The Matthews Police Report-May 1996

[Natalie Severn]

The Matthews Report of May 1996 was commissioned by Scotland Yard.The Home Office requested an internal report from Scotland Yard.This was produced by Detective Chief Superintendent Roger Matthews
Sir Geoffrey Bindman :
'Matthews concluded that James Hanratty was entirely innocent and had been wrongly hanged.He said his inquiries had led him to change his mind about capital punishment,of which he had previously been a supporter and to which he was now opposed.

Note:[Matthews had total access to the entire file/trial transcript/ all witness statements including those from Rhyl ,Redbridge,Lime Street and that of William Lee that had been withheld].

There were a number of lengthy delays after which Home Office officials concluded that the case should be referred to the Court of Appeal.
After a number of extraordinarily long delays,Sir Geoffrey Bindman eventually issued a press statement requesting an explanation for the 'inexcusable delays".


Interestingly, on a personal note, just in the past few weeks I have received several letters from a member of the public, Mr N, who has obviously followed the case with great interest over the years -especially since 2002.Mr N asked me why I had not in my book suggested the DNA may have been planted by the police.I replied that this was a difficult area to enter into especially since both senior officers who had been in charge of the case were now dead and can no longer be questioned.
Mr N's last letter ,received two days ago was as follows:




"Dear Norma,
I meant that the police may (stress may) have interfered with the DNA samples in the late 1990s. Both Acott and Oxford, but particularly Oxford, had distinguished careers in the police and a posthumous pardon for James Hanratty would have lead to the re-opening of numerous cases in which they were involved. Avoiding embarrassment would be a good motive for the authorities to bend this case. However, as only one or two police scientists would have had the seniority and the expertise to interfere with the evidence convincingly I doubt that this happened. But you're right to point out that Acott lied to the court in 1962 when he withheld witness evidence.
Please let me know how things are going.

Best wishes"


I am intrigued by this information, especially as there were the curious delays mentioned above, which appear to have been intentionally obstructive regarding the Scotland Yard /Matthews Report which had concluded that Hanratty was totally innocent and should never even have been charged.

Norma

[Limehouse]

The Matthews Report of May 1996 was commissioned by Scotland Yard.The Home Office requested an internal report from Scotland Yard.This was produced by Detective Chief Superintendent Roger Matthews
Sir Geoffrey Bindman :
'Matthews concluded that James Hanratty was entirely innocent and had been wrongly hanged.He said his inquiries had led him to change his mind about capital punishment,of which he had previously been a supporter and to which he was now opposed.

Note:[Matthews had total access to the entire file/trial transcript/ all witness statements including those from Rhyl ,Redbridge,Lime Street and that of William Lee that had been withheld].

There were a number of lengthy delays after which Home Office officials concluded that the case should be referred to the Court of Appeal.
After a number of extraordinarily long delays,Sir Geoffrey Bindman eventually issued a press statement requesting an explanation for the 'inexcusable delays".


Interestingly, on a personal note, just in the past few weeks I have received several letters from a member of the public, Mr N, who has obviously followed the case with great interest over the years -especially since 2002.Mr N asked me why I had not in my book suggested the DNA may have been planted by the police.I replied that this was a difficult area to enter into especially since both senior officers who had been in charge of the case were now dead and can no longer be questioned.
Mr N's last letter ,received two days ago was as follows:




"Dear Norma,
I meant that the police may (stress may) have interfered with the DNA samples in the late 1990s. Both Acott and Oxford, but particularly Oxford, had distinguished careers in the police and a posthumous pardon for James Hanratty would have lead to the re-opening of numerous cases in which they were involved. Avoiding embarrassment would be a good motive for the authorities to bend this case. However, as only one or two police scientists would have had the seniority and the expertise to interfere with the evidence convincingly I doubt that this happened. But you're right to point out that Acott lied to the court in 1962 when he withheld witness evidence.
Please let me know how things are going.

Best wishes"


I am intrigued by this information, especially as there were the curious delays mentioned above, which appear to have been intentionally obstructive regarding the Scotland Yard /Matthews Report which had concluded that Hanratty was totally innocent and should never even have been charged.

Norma

Hi Norma,

I have read extracts from Matthew's report and i must say, he makes some excellent challenges on the way the investigation was conducted and the way in which evidence was witheld from the defence.

Although Matthews reached his conclusions before the DNA evidence was presented, all of his observations and comments concerning the investigation still stand up.

Julie

[caz]

Interestingly, on a personal note, just in the past few weeks I have received several letters from a member of the public, Mr N, who has obviously followed the case with great interest over the years -especially since 2002.Mr N asked me why I had not in my book suggested the DNA may have been planted by the police.I replied that this was a difficult area to enter into especially since both senior officers who had been in charge of the case were now dead and can no longer be questioned.
Mr N's last letter ,received two days ago was as follows:

"Dear Norma,
I meant that the police may (stress may) have interfered with the DNA samples in the late 1990s...

Hi Nats,

I thought Hanratty's remains were only exhumed in March 2001. Have you asked your Mr N how the police could have introduced Hanratty's DNA (and made sure the rapist's wouldn't show up) 'in the late 1990s'?

Why clutch at straws like wildly improbable conspiracy theories, if you can show that Hanratty was in Rhyl when the crime took place?

I'd stick to the contaminated samples theory if I were you. It would be the lesser of two evils and slightly less unbelievable.

Love,

Caz
X

[Dupplin Muir]

Hi All
I haven't looked at this forum for many months in the aftermath of a family bereavement, so I've had a quick look through to try to catch up. However, I must apologise in advance if I repeat a point that has already been made by someone else.

Over the last year I've been involved with a university course in forensics, and as part of this course we had a number of guest lecturers, and I hope people might be interested in what they had to say. The Hanratty case was never mentioned but I feel that much of what was discussed is highly relevant to the case.

The first guest lecturer was a CSI with many years of experience with Kent, Surrey and Sussex police, and he was talking about the best way to store forensic evidence. He said that such evidence is often stored in very poor conditions - for example in old cell-blocks with leaky roofs so that the evidence was often damaged while in police hands. More relevantly he described a major case in which he was involved, where it was vital that the evidence was secure, so it was kept in a locked room with only two keys, plus a numeric keypad, with a combination known only to the keyholders. Nevertheless, one morning he turned up for work to find that someone had got into the room and rummaged through the evidence. Being part of the police establishment he naturally put the most benign interpretation on the incident, claiming that the person probably just wanted to check something, but he didn't explain why, in that case, the person hadn't gone through the proper channels. A neutral observer might well come to the conclusion that the evidence had been tampered with. One student asked if the police had informed the defence of this incident, and was rewarded with a sardonic smile, which suggested that they hadn't.

The second lecturer was a policeman with over 20 years of experience, who had been involved in the re-investigation of the Stephen Lawrence case. He stated flatly that the convictions obtained in that case were unsound because the DNA was contaminated. However, the police had taken so much flak in the original investigation that they had no intention of revealing this and facing further allegations of institutionalised racism, so the evidence was presented in court as if it was sound.

DM

[Natalie Severn]

Thanks for your post Dupplin Muir.Sincere condolences . I am very sorry to hear of your sad loss and thank you for letting us know.
It would be so helpful if we were able to study the Matthews Report.Matthews was commissioned by Scotland Yard to look into every aspect of this case and had police files to study that have never been made public .He concluded Hanratty was entirely innocent, could not have committed the crime and should never have been charged.Well times have changed.Valerie Storie's identification would not be permitted in today's courts because you are not allowed a second chance if you first positively identify another person and Valerie's evidence went a long way as she alone saw the A6 murderer that night.
Or did she?

On Wednesday 18th February 1997 a couple who have refused to be named came forward,after seeing a play about the case entitled,'The Hanging of Hanratty'-a play incidentally that received some excellent reviews at the time.
The couple told that on the night of the murder, they actually spoke to the man in the Morris Minor near the village of Clophill [Beds].
They claim he was struggling to control his car and was very rude and abusive when they stopped to ask him if he needed any help.
The incident took place in the early hours of the following morning and the couple who did not wish to be identified -swear it was NOT Hanratty. They claimed they had reported it to the police as soon as they read of the crime but were dismissed curtly and the statement was never made public.Apparently the incident has overshadowed their lives ever since.
There is the similar statement of William Lee who saw the car 100 miles north of Bedford later in the morning, at 6.30 am and almost collided with it.So livid was he about the driver's behaviour he took its registration number and reported it to the police.The CCRC discovered this statement in 1998 and interviewed him.If it was the Moris Minor it could not have been in Avondale Crescent in East London at 7 am that morning and therefore was not the car seen by witnesses Skillett and Trower-explaining why Blackhall, the man seated nearest the driver of the Moris Minor both men saw, also insisted , like the couple above ,that the driver of that Moris Minor looked 'nothing like Hanratty'.
Regarding the difficulties faced when dealing with the storage facilities of such very old cloth and the claims made at the time [2001] by forensic scientists much has been discovered since then regarding the cross-contamination likelihood of imperfectly stored DNA. It is especially important in LCNDNA testing that the storage facilities from crime scene to lab follow the stringently sterile guidelines laid down as otherwise the test rapidly becomes completely useless and-in several instances recently-has been shown to be extremely dangerous having led to several wrongful arrests and imprisonments.
[see my book-'The A6 Murder Was Hanratty Innocent?"-final chapter]
by Norma Buddle

[Natalie Severn]

Regarding the above siting by William Lee:When Mr Lee was re-interviewed by the CCRC in 1998 he repeated verbatim what he had said in his original statement including the fact that the driver of the Morris Minor had been wearing a green woollen hat with a pom pom on it.Later in their investigations the CCRC obtained a file containing photographs which included coloured images of the interior of the car and the boot.When those photographs were enhanced and enlarged ,a green woollen hat with a pom pom on it,exactly as described in mr Lee's statement to the Derbyshire police in 1961 could be seen in the boot of the car.

[caz]

Hi Nats,

Long time no see!

I'm a bit confused now over all these different Morris Minors! Could you untangle them please and tell me who of these witnesses actually saw the Morris Minor involved in the crime (because naturally the driver of any other Morris Minor would have looked 'nothing like Hanratty'), how you know it was the Morris Minor they saw, and also how you know it wasn't Hanratty's green woollen hat with a pom pom in the boot of the murder car, since nobody was likely to own up to it.

Love,

Caz
X

[louisa]

Before Norma has to go through all the stuff regarding the Morris Minor (again) - I'd just like to give my opinion on something.

Judging by what we know of Hanratty's dress sense, I doubt if he would have been the type of person to wear a green knitted pom pom hat. He was known as something of a sharp dresser, even when out burgling.

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Caz and Louisa.I dont mind explaining about the Morris Minor because it is very significant what William Lee reported-but it may have to be next week as I am in Prestatyn still and dont have my books here with the detail.However I do have a copy of my recent book and may well be able to get the information from it-later...
good to see you both on here!
Cheers
Norma

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Nats,

Long time no see!

I'm a bit confused now over all these different Morris Minors! Could you untangle them please and tell me who of these witnesses actually saw the Morris Minor involved in the crime (because naturally the driver of any other Morris Minor would have looked 'nothing like Hanratty'), how you know it was the Morris Minor they saw, and also how you know it wasn't Hanratty's green woollen hat with a pom pom in the boot of the murder car, since nobody was likely to own up to it.

Love,

Caz
X

Hi Caz,
Have a read of the following.The 'undisclosed ' sighting by Mr Lee - given by him as a statement to the police on the day of the murder needs to be read in conjunction with the undisclosed evidence of Doreen Milne and the undisclosed evidence of Margaret Thompson .If any of these witnesses is correct then the Moris Minor allegedly seen by Skillett /Blackhall and Trower at approx 7.05 am on 23 /08/1961 was not the same Morris Minor as the murder car.
[The underlining to 'highlight'- ditto the emboldening are mine ]
From the 2002 Appeal judgement :

The following were considered at the appeal as "the High water mark of non-disclosure"


152. The seventh ground of appeal concerns the fact that (not disclosed to the defence) there were other reported sightings of the Morris Minor car during 23 August 1961 in different parts of the country and evidence that a different light grey Morris Minor had been parked directly opposite where Mr Gregsten's car was recovered. This evidence consists of the following:

i. At 6.30am on Wednesday 23 August, William Lee saw a grey Morris Minor being driven by a man wearing a woollen pom-pom hat on the A6 near Matlock in Derbyshire. He wrote the registration number down as 847 BHN which was the registration of Michael Gregsten's car in the boot of which there was such a hat (although there is no evidence that the murderer otherwise was seen wearing it).

ii. At 12 midday on the same day, John Douglas, a petrol pump attendant at a garage at Birstall, north of Leicester, made a mental note of the registration
number of a bluish grey car as 847 BHN occupied by a man and a woman. The man spoke with a southern accent which sounded to him as coming from Somerset.

iii. Other sightings of a car with the registration number 847 BHN were noted at 1.00pm between Hitchin and St. Ippollits (which would mean that the car stayed in the vicinity of Bedford all morning) and at 5.25pm in Coventry (which given the time the car was seen by the police in Avondale Crescent is simply not possible).

iv. Doreen Milne said she parked her grey Morris Minor in Avondale Crescent at 8.15am opposite where Michael Gregsten's car was subsequently found without recalling any car parked opposite hers. Margaret Thompson saw police interest around what she called a grey Morris 1000 at 8.00pm and reported that it had not been there at 5.30pm when she passed with her three year-old son.

Needless to say, the sightings in Matlock, Coventry and north of Leicester are inconsistent with the Morris Minor being seen in Eastern Avenue, near Avondale Crescent, or in Avondale Crescent by 7am although it is somewhat difficult to visualise for what purpose the gunman might have made these trips and then returned to Ilford (as he must have done) using a car which he would have known the police would be seeking as soon as Michael Gregsten was identified and the car he was driving ascertained.

153. There is no doubt at all that this material would fall to be disclosed by contemporary standards: the contrary is not suggested. In our judgment the names and addresses of these witnesses also fell to be disclosed under the more restrictive regime described in R v Bryant & Dickson. We are not in a position to say why that did not occur although DS Acott may have discounted these identifications, at least in part, because of other material which was also not disclosed (and about which the appellant also complains).

154. Unknown to the defence at the trial was the fact that a record was kept by Michael Gregsten of the mileage when he put petrol in the car. On 22 August 1961, the odometer was recorded as 51,875 miles. When the vehicle was recovered in Avondale Crescent, the police noted the odometer reading to be 52,107 miles. Thus, 232 miles had been travelled in the period which elapsed. Depending on when petrol was put in the car, this may have included Michael Gregsten's driving that day (57.4 miles) but must include the drive from the cornfield at Dorney Reach to Deadman's Hill on the A6 (58-65 miles) and, at the very least, the minimum distance from the A6 to Avondale Crescent, Ilford (48.6 miles). We say 'at the very least' because there is, of course, no direct evidence of where the gunman went having left Valerie Storie for dead on the A6 and neither do we know that, in any event, he took what present investigation reveals would then have been the shortest route. These distances are comfortably within the distance which, if the record is correct, the odometer recorded.

155. The most impressive evidence of sighting must surely be that of Mr Lee in Matlock. The straight-line distance from Deadman's Hill to Matlock and then to Redbridge is estimated at 268 miles. That itself exceeds the 232 miles record and takes no account of the trip from Dorney Reach to Deadman's Hill. A route planner puts that total distance as 333.3 miles. Thus, if the odometer readings are correct, this identification must also be flawed. Mr Sweeney makes the same point about the identification north of Leicester.



Regards Norma

[Natalie Severn]

Note the assumption above that if Supt Acott wrote the mileage down as being so and so "he must be right and everybody else wrong"Well er no! Michael Sherrard QC Hanratty's trial barrister suspected foul play from the moment the hearing was changed 'because of timetables' from the Old Bailey to Bedford.He noted at the time police notes differed in length from the times given when Hanratty was questioned by them for 'several hours' and what was produced and later showing much briefer notes on that interview where Hanratty never had a solicitor present. 2002 scientific handwriting tests showed that indeed what Sherrard suspected in 1961/62 was true.The notes had been shortened,several long chunks of notes from the pages were missing -indeed the notes taken down by the police 'had been 'tampered with'-Michael Sherrard QC 'Of Wigs and Wherefores' autobiography of 2009.

Given that these crucial sightings in Avondale Crescent and by William Lee had never even been disclosed to the courts -the mileage noted could have been an unintentional omission by Gregsten---who or what , therefore, is wrong here ? Gregsten's record or Acott's note of it or Lee's statement on the day to the police giving the car registration number and the description of the erratically dangerous driving by the man in the green woollen hat with the pompom on it-a hat of that same exact colour and description being found in the boot of the Morris Minor?-No wonder that statement was never disclosed.And isn't it then so much more likely that it never saw the light of day to do with the 'fiddling'of notes ? if seems to me that if things didnt fit the case for the prosecution, a way was found for them to fit it!!!!
Michael Sherrard QC had been and remains ,very well aware of such tamperings and hanky panky!

[Natalie Severn]

The A6 Murder : Was Hanratty Innocent?

I have addressed the above issues around the case in my book

http://www.housmans.com/books.php available from either Housmans or Bookmarks, Bloomsbury, London.

'The A6 Murder: Was Hanratty Innocent?' by Norma Buddle.
The book was originally published as 4 graphic pamphlets -and it contains the pamphlet from
-William Beadle- Chair of the Whitechapel Society who writes on the 'Hawser Report' - [Bill wrote a long and very critical essay about in the 1970's soon after it was published].He also writes here on the anomalies and inconsistencies of the A6 case against Hanratty and on the LCN DNA tests of 2002.
Andrew Buddle my husband , and a sociologist, co-writes the pamphlet on the DNA with myself and William Beadle and focusses on examples of the unreliability of some prominent cases in recent LCN DNA testing which have resulted in overturned verdicts including a murder case from the 1980's and in other cases of rape and murder where there have been recent successful challenges to the findings of the LCN DNA tests-in one case the young man had never even been to the town he was accused of committing rape in![March 2012] .
other contributors, just as compelling in their specific illustration are
-Tom Foot- Paul Foot's son
-James Moore
-Julie Lambert
and last but not least all those of you who have contributed so instructively here to the discussion [acrimoniuosly or otherwise ]
My thanks as always to Stephen Ryder for making such internet discussion possible!

[caz]

Hi Nats,

Many thanks for the extra info.

On Wednesday 18th February 1997 a couple who have refused to be named came forward,after seeing a play about the case entitled,'The Hanging of Hanratty'-a play incidentally that received some excellent reviews at the time.
The couple told that on the night of the murder, they actually spoke to the man in the Morris Minor near the village of Clophill [Beds].
They claim he was struggling to control his car and was very rude and abusive when they stopped to ask him if he needed any help.
The incident took place in the early hours of the following morning and the couple who did not wish to be identified -swear it was NOT Hanratty. They claimed they had reported it to the police as soon as they read of the crime but were dismissed curtly and the statement was never made public.Apparently the incident has overshadowed their lives ever since.

Going back to the original post I was querying, I have to wonder why this couple left it so long to come forward and then refused to identify themselves, if they truly cared about setting the record straight and righting a terrible injustice, and if their lives really had been 'overshadowed' ever since. It's just not evidence if we don't know who these people are and nothing about the claimed incident or reporting of it can be independently supported.

The sighting by William Lee sounds more promising, and of course his evidence should have been heard at the time, if only to give others the chance to support it or undermine it with other evidence, eg the alleged mileage figures. But again, even if Lee did see the murder car, and the mileage figures were wrong, where is the evidence that Hanratty could not have been the driver? Could he not have found the hat in the boot after the shootings and worn it in an attempt at disguise? Particularly if, as Louisa says, it wasn't the kind of hat he'd have worn by choice, and particularly if his hair colour was quite distinctive? Was Valerie ever asked about this hat?

If it was the Moris Minor it could not have been in Avondale Crescent in East London at 7 am that morning and therefore was not the car seen by witnesses Skillett and Trower-explaining why Blackhall, the man seated nearest the driver of the Moris Minor both men saw, also insisted , like the couple above ,that the driver of that Moris Minor looked 'nothing like Hanratty'.

This is the bit I didn't quite grasp, because if you are arguing that Skillett et al saw the wrong Morris Minor, then the fact that Blackhall insisted, 'like the couple above', that this driver also looked 'nothing like Hanratty', is neither here nor there. Only one driver, of the right Morris Minor, could have been Hanratty.

Love,

Caz
X

[Limehouse]

Hi Caz/Norma

I think that if this couple had been dismissed so strongly at the time of the events, it is not surprising that they did not come forward later. What would be the point? And why would they want to be named and be looked upon as possible cranks? If this information was never passed to the defence, where could this couple go with their information?

It woiuld be interesting to know at what point this couple were interviewed, if at all because, if true, this story is another example of how some witnesses were treated if their evidence did not fit the 'official' version of events.

[caz]

But Limehouse, they did come forward with their information later, but apparently only because of this 'play' they saw about the case in 1997.

I have to wonder why they insisted on anonymity, then never came forward again, if they gave their names to the police when they first read about the crime and were so curtly dismissed. I'd have shouted about it from the rooftops! They surely knew that refusing to be identified would help nobody.

Maybe they, like others, were waiting and hoping for the DNA tests to prove Hanratty's innocence, and had a rethink after the 2002 appeal.

Love,

Caz
X