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

[Graham]

This is just uninformed gossip about priests.If they did say such a thing they were very wrong to do so.It shouldn't need saying.

Wasn't gossip, Nats. The minister (not priest) himself reported what she said. Am I correct in assuming that only the Roman Catholic and High Anglican churches have the confessional? If so, then an Episcopalian minister would be under no constraint of secrecy.

Graham

Edit: Whoops, were you referring to Canon Hulme? If so, then most certainly he should not have made public anything Hanratty said to him under the secrecy of the Confessional. But if he did, I'm sure he wouldn't have been the first.

Graham

[Graham]

How could Mr Dutton from Kinmel Bay be expected to make his statement direct to London or Bedford where the trial was in 1961? Going to the police is the correct way now and was the correct way then Graham.

Not necessarily, Nats. By definition, once a criminal case has reached trial stage, then it is assumed, rightly or wrongly, that the police investigation is complete. Hanratty's trial was already underway when Mr Dutton's memory was jogged by reading a report of the trial, specifically that Hanratty had been trying to sell a gold watch (in Liverpool, not Rhyl). Mr Dutton naturally thought that the police would be the obvious channel through which to ensure his evidence found its way to the defence, but the police just sat on it. He could have gone straight to the defence solicitor, which is essentially what Mrs Jones did via Joe Gillbanks. The name of Hanratty's defence barrister was common and public knowledge anyway, so Mr Dutton could have gone direct to Sherrard's chambers (his local public library would have had the necessary information to allow to him to make the contact).

Graham

[Natalie Severn]

Wasn't gossip, Nats. The minister (not priest) himself reported what she said. Am I correct in assuming that only the Roman Catholic and High Anglican churches have the confessional? If so, then an Episcopalian minister would be under no constraint of secrecy.

Graham

Graham -you are giving credence to something that cannot be proven by any reason -stuff that simply perpetuates the injustice of such whispers and smears -you are better than that . In the A6 murder to their shame ,the prosecution relied on thugs and grasses like Ray Langdale . Whoever committed the crime was either driven to the cornfield for a purpose by another person involved in the attack and dropped off or the beginning of the crime did not take place in that cornfield but the gunman was picked up as the couple made for Slough as Valerie first stated. Norma

[Graham]

Graham -you are giving credence to something that cannot be proven by any reason -stuff that simply perpetuates the injustice of such whispers and smears -you are better than that . In the A6 murder to their shame ,the prosecution relied on thugs and grasses like Ray Langdale . Whoever committed the crime was either driven to the cornfield for a purpose by another person involved in the attack and dropped off or the beginning of the crime did not take place in that cornfield but the gunman was picked up as the couple made for Slough as Valerie first stated. Norma

I'm sorry, Nats, but you've completely lost me here. Are you going on about Canon Hulme, or what? See my edit of my last but one Post.

Graham

[Natalie Severn]

The name of Hanratty's defence barrister was common and public knowledge anyway, so Mr Dutton could have gone direct to Sherrard's chambers (his local public library would have had the necessary information to allow to him to make the contact).

Graham

Well frankly this is just quibbling.Mr Dutton did exactly what most of us would do in such a situation.He went and made a statement to the police and nobody there told him to do otherwise.His statement went to Scotland Yard and has since been lost but nobody denies he made it.

[Natalie Severn]

Not interested in what these priest people said or didn't say Graham

[Graham]

Not interested in what these priest people said or didn't say Graham

Blimey!

Graham

[cobalt]

It might be a good idea to disregard, when making a case, either prison cell confessions or gallows confessions on this site. (And that includes last gasp pleas of innocence.) These are so open to manipulation or misinterpretation that neither can be confirmed to a level worthy of the people who contribute here.

I have been accused (by Graham I think) of having an obsession with Bert Balmer, of Liverpool CID, a man I never met from a city I have never visited. My obsession, if it is one, is the same as everyone else who takes the trouble to compose arguments on this site, namely that justice must be done. It matters nothing if our concerns focus on what happened in Rillington Place 1949, Liverpool in 1951, Bedfordshire in 1961 or Birmingham in 1974, for justice knows no boundaries. It does not matter either whether we support or oppose the Crown Case; the important thing is we behave as engaged citizens committed to what is just. If that is an obsession, then my plea is tendered as guilty.

Balmer is significant in his own right, although the details of his actions in Liverpool capital crimes belong out with this site. His presence is crucial to the Hanratty alibi, for he was the most powerful policeman in Liverpool in 1961. His loathing of common criminals and socialism (I am not sure if he made much distinction between the two) was well documented both in reported conversations and his actions as a senior policeman. Any private detective attempting to establish an alibi in Merseyside for a suspected murderer could expect short shrift from such a man, even when working for criminal lawyers in a Capital Case. This is especially true for Joe Gillbanks, a man who had in the past worked directly under Bert Balmer when the latter was Head of Liverpool CID, and had been put forward for a King’s Recommendation for Bravery in 1951. (I have tried to find out the ‘armed murderer’ Gillbanks arrested in 1951 but have drawn a blank. Any help welcome.) Balmers’ stock-in-trade was fitting up suspects on the say-so of other suspects, something Gillbanks must have, at the very least observed, at close hand. Balmer was not in the game of establishing innocence.

I repeat my florid metaphor of Goebbels investigating the Reichstag Fire: Gillbanks was the wrong man to elicit information from the Liverpool criminal classes, as he would have been seen as Balmer’s man. Furthermore I am suspicious of Gillbanks’ handling of information from other parties, his handling of the photographic ID and his failure to place Hanratty in Rhyl barber shops.

The Dutton statement based on a date stamped bank receipt (probably the best counterweight to the ID by Valerie Storie) was out with Gillbanks’ remit, but seems to have met a similar fate to most things he investigated. Nothing of any substance that was helpful to Hanratty came down from Liverpool, either by accident or design. Balmer was a key player in the alibi element of this case due to his previous track record and reputation in the Liverpool area, and I make no apology for continuing to bring his name up, or that of his former underlings. Was Balmer in contact at the time with Acott, and Balmer’s future successor Kenneth Oxford? Answers on a postcard, as they used to say.

I have expressed here before an opinion that the Liverpool/Rhyl aspect of this case is a Dead End that has been exhausted, and that more attention should be focused on the actual locus of the crime. I am happy to have been corrected.

[Sherlock Houses]

The 'free library' also has this article about the Catholic priest, Canon Anthony Hulme, who was with Hanratty at his death. He is supposed to have said Hanratty had confessed the crime to him and later told the Hanratty family that he had not confessed to make them feel better.

The following post of Derrick's from November 23rd 2010 [A6 Murder thread post #7133] sums up my own feelings about this perfectly...............

What concerns me most about the Cassandra article is that it was written a week after the judgement in the appeal of 2002.

The tale of Father Hulme regaling Mr Leggat of Hanratty's confession is nothing more than hearsay and has to be viewed totally in that light.

I would go further and say that it is complete nonsense, just as others would consider the Sketch article regarding the cleaners. Who is this Leggat man anyway? Has anybody heard of him telling this tale prior to this article?

Yet even if it were true then Hulme has given completely contradictory statements to two people, which not only goes against the confidentiality associated with confession but he may have also lied to the father of an executed man. Not a very savoury situation for a Catholic priest with his SatNav programmed for heaven. [keep going straight ahead after 80 years into Hades. You have arrived at your destination.]

Derrick

[moste]

The following post of Derrick's from November 23rd 2010 [A6 Murder thread post #7133] sums up my own feelings about this perfectly...............

Sums up my feelings too. I just read an article in the Catholic Herald from Google about one, Father Alexander Lucie-Smith, Doctor of moral theology, who was interviewed by the BBC in 2014 for a programme covering this very question regarding breaking the seal of confession. I sent the article to myself by email, as its quite long .Anyway the gist of the thing is that article 1388-1 of the code of cannon law, provides that a priest must not break the seal of confession, (which is regarded by the faithful as absolutely sacrosanct) under any circumstances, ever, for fear of excommunication. a punishment only reversible by the pope. Hanratty,s confession best left out of it I reckon.

[Spitfire]

I don't think that anything can be read into reports of what someone said someone else said about what the priest who heard the confession of the wretched James Hanratty said on his way to his just and rightful execution.

It seems to me that stories such as the above are tittle tattle designed to provide journalistic copy and increase the circulation of newspapers (in an earlier age) and click through in the internet age.

The stories provided by, or about, William Ewer can likewise be categorised as tittle tattle.

As to Trevor Dutton, it does not seem that the defence thought that the failure to disclose his information at the time of the trial provided a ground of appeal. There were fairly extensive grounds prepared by the defence team led by Mike Mansfield and complaint was made about the failure to disclose the existence of Mesdames Walker and Vincent and Mr Larman, but nothing about Mr Dutton.

[Sherlock Houses]

I don't think that anything can be read into reports of what someone said someone else said about what the priest who heard the confession of the wretched James Hanratty said on his way to his just and rightful execution.

I take it from this that you knew James Hanratty from personal experience and are thus in a valid position to comment so vitriolically on on his character. If so it is completely at odds with how the many people who actually knew or met him described him.

[Spitfire]

As he was a murderer and rapist, the description I gave earlier is apt.

[Sherlock Houses]

As he was a murderer and rapist, the description I gave earlier is apt.

Only in your humble opinion.

[Spitfire]

Only in your humble opinion.

My opinion and the opinion of the 1962 Bedford jury, the 1962 Court of Criminal Appeal, the 2002 Court of Criminal Appeal and the opinion of Mike Sherrard that the wrong man was not hanged and all backed up by the statement of Mike Mansfield QC (Hanratty's brief) that Alphon was not the A6 Murderer (which is what this thread is about).