Hanratty's and Dixie France's :movements in lead up to 21st August

[Natalie Severn]

The gunman's behaviour in this case reminds me in some ways of Christopher Craig's, a decade previously, which resulted in the shameful and wrongful hanging of his innocent sidekick Derek Bentley.

Both killers appear to have been young men who allowed the power of having a loaded gun go to their heads on one fateful night, making them commit crimes that were as senseless as they were horrific. If the original intention in both cases was robbery, and the weapon taken more for defence or threatening purposes than for shooting anyone down in cold blood, it's clear that both 'jobs' were badly botched or otherwise aborted, and nothing was gained from the experience, which might explain why the A6 killer was left with a good deal of frustration, which he took out on Valerie by raping her before shooting her too.

The psychology just seems all wrong to me for a conspiracy of any kind, involving this gunman being sent off in search of that couple.

Love,

Caz
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Interesting Caz because its precisely the psychology that seems all wrong to me and so profoundly ill matched to Hanratty.Its this more than anything that has always made me totally reject him as being the A6 killer.Hanratty had no background of violence or rape whatever but the greatest inconsistency of all seems to be the temperament of the killer .Hanratty couldn't have stayed in a car for 5 minutes let alone five hours before he got down to doing whatever it was he was in the car for.His was a classic case of 'attention span disorder' from not being able to concentrate for more than five minutes at school to being at five places in one night on 21st August 1961 viz taking his suit to the cleaners midday in Swiss Cottage viz after >collecting his suitcase from Charlotte France>having a drink with Anne Pryce at the Rehearsal Club>having a sandwich and looking at which dogs were running in Hendon[?] and flying off to watch them run at Hendon>returning to Leicester Square and the Rehearsal Club >visiting a 'lady friend' near the Palladium> taking a taxi to the Broadway Hotel near Baker Street after realising he was far too late to catch the late night train from Euston to Liverpool [it left around 11pm].....
Yet we are expected to believe this 'lust crime' took him on a long ' through the night' 5 hour car ride requiring very fixed concentration and single mindedness before he got down to his shooting and lusting on Deadman's Hill.Tell me another one!

[caz]

I said nothing about 'lust' Nats.

Rape is one of the spoils of war, as you know, committed by many men who would not even think of it in peace time.

This criminal found himself fighting an unwanted battle with the couple he had held up so recklessly at gun point, and another battle within himself, trying to 'fink' how he was going to extricate himself from a situation of his own making, which had rapidly turned into one he had no previous experience of, and evidently found difficult to control, even with his deadly new toy.

He may well have ended up shooting Gregsten in the heat of the moment by accident, thinking the tables were about to turn on him, but by golly he went all out to win the war after that, taking Valerie by force and driving off into the night leaving her for dead.

You can't really argue that the gunman's initial behaviour was "out of character" as such, for a petty opportunistic thief like Hanratty, who was no stranger to seeing a car and helping himself. You don't know what anyone will do the first time they go out with a loaded gun, not even the criminal does, and this one didn't appear to have the vaguest plan in his head about what the night would bring or even what he wanted it to bring, never mind how he was going to achieve it. He was winging it all the way, with only the loaded gun and his wits to help him, and he clearly wasn't overloaded with the latter, from Valerie's account of the night's events.

It must have been a new and terrifying experience for all three souls in that car. The gunman had never done anything like it before (at least I know of no similar cases) but he was doing it now, so "out of character" suddenly became very much "in character", if for one night only.

Love,

Caz
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[Natalie Severn]

Caz
There is a lot of nonsense talked about James Hanratty and his alleged dim wittedness---a view most definitely not shared by Michael Sherrard who knew him from daily meetings with him throughout his ordeal .A reading by your good self of the exchanges in court between Swanwick QC and Hanratty is most instructive regarding James Hanratty.Graham Swanwick -born with a silver spoon in his mouth and immense social,economic and scholastic advantages -eg privately educated at one of our most expensive public schools graduating to the highest level possible at our best universities -Oxbridge and Law schools, yet when pitched against Swanwick, Hanratty come off at least as well if not better in their sparring repartee in the court room.As Michael Sherrard emphasised in his autobiography,Hanratty was more than up to those sparring matches ,'articulate and more than up to the mark.
Yes true he apparently had learning difficulties at school frequently the result of a lack of concentration and it was ' in Sherrard's words .It was concentration,above all,in my view, that was needed in that 5 hour drive round the outskirts of London holding a gun to the heads of Valerie Storie and Michael Gregsten and Hanratty had zero tolerance when it came to any kind of perseverance at anything at all.

Also could there be some kind of answer to these questions:

a] where is the proof Hanratty ever had a gun? He had never owned a gun or been seen with a gun-never.

b] Do you know that something like 85% of EastEnders----which James Hanratty was not btw---- would have said 'fink'?
That it is a large part of Cockney dialect and enunciation!!!---

--------and while we are at it it seems to me that the killer knew the East End very well indeed parking the car way over to the Eastern outskirts of London---not an area Hanratty would have been overly familiar with---if at all in fact.

[caz]

I think we go round in circles again, Nats. There's nothing so dim witted as providing a false alibi if you are innocent and your neck is at stake, particularly if you have a genuine alibi (along with plenty of potential witnesses) that you will have to fall back on if the false one blows up in your face and then it will all be too late.

If you are right about Hanratty being sharp witted, that only suggests he was guilty and had the wit to realise he needed a second false alibi to replace the first.

Love,

Caz
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[Natalie Severn]

I think we go round in circles again, Nats. There's nothing so dim witted as providing a false alibi if you are innocent and your neck is at stake, particularly if you have a genuine alibi (along with plenty of potential witnesses) that you will have to fall back on if the false one blows up in your face and then it will all be too late.

If you are right about Hanratty being sharp witted, that only suggests he was guilty and had the wit to realise he needed a second false alibi to replace the first.

Love,

Caz
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If you can't see the quite awful predicament Hanratty was in that night at 11 pm on October 6th 1961-7 weeks after the A6 murder- when he had telephoned Chief Supt Acott at Scotland Yard having learnt he was wanted for questioning on it, then I really am surprised Caz.He was trying to avoid falling into the hands of the police -trying to avoid being put back in prison on a burglary charge for which he was wanted .And really- how many of his 'friends' in Liverpool would have been be willing to perjure themselves by pretending he stayed with them on the night of the murder and then get 12 years in this capital case?
And how on earth was he supposed to return to those landladies in Kinmel Street and South Kinmel Street in Rhyl and ask if they remembered when he came knocking on their doors on 22nd of August 1961? "scuse me Madam -I am on the run and wanted for the A6 murder and I need your alibi for the night --do you remember me?"
As the judge said-"He doesn't need to prove his alibi: the failure or otherwise of the alibi does not make him guilty"
But for some reason people prefer to forget the perfectly strong Liverpool alibi that DID confirm his movements on the Tuesday provided by Mrs Dinwoody.It was in fact a lot stronger than acknowledged as Michael Sherrard insisted and Paul Foot later proved by intensive interviewing of of both the 21st August witnesses who had seen him in London and Mrs Dinwoody,her granddaughter Barbara and Linda her friend- PLUS the lorry driver whose recollection was proven to have been out -he called close to 6 pm not 5 pm when Barbara,her friend LInda and James Hanratty had all been and gone which was why he hadnt seen them----and then there were the various police in Liverpool Foot had interviewed.And what was Acott's response? He suggested Hanratty could have taken an aeroplane from Speke---or possibly a helicopter......what!!!???
.

[caz]

If you can't see the quite awful predicament Hanratty was in that night at 11 pm on October 6th 1961-7 weeks after the A6 murder- when he had telephoned Chief Supt Acott at Scotland Yard having learnt he was wanted for questioning on it, then I really am surprised Caz.He was trying to avoid falling into the hands of the police -trying to avoid being put back in prison on a burglary charge for which he was wanted .

Hi Nats,

If he was innocent of murder because he was innocently staying overnight in Rhyl at the time, with all these witnesses who could confirm seeing him there, then I don't see why he was in a 'quite awful predicament' until he chose to lie about staying in Liverpool instead.

If he was guilty then yes, he was in a quite awful predicament entirely of his own making and he had to lie, and lie again, about his whereabouts.

And really- how many of his 'friends' in Liverpool would have been be willing to perjure themselves by pretending he stayed with them on the night of the murder and then get 12 years in this capital case?

And yet your sharp witted Hanratty was apparently depending on them to do just that. With him or against him - the only options once he decided to tell a lie that involved them. Was he able to return to Liverpool to ask them directly for their support? Or did he just hope they would come up trumps when they found out he was in big trouble? Why did he ever imagine they would risk so much to help him out?

As the judge said-"He doesn't need to prove his alibi: the failure or otherwise of the alibi does not make him guilty"

Then his wits should have told him to stick with his first story if he didn't think he could prove either, and the jury might just have been swayed by the judge's words. A second unprovable alibi that contradicted the first was never going to do it.

Love,

Caz
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[OneRound]

... Then his wits should have told him to stick with his first story if he didn't think he could prove either, and the jury might just have been swayed by the judge's words. A second unprovable alibi that contradicted the first was never going to do it.

Love,

Caz
X

Hi Caz - that certainly seems to have also been Michael Sherrard's view at the time. His obituary (and thanks for posting it, Natalie) reminds us of the barrister's insistence of Hanratty signing a disclaimer before his client went down this fatal path.

I do wonder if Hanratty simply invented the Rhyl alibi in desperation and almost struck lucky with the appearance of the landlady or whether a criminal colleague was somehow able to suggest it to him ....

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Caz - that certainly seems to have also been Michael Sherrard's view at the time. His obituary (and thanks for posting it, Natalie) reminds us of the barrister's insistence of Hanratty signing a disclaimer before his client went down this fatal path.

I do wonder if Hanratty simply invented the Rhyl alibi in desperation and almost struck lucky with the appearance of the landlady or whether a criminal colleague was somehow able to suggest it to him ....

Hi One Round,
I suggest you read Paul Foot's detailed interviews with the landlady Margaret Walker.Also and even more importantly with Betty Davies,her mother in law Margaret and husband Noel.They form a body of evidence that in my view and that of many others -Paul Foot in particular but that of many others who have studied the case ,is unshakeable .

But how on earth would Hanratty have known this? How could he know that they would remember him six months later knocking on their doors late that August ----? or that someone like Paul Foot would go to such lengths to scrutinise their statements --and not of just one or two witnesses like Mrs Jones the landlady of Ingledene but of eleven of the Rhyl witnesses in all----[and there was Mr Larman another important witness whose statement to police arrived too 'late'for the trial but not through a fault of his own and which he eventually insisted they look at] and of course the crucially important Liverpool witnesses- Mrs Dinwoody and her granddaughter and her granddaughters friend ]
Then - just as crucially important -the [withheld] statement of Trevor Dutton ,a Kinmel Bay Councillor , who NOBODY ---not Sherrard not even Hanratty--- knew had given any statement to police -and it was a lengthy statement to the police in Abergele given during the Bedford trial---but which only came to light -- six years later long after Hanratty had been executed .Dutton had answered an ad in 1967 in a Denbighshire newspaper that had been placed by Paul Foot and this happens to be only one of literally dozens of withheld styatements in this case.

I hope this goes some way to answering your comments too Caz as like you I feel we just go round in circles and sarcasm begins to take the place of reasoned argument or research.

[Stevo7395]

Hi Peeps, not posted for a few weeks and still trying to read all of the threads on here. One thing that really troubles me is the more I read about it is that various witnesses seemed to have been ignored by the Met and Beds Police, the couple in Clophill who had a confrontation with a man in a car after the material times, the guy who walked into Staines Nick to make a statement, the fact that the Met have other statements that the " Crown " will never reveal for even now decades to come for fear it would put " living people " in danger ?......are they talking about VS or other witnesses.

VS is still alive I believe as is Langdale who used to live in the area I live in and has family here. People I know knew RL but don't seem to want to talk too much about their knowledge of him. I'm told he lives " abroad ". One person I spoke to who is local to me is that Langdale was "involved " more than just giving evidence in court. I believe he was in the same prison as JH whilst he was held on remand at Brixton ?

We can conjecture all we want but we have to admit that there are so many, inconsistencies, altered statements, altered faces and altered traces that this tale will never lose it's fascination. The only thing that troubles me about Jh's innocence is the DNA but by today's standards that is now questionable ten years later which JH's family are trying to get CCRC to get another appeal.

I hope one day Jh's family find peace and the surviving victim finds peace as well, cheers , Steve

[caz]

I hope this goes some way to answering your comments too Caz as like you I feel we just go round in circles and sarcasm begins to take the place of reasoned argument or research.

Hi Nats,

Believe me I wasn't being intentionally sarcastic. You claimed that Hanratty was far from being slow witted, so I merely pointed out that if he had been innocent of the murder as you insist he was, his attempts at defending himself can best be described as those of a complete dimwit.

If he remembered going to Liverpool on the day in question, he would surely have remembered going on to Rhyl and looking for somewhere to stay, and being offered an attic room in a guest house that was otherwise full. I mean, how many times would this have happened to him in the course of that summer?

And I'm sorry, but the more witnesses you wheel in with supposedly definite sightings and conversations with Hanratty in or around Rhyl on that crucial night, the less plausible are the reasons given for him not being able to run with this "genuine" alibi, but conjuring up a false Liverpool alibi instead, that none of his cronies was remotely likely to back up (as you so rightly observe), especially once they got wind of him being wanted for the A6 murder.

It isn't as if he had seen and talked to nobody in Rhyl and had slept rough on the beach or somewhere, and therefore felt he had a marginally better chance of recruiting one or two of his criminal pals in Liverpool to lie for him. On the contrary, he is meant to have interacted with umpteen honest witnesses who remembered having spoken to him in Rhyl. So it really does beggar belief that he would not have been equally aware of having spoken to all these people, and of needing just one or two to tell the truth for him and save his life. How did he imagine that a lying thief could possibly stand him in better stead than ten or more truthful witnesses?

If Hanratty didn't use the Rhyl alibi initially, because he truly believed he had no way of proving he was ever there, why did he think that calling upon it at the eleventh hour could possibly do him anything but more harm?

You have explained what you think his reasons must have been through all this, as an innocent man, but I'm afraid they only appear unsound in the extreme for anyone striving to be found not guilty of a capital charge. Conversely, as a guilty man, his reasons for telling the first story and then changing it to the second are all too obvious and need very little explanation.

Love,

Caz
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[Natalie Severn]

If Hanratty didn't use the Rhyl alibi initially, because he truly believed he had no way of proving he was ever there, why did he think that calling upon it at the eleventh hour could possibly do him anything but more harm?

The reason he gave Michael Sherrard himself , was that was that he had become thoroughly frightened since right up until this point ,he ,like much of the press and like Michael Sherrard had believed he could not be found guilty of something he had had nothing whatever to do with.
When the prosecution went to such lengths to pin it on him he told Sherrard 'Look I didn't stay with those men in Liverpool-it was something I told him[Acott] that night after I spoke to Barry Harding on The Daily Mirror-who also asked him directly,that night, "do you have an alibi?".This was because both men within minutes of each other had ' put me on the spot by asking me if I had an alibi for Liverpool [with Acott this was at 11 .10 pm on 6th October with Harding it was only a few minutes earlier I seem to remember]-'and I felt I had to stick to later' .
However the truth of the matter was that after he couldnt find his Aspinall man in Liverpool he went on to Rhyl---and he decided the truth about where he stayed that night might have a better chance of clearing him.
Lets not forget that the prosecution,though they appear to have entirely believed what Mrs Dinwoody had said,believed he had either gone into her shop on the Monday[21st August] or ,if it was indeed on Tuesday 22nd as H insisted,he may well have' bought a look alike alibi 'to go into her shop on the outskirts of town and act the goat [just hoping somebody would check it out later] either that or he may have got a plane from Speke to London or even a helicopter!!!

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Peeps, not posted for a few weeks and still trying to read all of the threads on here. One thing that really troubles me is the more I read about it is that various witnesses seemed to have been ignored by the Met and Beds Police, the couple in Clophill who had a confrontation with a man in a car after the material times, the guy who walked into Staines Nick to make a statement, the fact that the Met have other statements that the " Crown " will never reveal for even now decades to come for fear it would put " living people " in danger ?......are they talking about VS or other witnesses.

This doesn't surprise me at all Steve! After Hillsborough and what was revealed a couple of months ago by the Independent Inquiry and 162 relatively recent witness statements being 'altered' by the police ---yes ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY TWO ----as well as a 'smear campaign' begun by none other than Kenneth Oxford a few days after the tragedy at Hillsborough in his urgent 'memo' to Margaret Thatcher about 'drunken and ticketless Liverpool fans' having caused the disaster,I could believe anything! Yes,anything that went on! Oh---and it was this very same policeman, Sir Kenneth Oxford, who was due to explain to the 2002 Court of Appeal the 'alterations' he and Acott had made to Hanratty's statement -proven to have been 'altered' by forensic handwriting tests -a statement taken when the two of them arrested Hanratty in Blackpool .Unfortunately Sir Kenneth Oxford died in the run up to the appeal so we will never know why the 'alterations' were made [ha ha pull the other one!]

Do people realise that in this trial most of the key prosecution witnesses had either ' done time 'or ' were doing time' [Langdale -l ]or had 'altered their statements ' to help the police [eg Anderson and Nudds -the latter made three statements-one implicating Alphon the other two Hanratty] or like Charles France were players on the criminal fringes of Soho [France also had a long police record-half were gambling offences others were for stealing lead of the roofs of houses etc

HEY! Is there not 'something rotten in the state of Denmark'? ---[so to speak]
Great post Steve btw---you appear to really know the lie of the land!

[caz]

The reason he gave Michael Sherrard himself , was that was that he had become thoroughly frightened since right up until this point ,he ,like much of the press and like Michael Sherrard had believed he could not be found guilty of something he had had nothing whatever to do with.

Hi Nats,

Did you mean to write this? That Sherrard himself didn't believe anyone who was innocent could be found guilty? That doesn't make much sense in light of his worried reaction to Hanratty's change of alibi!

However the truth of the matter was that after he couldnt find his Aspinall man in Liverpool he went on to Rhyl---and he decided the truth about where he stayed that night might have a better chance of clearing him.

If I were to say that 'the truth of the matter was' that Hanratty couldn't have been in Rhyl because he was busy leaving his DNA at the rape scene down south, you'd rightly tick me off for stating my opinion as fact, even though it is backed by the 2002 Appeal Judgement.

I submit that he would have known from the start that telling the truth was the infinitely better option if he really had encountered umpteen willing witnesses while in Rhyl. Why suddenly rely on them only at the last minute when it was too late, if he had always known they must be out there? It only makes sense if he could think of no better option when inventing an overnight stay in Liverpool, and when that failed him he had no other option at all but to invent one in Rhyl instead and try to con the jury into believing he was an innocent simpleton.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Do people realise that in this trial most of the key prosecution witnesses had either ' done time 'or ' were doing time' [Langdale -l ]or had 'altered their statements ' to help the police [eg Anderson and Nudds -the latter made three statements-one implicating Alphon the other two Hanratty] or like Charles France were players on the criminal fringes of Soho [France also had a long police record-half were gambling offences others were for stealing lead of the roofs of houses etc

On the other hand Hanratty was a career criminal himself, and he naturally mixed with a lot of others. He had himself been hoping to recruit one or two as witnesses for the defence, who were supposed to perjure themselves to give him a false alibi. He never gave himself a sporting chance, did he?

Love,

Caz
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