Mail's feature of 1999 on Hanratty by Roger Matthews

[Victor]

Hi Nick,

There are clues in what Matthews wrote indicating what new evidence he has.

How do your suggestions tally with the quote?

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.

Are you saying that if he has (to take your first example) located a new witness to the hold-up, that Foot could have (should have?) found them too?

KR,
Vic.

[Victor]

Hi Nats,

Victor, what if one of the three is still alive-or was in 1999?

How is that relevant to whether the existing evidence is sufficient to conclude that 3 people colluded to abduct a couple in a Moggie in the middle of nowhere?

Perhaps this will throw more light on his report.Apparently there is material in the report the powers that be don't want us to see....Why not?

Again that seemingly contradicts the little extra evidence quote. I'm quite interested in what he has found though and look forward to the book.

KR,
Vic.

[NickB]

Victor,

I am suggesting he should provide evidence of the sort I suggested to back up what he describes as the "facts". Otherwise it is just conjecture and opinion.

It looks like he simply supports the traditional Alphon theory.

An 'Independent' April 1997 article headed 'Hanratty case - police want to track killer' (claiming to use "police sources") says he:
“concluded the man who carried out the attack on 22 August l961 at Deadman's Hill, Bedfordshire, was probably hired to break up the illicit liaison. His report is believed to recommend that a new inquiry should in particular examine evidence regarding Peter Alphon, a salesman who was the original suspect.”

[Derrick]

Victor,

I am suggesting he should provide evidence of the sort I suggested to back up what he describes as the "facts". Otherwise it is just conjecture and opinion.

It looks like he simply supports the traditional Alphon theory.

An 'Independent' April 1997 article headed 'Hanratty case - police want to track killer' (claiming to use "police sources") says he:
“concluded the man who carried out the attack on 22 August l961 at Deadman's Hill, Bedfordshire, was probably hired to break up the illicit liaison. His report is believed to recommend that a new inquiry should in particular examine evidence regarding Peter Alphon, a salesman who was the original suspect.”

That article is here http://www.independent.co.uk/news/ha...r-1264556.html

I must say that it would be helpful in future if posters give precise references for the information that they quote, especially web based material in the form of a URL. It is what the web was built on after all

Del

[NickB]

I must say that it would be helpful in future if posters give precise references for the information that they quote, especially web based material in the form of a URL. It is what the web was built on after all

I always do, and tried to in this case but the link wouldn't work.

[NickB]

For anyone also unable to use the link above this link may work.

[Victor]

Hi Nick,

I am suggesting he should provide evidence of the sort I suggested to back up what he describes as the "facts". Otherwise it is just conjecture and opinion.

I'd go further, if he doesn't provide evidence of the sort you listed then it must be gross negligence and incompetence, and he should be dismissed as a serving police officer.

It looks like he simply supports the traditional Alphon theory.

Of gawd that old codswallop, if that's true then comments about his reputation are just a smearing of police integrity.

Kr,
Vic.

[Derrick]

...
I'd go further, if he doesn't provide evidence of the sort you listed then it must be gross negligence and incompetence, and he should be dismissed as a serving police officer.

He is retired.

Of gawd that old codswallop, if that's true then comments about his reputation are just a smearing of police integrity.

What integrity? After Hillsborough, Lawrence and de Menezes do the police have any?

Del

[Sherlock Houses]

What integrity? After Hillsborough, Lawrence and de Menezes do the police have any?
Del

I would guess very little.

For anyone on here naive enough to place their faith in the alleged integrity of our police force the following useful link might prove both shocking and enlightening.......

http://www.bentlawyersandcops.com/bent_cops_list.htm

[Natalie Severn]

Victor,
Did you never wonder about the wording of number 128 of Lord Woolf's judgement? Viz- "By way of postscript we should record that it has been agreed by Mr Sweeney [Crown prosecution] and Mr Mansfield that in the evidence made available Peter Alphon could not have been the murderer.
It is understood that this agreement arose out of the DNA evidence

Why end the section on DNA evidence with such an insistence?

[Graham]

Victor,
Did you never wonder about the wording of number 128 of Lord Woolf's judgement? Viz- "By way of postscript we should record that it has been agreed by Mr Sweeney [Crown prosecution] and Mr Mansfield that in the evidence made available Peter Alphon could not have been the murderer.
It is understood that this agreement arose out of the DNA evidence

Why end the section on DNA evidence with such an insistence?

Hi Nats,

not completely sure what you mean here. As far as I'm concerned, at the time of the DNA tests, Peter Alphon was traced and after due analysis his DNA didn't match any of the DNA's on the various samples, and the police eliminated him as a suspect. If Matthews is suggesting in 1997 (prior to the DNA tests) that Alphon was still considered as, if not a murderer, then part of a conspiracy, his proposal is out of whack with the DNA evidence and also the conclusion of colleagues in the police service. Seriously, does anyone in 2014, still believe that Peter Louis Alphon was either the A6 killer or was part of some devious plot?

Alphon, incidentally, was not necessarily the first suspect; he was, however, the first named suspect.

The hoary old chestnut that someone in either Valerie Storey's or Michael Gregsten's families paid a hired gunman to break up that illicit relationship is, to my mind, absolutely ridiculous. Neither family was exactly well off, for a start. And if, as Alphon the arch-liar claimed, he was paid £5000 to do the deed, then that's around £130000 in today's values. No way. There is, of course, the remote possibility that someone wanted Gregsten out of the way so that he (whoever he was!) could move in and claim Janet Gregsten as his own, but all [I]he[I], whoever he was, had to do was wait, as the Gregstens' marriage was all but over anyway.

Obviously, until and if Matthews' report and/or his promised book is published, we can only - as Holmes would say - possess our souls in patience. But if report or book still push the now discounted and discredited Alphon story, then I'd cheerfully light the bonfire with them next 5th November.

Finally, if there really was a conspiracy involving three persons, as Matthews claims, then I'm reasonably confident that, between them, Foot and Woffinden would have winkled it out.

Graham

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Graham-to answer part of your post -I believe Paul Foot attempted to draw out connections along the lines you mention and certain newspapers took this up, in particular the Sunday Times.William Ewer almost immediately sued that newspaper for libel which more or less silenced further speculation for many years.William Ewer appears to have been well connected too,certainly not a poor man.If you remember even his little shop in the Swiss Cottage arcade where he spotted Hanratty entering the dry cleaners opposite a few days after the murder,according to one newspaper , had a Wilson Steer painting in it---a Steer painting today would be worth in excess of £26,000. Some time later ---I think it was 1969--- an add in Sotheby cites him as an art dealer selling [for a client] a Hans Holbein miniature- today that would be worth millions. i am not saying he was a millionaire but he was certainly comfortably off.William Ewer also became Janet Gregsten's lover as you know -they moved in together not that long after the trial.We don't know when Ewer's natural affection for Janet as his sister-in -law moved from a brother in law's concern for her happiness and the well being of her and her children to a desire to be her live in partner, but move it did and it might explain any interest he may have had to teach Michael Gregsten what he believed to be a lesson about his duties and responsibilities as a husband and father etc.

[Victor]

Victor,
Did you never wonder about the wording of number 128 of Lord Woolf's judgement? Viz- "By way of postscript we should record that it has been agreed by Mr Sweeney [Crown prosecution] and Mr Mansfield that in the evidence made available Peter Alphon could not have been the murderer.
It is understood that this agreement arose out of the DNA evidence

Why end the section on DNA evidence with such an insistence?

Hi Nats,

That's the perfectly sensible and logical place to put such a statement, isn't it?

Paraphrasing it gives:- Here's the DNA evidence, out of this evidence both defence and prosecution agree that Alphon could not have been the murderer.

What integrity? After Hillsborough, Lawrence and de Menezes do the police have any?

I do feel that Ian Tomlinson was murdered, and there's Plebgate too.

KR,
Vic.

[NickB]

Janet Gregsten was upset by the allegations implied in Paul Foot’s book. He interviewed her shortly before she died and subsequently his views on the Alphon theory softened considerably.

In an article a couple of years later Foot warned “against jumping to hasty conclusions” about Alphon who “didn't know as much as he pretended. He certainly didn't know what he alleged – that Mrs Gregsten was the prime mover in commissioning the murder."

The Matthews report was completed before Foot’s article in December 1997, and the ‘leak’ to the Independent was 8 months before, so pre-dated Foot's change in direction on the Alphon theory.

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Nats,

That's the perfectly sensible and logical place to put such a statement, isn't it?

Paraphrasing it gives:- Here's the DNA evidence, out of this evidence both defence and prosecution agree that Alphon could not have been the murderer.


KR,
Vic.

The scientists for the prosecution may have presented their DNA evidence as factual certainty but there is actually no proper basis for such a claim.Dr Jonothan Whitaker of the then FFS gave evidence in 2007 for the prosecution in the trial of Vincent Simpson for murder .Dr Whitaker said the combined odds of the DNA coming from someone else other than Simpson were 1 in 40 million.The QC Mark Stewart defending Simpson challenged the findings saying the techniques used had left too much room for interpretation by the tester and that the findings were impossible to check of the FFS because there were probably only three labs in the world using exactly the same low copy number test.Mr Stewart went on to raise doubts not only about contamination by long storage at Tayside police headquarters in Dundee where Dr Whitaker agreed there was a possibility of contamination by transfer of DNA from one item to another.Dr Whitaker also admitted his high tech lab had allowed items of evidence to lie about together in open bags."I would hope to avoid that but there have been cases where this has happened" ,he said in agreement with Mr Stewart.The FFS's new LCN DNA techniques had encouraged detectives into believing the mystery could finally be solved.Mr Simpson had been charged in 2005 with the murder of trainee nursery nurse Elizabeth McCabe in Dundee in February 1980.The jury found Vincent Simpson,61,not guilty of murder after a seven week trial .In his closing speech at the High Court Mark Stewart QC described the police investigation as 'fundamentally and permanently flawed'.
There are several such cases that have been thrown or where grave doubts have emerged about its storage use and the conclusions that can be drawn about LCN DNA.

In the Stephen Lawrence case, the FSS’ cavalier attitude to the storage of exhibits was exposed assisting the defendants to escape justice. The FSS witnesses account of shabby and uncontrolled handling and storage of evidence happened at exactly the same time as they were handling and storing exhibits relating to Hanratty. The Old Bailey court – in the original trial of Dobson and Norris - was told that in 1995 staff at the Forensic Science Service (FSS) had placed brown paper bags containing Mr Dobson's jacket and cardigan in the same "overbag" as those containing Mr Lawrence's jacket. The Old Bailey also heard that at one point a knife found near the murder scene was placed in the same outer bag as jeans taken from Mr Norris's house.

The items were again individually sealed in paper sacks within the larger plastic bag, the jury heard.
Under cross-examination, Christopher Bower, who ran the FSS laboratory store, was asked whether there had been any rules to ensure items remained segregated or were "kept separately in case of a cold case review".

He told the court there had not been, and that sealed paper exhibit bags from the same case had been "randomly" put in the same plastic "overbag".

Mr Bower, when asked if that was a source of embarrassment or concern, said that the taped seals on the evidence bags were always checked when the items were sent back to the police.
Timothy Roberts QC, for Mr Dobson, asked him: "There was no anxiety in your storeroom about these packages being co-mingled together?" Mr Bower replied: "Not at all, no." (!) – my exclamation mark.

In 2007 Professor Dan Krane, a DNA expert from Ohio gave evidence in the notorious Omagh Bomb trial of Sean Hoey, where the judge threw the prosecution case out because of the FSS's LCN DNA findings.
"Low copy number tests are much more prone to flexible interpretation,than with the conventional tests.
Because of its great sensitivity,there are much greater concerns about the persistence of DNA and its ability to be transferred from one article to another,
Its just too easy for contamination to occur,or for DNA to have become associated with an article through very innocent, very old contact.'
Peter Gill was called, one of the inventors of the LCN technique to try to bolster the prosecution's case.Under cross examination he said some of the results were valueless being put forward by the prosecution and that LCN was a complex area in which there were "shades of grey".
This led the judge, Mr Justice Weir to say "When this evidence is presented on behalf of the prosecution,no-one talks about it in terms of 'shades of grey'. Its put forward as evidence I can rely on."
The Forensic Science Service that became government owned in 2005, has now been closed down for running at a £2 million per month loss.It began routinely using LCN DNA testing in casework in 1999.There have been constant doubts within the scientific community about its merits-the method itself and the science behind it....and the conclusions that can be drawn from its results.