoes of Alphon and his fascism here also of his talk about his "mission" against immorality.

"The schizoid youth with a mother complex and a hatred of his father may sublimate his animosity by playing war or dreaming about battles and bloodletting.[Campbell-"Special modes of adjustment"]----Alphon, ofcourse, was deeply attached to his mother and hated his father].
" High intelligence characterises his mental equipment but his mental processes crave abstractions such as poetry,philosophy......occult subjects,clairvoyancy ,supernatural and fantastic ideas....his mind entertains bizarre, superstitious ,mystical,extramundane trends."
--Alphon had many of these interests and characteristics and his behaviour with the telephone-eg his numerous nuisance calls, ringing people up and using threatening language ,is also absolutely typical of an individual with a paranoid schizoid personality who is moving towards a psychotic episode.
A neighbour of ours had this type of personality.He had a very similar type of behaviour but provided the stress factors were not too intense he was able to avoid tipping into psychosis.However once he almost strangled his flatmate with a telephone cord during an argument and another time he turned all the gas taps on and could have blown himself and others up in the blast .Due to modern drugs he was able to recover quite quickly ,receive treatment and is now married.His wife also had this type of personality and was able to have the same treatment.They are still happily married with teenage children.
[ Sources are from Campbell,Everyday Psychiatry/or Cleckley,The Mask of Sanity.
Alphon is in fact a perfect candidate for carrying out a murder such as the A6.A read through Paul Foot"s conversations with him or Jean Justice"s reveal a close match to the type of personality described above.
Best,
Norma.

[Victor]

Psychobabble and Quackery

Hi Caz,

It looks like you were spot on, Alphon is still causing people to waste their time and energy writing really long posts!

KR,
Vic

[caz]

Ooh dear, Vic, here comes a long one from me now in response.

Hi Caz,

In fairness Caz you have been absent quite a bit lately, and over the past six months many inconsistencies have been addressed and many of the anomalies exposed...

[snip]

...Then there is the Morris Minor itself where although there were a number of fingerprints,fibres and blood, there wasnt a single forensic link to Hanratty and not a single semen stain, even though there should have been if what we now understand about what happened took place where it was said to have taken place in the car ---and how .That is not to doubt Valerie"s word.It is simply to state the inconsistency that is evident in what we are expected to understand.
Just a few of the discrepancies out of 112!
Cheers Caz,
Norma

With all due respect then, Norma, I must have managed to miss the only juicy bits, because on my return all I have seen are repeats of the same old, same old, and the continued failure to give a straight answer to a straight question.

If there is a straight answer, explaining precisely how and why an innocent Hanratty was set up, picked out, convicted, hanged and then saddled with the unluckiest DNA result in criminal history, lurking somewhere among the posts I missed, maybe someone could relieve me of my woeful ignorance and direct me to the relevant page, or post it again, while I’m all eyes for a short while. (Off on holiday at the end of this week and after that, who knows?)

You appear to be in favour of another miscarriage of justice, ie putting the blame on Alphon (for the crime for which Hanratty’s conviction in a court of law has not been found unsafe in law, let alone wrongful) despite the fact that Alphon was not recognised by the victim; not the one on trial for his life; made no verifiable confession; and has given you the same lack of a single forensic link between himself and the car.

That cannot be right, can it? Especially if you believe Alphon was mentally challenged and therefore was, and is, even more incapable of defending himself than Hanratty was? At least if Hanratty was innocent, he surely had the half a brain he required to say right from the start that he went on to Rhyl after Liverpool, giving his defence a sporting chance of getting the goods to save his neck. And please don't wheel out the old "but he never had to prove where he was" argument again, because it's already nearly fifty years too late. He has given his 21st century defenders the devil's own job to redress the balance now, in any meaningful way, shape or form - as is clear from the long, painful and ultimately irrelevant points being pulled like teeth from you all now. Hanratty will now remain guilty, with no help from himself, unless someone with a handy magic wand can help him out and wave all that guilt away. Guilty unless you can prove he was innocent, and in Rhyl at the time.

Limehouse has offered just the one scenario (which she herself describes as not being ‘too’ unlikely) in which Hanratty was not the gunman, but admits that it doesn’t account for two of the most crucial factors (besides his fatal Rhyl faux pas), ie the victim’s testimony and the DNA results, which would have to have been independently wrong and screwed up by unconnected influences, whether it be string-pulling, manipulation, crookedness, incompetence, contamination (of the forensic or eye/ear witness evidence) - or whatever is the flavour of the month by way of explanation.

What we could perhaps agree on here is that the police would have been just as happy if they could have got a case up against their first man, Alphon, as they were with the case against their second, Hanratty. But only one could have been the gunman.

Is this not similar enough to the case of Stagg and Napper and Wimbledon Common, and how the police mishandled that one, to give you pause and make you wonder if the A6 did not also feature an innocent man first in the firing line, with the guilty man second?

Charles France could easily have known that Hanratty would find it difficult to secure an alibi in Liverpool because of the nature of his visit.

That's hardly the point, Limehouse. France could not have known that Hanratty wouldn't turn out to have a dozen ways of proving he had been either in Liverpool or Rhyl, or travelling so very far from the scene of crime. An old receipt for a snack or drink purchased en route would have done it; a bus or train ticket; a casual conversation in a pub with one of its regulars; I'm sure you can think of many other possibilities.

France could not have known - or guessed, or even presumed - that Hanratty's blood group would match that of the rapist. O might be the most common single group, very closely followed by A, but most people have a group other than O. Take any ten men at random in 1961 or today, and we'd expect less than five to be O.

France could not have guaranteed that the rape victim would pick out his patsy and remain convinced to this day that he had been the man who put her through hours of sheer hell in that car.

And France could not possibly have predicted that in 2002, JH's DNA from the hanky would prove a match to the only 'suspicious' DNA profile obtained from the rape victim's stained underwear.

Love,

Caz
X

[Natalie Severn]

You appear to be in favour of another miscarriage of justice, ie putting the blame on Alphon

I am not Caz. Alphon made his own admission that he was the A6 killer and I tried to show in my previous post that Alphon appears to fit the profile of such a bizarre murder since he also appears to have had a schizoid personality---a condition that ,under certain circumstances ,would have enabled him to kill in cold blood .However as I tried to point out, I believe he mostly managed any mental illness he experienced reasonably well most of the time ,during his long life and found a number of rather perfect modes of adjustment and outlets ,such as joining the fascist party and busying himself with a crusade to restore the name of Hanratty ,who admitted on a number of occasions that he felt a sharp stab of conscience about.
Alphon"s bizarre behaviour at the Alexandre Ct Hotel had actually so alarmed Miss Perkins and other guests there that they had called the police suspecting him to be the A6 killer.THat was how the link to the Vienna Hotel had begun.He was,said Miss Perkins who was booked in the next room at the Alexandre Hotel,"talking to himself all night,preventing me from sleeping and marching up and down rattling metal objects".
Well he was clearly having some kind of breakdown and was probably "hearing voices" or other hallucinations.
He seems to have been following in the footsteps of Hanratty -in both life and death;He booked into the Broadway House Hotel the day after Hanratty did;He arrived at the Vienna Hotel the day after Hanratty did;He was the first man arrested in connection with the A6 murder,Hanratty was the second.
He then devoted quite a bit of time making telephone calls in connection with the A6 murder, visited Mr and Mrs Hsanratty and offered the a large sum of money[which they refused] and eventually made several confessions to the International press.
More later.
Best Norma

Btw-I made a mistake over Charles France,He was one year younger than Hanratty"s mother,not older than her ,as I had previously understood.

[Natalie Severn]

posted by Victor:


Psychobabble and Quackery

Hi Vic!

Unlike the waffle we have to suffer about contaminated test results!

[babybird67]

Hi Babybird



The zero evidence you state is actually the evidence that France gave as a prosecution witness saying that Hanratty told France that under the upstairs back seat of a bus was a great place to get rid of unwanted stolen goods. If France hadn't said this, then what?

I think you're getting confused old man. That is not evidence that France had anything to do with procuring a gun for Hanratty. All that is evidence of is that Hanratty told France where he used to hide things. Of course the statement was independently corroborated by Hanratty himself when he confirmed he had had this conversation with France. More evidence that Hanratty and the gun/crime were connected, not that France and the crime were.

Are you saying France topped himself because Hanratty was the A6 murderer? Surely he did his public duty to dob in such a beast eh?

Well nobody will ever know the true reason France committed suicide however it makes perfect sense to me, that someone who had invited a rapist and murderer into his home, around his wife and children, would feel so overcome with guilt that they might take their own life. Mental illness seems to be something that ran in the France family anyway. I don't think it would have taken much. Of course, maybe he had premonitions of the judgemental accusations that would fly his way with zero evidence to back them up and really felt he couldnt' face trial by media/armchair detectives. Who knows. I think it's slanderous to continue to accuse France of things for which there is zero evidence, but there we are, we all have to sleep with our own consciences don't we.

Don't you think Alphon's incessant phone calls may have had something to do with his suicide?

They may well have done. Is it nice to know you France-accusers are the modern equivalent of an Alphon harrassing a man to death?

Beside, why did France go to Ewer's shop after the murder to apologise to him? It couldn't have been because of Hanratty surely because France could have gone straight to the old bill.

Err why not? Why don't you think he would feel responsible for housing and feeding a monster who killed his sister in law's husband in cold blood?

Now now!

Problem?

[babybird67]

What? How can you assert such a thing with absolutely zero evidence to back that up?

When I state that France 'metaphorically' places the gun in Hanratty's hand I mean that he testified in court that Hanratty had said that under the back seat of the bus was a good place to hide loot from a robbery. He makes the connection between Hanratty and the gun.

Hanratty himself made the connection by leaving his handkerchief, which he freely identified was his, around it, and by admitting France's account of his conversation was true.

Incidently - when questioned about the conversation - Hanratty admits that he did say this was a good place to hide unwanted loot from robberies. He goes on to say that was talking about unsaleable items - not a gun. "I didn't mean a gun" said Hanratty.

Why do you continue to use things that Hanratty has said at face value? He was a rapist and murderer. Of course he wasn't going to admit he had hidden the gun there!

Now -this could mean two things:

1. I would never hide a gun from a crime like that under the back set of a bus.
2. I have never thought about hiding a gun. I haven't previously used a gun.

Not at all. It could actually mean that, **** i hid the gun there, i forgot i had that conversation admitting that's where i hid things...oh well, i will just have to say i meant things other than the gun that I hid there. The man was a career criminal, murderer, rapist, liar. Your naivete when you recount what he said as if anybody with any understanding of such men could believe it and take it at face value is quite touching.

Not everyone will like my proposals - but I ask you to consider them as just possibilities that I have been turning over in my mind. They are not supposed to be my absolute word on the events.

I think there are very real questions to be answered about the true motive for this crime and who else may have been involved.

And as I have stated a zillion times, the times for asking questions is over. The man has been convicted three times. His DNA was on his victim's knickers showing he had had sex with her. She identified him. The time for asking questions which have been answered over and over, should really be over. Justice for Valerie. She deserves it.

[babybird67]

Norma

are you aware that Hanratty's own defence team are now in agreement with the Prosecution that Alphon 'could not have been' the A6 murderer?

It doesn't appear that you are from your ravings about Alphon and his character.

[Natalie Severn]

are you aware that Hanratty's own defence team are now in agreement with the Prosecution that Alphon 'could not have been' the A6 murderer?

It doesn't appear that you are from your ravings about Alphon and his character.

Ravings Jen? I was quoting from the work of some leading psychiatrists.I leave you to see the links between what we know about Alphon and what has been termed by these psychiatrists as a "schizoid personality"----it is claimed Hitler had such a personality-interesting because Alphon was a great admirer of Hitler .

I think the defence team were duped by the big bogey DNA-as per the dated LCNDNA 2002 testing! What they were referring to in this case was Low Copy number DNA which simply means a minimal amount of it-almost nothing to be precise which is why nobody can check it because it was destroyed in the testing.How convenient!
What I would dearly like to have now is an answer to is the question Dupplin Muir asked a little while back:

"What happened to all the other DNA that should have been on the sample viz
-the nurses who treated VS
-the police who collected and bagged the sample
-the forensic scientists who originally examined it
None of these people knew about DNA testing so they can"t have taken any measures against their DNA getting on the sample,"

Best
Norma

[Natalie Severn]

[QUOTE=babybird67;165132]Hanratty himself made the connection by leaving his handkerchief, which he freely identified was his, around it, and by admitting France's account of his conversation was true.

Natalie Severn said:
Actually Jen,there isn"t a single reference to this hanky having been found wrapped round the gun and the box of 60 cartridge cases in any National newspaper in the weeks following the find on the bus----this is despite a search through all the local and National newspapers of that time.If you happen to know of a newspaper report that mentions it it would be greatly appreciated.


babybird said:

And as I have stated a zillion times, the times for asking questions is over. The man has been convicted three times. His DNA was on his victim's knickers showing he had had sex with her. She identified him. The time for asking questions which have been answered over and over, should really be over. Justice for Valerie. She deserves it.

Natalie Severn said:

Ok Jen, the prosecution claimed their forensic scientists had found Hanratty"s DNA on Valerie"s knickers.Apparently they only mentioned Hanratty"s first off, then ,when others wondered what had happened to Valerie"s and Gregsten"s they included theirs too-as a kind of "after thought".
But and it is a big "but" --- they conducted these tests in secret and then destroyed the evidence ---so in my book and that of many others ,such a test is worthless. We are expected to simply take their word for it-- as an act of faith rather than as a scientific fact ,which shatters any illusion that such testing is objective or even "scientific" since the tests cannot be considered to abide by the rules of science ie have been undertaken by a scientific method predicated upon a process which allows "repeatability".Their test cannot be repeated.What happened to the rest of the cloth ?Did they destroy that too?
Oh-and I would so dearly like some answers to that question poised by Dupplin Muir which I wrote up earlier-see above.

Cheers
Norma

[RonIpstone]

But and it is a big "but" --- they conducted these tests in secret and then destroyed the evidence ---so in my book and that of many others ,such a test is worthless.

This is nonsense. The Hanratty family had solicitors acting who had instructed forensic experts to observe the DNA tests. This clip shows Dr Patrick Lincoln interviewed for Woffinden's Channel 4 prog The Mystery of Deadman's Hill and you will see that he was quite sanguine about the prospects of obtaining a profile of the murderer.

Doc Lincoln seems to have been ditched in favour of Doc Evison for the evidence given on appeal. I have always assumed that Dr Lincoln had confirmed that Hanratty's DNA was present, that he had been rightfully convicted and that Evison had been brought in to give a second opinion. The best he could come up with was that Hanratty's DNA was present but might have got there as a contaminant.

The possibility of contamination was accepted by both the court and the prosecution, but if Hanratty's DNA was there as a contaminant where was the rapist's DNA? A question which to this day no proper answer has been given by either the Hanratty defence team or by the Hanratty Appreciation Society.

The last time this matter came up for a wider public debate was when the doddery Richard Ingrams was given free rein with the Radio 4 Today prog, and the forensic expert brought on to give her views had not even seen the test file or had access to details of the test procedures.

To the satisfaction of most right thinking people the presence of Hanratty's DNA on the two exhibits tested has been satisfactorily proved. It has not been explained how the rapist/murderer's DNA could have vanished if the rapist/murderer had been not Hanratty.

[Black Rabbit]

Please could anyone inform me, size wise, just how big a 'fragment' of the knickers was used in the DNA testing and exactly from what part of the garment this 'fragment' actualy came from?

An actual source of reference would be most welcome too if possible.

[Natalie Severn]

This is nonsense. The Hanratty family had solicitors acting who had instructed forensic experts to observe the DNA tests. This clip shows Dr Patrick Lincoln interviewed for Woffinden's Channel 4 prog The Mystery of Deadman's Hill and you will see that he was quite sanguine about the prospects of obtaining a profile of the murderer.

What I am concerned about is not whether the Hanratty family solicitors were invited to "observe" these tests ,but what the words "observe the tests " means,very specifically, in this case.The tests as I understand were carried out by the FSS acting "on behalf of the prosecution".They were not "neutral" or "impartial" operators, if they were employed and paid by the prosecution.

So the devil is in the detail here: So did either Doctor Lincoln or later Dr Evison actually "invigilate" during the process of testing ---were they physically involved in the process ,from when the items were collected and arranged for testing to when the results were examined ?ie Were they present-in the flesh-during the process itself or did they simply study the end result---ie the findings of the prosecution"s FFS team?