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

[Natalie Severn]

Spitfire: pass Just remember there was a whole lot of lying going on in that courtroom---and that it certainly wasn't just Hanratty !In fact they seem to have got prosecution witnesses who has PHD's in lying and had made headlines because of the whoppers they told![Arch criminals and liars galore -like Nudds and Langdale for a kick off bearing testimony against Hanratty!]

[Spitfire]

Hanratty had lied once about being in Liverpool on the night of 22/23 August, he was playing a very dangerous game by telling further lies. In truth, if one's room is an attic room with a bath, a bed and a skylight, it is not difficult to recall those facts and tell them to one's brief. Hanratty could give an accurate description of his room at the Vienna, and if he had stayed at Ingledene, he should have been able to describe his room.

That he could not, leads me to the inescapable conclusion that he did not stay there on the 22 August 1961.

[NickB]

Swanwick asks about his arrival and in which room he slept that night – the first night. Hanratty replies: “I went up a flight of stairs and it was on the second floor and it was a back room.”

Then he reiterates this - still clearly talking about the first night. “Well it was dark when I entered the house and I did not draw the curtains because it was the back room.”

In the morning he wakes up and looks out the window at the courtyard, because it is a back room.

The bathroom in the attic faces the front.

[Natalie Severn]

Andy has just asked me a question:
Norma-you stayed in a boarding house in Stratford on the way to Prestatyn a few weeks ago.Tell me, Can you remember the colour of the curtains? Did you draw them?

I answered truthfully; No I can't remember their colour or what they looked like.But yes,I think I drew them.I can't remember even what they were like but I always draw curtains at night-especially in Summer.

[cobalt]

Natalie,

I don’t think we can criticise Swanwick for his tactics at the trial. He was entitled, as were Hanratty’s representatives, to do what was required. He did a better job of it. Hanratty’s representatives, in hindsight, lacked the aggression to go for the prosecution witnesses, particularly Valerie Storie. I know Sherrard is well respected by many of Hanratty’s supporters, but for me he lost a game that was winnable. Accepting the DNA results in his later years was a validation of his failure in 1961. As a Marxist, you will perhaps understand my misgivings about how the proletariat are represented when they find themselves in the dock in the bourgeois-capitalist system we are encouraged to call democracy.

I suspect that many of us on this site have reverted to class positions when deciding the guilt or innocence of Hanratty, albeit we have perused the evidence in order to do so.

For those on the political right, Hanratty was a cheap crook who got in over his head, and told a series of depressingly predictable lies, hoping his criminal mates would back him up. The police, in the best British tradition, made a few errors but muddled through in the end, as this country often has. Their job is to protect the public from villains (or villeins) and keep order on their manor. Since then a bunch of well meaning but naïve libertarians have been fighting to clear the name of a gas meter murderer, and in doing so have undermined the concept of capital punishment which is essential to the well being of the state. British justice might be a bit rough and ready, but by God we have never executed an innocent man.

For those on the left, Hanratty was an expendable working class lad, fitted up in order to protect respectable society; a society of Masonic handshakes, Rotary Clubs, and self-employed businessman epitomised by William Ewer. The real culprits were protected from on high, something that Alphon was aware of and made mischief with. Hanratty was a sacrificial victim to a system which can only sustain itself by demonising the lumpen elements of the proletariat in order to frighten the others, and in the process secure the nervous support of the bourgeoisie, or as they are now called, ‘Middle England.’ Rather than admit error, and undermine a judicial system crucial to their survival, the Establishment later corrupted evidence to validate the initial miscarriage of justice.

Swanwick did his job: Sherrard didn’t.

[GUT]

Hanratty had lied once about being in Liverpool on the night of 22/23 August, he was playing a very dangerous game by telling further lies. In truth, if one's room is an attic room with a bath, a bed and a skylight, it is not difficult to recall those facts and tell them to one's brief. Hanratty could give an accurate description of his room at the Vienna, and if he had stayed at Ingledene, he should have been able to describe his room.

That he could not, leads me to the inescapable conclusion that he did not stay there on the 22 August 1961.

I can not tell you just how many cases are lost because someone gets caught out in an unnecessary [and often stupid] lie, and thenceforth everything they say is suspect.

[moste]

Good post this Cobalt.. Of course Sherrard though was in the unhappy position , of being required to tear into Storie for all he was worth ,completely destroying her evidence of identification, and the fantastic story of the trip in the car. He neither had the experience, or the heart to do that, and that was to his discredit I think.Incidentally is anyone on this thread conversant enough on Trial procedure and protocol, to answer: Could Judge Gorman have brought Sherrard and Swanwick together at some point to inform them that he was throwing this case out? Or is that not permitted in law because they had had the Ampthill pretrial?

[GUT]

Good post this Cobalt.. Of course Sherrard though was in the unhappy position , of being required to tear into Storie for all he was worth ,completely destroying her evidence of identification, and the fantastic story of the trip in the car. He neither had the experience, or the heart to do that, and that was to his discredit I think.Incidentally is anyone on this thread conversant enough on Trial procedure and protocol, to answer: Could Judge Gorman have brought Sherrard and Swanwick together at some point to inform them that he was throwing this case out? Or is that not permitted in law because they had had the Ampthill pretrial?

And if you rip and tear there is a risk the jury will feel sorry for the victim and blame the accused.

[Spitfire]

I can not tell you just how many cases are lost because someone gets caught out in an unnecessary [and often stupid] lie, and thenceforth everything they say is suspect.

Very true.

The judge was at great pains to make clear to the jury that the burden was on the prosecution to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt, rather than for the defence to make out a defence. Reading between the lines, I think that the judge thought that Hanratty had not established his alibi, but that the prosecution had not established its case to the required degree of proof. But the jury obviously thought that Hanratty's lies had only the one explanation, he was the A6 murderer.

[Graham]

Hi Cobalt,

there are points in your post that I agree with (including, I rather regret to say, your final sentence) and points I do not agree with. However, without presuming to speak for everyone who posts to this forum, I think we should try to keep politics out of the debate - with every respect to yourself, I should add.

Incidentally, Paul Foot, who in some respects was the first dedicated high-profile fighter for James Hanratty's cause, was a member of the Socialist Workers Party as well as a long-time contributor to Private Eye, in the days before that journal became partially gagged by huge libel costs. He made little secret of the fact that it was his politics that made him fight for the rights of people like Hanratty, and by and large he did a very good job. His PE column was the first I turned to in every issue. However, towards the end of his life he softened somewhat towards certain people who, he felt, had conspired to hang Hanratty the Working-Class Boy; and he was big enough to admit it.

Graham

[Spitfire]

Swanwick did his job: Sherrard didn’t.

I really do not see how you can write that.

Swanwick won and Sherrard lost, but I cannot see how the blame for that could be fairly laid at Sherrard's door. We do not know all of the ins and outs of what Sherrard advised and what Hanratty told Sherrard in the many conferences which were held. As far as I can see every point in Hanratty's favour was taken by Sherrard and put before the jury.

[NickB]

In his 2009 book ‘Wigs and Wherefores’ Sherrard pondered what would have happened if Victor Durand had conducted the defence instead, as he’d intended.

“Even today I am morally certain that Victor would have secured an acquittal. Victor would have maintained a dour stance for one thing and kept his distance from his client. I think he would not have gone down to the cells each day as I did before the court rose. That might not have given Hanratty the chance to change his alibi.”

[Graham]

As I've mentioned ages ago, a real hard-case bad-boy and gangster called Tony Mancini was accused of murdering his girl-friend back in 1930's Brighton, one of the two 'Brighton Trunk Murders' that incredibly happened at more or less the same time. Mancini was allotted the great Norman Birkett as his defence counsel, and given Mancini's precedents it's unlikely that Birkett thought of him as anything but guilty as hell. However, he got Mancini acquitted with a virtuoso performance in court. Years later, Mancini said that Birkett had coached him how to behave in the witness-box, even to the extent of producing tears of anguish when he was asked about his late girl-friend. In 1976 Mancini confessed to the murder.

The 'other' Brighton Trunk Murder was never solved.

Anything's fair in love, war and where an accused man's life is at stake.

Graham

[GUT]

In his 2009 book ‘Wigs and Wherefores’ Sherrard pondered what would have happened if Victor Durand had conducted the defence instead, as he’d intended.

“Even today I am morally certain that Victor would have secured an acquittal. Victor would have maintained a dour stance for one thing and kept his distance from his client. I think he would not have gone down to the cells each day as I did before the court rose. That might not have given Hanratty the chance to change his alibi.”

But JH may have changed it when he was in the box anyway.

[Limehouse]

Hanratty had lied once about being in Liverpool on the night of 22/23 August, he was playing a very dangerous game by telling further lies. In truth, if one's room is an attic room with a bath, a bed and a skylight, it is not difficult to recall those facts and tell them to one's brief. Hanratty could give an accurate description of his room at the Vienna, and if he had stayed at Ingledene, he should have been able to describe his room.

That he could not, leads me to the inescapable conclusion that he did not stay there on the 22 August 1961.

So, when VS told Kerr 'we picked up a man/hitchhiker near Slough' was she lying? When she at first described her attacker's eyes as 'brown' - was she lying? When she picked out an innocent man at the first ID parade and said she was certain he was the gunman - was she lying? Which of Nudd's statements was truth and which were lies? Why were any of his statements allowed in court? What of the evidence of Louise Anderson? Truth or lies?

When you boil it down, some people were protecting their families, some were avoiding prosecution, some were dancing this way and that for what ever reason, some were confused and under pressure and it resulted in them 'not telling the whole truth' and if they had done so, including Hanratty concerning his Rhyl alibi, the outcome of this trial may have been very different.