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

[NickB]

Nats,

I assume you’ve seen Tom Foot’s article on the subject.

[NickB]

I have read the Sunday Times articles. What sprang out at me was that there was a deafening silence on the question of whether Ewer was paid for the ‘cleaners’ story. If he had been paid (as I expect he was) this would provide an alternative explanation.

The Sunday Times must have asked Duffy if a payment had been made. Why did they not reveal his answer?

[Natalie Severn]

Thank you for that information. I shall look out for The Sunday Times when I next visit a newsagent on a Sunday morning.

I believe that The Sunday Times, (along with Paul Foot and Jonathan Cape Ltd), was sued by William Ewer and was forced to settle out of court with the payment to him of substantial damages (as was Jonathan Cape Ltd).

Presumably the legal advisers of the paper were not as sanguine about the prospects of the court coming to the same conclusion as the opinion expressed above with reference to the paper's journalists' reliability.

Not at all.They knew-of course they did .They simply decided to publish and be damned! Lewis Chester btw remained one of their most reliable investigative journalists and was considered to be one of the finest journalists in the British Isles .

[Natalie Severn]

The Sunday Times said that Mr Ewer was not consciously or knowingly involved in the crime nor was any other member of the family. So it must have been what the paper said about the ‘cleaners’ story that its lawyers decided could not be substantiated.

The phrase “said Mr Ewer last night” in the Sketch article indicates it was rushed into print. There would not have been time to check it properly. I believe that simply visiting Swiss Cottage would have shown the story to be faulty - because the two shops did not face each other.

The Sunday Times played into Ewer’s hands by not probing the most obvious motivation for the ‘cleaners’ story – greed - and suggesting a more sinister one. So he was able to hit the jackpot again and win more damages.

Paul Foot's son Tom spoke with me a few years back about these arcades and explained how they were constructed and he saw no contradiction what ever in the dry cleaners story.He also pointed out where Charles France's flat was and I realised I had just come past it in the 31 bus! Its not more than a ten minute walk from where Ewer's Umbrella/Antiques shop was.
Of course the Sunday Times had to cover themselves saying that about William Ewer---- but read between the lines. I have the document here and as soon as I get time I will transcribe some of it .They prove he told some outlandish porkies, Mr Ewer.

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Nats,

But if you are arguing that this is evidence for Janet's involvement, and for deliberately trying to lead the police with her uncanny 'intuition' to an innocent scapegoat in the form of Hanratty, isn't this entirely at odds with the post by Sherlock Houses, claiming that Janet came to believe Hanratty was innocent?

Can you think of any possible reason why Janet would ever have expressed such a belief, if she knew damn well he was innocent because she had tried to get him framed as early as September 1st, 1961, to protect herself and her husband's actual killer from the long arm of the law?

Love,

Caz
X

I don't think in terms of Janet never changing .The Janet with a baby and young child in August 1961 whose debt ridden husband was about to leave her in deep financial straights was surely a different person once her children were growing up with the affluent brother in law William Ewer of Hampstead and Golders Green to support them and help her care for them.I have stated recently that I don't believe either William Ewer or Janet or the gunman ever intended that Gregsten should die or cause Valerie or Gregsten any physical harm .But in the event he did ,probably through Gregsten trying to disarm him in the total darkness of the A6 lay by , a tragic outcome of a botched plan to threaten and try to terrorise the couple into splitting up ,first in the darkened field of Dorney Reach ,then under the cloak of darkness in a moving vehicle along the A4 and A6 until they reached the desolate destination of Deadman's Hill.The gunman himself despite botching it got away.Afterwards the very last thing anyone involved in the plan to scare the couple wanted was to lead police to the real gunman....so Hanratty became the scapegoat for the crime by default.
If you think about it, the judge and jury were led all along to believe Valerie and Gregsten were just good mates interested in road maps etc so everyone was in the dark at the trial that they were lovers and in my view Valerie was told she must keep up this pretence by Acott who made dissimulation of the real events his business and his [and Oxford's ]alone , offering up the deranged cowboy theory to mystify and send people off on the wrong direction.I believe Valerie would have chosen to tell the truth left to herself ,about her relationship with Gregsten if she had been allowed but was warned not to. For the entire story we have only Valerie's word which may have had to omit elements of the gunman's diatribe in the car in order for her to avoid any cross questioning of her relationship with Gregsten in court .As it was nobody asked the question.

[NickB]

The Sunday Times said that Mr Ewer was not consciously or knowingly involved in the crime nor was any other member of the family. So it must have been what the paper said about the ‘cleaners’ story that its lawyers decided could not be substantiated.

The phrase “said Mr Ewer last night” in the Sketch article indicates it was rushed into print. There would not have been time to check it properly. I believe that simply visiting Swiss Cottage would have shown the story to be faulty - because the two shops did not face each other.

The Sunday Times played into Ewer’s hands by not probing the most obvious motivation for the ‘cleaners’ story – greed - and suggesting a more sinister one. So he was able to hit the jackpot again and win more damages.

[caz]

They all make the same claim which is that the story came from Janet Gregsten herself-not William Ewer.They say the reports published by the Daily Sketch and Daily Mail on the Monday after the trial ended recollected precisely that the 'intuition aspect' was checked with Mrs Gregsten herself and that the outlines of this remarkable sequence were confirmed by Detective Supt.Acott .

Hi Nats,

But if you are arguing that this is evidence for Janet's involvement, and for deliberately trying to lead the police with her uncanny 'intuition' to an innocent scapegoat in the form of Hanratty, isn't this entirely at odds with the post by Sherlock Houses, claiming that Janet came to believe Hanratty was innocent?

Can you think of any possible reason why Janet would ever have expressed such a belief, if she knew damn well he was innocent because she had tried to get him framed as early as September 1st, 1961, to protect herself and her husband's actual killer from the long arm of the law?

Love,

Caz
X

[Spitfire]

The Sunday Times is a quality newspaper and its journalists were considered reliable and would have belonged to a TU chapel and would not have jeopardised their careers lightly .

Thank you for that information. I shall look out for The Sunday Times when I next visit a newsagent on a Sunday morning.

I believe that The Sunday Times, (along with Paul Foot and Jonathan Cape Ltd), was sued by William Ewer and was forced to settle out of court with the payment to him of substantial damages (as was Jonathan Cape Ltd).

Presumably the legal advisers of the paper were not as sanguine about the prospects of the court coming to the same conclusion as the opinion expressed above with reference to the paper's journalists' reliability.

[Natalie Severn]

Going back a bit...

Ido wonder how anyone could imagine she may have been part of a conspiracy against the courting couple and later Hanratty?

Hi Caz,I have been studying a long article entitled Hanratty: The contradictions of William Ewer .Its by three Sunday Times investigative journalists, Lewis Chester ,Alex Finer ,Nelson Mews and dated 23rd May 1971.The Sunday Times is a quality newspaper and its journalists were considered reliable and would have belonged to a TU chapel and would not have jeopardised their careers lightly .
They all make the same claim which is that the story came from Janet Gregsten herself-not William Ewer.They say the reports published by the Daily Sketch and Daily Mail on the Monday after the trial ended recollected precisely that the 'intuition aspect' was checked with Mrs Gregsten herself and that the outlines of this remarkable sequence were confirmed by Detective Supt.Acott .Bear in mind the legal advisers at the Sunday Times who would have checked this story take great care to avoid the paper being sued but sometimes, even papers such as the Sunday Times will publish and be damned.nxAuthor






Re Lewis Chester-a brief synopsis
Agent: Carol Heaton
Lewis Chester was born in London’s East End. After national service - as an army PT instructor - he read history at Oxford and later studied politics at Harvard. He was an award-winning investigative journalist on the Sunday Times, where he headed the Insight team and wrote features before being fired by Rupert Murdoch as a Wapping “refusenik”. He has written many non-fiction works, among them AN AMERICAN MELODRAMA, a widely acclaimed study of the 1968 presidential election; COPS AND ROBBERS, short-listed for the Crime Writers Gold Dagger Award, and HOAX, which won the Edgar Allan Poe Crime Fact Book Award. His diverse biographical output includes books about Donald McCullin, Britain’s leading war photographer, and Roger Law, the creator of “Spitting Image” - both old mates at the Sunday Times.

His other biographical subjects have been Lew Grade, Martin Luther King Jnr., Lord Beaverbrook, Jeremy Thorpe, Aristotle Onassis, Howard Hughes, and the impecunious anti-apartheid campaigner, the Reverend Michael Scott. He enjoys swimming in Hampstead ponds and playing cricket for Lord Gnome’s XI.

[caz]

But surely , with such vital information as 'an exact description of the assailant' ,(or as exact as was humanly possible)required, it isn't as though the police could not have remedied an error within hours, if not minutes, after the erroneous description was flagged.
We have a monster out there! an incredibly evil predator on the loose, who will stop at nothing to satiate his vile lust and deprivation.
Superintendent Morgan of Biggleswade doesn't exactly exude confidence, with his explanation as to what the police believe the assailant looked like.
The whole attempt to paint a picture in the minds of the public was a **** up, from beginning to end.

Hi moste,

Here is the risible description to which you refer ("erm, brown eyes, very deep set, erm, not very deep set..."):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmN96CaWPLM

How do you imagine any police errors in this description could have been 'flagged' unless poor Valerie had been sitting upright in hospital watching the telly at the time and taking note? Don't you think she had enough on her plate? She could hardly catch up with any of it online either. I expect she got to hear about it later and that was when she pointed out that "brown eyes" (coming immediately after the brown hair, and arguably just a slip of the tongue like the "deep set" example) was a police error, after which the eyes went back to being the large, not deep set, light blue ones she had seen originally.

I take it nobody here believes the police were above making such an error, particularly given Morgan's woeful performance?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Going back a bit...

It's more than interesting that in her final years Janet believed James Hanratty to be innocent of her husband's murder.

Janet came to believe in Hanratty’s innocence in her last few months as a result of Foot’s interviews with her, when he persuaded her that Alphon was most likely to be her husband’s killer.

However they influenced each other and Foot began to change his views about Alphon. A couple of years later, in a ‘London Review of Books’ article on 11-Dec-97, 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."

Hi SH, Nick,

Of course, the above is completely at odds with Janet having had any inside knowledge or personal involvement, either before or after the crime. She would hardly have expressed a belief in Hanratty's innocence if it was in her better interests to let sleeping dogs lie; ditto a belief in Alphon's likely guilt if she was involved herself and knew he was too. Clearly, had she been the 'prime mover' she'd have had the strongest possible motive for accepting the jury's original verdict, keeping her head down and not rocking the boat.

I do wonder how anyone could imagine she may have been part of a conspiracy against the courting couple and later Hanratty?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Hi again Graham,

The connection between the way the gun was disposed of and Hanratty would only be made by France himself when he told the police about it. Could it not be that his hand was forced when he found out where Hanratty had put the bloody thing and was terrified it would come back to haunt him? Would he have set out to incriminate Hanratty by planting the murder weapon on the bus and then telling the police about his little hiding place if he had also supplied it to him? Would it not have been (dare I say it? Oh go on then) a suicidally unwise move to provide a connection which had originated with himself and could therefore lead back to him? Supplying the gun with no further knowledge would have been bad enough, but what if he was involved in any of the aftermath and Hanratty decided to cough? Did France cough first, about the hiding place, but only because he felt it was the safer option when the gun he had supplied was found there?

If France had taken it upon himself to dispose of the gun, I strongly suspect he would have chucked it in the river so it could never be found and associated with either of them.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Finally, as we know, Dixie France went along cap-in-hand to Ewer to 'apologise' for the murder of Michael Gregsten. Why? What had France got to do with it? In my honest opinion over the 20+ years I've been interested in the A6, France supplied Hanratty with the gun and got rid of it on the 36A bus in a manner he knew would incriminate James Hanratty.

Just speculation, folks, nothing more.......well, not quite.

Hi Graham,

I do think France may have been guilty of supplying the 'cowboy' with his new toy, in which case I can see Hanratty going back to him in a panic when his first stick-up went so badly wrong. In this scenario, however, I can't really see France wanting to touch that gun again with a barge pole, let alone rummage around for a snotty hanky to take with it onto the bus, which - as I've argued before - would not have helped incriminate Hanratty in 1961, so would seem to be a pointless extra exercise. He might, however, have advised Hanratty to "get rid of the damn thing" and get himself an alibi for as far away as possible, resulting in a short bus ride followed immediately by the next train to Liverpool and a telegram back to France, to make it appear he had been nowhere near a London bus all week. He'd know the gun and hanky would be found, but this would serve his purpose if he could claim to have been in Liverpool at the time, and neither could be tied to him (at least not before France let the bus detail slip, his own carelessness revealed the cartridge cases left behind in his hotel room, and eventually his DNA was found on that hanky).

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Oh come now, you do yourself an injustice. I just had a peek at your profile, the public one that is, and there you are with your sister.....

Graham

Actually Graham, that photo is now a good five years old, and features me on the right and my ex husband's niece on the left, but I'm easily flattered so thank you kind sir.

Love,

Caz
X

[Natalie Severn]

Superintendent Morgan of Biggleswade doesn't exactly exude confidence, with his explanation as to what the police believe the assailant looked like.
The whole attempt to paint a picture in the minds of the public was a **** up, from beginning to end.

What was also remiss was failure of the police to pursue the sighting by three residents who lived nearby Marsh Lane Cornfield of a man who 'looked like the photofit released on 29th August 1961.The man had been seen by Frederick Newell [ and apparently by a Mr Fogarty -Waul in the vicinity of the cornfield acting strangely two weeks previously ] but he was seen by Frederick Newell along with Elsie and Stanley Cobb at 2.30 pm on Tuesday 22nd August passing their adjacent houses which were close to where the Morris Minor was parked later that day in the cornfield.When Mr Newell had seen him mid week three weeks before 22nd and again mid week a week later the man was wearing a red coloured pullover under a dark jacket and the 2nd time he had a red garment under his coat . The Cobbs and Newell were amazed the police had never come round their houses to interview them about any sighting at any time and when they saw a photofit of the man released on 29th August the three of them went to the police because both the police description and the photofit looked like the man they saw on the occasions described above.He looked 25 to 30,very sallow complexion,with dark eyes.He had dark hair brushed back inclined to recede at the temples and he carried a white rolled over carrier bag on that Tuesday 22nd August.
I think it probably best to leave Mr Fogarty Waul's description for another time [most of those reading this will know about his alleged sightings and his reporting of them to police ] but Fogarty-Waul 's sighting is also based on two separate sightings in the vicinity of Marsh Lane ,the first coincides with the second mid week sighting by Mr Frederick Newell though Fogarty Waul saw the man in the early hours of the Wednesday rather than during the day. .
Mr Fogarty -Waul's man looked like the left photofit put out by police .He also looked like a well known TV personality of the time ,Sidney Tafler as well as having a distinctly casual walk or stroll.