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

[caz]

Its frustrating listening to people arguing back and forth about JHs alibis. I mean, his proof of being in London on the Monday is a given. His statement of his movements up to the visit to the sweet shop in Scotland road are also a given. Tuesday 4:30ish, 22nd Aug. proved by two people in shop who Signed the back of his photo .It wouldn't matter if he had made his way back to London at this point, he couldn't have been the murderer. If he lied about what he did after this Liverpool sighting, then he was a stupid man, but the police not following the correct protocol with the photos, and the jury being influenced by him changing his mind, about what he wanted them to believe, after Tues.4:30 on the 22nd Aug. (even possibly perjuring himself, to protect his friends or whatever,again, a stupid man) should have been of no consequence to the verdict.

But clearly Hanratty's two alibis were of great consequence to the verdict, which was delivered unanimously by the jury, not 'rigged' by the powers that be. The jury was told not to convict unless everyone was 'sure' Hanratty was guilty.

P.S. Caz. Hanratty maintained his alibi in Liverpool up until It was no longer possible to get to Dorney.

Yes, but that doesn't make it true. The jury evidently didn't believe him because he had already lied at least once about where he had been while the couple were being held up at gunpoint.

Love,

Caz
X

[NickB]

JH described sitting [U]for five hours[U] with a "clerky gent" on his claimed 22 August journey to Liverpool - he even said the the gent's cufflinks were embossed with an E!

Indeed when Hanratty’s picture did appear in the newspapers his defence team pointedly did not think it worth asking for any witnesses from Rhyl to come forward, but instead put out an appeal for “the man with the gold cuff links initialled ‘E’”.

[caz]

This contrasts sharply with all those witnesses in Liverpool and then Rhyl who actually met and spoke with Hanratty and had just cause, for one reason or another, to remember him.

Would 'just cause' have included his streaky dyed black hair at the time, and face covered in late summer freckles? Was this how they claimed to recognise him from the photo they were shown, or was his hair light in the photo, in which case did none of the witnesses remark upon the difference?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Indeed when Hanratty’s picture did appear in the newspapers his defence team pointedly did not think it worth asking for any witnesses from Rhyl to come forward, but instead put out an appeal for “the man with the gold cuff links initialled ‘E’”.

Interesting, Nick. He has just been sentenced to death and his defence team are going right back to the beginning, to appeal for a witness who could confirm he as much as travelled to Liverpool on 22nd, never mind spent any time there, leaving luggage or seeking directions in sweet shops and so on. Clutching at straws, weren't they?

Love,

Caz
X

[NickB]

As mentioned before Woffinden plays down ‘the man with the gold cufflinks initialled E’, apparently to avoid his readers making a connection with Hanratty’s burglary loot 10 days before the train ride which included:
‘six sets of gold cufflinks with the initial 'E' on them’.

[Sherlock Houses]

JH described sitting [U]for five hours[U] with a "clerky gent" on his claimed 22 August journey to Liverpool - he even said the the gent's cufflinks were embossed with an E! So why didn't "Clerky gent" come forward? Or any of the other passengers JH shared the compartment with all the way to Liverpool?

I can't ever recall reading that Hanratty sat next to the "clerky gent" for 5 hours Graham. As far as I am aware we have no further information as to when this man boarded or got off the London to Liverpool train. If this "clerky gent" was a daily commuter on the train it is understandable that he wouldn't be able recall a stranger's face, particularly if he busied himself with office-related work [Hanratty said the man was making notes with a gold biro] and was oblivious to the other occupants of the compartment. It could also be that he was one of those people who don't like to get involved, whatever the consequences.

What we do have is the statement of Michael Da Costa who was at Euston Station on the morning of August 22nd 1961. He was on his way to visit his mother in Northampton. This observant young actor [he was almost 20 years old] had reason for remembering Hanratty. For the benefit of anyone who has not got the Foot book this is Da Costa's statement of February 20th 1962........

"I clearly remembered that I had seen Hanratty on Euston Station on that date [August 22nd] either at the paper stall or in the refreshment buffet off the main hall. I distinctly remember him, as, being an actor myself, I noticed his hair looked dyed and I thought it was a wig. Also at the time I was in a part that portrayed just what this man looked like, and because of this I took particular note of him."

The underlined part is interesting bearing in mind what Hanratty told his defence team. He said that when he arrived at Euston Station that Tuesday morning he bought a return ticket and then bought some magazines and sat around in the buffet waiting for the next train for Liverpool.

It transpired that Da Costa was also on this train but in a different compartment to Hanratty. And it was a morning train.

[moste]

But clearly Hanratty's two alibis were of great consequence to the verdict, which was delivered unanimously by the jury, not 'rigged' by the powers that be. The jury was told not to convict unless everyone was 'sure' Hanratty was guilty.



Yes, but that doesn't make it true. The jury evidently didn't believe him because he had already lied at least once about where he had been while the couple were being held up at gunpoint.

Love,

Caz
X

And the jury didn't believe Mrs.Dinwoodie or her granddaughter either. So the jury guessed that because Hanratty only wanted to come clean about his later adventures after lets say 5.00 pm on the Tuesday 22nd of Aug. then Mrs.Dinwoodie and the little girl were mistaken. I don't get it!(That jury! eh? after hours of deliberating, "what does 'beyond reasonably doubt mean?) To steal a line from the famous Dickens character "I'll retire to bedlam!"

[Natalie Severn]

Did anyone on the bus from Liverpool to Rhyl on the evening of 22 August, as JH claimed, come forward to identify him? Not a passenger, not a conductor, not a driver? Nobody? How odd.

Graham

Graham I was actually asking my question about Taplow Railway Station very seriously since the shocking gun' hold up' and murder of 22/23 August had only just happened and according to Valerie's statement had begun its course quite near Taplow Station with the event fresh in everybody's minds as a nation wide hunt began immediately.I would have thought therefore that one of the very first things the police should have done was interview the station master, the ticket collectors at both Paddington and Taplow -particularly Taplow being so much quieter and passengers that day on those trains to Taplow being relatively few on 22nd August ? Yet we don't know whether they did or didn't follow such a line of inquiry which seems extraordinary if they did not.


Regarding your similar question Graham,about the bus from Liverpool to Rhyl.This journey was only known about by Sherrard for the first time on 29th January 1962 and I understand because of time restriction they prioritised finding Mrs Jones of Ingledene as a witness for the defence and Terry Evans .Possibly they thought them more important for the trial than tracking down the conductor of a bus or its passengers 5 months previously with time of the essence . However as a point of information , a Merseyside retired police officer claimed they did indeed eventually do just that and he claimed to have had sight of the closed files held by Merseyside Police which contain a statement from the conductor of the 6 pm Bus from Liverpool to Rhyl on 22nd August and that it contained a statement and description about a man answering Hanratty's description with specific mention of his hair who was on that bus .The man who wrote to me about is from Merseyside .He may well be an ex policeman himself.He suggested people need to start to press for access to it but I understand such a file is forbidden by law to be opened and so have not pursued it . There are, according to Paul Foot's research likely to be up to a dozen such statements hidden away that have never seen the light of day either because people did not want to get involved further or were told by the police not to such as Ernie Gordon of the Dixie's cafe near the fairground who flatly refused to get involved further and denied everything he had said .But a full police statement does exist [or existed] by Mr Henry Parry who was the landlord of the Windsor hotel immediately opposite Mrs Jones' house.He gave a full statement to police but refused to get involved.If it had incriminated Hanratty I believe we would have known about it....and him as a witness for the prosecution.nx

[Natalie Severn]

You see, Nats, this is what doesn't make sense. If the journalists following the trial saw that things were being 'rigged' against Hanratty,
X

No Caz,from all accounts the reason most of the journalists believed he would get off was due to the lack of evidence. From what Paul Foot states in the pubs of Fleet St there was also a definite sense that something very fishy was going on regarding the "intuitions" they claimed Janet Gregsten said she had about Hanratty being the murderer . This according the Paul Foor was what Fleet Street believed the dead man's wife , Janet Gregsten had said to two or three of their own Chapel mates .And that she had been claiming to them that she had had them in William Ewer's antiques shop in Swiss Cottage as she was hanging a William Steer painting in the window of the shop when suddenly she spotted the man she intuited was her husband's murderer going into Burtol's dry cleaners just 6 days after the murder that took place 50 miles away. Now both William Ewer and Janet Gregsten flatly denied they had said this to journalists but whatever it was that was they did say was enough for the journalists to begin to smell a rat . In 1971 ,9 years and a love affair with Janet Gregsten later, William Ewer admitted to the Times Newspaper that such an extraordinary intuition did occur 6 days after the murder but that it was not Janet Gregsten's intuition but his own 'intuition' when he spotted a young man with eyes as big as carbuncles in his local fel a fel cafe while he was sipping coffee.Hearing about these excursions into extra sensory perception gave our cynical journalists a lot of concern about the possible motives of Janet Gregsten and/or William Ewer for coming out with such strange statements which when combined with the daily spectacle of an extremely agitated William Ewer turning up and busying himself at the murder trial every day appears to have set their minds towards an innocent verdict rather than a guilty one.nx

[Sherlock Houses]

.Hearing about these excursions into extra sensory perception gave our cynical journalists a lot of concern about the possible motives of Janet Gregsten and/or William Ewer for coming out with such strange statements which when combined with the daily spectacle of an extremely agitated William Ewer turning up and busying himself at the murder trial every day appears to have set their minds towards an innocent verdict rather than a guilty one.nx

Ewer made it his business to attend every day of the 4 week trial. A little puzzling to say the least, especially given his dislike of his brother-in-law Michael Gregsten. For some reason it was much more important for him to attend the trial than to attend to his own antiques business. He must have been sufficiently well off financially to afford to neglect his shop each day and make the 100 miles plus round trip to Bedford. More than a bit of a dark horse our Mr Ewer.

Umbrella repair man indeed !

[Natalie Severn]

Why National Journalists expected an 'innocent ' verdict of innocent

For Caz and others re the journalist's reports and the suspicions they had given rise to in Fleet St. before, during and after the trial for murder of James Hanratty :
As soon as the Trial ended Journalist Peter Duffy crime reporter of the Daily Sketch -the same journalist who smashed Peter [B]Alphon's alibi on 23rd September 1961 reporting that Alphon's mother had told the police he had not been home for 8 weeks and had not been home on the night he said he was [/B carried reports with Bernard Jordanof the Daily Mail about a mystical experience Janet Gregsten had had :"Amazing story of Mrs Gregsten's intuition headlined the Daily Sketch and similarly the Daily Mail.Stories that confirmed for Fleet Street's teams of crime reporters that something deeply suspicious permeated the entire case.Mr Ewer protested vehemently that aspects of the story were inaccurate [in 1971 he claimed it was he himself who had had the intuitive sighting] but several indisputable aspects of the story were confirmed by Dorothy Morrell the woman in the Finchley Road flower shop and Peter Duffy himself again went public on a BBC Panorama programme of 1966 to confirm that what he had written was true .The behaviour of William Ewer appears to have triggered Fleet St suspicions in any case when a George Hollingberry of the Evening News and Bernard Jordan were having a drink in a pub referred to as "The Merry Widow" in the last week of the trial when William Ewer walked in and collared them and then came out with the tale of the 'intuitive sighting 'out of the blue and to their great astonishment.A number of journalists had also noticed his bizarre behaviour during the trial fussing about all the time and Peter Duffy eventually scooped the story and was joined soon after by an indignant Bernard Jordan who had heard it direct from the horses mouth .[apologies -I accidentally deleted a paragraph relating to Alphon's mother trashing Alphon's alibi and Peter Duffy's comment on this..... can provide the detail if needed.Point is Fleet Street had become alliterated to inconsistency and fabrication early on and remained suspicious.

[Limehouse]

Hi Julie,

And possibly responsible for sending a man she knew might well be innocent to his death?

Possibly telling a version of the 'truth' (for whatever reason) certainly implies deliberately lying. I think that is going way too far.

How about Hanratty deliberately lying about his whereabouts at the time of the murder (saying he was in Liverpool), knowing the jury had the power to send him to his death if they discovered he was lying?

I would suggest that was what did for him, and not the victim being economical with the truth.

Love,

Caz
X

Hi Caz,

No, Valerie was not responsible for sending Hanratty to his death. However, she did, apparently, tell Kerr 'we picked up a hitchhiker' . Whether she did so in confusion (she was, after all fighting for her life) or because she didn't think how they encountered the man was important at that time, that is the way the story was circulated very early on. I personally feel that the true nature of VS's and MG's relationship was concealed to protect the sensibilities of, particularly, MG's family.

What I was trying to imply in the whole of that post was that in the whole story that was presented to the jury, and to the world, there was truth, lies, versions of truth and some genuine confusion. Some people had reasons to lie and those reasons have been explored in detail in other posts.

When you examine all the statements and witness accounts and the debate that has been boiling here on this site for several years, it seems that all of the witnesses who testified that Hanratty was in Liverpool and Rhyl seem to have been 'mistaken' or were 'getting in on the act' but other important testimonies that might at first have been mistakes (such as the colour of the gunman's eyes and how he first encountered the couple) were overlooked.

To summarise, Yes - Hanratty lied, foolishly, but he had reasons for doing so that were not related to the terrible events that August night.

Kind regards,

Julie

[Limehouse]

Brilliant, cobalt!

Except for one thing: I class myself as being on the left; I am totally against the concept of capital punishment and firmly believe that nobody should have hanged for the A6 murder; I am also well aware there have been far too many grave and inexcusable miscarriages of justice in the history of British crime, resulting in the innocent being punished for the sins of the guilty.

But I am still forced to accept that, despite the shortcomings of the original trial, the wrong man was not hanged in this case.

Love,

Caz
X

Excellent post Caz, and I agree with every word - except the last line.

[Limehouse]

Hi again Julie,

To be strict about this, an alibi covers the actual time the crime was taking place, so if he wasn't in Liverpool during this entire period, but in Rhyl or anywhere else, it was a complete fiction, and it is not 'people' who are claiming it, but Hanratty himself!

If he really was in Liverpool while the A6 crime was in progress, he lied twice: firstly by claiming his Liverpool alibi had been complete fiction, and secondly by claiming he had been in Rhyl instead.

Love,

Caz
X

Quite possibly, Caz, but that does not make him guilty of the crime of murder and rape. Certainly, his lies contributed to his own conviction.

How many times did Nudds lie? What effect did his various testimonies have on the verdict?

Kind regards,

Julie

[Limehouse]

Not knowing the London area well I didn't realise Avondale Crescent was near to Wanstead. I was under the impression it was in Ilford.
All quite intriguing when put into context with the following newspaper extract from the Daily Express of September 2nd 1961.

Food for some thought perhaps.......

I am so glad people have taken up my suggestion that the abandonment of the car so close to The George at Wanstead might have been significant. I could never understand why Avondale Crescent was described as being in Ilford as Ilford is probably almost two miles away. In the late 70s and early 80s, I worked in Wanstead High Street, less than a minute's walk from The George. Redbridge station is a few minutes walk away and Wanstead station is, indeed, just across the road from the pub. I grew up in Walthamstow and Chingford, just a few miles down the road and well remember the period when Harry Roberts (whose parents ran the pub) was on the run, having been implicated (and later convicted) in the shooting dead of three policemen in west London. It was strongly believed Roberts was hiding out in Epping Forest, which surrounded my childhood home and haunts.

It was a nice place to grow up, but it had a large ex-East End population, being the type of place where people went to 'better themselves' either as the result of decent, hard work - or crime. Indeed, the Krays frequented the area and ended up being buried a few yards away from my parents in Chingford cemetery.

I think it is entirely possible that the gunman was able to lie low in the area or at least clean himself up. Perhaps this also explains various conflicting sightings of the car that day. It could well have been seen in the morning close to Redbridge station, concealed for a period of hours, and then dumped when the light was fading.

It is clear from that clipping above (what a find!) that the police were interested in someone in that area at the time.

Have a good weekend all.

Julie