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

[Spitfire]

I think that now is a good time to take stock.

Ewer was not having an affair with Janet but thought that Mike Gregstren's treatment of her was caddish and he was going to do something about it. Ewer enlists the services of Alphon and Charles France (Dixie), the plan being to either scare or kill Gregsten and to pin the blame on the hapless Hanratty.

It is not clear whether the plan to frame Hanratty arose post Gregsten's murder or whether it was an integral part of the plan to scare or kill Gregsten. One has to assume that Hanratty presence in the Vienna Hotel prior to the murder and Alphon booking into the same hotel was part of the frame up operation and therefore we can deduce with a certain degree of misplaced confidence that the decision to frame Hanratty had occurred before the murder of Gregsten.

Dixie's decision to frame Hanratty when he, Dixie, knew that Hanratty was in Liverpool at the time of the commission of the crime shows the low cunning of the people we are dealing with. As Dixie believed that Hanratty was in Liverpool then no one could suspect him of framing Hanratty when he, Dixie, did in fact frame him. Dixie must have planted the .38 gun on the 36A bus, although the overwhelming evidence is that the gun used by Alphon was a .32 revolver. In doing this Dixie must have been confident that the authorities would be compliant in prosecuting Hanratty rather than the true criminal, Alphon.

Ewer then has his or Janet Gregsten's 'She saw him at the cleaners' inspiration and alerts the police to the fact that James Hanratty is the man they want. But still the police do not bite. It was only when Dixie and or Ewer planted the spent cartridge cases at the Vienna which were discovered by Bob Crocker in Room 24 on the 11 September, that the cops went after Hanratty.

Ewer and Dixie were being too clever by half here. The plan almost backfired as Nudds was prevailed upon to make a statement (his second statement) implicating Alphon, the person whom Ewer and Dixie were attempting to protect and exonerating Hanratty. Fortunately for Alphon, Dixie and Ewer, Valerie Storie did not identify Alphon at the parade and the police turned their attention to Hanratty, who everyone agrees was innocent and could not have committed the crime as he was in Liverpool or Rhyl or somewhere else.

[Natalie Severn]

Moste,if you believe the gunman deliberately shot Gregsten fine-but that in no way discounts the theory that that was not what he had been commissioned to do. The gunman seems to have been ready to crack.It was pitch dark up there and one false move and Gregsten could have overthrown him so he was probably prepared to himself have to fight for his life at that point and was therefore very on edge ready to shoot to kill-which is what happened.

[Natalie Severn]

My thinking here it that Alphon may well have helped to map out a route to Deadman's Hill .His love of symbolism would have played a part in its choice .He may have also spied on the couple in the Old Taplow Inn-the area wasn't far from Slough whose dog racing tracks he went to regularly. The landlady said she had definitely seen Alphon in the pub before and it would have been the very first business finding out where the couple went to have a drink and where their trysts took place afterwards -they couldn't know that unless they watched their movements.The gunman remember apparently said when they reached the crossroads on the M4 not left to Maidenhead I am sick of Maidenhead ---and where was Gregsten's new flat? Had that been kept a bit of a watch on too? So not a major part-but Alphon may be in there as well.

[Natalie Severn]

Ed,
Interesting observations as usual. But I fear Caz, Graham and Spitfire will have the Blue Moon theory for breakfast.

Trying to make Gregsten see the error of his ways was unlikely to be achieved at gunpoint. Especially with his young paramour beside him.

Well in normal circumstances the concerned relatives such as Ewer and his wife -Janet's half sister would I am sure choose to help the abandoned wife and children by threats and warnings of financial ruin to Gregsten and in fact I think efforts had been made in this way by letters to their bosses at the road research laboratory in Slough with the couple being told their behaviour was unacceptable by their bosses but up to this point they simply ignored it and both were still employed.
But now Gregsten's was about to embark on quite a different trajectory separating from Janet -who he was still fond of apparently and his children who adored -he had only been in the park in Watford with them that afternoon .So this business of him leaving the family home and abandoning his family was a whole new ball game and Janet's relatives led by William Ewer believed he had to be made to stop-by force if necessary.
Cobalt you so lightly dismiss such a shocking scenario where a masked man waves a loaded gun at a Gregsten and his mistress who are' in flagrante' - in a darkened and deserted field -to be followed by five hours of tortuous driving round the outskirts of West London- past places like your old home in Abbots Langley on up to where there is a road sign for 'Deadman's Hill' flashing up before you ! It was a life threatening scenario of which we have only Valerie's traumatised memory of what was said in those consecutive minutes that rolled into hours and ended in Gregsten's head being blown off and herself being raped and brutalised with five gunshot wounds that left her paralysed for life . This was a threatened fatal event for Gregsten and I can not imagine a neurotic fearful man like Gregsten ever having wanted to repeat it, had he survived .
Valerie Storie though seems very different from him in character from what we know of her .Still a girl of 22 she showed extraordinary reserves of strength , courage, tenacity, resilience and serenity after her horrendous ordeal and moreover she accepted the situation where she was his bit on the side.So she had to be given a sort of tarring and feathering too.

[cobalt]

Dixie France supplied the gun? Probably. As near certain as most things in this case.
Who did he give it to?
How was it retrieved?
Big questions.

How was the car driven from the locus back to North London?
Too many eyewitness accounts that are conflicting, from North London to Derbyshire.

Two parts of the case that are entirely inexplicable.

1. No forensic evidence found from the car.
2. Ewer lighting upon Ryan as the suspect before the police even knew who he was.

[cobalt]

Ed,
Interesting observations as usual. But I fear Caz, Graham and Spitfire will have the Blue Moon theory for breakfast.

Trying to make Gregsten see the error of his ways was unlikely to be achieved at gunpoint. Especially with his young paramour beside him. And what Ewer, a presumably intelligent man, could not achieve, was unlikely to be achieved by Hanratty, Alphon or some family confidante of France in a 5 hour discourse.

Ewer had presumably done all the talking required. If he had commissioned other means of persuasion then talking would not have been on the agenda. Why would Alphon, or Russell with a gun be able to persuade Gregsten to see things differently, especially when sitting next to Valerie Storie?

[Ed James]

[QUOTE=cobalt;348800]OK, Ewer must be involved. His actions in alerting the police to Ryan cannot be explained any other way.

Hi Cobalt

I can feel some attachment to Nat's compelling explanation of the abduction but still have some nagging doubts.

But lets stick with the notion of Ewer commissioning France to arrange for a gunman to confront the couple in the car , the key question is what exactly did he commission? What is clear from the outcome is that what was commissioned was either not clearly conveyed or the gunman was incapable of carrying it out.

I think there is a case that the target was essentially Gregsten. Valerie Storie had already shown herself to be the strong one of the pair, even visiting the Gregsten home on a couple of occasions and steadfastly refusing to end the relationship even with pressure from her employer. We know from Ewer's statement of 11 September 1961 that Gregsten was in turmoil and felt he should be struck down by God forwhat he was doing. His religious upbringing in Christian Science made him vulnerable to acts/thoughts of evil against him.

So what if the commission had been vague, not clearly communicated via France but focused on securing Gregsten's specific acknowledgement in some way that what he was engaged in was wrong. Could the length of the abduction be explained by the gunman waiting to see signs of this from Gregsten ? When the threat was actually (possibly predictably) creating greater solidarity between the couple.

Cobalt wrote: But there are so many problems with this. First of all, how did Alphon get wind of the plan if he was not directly involved? He was, I think, the first to put up the ‘frightener’ theory in public.

It is unclear to me how Alphon had so many insights about the case, unless of course he was merely speculating or perhaps was originally sounded out by Ewer through their association at far right wing meetings before Ewer turned to France. I agree that France normally wouldn't pick Alphon for the job , or Hanratty for that matter.

Cobalt wrote Second, why has Valerie Storie maintained her silence all these years? The ‘frightener’ was aimed at breaking up her relationship with Gregsten, so she has had no reason to protect the forces that were striving to do this, .’

Having gone through such a horrendous experience and invested so much in identifying the culprit, there is no way that she is going to give any credibility to the 'inside job' theory , much as others don't.

If we accept Ewer's involvement before the event, I don't think in the panic afterwards he was involved in the decision of where to dump the gun. It could be that France made that decision under pressure from the gunman anxious to dispel any police link to the killer hailing from the Wanstead area where the car was dumped.

At the same time, if things became hot, France could reveal that Hanratty used the back seat of a bus as a hiding place.

ATB
Ed

[cobalt]

OK, Ewer must be involved. His actions in alerting the police to Ryan cannot be explained any other way.

But there are so many problems with this. First of all, how did Alphon get wind of the plan if he was not directly involved? He was, I think, the first to put up the ‘frightener’ theory in public. How on earth did he manage to work that out? Did he glean this from his police interrogations? Which means the police were aware of this possibility from the start.

And do not tell me that France, who apparently rubbed shoulders with London gangland, settled upon Alphon, an Almanac salesman, as his Mr Fixit. That is risible. France must have had a dozen better candidates loafing around the Rehearsal Club. Ewer might have been unworldly enough to buy the Alphon package, but not Dixie France.

Second, why has Valerie Storie maintained her silence all these years? The ‘frightener’ was aimed at breaking up her relationship with Gregsten, so she has had no reason to protect the forces that were striving to do this, especially since she has subsequently been confined to a wheelchair. She lost the love of her life and her mobility: so why protect Ewer and scapegoat Hanratty? She was in the car and privy to details that have never been made public; she must have been able to work out what was going on if indeed this was a ‘frightener.’

Third, why the lack of purpose in the enterprise? A good, sharp, shock might just have made Gregsten think again. I assume Ewer had tried a man-to-man talk that fell on stony ground, so this was his last resort. But a pointless drive around North London, with the woman in question present, which could only cement Gregsten and Storie’s sense of solidarity? No obvious escape route for the enforcer? Or at best a pick up about 5 hours later? This is tenth rate gangsterism. If you can’t make your point with a loaded gun within 5 minutes you are presumably wasting your time after 5 hours.

This Blue Moon theory also renders obsolete the coincidence of Alphon staying at the Vienna, his bizarre behaviour in the aftermath of the murder which alerted the police to him, and his reported sightings in Slough.

[moste]

To France desperate for money having lost his job, the chance to make a few hundred quid by getting a 'shooter' from the Rehearsal Club where he still played cards and knew everybody was an offer from Ewer he couldn't refuse.He had no intention of using it to harm physically ---that was not what he was asked to do.He may simply have been asked if he knew anyone willing to give Gregston a bit of stick ---make him see sense over leaving his wife and children.The idea of having a gun may have come from France because he had such easy access to them at the Rehearsal club and choosing a gun, a lethal weapon , created a pretty powerful threat inside a morris minor .But ---and there was a big but...suppose either Valerie or even Gregsten went back and rang the police once the gunman had left them and described the man ? Best therefore to wear a mask and pretend to be somebody else to deflect attention.What better than pretending to be a petty gangster? or a jail bird on the run? Don't forget either that France had probably had five weeks of getting his ears battered with Hanratty's tales of daring do in and out of the prison so he had all the fresh stories and street slang at his fingertips.He had also been in the nick himself and had been mixing on the edge of the underworld from when he was 18.
So I believe the idea of using Hanratty as a foil just struck them as apt---imitate Jim-say that's your name and you were mistreated as a kid[which Hanratty was not of course ---and they'll never find out who he was and anyway Hanratty can prove he was in Liverpool if the police try to investigate.
The crucial thing to recognise is that the plan was never to cause physical harm to Gregsten or Valerie. The terrible scene when half Gregsten's head was blown off by accident in the Morris Minor was just that -an accident and never meant to happen.
What to do now then? There was little choice -keep on deflecting guilt away from the Frances' and continue to use Hanratty as a patsy because in 1961 even being party to being in possession of a gun was a very serious criminal offence if you did not have a licence.
I don't for one moment believe France killed himself because he had brought Hanratty into their home.France rubbed shoulders with some of the most vicious gangsters in London on the tables he oversaw in Soho.France was mortified to have sent his friend to the gallows when he knew very well he was completely innocent.France went to see Ewer to apologise for the atrocious mess they made out of a job they did for him. France committed suicide the day after Hanratty lost his appeal and he knew he was going to hang .

The idea that the death of Gregsten was an accident.....I can't get my head around that .As we have examined in the past , around MGs left ear were the two entry wounds with tattooing around the wounds I assume the pathologist is here referring to powder burns. Now again as examined before there were two models of .38 weapons that may possibly have been used single action,(which involves 'cocking'(pulling back on the hammer spur) after each shot to engage the next bullet in the chamber So if this was an accident, we can rule this one out completely. That leaves the second model of .38 weapon which is double action, this is easier for an amateur to use because squeezing the trigger to fire a round, also simultaneously turns the chamber (barrel) to engage the next round. Now performing this action in less than a second, with the amount of pressure required on the trigger in both shoots would, I submit, negate the eventuality of an accident.(remember, more than a few milliseconds between shots and the head would have moved significantly.) PS. Did I mention IMHO Simpson didn't make a mistake with identifying the .32 slugs he dug out of Storie's arm. But thats something else.

[Natalie Severn]

I think it shines a light on what happened Moste.. And I feel sure William Ewer never intended there to be a murder ..... he just wanted Gregsten to get a good seeing to.

[moste]

Mosts-They had not put two and two together at that point.The information had just been filed away.

Ignored then! You reckon. Wow, that blue moon post was a real peach eh? what do you make of it?

[Natalie Severn]

A post from some years back from Blue Moon who says they are related to the France family is interesting.

[Natalie Severn]

Mosts-They had not put two and two together at that point.The information had just been filed away.

[moste]

Hi Natalie. From your post.. Oxford testifying in court under oath stated "on September 24th we did not know who Ryan was -he was only a name"
Ok, so we are to believe then, that Janet Gregsten's brother in laws telephone call to Scotland Yard, (after believing he had spotted the killer), re-the investigative work he had done, revealing that one J. Ryan had sent flowers to his mother a Mrs. Hanratty either (a) did not reach the brilliant detectives Acott and Oxford ,or (b) It had, and they had ignored it, or (c) they realised this was the break through they were looking for in the case, but chose not to involve Ewer in the developments ,for reasons known only to themselves.

[moste]

So, Ewer having arranged the murder of Gregsten and the attempted murder of Miss Storie now finds to his horror that the latter has survived and has given an uncannily accurate description of Alphon, whom Ewer had arranged to be picked up on the A6 in or near Slough.

Ewer must act to direct attention away from Alphon, as investigation of Alphon by the police will in turn lead back to Ewer. He decides to pin the blame on J Ryan, aka James Hanratty, whom he sees leaving the dry cleaners.

Was Janet Gregsten involved in all this? Probably but then again possibly not, she is the person whom Ewer says spotted Ryan as the killer from his demeanour in the dry cleaners. But if Janet was so involved, one has to ask why did Ewer need to go to such lengths to possess her and why was it necessary to murder Michael Gregsten at such expense.

Ewer must also have planted the spent cartridge cases in the Vienna but taking care not to plant .32 ammunition used by Alphon but the more common .38 to match the gun planted on the 36A bus.

Talking of the bus, the plot to frame Hanratty must have had its inception prior to the planting of the gun on it. How did Ewer, who may or may not have planted the gun on the bus, know that the place under the rearmost seat of the upstairs deck was a favoured hiding place of Hanratty for his unwanted booty? As far as we know Charles France knew that that was a favoured Hanratty hiding place and also knew that Hanratty had stayed at the Vienna.

We must therefore assume that Charles France and William Ewer had concocted a plan with the ultimate aim to kill Michael Gregsten and to frame Hanratty for the crime.

Well done . We're starting to get the feel of the thing now aren't we ? just one thing ,Ewer, very wealthy ,hired people to do his dirty work, didn't do it himself. Ewer's knowledge of JH liking the buses back seat, he learned from France ,(Don't forget France's sobbing 'I need a hug' visit, some time later proving almost without doubt that there was something between these two dudes) As to Ewer already being in possession of Janet's favours, why would he deem it necessary to kill MG?. Because, consider this, (A)Mr. Ewer loved Janet with every fibre of his huge frame, he wanted her entirely for his own. (B) He had watched Michael treat his wife abominably for at least as long as his association with the fire, and then the road research companies,(remember what his good friend at the Fire research Labs had to say, "Michael was very much in love with a girl here, he talked of" leaving Janet and moving in with this young lady, "even back then! "My goodness" Ewer must have thought ,this bloke makes Casanova look like a Monk! We don't know that Ewer wasn't seething at Gregsten's treatment of Janet. All this talk about "I couldn't give Mike what he wanted" and Storie's "Oh we were all friends". Never heard such poppycock in all my life!
Still good post Spitfire and welcome aboard.