Rob Harriman: Hanratty - The DNA Travesty (Kindle E-Book)

[Victor]

Hi Victor -The Home Office requested Scotland Yard to do an internal report on the case and Detective Chief Superintendent Roger Matthews was appointed to lead a twenty man team of detectives to look at all the evidence in all the files.

Hi Natalie,

A report that was never published and was superseded by the case being passed to the CCRC who also looked at all the evidence in all the files, and they concluded that the DNA evidence made a strong case even stronger!

KR,
Vic.

[Natalie Severn]

Daily Mail article of 1999 by Sr. Detective Roger Matthews of Scotland Yard to

Note to readers :Roger Matthews , a very senior detective at Scotland Yard at the time ,who I have never met or spoken to , does not say here in 'The Daily Mail' that his findings led him to believe 3 people were involved in the A6 murder [none being Hanratty] but it is my understanding from 2 mutual friends that he has been contacted by ,that was what his findings led him to understand and that he remains firm in his belief that Hanratty had nothing whatever to do with the crime .

DAILY MAIL ARTICLE PUBLISHED UNDER THE TITLE "THEY HANGED
THE WRONG MAN" (May 1999) [article written by Roger Matthews and based on his findings as Detective Chief Superintendent Roger Matthews for Scotland Yard prior to 1999 when he led a 20 strong team to not only examine 16 boxes of evidence +files and documents not in the public domain.It took them 12 months to collate the information and draw a conclusion from all these findings]

James Hanratty, aged 24, an inadequate petty criminal, was executed on a grey April morning in 1962 for a cruel, cold-blooded - and apparently random - sex crime. Initially, few outside his immediate family mourned his passing.

These days, sadly, we are used to horrific killings by gunmen and the appalling litany of brutal sexual assaults. However, in that more innocent age, the bizarre evil of this attack shocked the entire nation. As a callow sixth former with a burning ambition to join the Metropolitan Police, I remember reading about the crime with incredulity. I certainly felt no sympathy for a man whom I knew nothing about.

Little could I know that more than thirty years later in 1995, it would fall to me, by now an experienced Detective Superintendent at Scotland Yard, to conduct a review of the case at the request of the Home Office. The Home Secretary was considering an application from the family's lawyers to refer the case to the Court of Appeal.

Normally, of course, it is the function of police officers to search out evidence of guilt. Here, though, I was being asked to consider whether someone whom had been hanged as a murderer while I was still a schoolboy had in fact gone to the gallows an innocent man.

It took me a year of painstaking research before I reached the somewhat unpalatable conclusion that a grievous miscarriage of justice had almost certainly taken place. On the available evidence, James Hanratty ought not to have been found guilty; and certainly not have been “hanged by the neck until dead” in Bedford jail.

Now, as the case awaits hearing in the Appeal Court, I feel I have to speak out, because I am so concerned about the entire episode. Gradually, during the investigation, my opposition to the death penalty strengthened. Such a measure is so appallingly irreversible.

As I burrowed through sixteen boxes of evidence and yellowing files and documents, I found a copy of the last letter dictated by Hanratty (he could barely write) shortly before his execution. It took on poignancy for me.

The letter was to his brother Michael- a man whose tenacity I have come to admire - and it contained a final, and unexpectedly moving and dignified appeal to clear his name. At the time, it had sparked a campaign led by his father, backed by John Lennon and including investigative writers such as Paul Foot. The campaign is still running.

"Well, Mick", said Hanratty in that letter, "I am going to do my best to face the morning with courage and strength and I am sure God will give me the courage to do so...I am going to ask you to do me a small favour, that is I would like you to clear my name of this crime.
Someone, somewhere is responsible for this crime and one day they will venture out again and then the truth will come out, and then that will be the chance for you to step in. Well the time is drawing near, it is almost daylight, so please look after Mum and Dad for me. . .. I only wish I could have the chance over again. But never mind, Mick, as I don't know what I have done to deserve this. But Mick, that's fate for you. . . your loving brother Jim".

Hanratty died an hour or so later, still protesting his innocence to the Roman Catholic priest who gave him the last rites.

Of course, I didn’t base my professional assessment of Hanratty's guilt upon the hanged man's last words, no matter how impressive. Yet I couldn’t but wonder why this 25year-old had gone to his grave protesting his innocence with such quiet determination and dignity. Unless, of course, he really was innocent.

So, what exactly had James Hanratty been accused of? Well, the basic story has never been in dispute. At around 9.30 on the evening of 22nd August 1961, lovers Michael Gregsten, 36, and Valerie Storie, 22, were enjoying an illicit tryst in a grey Morris Minor owned by his aunt.

They had to be discreet because he was married with two small sons; and because they both worked at the Slough Road Research Laboratory in Borehamwood. Michael was a scientist and Valerie a research assistant.

They were parked in a remote cornfield at Dorney Reach, itself somewhat remote, near Taplow in Buckinghamshire. It was a location they had used before. Suddenly they were interrupted by a tap on the window. Gregsten wound it down and was forced out of the car at gunpoint.

The gunman climbed into the rear and ordered Gregsten to get back in and drive off. The trio spent several hours driving around the suburbs of North-West London and beyond, whilst the gunman claimed he was a desperate fugitive bent on armed robbery. Bizarrely, he took items from them, including a valuable watch, which he returned prior to the brutal and callous shootings which were to follow.

Eventually, Gregsten was ordered to park in a lay-by at the grotesquely named Deadman's Hill on the A6 in Bedfordshire. The journey had been bad enough, but what followed was truly horrific. Gregsten was shot twice through the head and died instantly. Valerie was
forced to help remove the body of her murdered lover from the car.

Then she was savagely raped and shot at least four times. She was left for dead alongside Gregsten's body. In fact she was - and remains - paralysed from the waist down but her brain was undamaged. She was able to give the police an account of her ordeal as soon as she was rescued.
The Morris Minor car was found dumped the next day in Redbridge, East London; and the gun used in the crimes was discovered a day later beneath the back seat of a London bus.

Suddenly, there came the breakthrough. Two cartridge cases from the murder weapon were found in the basement of a cheap hotel in Maida Vale, North-West London. A check of the hotel register revealed the name of Peter Louis Alphon, a travelling sales representative who specialised in selling "Old Moore's Almanac". He had booked into this hotel for an overnight stay on the day of the murder; and had been questioned over strange behaviour in another, nearby hotel in Finsbury Park. The background to this was that he had apparently locked himself in his room in the Finsbury Park hotel for the five days immediately following the murder.

Staff at the Maida Vale hotel said they had not seen Alphon on the crucial night; and his mother did not confirm his alibi - wherein he had mentioned visiting her at around the time the murder took place. .

Alphon's name was therefore released to the press, and it has to be said in his favour that he gave himself up. At an identification parade, however, held at her hospital bedside, Valerie Storie selected someone else and Alphon was released.

Police attention turned to Hanratty, who by common consent had stayed at the hotel on the night before the murder. He refused to give himself up because he was - and perhaps more importantly knew that he was - wanted for two offences of burglary on fingerprint evidence. On the telephone to police, he vehemently denied being responsible for the. crimes. No fingerprints or indeed any other forensic evidence had been discovered in the car. He was alleged to have told the interviewing officer that he was a "really clever" criminal who never left fingerprints. This was more than a little odd. All of his convictions had resulted from his leaving his prints at crime scenes.

He never wavered in his denial. On 11th October he was arrested in a cafe in Blackpool and charged after Valerie had selected him on an identification parade. Intriguingly, he bore not the remotest resemblance to the man she had identified (wrongly, of course) at the Alphon parade.

Miss Storie insisted, however, that this time, she was "positive" that Hanratty was the killer. It was a rather unusual “parade”. She was unable to visually identify any one; and asked that each participant uttered the words she said had been used repeatedly by the gunman. They were “Keep quiet: I’m Finking” – in a cockney accent. Hanratty was the only man on the parade born within a hundred miles of London!! Nowadays, this would be totally discredited.

The trial was the longest in English legal history and Valerie was obviously the chief prosecution witness. Hanratty initially refused to disclose where he had been on the night in question, and this weighed heavily against him.

Then he claimed that he had been in Liverpool. He was not able to substantiate this alibi and changed it during the trial, saying that in fact he had been staying in a guesthouse in the North Wales resort of Rhyl.

There was insufficient time to confirm this story - though his graphic description of the room he had occupied was quite extraordinarily accurate - and the landlady was uncertain
as to the dates upon which he had stayed. Therefore, this somewhat belated alibi collapsed, and Hanratty was convicted.

Following the failure of his appeal and the rejection of a petition signed by 90,000 people, he was hanged.

Soon afterwards, Alphon claimed to a writer that he was responsible for the outrage, whilst acting as a "hitman" whose task it had been to separate Michael and Valerie and frighten the former into returning to his wife and children.

Alphon supposedly made an identical admission to journalist Paul Foot.He has certainly been making it down the decades to anyone prepared to listen. Foot also discovered, incidentally, fourteen witnesses who supported Hanratty's claim to have been in Rhyl at the time of the atrocity.

Having got these basic facts straight, I began to worry about such matters as motive and opportunity. Why on earth would Hanratty, a petty if fairly determined urban burglar, suddenly take a gun and loiter in a very rural cornfield in Buckinghamshire?

Cornfields are hardly the most lucrative locations for armed robberies. Nor is it immediately obvious that the surrounding area would have been a source of rich pickings for a robber, particularly one with no apparent means of transport

It was common knowledge that Hanratty was a skilled car thief and that when arrested, he had in his pocket the keys for a Jaguar which he had stolen and driven around England for some weeks. Why did he not have a getaway car on the night in question? In addition, why did he need Valerie' s assistance to help start the very basic Morris Minor?

According to her, he did not even know how to change gear until she taught him. It just did not make any sense.

Then I turned to the prosecution case. The first thing to strike me was how thin it was. It would most certainly not have been sufficient to secure a conviction today.

There was, for instance, no forensic material. Instead, the prosecution relied upon identification evidence: from Valerie and two witnesses who claimed to have seen Hanratty driving the Morris Minor erratically in East London soon after the shootings. Their evidence was totally unreliable – and was in fact rejected at the trial.

Then there was the convenient discovery, three weeks later, of bullet cases, which had been fired from the murder weapon, in the hotel room used by Hanratty on the eve of the shooting. An odd event. The room had been occupied on at least two occasions in the intervening period. It had also been cleaned. Why had the cases not been discovered?

Next emerged the fact that the murder weapon had been discovered beneath the back seat of a 36A Bus - where a witness, Charles France, who later committed suicide, said that
Hanratty claimed to have got rid of, as a matter of course, valueless proceeds of his burglaries. The suicide in itself was a matter of some concern, since it coincided with the date of Hanratty's unsuccessful appeal. I found it strange that a killer would dispose of the murder weapon in such a fashion, when the Thames was available! Additionally, the route of the bus concerned passed France’s address. I couldn’t interview him, though!

Finally, there was an alleged confession to a fellow prison inmate. This, as far as I was able to establish, had been totally discredited at the trial.

It is very difficult to judge old cases by modern standards. Before the Police and Criminal Evidence Act for instance, the prosecution was able to be selective about just what evidence it disclosed.

. Today, it is under an obligation to present all relevant material. Had everything been disclosed in this case - in particular, but by no means only, details of the various identifications - the jury would have been given at least the chance to arrive at a different conclusion.

Other legislation and the impact of case law have had a marked effect on the way in which investigations and criminal trials are conducted. Indeed, the very first step in my investigation was a DNA analysis of a semen stain on Valerie's underwear - Hanratty's lawyers had hoped this would settle the matter once and for all.

The result was unfortunately inconclusive because the science was still insufficiently advanced.

Finally, as I dug still deeper, I came across matters that concerned me profoundly about the conduct of the investigation. It would be wholly improper for me to reveal details before the appeal hearing. Mention of “KIP”. Original notes of phone calls. The hotel register (copy). Disparity between evidence of SIO and Oxford. The manner in which a “J Ryan” was traced – smelled of informant. Postcard utterly impossible

Eventually, I acquainted my senior officers with my conclusion: a quite breathtaking miscarriage of justice had seemed to have taken place; just as Hanratty's family, friends and several distinguished writers had always maintained.

My views were endorsed by my then Commander, Roy Ramm, head of the Yard's International and Organized Crime Group. In May 1996, we reported jointly and formally that the Metropolitan Police would not oppose a Home Office recommendation to the Home Secretary advising him to refer the case to the Court of Appeal. I was assured that a decision would be arrived at ''within weeks".

This did not happen. Politicians had dodged the issue for over thirty years. The incumbent at the Home Office obviously saw no reason to depart from tradition. . .
In April 1997 - perhaps appropriately on the 1st - a new body called the Criminal Cases Review Commission was set up. The matter was placed in their hands.

Two years further still down the road, in March of this year, they referred the case to the Court of Appeal.
Some time soon, the hearing will begin. Obviously, I have not the remotest idea which way the decision will go. Having said that, whether the conviction is quashed or upheld I find it quite appalling that the Hanratty family has been made to wait for this length of time.

The entire history of this matter has been characterized by delay, and apparent resistance to the notion that politicians may have been mistaken in their assessment of submissions made on this young man's behalf There has also been a quite disgraceful reluctance to accept that the prosecution case was extraordinarily weak, or to consider the possibility that some other person may just have been responsible.

In truth, there was little in my confidential report that would not have been available to a committed investigator at any time during the past thirty-seven years.

I do hope that justice will be done, in whatever form, when the Court of Appeal hears the case.

Yet I recall the old adage: justice delayed is justice denied.

My heart goes out to the Hanratty family, who have waited so long for their day in court.

[Natalie Severn]

Gut-this confidential report has never been published .The LCN DNA issue being crucial is being investigated.

[Derrick]

Hi Natalie,

A report that was never published and was superseded by the case being passed to the CCRC who also looked at all the evidence in all the files, and they concluded that the DNA evidence made a strong case even stronger!

KR,
Vic.

The Matthews report, as you say, wasn't published but the rest of what you have posted is wrong.

The CCRC investigation, led by Baden Skitt, referred the case back to the Court of Appeal in 1999. The Court of Appeal at paragraph 9 of the judgement (2002) says:

Having conducted further enquiries (including obtaining DNA evidence), on 26 March 1999, the Commission referred the conviction to this Court pursuant to section 13 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1995. The Commission stated, in accordance with the statutory provisions, that there was a real possibility that the conviction would not be upheld.

It was actually the Court of Appeal who said what you refer to at paragraph 211 of the judgement:

In our judgment for reasons we have explained the DNA evidence establishes beyond doubt that James Hanratty was the murderer. The DNA evidence made what was a strong case even stronger. Equally the strength of the evidence overall pointing to the guilt of the appellant supports our conclusion as to the DNA.

Hope that helps
Del

[caz]

Hi Nats,

Your words:

Matthews concluded Hanratty was entirely innocent and could not have committed the crime.

Matthews's published words:

There has also been a quite disgraceful reluctance to accept that the prosecution case was extraordinarily weak, or to consider the possibility that some other person may just have been responsible.

The problem is that I can see no quote for Matthews concluding Hanratty 'could not' have committed the crime and was therefore 'entirely innocent' of it. All you have given us is Matthews (like so many others before and since) outlining the flaws in the system which led to a conviction he believed to be based on weak evidence. Nowhere does he demonstrate Hanratty's total inability to have been at the crime scene or guilty as charged.

Love,

Caz
X

[Natalie Severn]

Caz-the difference being neither you nor I have seen Roger Matthews confidential report on which he bases his conclusions--neither has anyone other than Scotland Yard and the Home Office who commissioned it -since it has not been allowed to be published and is still under lock and key…a years work as one of Scotland Yard's leading detectives in charge of a team of 20 detectives for 12 months seeing files and reports the public has never had access too…libel laws?

[Derrick]

Caz-the difference being neither you nor I have seen Roger Matthews confidential report on which he bases his conclusions--neither has anyone other than Scotland Yard and the Home Office who commissioned it -since it has not been allowed to be published and is still under lock and key…a years work as one of Scotland Yard's leading detectives in charge of a team of 20 detectives for 12 months seeing files and reports the public has never had access too…libel laws?

Norma

I find that hard to believe. The CCRC's powers are as great as the Crown itself...they even have the right to grant a Royal Pardon. If they haven't seen the Matthews report then I'm a monkey's mother's brother.

Besides, as Matthews said himself:

In truth, there was little in my confidential report that would not have been available to a committed investigator at any time during the past thirty-seven years.

There is nothing more in the police files to incriminate Hanratty or Alphon. And as the evidence against Hanratty, LCN included, is weak at best, this case will, eventually, go down as another great unsolved crime.

It has nothing to do with libel laws. France and Ewer are dead. As for another perp then well, good luck. The A6 Murderer was not Hanratty and it wasn't Alphon either.

Del

[Spitfire]

I have struggled through this book and cannot recommend that anyone else does the same.

I should have been forewarned that Harriman's forte was not accuracy, as fairly early on in the book he informs us that Timothy Evans was hanged for the murder of his wife and child. In fact, Evans was only tried for the murder of his young child, Geraldine, as the legal practice of the time (1949) was that there should only be one charge on a murder indictment. This quaint practice was still in force in 1961 when James Hanratty was charged with murder, and again there was only one charge on the indictment, to wit the murder contrary to common law of Michael Gregsten. There was no charge relating to the rape and attempted murder of Valerie Storie, although undoubtedly whoever murdered Gregsten had raped and attempted to murder Valerie Storie. This was similar to the Evans case, in that whoever had murdered Geraldine Evans had also murdered Beryl Evans.

Harriman does not see this as a long established legal practice in the Hanratty case but rather an ad hoc attempted by the prosecuting authorities to pull a fast one on the hapless Hanratty and his defence team, although Harriman cannot quite work out why the authorities should want to pull such a stunt.

The next surprising thing about this book is that Harriman does not think that the A6 murder was a murder case at all. In his considered view it was an accident not murder as there was not sufficient mens rea for murder.

I confess I found this part of Harriman's argument a heady mixture of plain bonkers and unintended comedy, as Harriman takes Sherrard to task for not running the defence that the gun might have gone off accidentally, and ergo there was not the mens rea for murder.

As to the DNA part of the book, Harriman confesses that he is not a DNA scientist, but this does not prevent him from taking to task those that are. Harriman makes various points in commenting on the evidence of the prosecution expert witnesses, and some of these may have validity, but he is hampered in my view because he has not seen all of the material placed before the court. Most importantly he does not seem to have been given access to the prosecution expert's reports upon which the witnesses were examined and cross examined.

The book does have the transcripts (ending rather abruptly) for the three days in the Court of Criminal Appeal when the DNA evidence was considered. Having read these I can see why the Court came to the conclusion it did in allowing the admission of the evidence and determining that it provided conclusive proof of Hanratty's guilt. Even the defence's expert, Dr Evison, was forced to agree that at least the prosecution theory was reasonable and that it was more likely than not that the DNA discovered on the knickers fragment was deposited by Hanratty during the commission of the crime.

No travesty of justice here.

[Penhalion]

I'm pretty new to the case so all I have are a lot of questions. Some question I have are:

The DNA from the nasal mucus on the handkerchief is one of the things which held up the conviction on the last appeal. The DNA clearly came from Hanratty and was found with the murder weapon. So far so good. Many people seem to feel that the handkerchief was planted with the gun by a second or third party to implicate Hanratty. Okay. So if someone is going to plant a snotty hanky with a gun to implicate someone.....doesn't that imply that they understand that the mucus can be directly linked to that person via DNA? Otherwise, the hanky could be from anyone since I'm thinking Hanratty didn't have his specially monogramed. The DNA in the mucus is the significant tie.

But.....in 1961 DNA was barely known and tests to find and identify it were 20-30 years in the future. Why would someone plant a type of evidence that not only couldn't be detected at the time, it wasn't even commonly understood to exist?

If THEY (whoever that might be) wanted to maintain the conviction by planting evidence just before the items were to be tested (and that would be one seriously long lived conspiracy!), then where would the DNA come from? A bit of old dried semen on a trouser fly would hardly serve to contaminate both the mucus stained hanky AND the knickers.

If the items were kept in less than pristine conditions (which I totally believe) that allowed a more happenstance contamination, why wasn't there contamination shown from other random people such as police officers, techs, and lawyers who all undoubtedly handled the items without gloves?

[Dupplin Muir]

No, I suspect that Hanratty didn't have his handkerchief specially monogrammed, but it was quite common at the time to buy handkerchiefs with your first initial already on them. Nowadays if we want handkerchiefs we just go in to Primark (say) and throw a pack into a basket, but in those days you would go to a proper shop with shirts, sweaters, etc, in cabinets with a salesman to take them out to show to you.

If Hanratty identified the handkerchief found on the bus, I suspect that this is how he did it. Having the initial 'J' wouldn't help the prosecution much since so many men have names beginning with that letter, but Hanratty might have been able to identify it by the style and colour in which the initial was embroidered.

Additionally, I believe that it is possible to determine blood-group from mucus, and together with France's convenient testimony about JH's proclivity for dumping unwanted swag under a bus seat, would probably be enough to link him to the gun.

Thus there is no need to assume that whoever planted the gun knew about DNA.

[caz]

I'm pretty new to the case so all I have are a lot of questions. Some question I have are:

The DNA from the nasal mucus on the handkerchief is one of the things which held up the conviction on the last appeal. The DNA clearly came from Hanratty and was found with the murder weapon. So far so good. Many people seem to feel that the handkerchief was planted with the gun by a second or third party to implicate Hanratty. Okay. So if someone is going to plant a snotty hanky with a gun to implicate someone.....doesn't that imply that they understand that the mucus can be directly linked to that person via DNA? Otherwise, the hanky could be from anyone since I'm thinking Hanratty didn't have his specially monogramed. The DNA in the mucus is the significant tie.

But.....in 1961 DNA was barely known and tests to find and identify it were 20-30 years in the future. Why would someone plant a type of evidence that not only couldn't be detected at the time, it wasn't even commonly understood to exist?

If THEY (whoever that might be) wanted to maintain the conviction by planting evidence just before the items were to be tested (and that would be one seriously long lived conspiracy!), then where would the DNA come from? A bit of old dried semen on a trouser fly would hardly serve to contaminate both the mucus stained hanky AND the knickers.

If the items were kept in less than pristine conditions (which I totally believe) that allowed a more happenstance contamination, why wasn't there contamination shown from other random people such as police officers, techs, and lawyers who all undoubtedly handled the items without gloves?

Hi Penhalion and welcome!

All your observations are spot on, and to date I have not received any satisfactory explanations when I have brought up similar concerns.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

No, I suspect that Hanratty didn't have his handkerchief specially monogrammed, but it was quite common at the time to buy handkerchiefs with your first initial already on them. Nowadays if we want handkerchiefs we just go in to Primark (say) and throw a pack into a basket, but in those days you would go to a proper shop with shirts, sweaters, etc, in cabinets with a salesman to take them out to show to you.

If Hanratty identified the handkerchief found on the bus, I suspect that this is how he did it. Having the initial 'J' wouldn't help the prosecution much since so many men have names beginning with that letter, but Hanratty might have been able to identify it by the style and colour in which the initial was embroidered.

Additionally, I believe that it is possible to determine blood-group from mucus, and together with France's convenient testimony about JH's proclivity for dumping unwanted swag under a bus seat, would probably be enough to link him to the gun.

Thus there is no need to assume that whoever planted the gun knew about DNA.

Hi DM,

I can hardly believe it would not have come down to us today if Hanratty had really identified his own snotty hanky during the trial by reference to an initial or the style or colour. If the hanky itself was plain white with no distinguishing features (as seems most likely) he wouldn't have been able to identify it positively as his, therefore he wouldn't be obliged to claim it, even if he guessed it was his and had no way to deny it.

I suppose if it had been distinctive enough, and especially if several identical hankies (bought together) were sitting somewhere with his other belongings, he may have thought a denial would be futile, but it would still have been one heck of an admission to make, no matter what the hanky looked like, and there seems to be no evidence that this was resolved at the trial. Certainly his best bet, if he believed the hanky was his, was just to maintain his denial of hiding anything found on the bus. He'd have surely twigged that France was stitching him up if what appeared to be his hanky had been used by someone else in the disposal of the murder weapon.

I very much doubt France would have known Hanratty's blood group, much less that it was the same as the A6 rapist's, or that anyone would have 'planted' Hanratty's snotty hanky with that in mind. As common as group O is, there are more people with a blood group other than O.

Love,

Caz
X

[Derrick]

I have struggled....

Having just reviewed the Amazon opinions on this book I spotted that your post here was the same as Dave the Gadgetman.

If you aren't the aforementioned DTG then apologies and perhaps you could, in future, quote up as is usually required and post references.

If you are then seeing as it is so hot here in England at the mo, I wondered if you had any views on how cheap it would be to install air-con in a bungalow.

Del

[Spitfire]

Having just reviewed the Amazon opinions on this book I spotted that your post here was the same as Dave the Gadgetman.

If you aren't the aforementioned DTG then apologies and perhaps you could, in future, quote up as is usually required and post references.

If you are then seeing as it is so hot here in England at the mo, I wondered if you had any views on how cheap it would be to install air-con in a bungalow.

Del

How can I "quote up and post references" to a 2017 Amazon review in a post of 2015 on the Casebook forum?

[Derrick]

Harriman has vanished

I was seeing if Harriman had updated his book recently but have found that almost every trace of him and his book has vanished from the web.

Strange?!