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

[Spitfire]

Alphon gripped Mrs Hanratty around the throat as she intervened to stop Alphon making a vicious attack on Jean Justice and the police were called.There was also an incident in a hotel where he had to be thrown out for disturbing the peace.

Hardly armed robbery, is it?

[uncle_adolph]

Lord Russell of Liverpool in his book Deadman's Hill: Was Hanratty Guilty? notes that there had been attempts at house-breaking in the houses on and near Marsh Lane. Not that he was specifically pointing the finger at Hanratty, but perhaps Jim had indeed tried his luck there in the recent past.

Graham

Haven't you contradicted yourself in one sentence there?

By the way, thank you and to Spitfire for pointing out my error. Clearly I will have to re-read my Woffinden....

[caz]

As far as Valerie's account is concerned it makes no reference to her affair with Gregsten.In fact a pile of camouflage has taken place about them both reading maps and then chatting in a darkening cornfield about them.That is a staggering omission if you think about it. I don't believe it was easy for the defence to cross examine Valerie with regard to her sex life ,especially as she was in a very vulnerable state still on a stretcherin court,brought by ambulance , recovering from bullet wounds ,rape,trauma , Gregsten's death etc .I don't believe it would have gone down well in court for the defence to put her on the spot like that, insensitive to her fragile state.I do believe though that Valerie would have readilly admitted the relationship's sexual basis if she had been allowed to as in the June of 1962 she spoke about it in a magazine series of two . Clearly Acott had advised against divulging it in court and Valerie was compliant.But it was wrong and misleading of Acott and the prosecution to have done so.

Blimey, Nats, are you not skating very close to saying she would not have been raped and shot if she hadn't been having sex with a married man in his car, practically inviting some deeply implausible conspiracy to prise the randy couple apart by hook or by crook? What she was doing at the time (even if it was dancing naked and drunk in the moonlight, tempting her lover to "come and get me, big boy") should be entirely irrelevant as far as a case against the defendant goes. She did not ask to be shot and raped and MG shot dead. She was not in any way, shape or form responsible for what happened in that cornfield. She was not on trial; Hanratty was. If his defence had tried to introduce such a highly speculative motive for the crime with no evidence, and to argue for reasonable doubt on that basis, I'm not sure it would have done him a bit of good. The jury convicted him without a clue what his motive would have been anyway, and as much on the strength of his altered alibi as anything else. Besides, if there really was a conspiracy to split up the naughty pair, how would that have cleared Hanratty of being hired to play the stick-up man with his new toy and just not being up to the job?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

This crime was no Hold Up, a crime which would have been over and done with in a matter of minutes. It was something else.

But for Hanratty it would have been his first attempt, and his first outing as an armed man. Wasn't it something he had admitted he wanted to try? And didn't the events of that night - not least the inept way Valerie was left alive to tell the tale - positively scream the inexperience of the gunman responsible?

I really don't think you are helping Hanratty with this argument. I agree that an experienced hold-up merchant, on a contract or working alone, would have done what he came to do in seconds and been off on his toes. This was entirely something else.

Love,

Caz
X

[Natalie Severn]

Blimey, Nats, are you not skating very close to saying she would not have been raped and shot if she hadn't been having sex with a married man in his car, practically inviting some deeply implausible conspiracy to prise the randy couple apart by hook or by crook? What she was doing at the time (even if it was dancing naked and drunk in the moonlight, tempting her lover to "come and get me, big boy") should be entirely irrelevant as far as a case against the defendant goes. She did not ask to be shot and raped and MG shot dead. She was not in any way, shape or form responsible for what happened in that cornfield. She was not on trial; Hanratty was. If his defence had tried to introduce such a highly speculative motive for the crime with no evidence, and to argue for reasonable doubt on that basis, I'm not sure it would have done him a bit of good. The jury convicted him without a clue what his motive would have been anyway, and as much on the strength of his altered alibi as anything else. Besides, if there really was a conspiracy to split up the naughty pair, how would that have cleared Hanratty of being hired to play the stick-up man with his new toy and just not being up to the job?
Love,

Caz
X

Who is saying anything like that? Of course Valerie was not responsible for anything that happened in that cornfield .Of course she did not deserve any of what happened to happen to her .It was outrageous and still is that she suffered all that and remains paralysed to this day . Neither did Michael Gregsten deserve to suffer what he did and die because of being married and having an affair -however he wasn't the first man that has happened to and he certainly won't be the last .
What I am pointing out is that along with many others before and since ,I believe that the whole thing was an attempt by a member of Janet's family to stop Michael Gregsten leaving his wife and family that very week on 27th August to live in a flat in Maidenhead -leaving two children both under 5 ,one a baby , leaving enormous debts and his deserted wife to struggle on alone without a husband as wage earner.
Given that that is what I and many others believe viz the hold up was a way to scare the lovers apart by someone in Janet's family paying a hitman ,the whole case falls into place and becomes a domestic tragedy of monumental proportions ,the truth of which was concealed by police and prosecution and never allowed to see the light of day in court-and which, in my opinion, was a thoroughly corrupt and despicable decision - hiding the truth about their affair and by doing so the likely domestic motive behind the crime-which went wrong and ended so tragically .The police and prosecuting counsel in this case never allowed the whole truth to surface which would have helped Justice to prevail and instead the result was a 25 year old man was executed for a crime he had nothing whatever to do with . It would not be the first time the real killer has gone free -who was probably someone who hung round Soho which at the time was riddled with police taking bribes from gangsters---read all about it- its in many bookshops now the true extent of late 1950's and early 1960's Soho corruption mostly centred around porn but also around 'jobs' .It got cleaned up just a couple of years later .....

[NickB]

‘“Can I kiss my girlfriend in case anything happens?” asked Mike.’

This is in Valerie’s account in the newspaper immediately after the trial. I don’t know if it was in her evidence but there were other things, like the three penny bit and saying they were very fond of each other, that indicated the affair.

There are two reasons I can think of why Sherrard did not probe further.
1) he thought that enough hints were being dropped that the affair was implicit;
2) he thought it would be counterproductive.

Whichever was applicable (perhaps both) surely he was right not to do so.

Talking of undisclosed relationships ... Sherrard and Blom-Cooper were well known to each other - a close friendship had been forged when they were contemporaries at Kings College, London.

[caz]

What I am pointing out is that along with many others before and since ,I believe that the whole thing was an attempt by a member of Janet's family to stop Michael Gregsten leaving his wife and family that very week on 27th August to live in a flat in Maidenhead -leaving two children both under 5 ,one a baby , leaving enormous debts and his deserted wife to struggle on alone without a husband as wage earner.
Given that that is what I and many others believe viz the hold up was a way to scare the lovers apart by someone in Janet's family paying a hitman ,the whole case falls into place and becomes a domestic tragedy of monumental proportions ,the truth of which was concealed by police and prosecution and never allowed to see the light of day in court-and which, in my opinion, was a thoroughly corrupt and despicable decision - hiding the truth about their affair and by doing so the likely domestic motive behind the crime-which went wrong and ended so tragically .The police and prosecuting counsel in this case never allowed the whole truth to surface which would have helped Justice to prevail and instead the result was a 25 year old man was executed for a crime he had nothing whatever to do with .

But Nats, it wasn't up to the prosecution to introduce a speculative motive for the crime, based on the victims' love life. You say that 'the whole case falls into place and becomes a domestic tragedy' when that love life is exposed and picked over, but this is only a belief, no matter how many may have shared it at one time or another. There is no evidence as far as I can see for anyone in Janet's family being involved in a conspiracy to split the couple up, resulting in this horrendous crime, and motive is the very last thing one can demonstrate successfully without some sort of careless admission by the person(s) with that motive. And again, it was Hanratty on trial, on the evidence against him - nobody else.

As Nick points out, if Sherrard knew perfectly well that the victims were having an extra-marital affair, he presumably felt there was nothing to be gained for his client by bringing this out in open court, or at the original appeal. Suggesting a completely unsupported and unprovable domestic conspiracy-gone-wrong motive for the crime would hardly have been a wise move and if anything could have gained more sympathy for the surviving victim. The conspirators would still have needed a front man-turned-murderer, and Hanratty would have been in the hot seat just the same.

I notice you didn't address my final question. How would any revelations of this nature have affected the evidence that secured Hanratty's conviction - from Valerie's identification of a man with large icy blue eyes and the right blood group, to the cartridge cases in that man's hotel room and the same man's admitted porkies about his whereabouts on the murder night? How could he have been cleared of being the stick-up man who botched the original plan, if plan there was? I'm still missing something the prosecution should have revealed - or the defence could have revealed - that would have changed the story's ending.

Love,

Caz
X

[Natalie Severn]

But Nats, it wasn't up to the prosecution to introduce a speculative motive for the crime, based on the victims' love life. You say that 'the whole case falls into place and becomes a domestic tragedy' when that love life is exposed and picked over, but this is only a belief, no matter how many may have shared it at one time or another. There is no evidence as far as I can see for anyone in Janet's family being involved in a conspiracy to split the couple up, resulting in this horrendous crime, and motive is the very last thing one can demonstrate successfully without some sort of careless admission by the person(s) with that motive. And again, it was Hanratty on trial, on the evidence against him - nobody else.


X

It is not a 'belief' Caz.These are facts which were deliberately suppressed .It is not a matter of 'putting two and two together' and discovering the couple were having an affair as Nick suggests. Nobody,I repeat,nobody knew that Gregsten was about to leave the marital home just five days after the murder .Nobody knew he was about to abandon Janet his wife and had made preparations to leave the marital home in Abbots Langley and take a flat in Maidenhead instead on 27th August 1961.Such a dramatic move was a life changer for all concerned and given the impecunious state of Janet's finances and the fact she was unemployed and had two children under five to support undoubtedly would have meant her falling back on William Ewer and Janet's sister -as happened in the event of Gregsten's murder.
The flat Gregsten was about to move into is five minutes from The Bear Hotel - a place Alphon claimed he knew btw and in one of his confessions recalled its changed decor and according to Valerie's account was mentioned by the gunman .

All of the facts I have mentioned become strong cumulative evidence when examined alongside the complete lack of evidence that exists against Hanratty.I guess you are about to wave the 'Hanratty's snotty hanky' thing again -This is so absurd frankly -it could have been an effort to frame him or it could have simply been a hanky grabbed by France to avoid his own fingerprints being on the gun he himself had supplied to a hitman.It in no way whatever confirms Hanratty's guilt.
Mrs Dinwoodie, Mr Trevor Dutton ,Mrs Grace Jones and many others actually saw Hanratty in both Liverpool and Rhyl.If you can give me the name of one person from the populated area from the station, Bath Road or Marsh Lane who saw Hanratty walking over to the field across the busy intersection or the longish walk to Dorney Reach from the railway Station......or anyone who saw him anywhere near anywhere in the South East I may re-assess my take on all this. The absence of any such sighting stands in sharp contrast to the eleven people [at least] who believed they saw him in Rhyl and the four in Liverpool.JUst the name of one person-other than Valerie whose mistaken identification of Michael Clark tells us she could not remember what the gunman looked like.All Valerie was able to do ,remembering as she did that the man had a "cockney" i.e. East London accent was pick out the only man there was with a London accent on the parade -a man who actually had a [West ]London accent [they are quite a bit different] ,namely James Hanratty -and that was on her second attempt to identify her attacker .Not exactly rocket science though was it?

[Natalie Severn]

I notice you didn't address my final question. How would any revelations of this nature have affected the evidence that secured Hanratty's conviction - from Valerie's identification of a man with large icy blue eyes and the right blood group, to the cartridge cases in that man's hotel room and the same man's admitted porkies about his whereabouts on the murder night? How could he have been cleared of being the stick-up man who botched the original plan, if plan there was? I'm still missing something the prosecution should have revealed - or the defence could have revealed - that would have changed the story's ending.

Love,

Caz
X

Come off it Caz.
*Valerie identified Michael Clark-a heavily built bloke of 5ft 9ins ["heavily set'] with dark eyes [annotated evidence in Acott's notebook'] on her first identification-and as Gareth Peirce points out,only the first identification counts in a court of law today.Her identified man bore no resemblance whatever to the very slim , five feet seven and a half Hanratty.
*The right blood group? You mean the one shared by over 40% of the male population?
* you mean the cartridge cases that could have been planted there by big time criminal prosecution witness Nudds on 11th September the day he was sacked from the Vienna Hotel? Or might they have been planted there by the police who had them from the roadside on Deadman's Hill in order to implicate Alphon---Alphon's name being down in that missing Hotel Diary as it recorded Alphon had first been given Room 24-[btw its still missing and was last seen the day after the trial being collected by Oxford-Acott's bag man!!!]
Stick up man? Do tell me ----please----of any Marsh Lane residents or Dorney Reach residents or Lake End Road residents who are recorded as having come forward to say they had
a] seen
or
b]heard gunshots
of a person testing out his gun or practising shots?
Now that would be real evidence
But I think we will be waiting rather a long time for such evidence .....because from its bizarre beginning with chief porky teller and long time criminal Nudds who kept moving the goal posts and finally made it up as he went along to porky teller and long time criminal Langdale to porky note take tamperer Oxford and porky teller Acott and his 'mobile roadworks' near Hanratty's old house that Hanratty hadn't even been near for a month and so didn't actually exist and that phantom garage near Hanratty's home and the bewildered pump attendant who didn't know why he was called upon to tell porkies at all [ because of course as Valerie said the garage they stopped at was on the A4 near Heathrow Airport nowhere near Sudbury .Then of course there was the man with the withered hand who Hanratty described as such only to be told he had a false arm not a withered hand and worked in the Gents toilets at Lime Street not in the left luggage office and anyway Hanratty could not have got the earlier train from Euston because he could not have got there in time----except of course he could have got there by 2.20 and seen Mr Usher as he said because as Mr Usher told them he used to do overtime ! Boy ! were there some Prosecution Porkies! In point of fact the whole thing could have been described as a 'porky prosecution fest' or 'Porkie Galore' and of course the prosecuting porkies won by miles !

[caz]

It is not a 'belief' Caz.These are facts which were deliberately suppressed .

To what end, though Nats? You appear to be confusing those suppressed facts with your 'belief' that they not only provided a potential motive for a plan to split the couple up, but that this was the case; it all went horribly wrong; and the real gunman was someone other than Hanratty. Some evidence for this belief would be nice, before you accuse the prosecution of deliberately suppressing facts that could have materially altered their case against Hanratty and the jury's verdict.

It is not a matter of 'putting two and two together' and discovering the couple were having an affair as Nick suggests. Nobody,I repeat,nobody knew that Gregsten was about to leave the marital home just five days after the murder .Nobody knew he was about to abandon Janet his wife and had made preparations to leave the marital home in Abbots Langley and take a flat in Maidenhead instead on 27th August 1961.Such a dramatic move was a life changer for all concerned...

And the relevance of all this to the identity of the gunman who committed the crime, and the evidence for Hanratty as that gunman, is what, exactly?

All of the facts I have mentioned become strong cumulative evidence when examined alongside the complete lack of evidence that exists against Hanratty.

So a belief then.

I don't need to wave Hanratty's snotty hanky again, but I agree this whole conspiracy malarkey is absurd. It doesn't wash - like the hanky.

You have suggested they had Hanratty down as their intended scapegoat and primed the gunman accordingly, so his chatter would sound like Jim's. So did he also have large icy blue eyes, or did Valerie come up with this startlingly accurate description of Hanratty-the-Scapegoat's eyes by pure happenstance, before the police ever latched onto him?

Also there's the little thing about the rapist's blood group. Let's suppose the scapegoat was finally selected after Valerie's large icy blue-eyed man's description became public, so this was not left to chance. Let's be extra generous and suppose they knew the real rapist's blood group would be established as O. Group O is the most common single group, but considerably less than 50% of the population share it. But let's be ultra generous and suppose they had a pool of 10 potential scapegoats, all with the right large icy blue eyes that Valerie had described. They could still only expect 3 or 4 at most to have the right blood group by chance alone.

Not exactly rocket science did you say? Pull the other one, Nats. If Hanratty wasn't the gunman, he was the unluckiest man who ever existed.

Have a great weekend, though.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

-and as Gareth Peirce points out,only the firstidentification counts in a court of law today.

Are you sure this doesn't simply mean you can't change your mind and pick a second person out of the same parade? Hanratty wasn't in the first, so she couldn't have picked him out. Not her fault that he didn't appear until the second parade.

The fact remains that Hanratty's eyes did match her 'large icy blue eyes', which is rather unlikely to have happened by chance, if he was a scapegoat who bore little resemblance, including in the eye department, to the man who had actually raped her.

Love,

Caz
X

[Natalie Severn]

Are you sure this doesn't simply mean you can't change your mind and pick a second person out of the same parade? Hanratty wasn't in the first, so she couldn't have picked him out. Not her fault that he didn't appear until the second parade.

The fact remains that Hanratty's eyes did match her 'large icy blue eyes', which is rather unlikely to have happened by chance, if he was a scapegoat who bore little resemblance, including in the eye department, to the man who had actually raped her.

Love,

Caz
X

No Caz it does not.Here are her words:
The first description is vital.If a witness makes a positive identification of one individual ,no subsequent identification of a second is permissible.
Equivocation and uncertainty are not enough.
from Dispatches from the Dark Side Gareth Peirce 2010

[Natalie Severn]

The fact remains that Hanratty's eyes did match her 'large icy blue eyes', which is rather unlikely to have happened by chance, if he was a scapegoat who bore little resemblance, including in the eye department, to the man who had actually raped her.

Love,

Caz
X

If Valerie had been quite certain the man had these 'large icy blue eyes' then why did she contribute to an identikit on 26th August which clearly describes the man's eyes as dark whether their colour was actually brown,green or blue these are dark in tone and Valerie then went on to identify Michael Clark who also had dark eyes.

[Natalie Severn]

Caz,
I note that you have not contributed one single incontrovertible piece of evidence to support Hanratty's guilt.You say like then he was practising in a corn field -yet nobody saw anybody 'practising in this very visible cornfield from several houses,a farmhouse and from the nearby entrance to Eton College rowing club! So Its all very well you following the prosecution evidence to a letter---and asserting without any proof whatever that Hanratty was busy practising gun shots there -gunshots nobody ever heard -not a single one-and a Hanratty cowboy man nobody ever saw in any cornfield that day .Was he invisible then? Were the farmers who lived in a house in the very corn field stone deaf then? Were the passers by all hard of hearing as well as the people who lived in Marsh Lane? The prosecution evidence was all about moving goal posts -almost on a daily basis as I and numbers of others have factually demonstrated from the phantom roadworks to the falsified garage location to disappearing hotel diary entries to mis identification -and thats not even trying to explain the falsification of the witness statement at Blackpool discovered in the notes taken down and altered afterwards -notes taken on the night of Hanratty's arrest with no solicitor present .Is this ok with you?

As for motive-oh please Caz you know better than to try and pull that fast one! All detectives look for a domestic motive first ---except it would seem Basil Acott!

[Graham]

......is it safe for the rest of us to come out to play yet....?

Graham