The attack on Swedish housewife Mrs Meike Dalal on Thursday, September 7th 1961

[OneRound]

Hi folks,

Struggling to catch up. Is the suggestion now that Michael Gregsten's mother recruited Alphon to kill her own son as part of some complex life insurance and property scam?

Regards,

OneRound

[NickB]

The value of Michael Gregsten's estate might be explained by his mother having registered her house in Mike’s name to avoid death duties.

I believe this was easier to do then, and life insurance could cover the unlikely eventuality of the son dying first.

[Ed James]

Ed,

Good questions.

A well informed contributor (julie q) posted that Janet ...

“on receiving £2,000 pounds compensation from her husband’s employers she had given it to Ewer as part payment on a deposit towards a larger house in Wentworth Road, Golders Green”.

I am guessing that if Janet had also received a life insurance payout this would have been mentioned too.

Nick

Hi Nick

I think that might be 'mystery' solved. Under the then civil service pension scheme , Janet would have received a considerable lump sum for 'death in harness' as well as regular widow's payment.

regards

Ed

[Natalie Severn]

Where did I suggest the gunman was busy practising shots in the area before the hold-up? The gunman wasn't seen in the cornfield; he wasn't seen approaching the couple; he wasn't seen all the time he was with his victims, whoever he was. That doesn't make him invisible, or the stuff of Valerie's imagination.

You may not have suggested it,Caz, but that, in case you did not know it , is what Swanwick built his entire case on! Its in the trial transcript: that Hanratty had gone to a cornfield in Buckinghamshire to play at cowboys practising with his new gun! And that the crime was based on his tremendous lust for Valerie who he had copped sight of in the car ,had an unbridled passion for that catapulted him into the car and held her at gunpoint.Deeply illogical to this proposed scenario is the fact he needed no instant gratification of his lust but rather held himself back while he drove round the outskirts of North London on a sexual high for five full hours!

[Natalie Severn]

Are you sure this doesn't simply mean you can't change your mind and pick a second person out of the same parade? Hanratty wasn't in the first, so she couldn't have picked him out. Not her fault that he didn't appear until the second parade.

The fact remains that Hanratty's eyes did match her 'large icy blue eyes', which is rather unlikely to have happened by chance, if he was a scapegoat who bore little resemblance, including in the eye department, to the man who had actually raped her.

Love,

Caz
X

I am quite sure it does not mean that Caz.At some point I will post the section of her statement that makes it completely clear that no such 2nd Identity parade could take place today.
I find it extraordinary that you can't seem to grasp that Valerie helped the police build a photofit of the gunman showing him to have dark eyes

She later identified as her attacker Michael Clark who we have it on no less authority than Acott himself that Michael Clark had darkeyes too.
No indication whatsoever from the first crucially important photofit made under Valerie's direction on 26th August 1961 that the man who had attacked her had large icy blue eyes.
No indication whatever later that the innocent Michael Clark who Valerie first identified as Michael Gregsten's killer and her attacker ,bore any resemblance with his dark eyes ,heavy build and 5ft 9ins height to Hanratty with his light blue eyes, 5ft 7 and a half height and noticeably slight build.

[NickB]

Ed,

Good questions.

A well informed contributor (julie q) posted that Janet ...

“on receiving £2,000 pounds compensation from her husband’s employers she had given it to Ewer as part payment on a deposit towards a larger house in Wentworth Road, Golders Green”.

I am guessing that if Janet had also received a life insurance payout this would have been mentioned too.

Nick

[Ed James]

I think anyone taking out a life insurance policy for Mike would have been advised to name Janet as the beneficiary so that the money would have gone straight to her upon his death - rather than going into his estate and being subject to delay, creditors and death duty.

Hi Nick

Well spotted. You are right.

A surviving beneficiary of a life insurance policy receives the life insurance proceeds directly outside of probate and out of reach of the deceased creditors. I assume that was the law then,as now.

This suggests that Janet was not a designated beneficiary if as I have assumed the estate was largely made up of life insurance payments. Similarly, if his mother was a designated beneficiary she would have received the sum outside of probate too.

That leaves two possibilities: first, there were no designated beneficiaries for the life insurance policy ;or secondly, the estate did not involve any life insurance entitlement.

Does it matter? Well, if life insurance , then those who speculate about a deliberate assassination (not me) may suggest this provides a (further) motive. And you might question if ,or why not, the police apparently did seek to establish who financially benefitted from Mike Gregsten's death.

And if not life insurance source, then the apparently impecunious civil servant had inexplicable' access' to sizeable financial assets. Were Janet or Valerie aware of this?

ATB

Ed

[caz]

But if she is only referring to a single identity parade (where the witness is obviously not permitted to make more than one positive identification, as it would show equivocation and uncertainty), it's not irrelevant to Valerie's situation, because she made the second positive identification at a second parade, featuring a different suspect and new volunteers. If that wasn't permissible, there could have been no second parade, could there?

Sorry, I meant it's not relevant...

[caz]

But the fact of the matter is she DID pick someone out at the first parade. And there is no point in saying 'It wasn't her fault' because it clearly was. It was her fault and hers alone if she IDd an innocent member of the public. The police conducted the first parade under the regulations of the time and made it clear she was under no obligation to pick anyone out? How could it be their fault?

Please don't misrepresent me, cobalt. What I said was that it was not Valerie's fault that Hanratty didn't appear until the second parade.

The jury was aware that she had picked out a volunteer from the first parade and the fact remains she did not pick out the suspect on that occasion, Alphon. If all you Hanratty defenders were really so concerned about the rules and regulations of fair play, Alphon should have ceased being a suspect in your eyes from that moment on. If Valerie had similarly failed to pick out Hanratty from that second parade, you'd rightly have the screaming ab-dabs if he was still being fingered today as the more likely killer. How can none of you seem to see the double standard here regarding the outcome of both id parades?

It was entirely Hanratty's fault that he lied about his whereabouts and then admitted lying by changing his alibi. Had he stuck with the Liverpool lie, or said he was in Rhyl to begin with and stuck with that instead, it is quite possible that the jury would have given him the benefit of the doubt, coupled with Valerie picking out someone from the first parade when Hanratty was not present. The judge warned the jury about the doubt issue, so they could not have had any, arguably thanks to nobody but Hanratty himself.

That was not Valerie's fault either.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Caz,
I note that you have not contributed one single incontrovertible piece of evidence to support Hanratty's guilt.

The 2002 appeal judgement does all the work for me, Nats. The onus is entirely on you to dispute it with one single incontrovertible piece of evidence to demonstrate that Hanratty was elsewhere at the time and his DNA was cooked up, planted or misidentified, or only present on the victim's underwear by some vanishingly unlikely contamination event, while the rapist's DNA did an equally unlikely vanishing trick.

So Its all very well you following the prosecution evidence to a letter---and asserting without any proof whatever that Hanratty was busy practising gun shots there -gunshots nobody ever heard -not a single one-and a Hanratty cowboy man nobody ever saw in any cornfield that day .Was he invisible then?

Where did I suggest the gunman was busy practising shots in the area before the hold-up? The gunman wasn't seen in the cornfield; he wasn't seen approaching the couple; he wasn't seen all the time he was with his victims, whoever he was. That doesn't make him invisible, or the stuff of Valerie's imagination. He raped her, he shot them both and she described a man with Hanratty's eyes and blood group, and recognised his voice from the hours he spent talking to her in that car.

As for motive-oh please Caz you know better than to try and pull that fast one! All detectives look for a domestic motive first ---except it would seem Basil Acott!

But looking is not the same as finding. And motive can only finally be established when you have your man - and often not even then. Since there was nobody with a domestic motive who could have been prosecuted for the murder itself, what do you suggest they should have done? How could they have let Hanratty go, even if they were convinced the motive was domestic? The rapist and gunman's motive (whether Alphon, Hanratty or A.N.Other) would not have been domestic anyway if he was simply hired to frighten the couple into separation, so how would that have affected the case against Hanratty?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

If Valerie had been quite certain the man had these 'large icy blue eyes' then why did she contribute to an identikit on 26th August which clearly describes the man's eyes as dark whether their colour was actually brown,green or blue these are dark in tone and Valerie then went on to identify Michael Clark who also had dark eyes.

I don't know, Nats. I don't know she was quite certain. What I do know is that she was hardly likely to come up with that description by pure chance, and stick with it, if it applied to a scapegoat chosen beforehand, and if the actual gunman's eyes were really as dark as Newgate's knocker. Let's focus on the odds of Hanratty working as a scapegoat from start to finish.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

No Caz it does not.Here are her words:
The first description is vital.If a witness makes a positive identification of one individual ,no subsequent identification of a second is permissible.
Equivocation and uncertainty are not enough.
from Dispatches from the Dark Side Gareth Peirce 2010

A woman called Gareth? Interesting.

But if she is only referring to a single identity parade (where the witness is obviously not permitted to make more than one positive identification, as it would show equivocation and uncertainty), it's not irrelevant to Valerie's situation, because she made the second positive identification at a second parade, featuring a different suspect and new volunteers. If that wasn't permissible, there could have been no second parade, could there?

Love,

Caz
X

[NickB]

I think anyone taking out a life insurance policy for Mike would have been advised to name Janet as the beneficiary so that the money would have gone straight to her upon his death - rather than going into his estate and being subject to delay, creditors and death duty.

[Derrick]

...Presumably life insurance...

Hi Ed

I support that source as being most likely. As you say he was profligate with money, among other things.

El Del

[Ed James]

October 12th 1961 was the date Michael Gregsten's probate will was disclosed.
His personal effects amounted to a tidy £3,269.

Sherlock

A tidy sum indeed for a man that rented the marital home, was driving a car owned by his aunt (having sold his own car to raise money) and according to a number of different sources (including Valerie) was always in financial difficulties. Janet had even sold his beloved piano to raise funds.

To gauge the value of his estate, £2,530 is quoted as the average house price in the 1960s.

So what was the source of his estate? Presumably life insurance - with possibly double indemnity for a violent death ! Though not sure if this was a feature of British insurance policies. I suspect his mother in her overbearing concern maintained the premiums.

Or were his mother and aunt foolish enough to advance him money to start a new chapter in his life - either with Janet (of whom they did not have much regard) or Valerie. I doubt it.

ATB

Ed