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

[Natalie Severn]

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

Graham

ha ha ha!

[cobalt]

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

Not if Caz's elimination waltz logic regarding ID parades is to be reintroduced into law. You might find yourself fingered in an ID parade at the 7th time of asking.

Caz says: 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.

This is quite an alarming interpretation of the events. First of all, it has been clearly established on this site that Ms Storie was clearly instructed that she was under no obligation to pick out a person at the parade. Had she been uncertain and picked out nobody at the first parade then, I concede, that would have made her ID of Hanratty much stronger.

But the fact of the matter is she DID pick someone out at the first parade. And there is no point in saying 'It wasn't her fault' because it clearly was. It was her fault and hers alone if she IDd an innocent member of the public. The police conducted the first parade under the regulations of the time and made it clear she was under no obligation to pick anyone out? How could it be their fault?

The ID of Hanratty is entirely worthless, as worthless as his cell confession or the statements of Nudds. Valerie Storie acted honestly no doubt, but her evidence is as useless as that presented by that pair of notorious liars.

[Spitfire]

And of course Acott's ability to determine the precise age of the man picked out by Miss Storie must excite the suspicion of even the most excitable of strawman conspiracy theorists.

Perhaps slightly off topic,
But why is Acott so precise in the dating of the suspect (7.12.35.) I consider myself, at my advanced years, as a reasonable judge of a person's age, but I could never be as precise at Acott.

Was he suggesting some horoscope significance? 7.12.35 is very precise, ludicrously so. From photos most of us, of a certain age perhaps and aware of fashions at the time, would put Hanratty in his early 20s and Alphon in his late 20s early 30s. You could hardly be more exact than that.

[cobalt]

Hello Spitfire,

You are entitled to repeat an earlier post made by me, one in which I mistakenly assumed Acott was referring to the suspect described by Valerie Storie rather than an actual member of the ID parade.

However I did fairly quickly acknowledge my error. That is a matter of record on this site. You are free to quote that as well.

If you are deciding to argue ad hominem then that has got to be a good sign for those of us who challenge the case against James Hanratty.

[Spitfire]

Hello Spitfire,

You are entitled to repeat an earlier post made by me, one in which I mistakenly assumed Acott was referring to the suspect described by Valerie Storie rather than an actual member of the ID parade.

However I did fairly quickly acknowledge my error. That is a matter of record on this site. You are free to quote that as well.

If you are deciding to argue ad hominem then that has got to be a good sign for those of us who challenge the case against James Hanratty.

Cobalt,

You made a mistake. It is difficult to see how you could make such a mistake but you are human and humans make mistakes.

Valerie Storie is also human and she too made a mistake when she identified Clark in the first parade.

Miss Storie's mistake graphically illustrated the dangers of relying on eye witness identification evidence. Mr Sherrard deployed her mistake (in identifying Clark) both in his cross-examination and in his speech to the jury. Gorman J would likewise have warned the jury of the dangers of identification evidence.

We do not know how much weight the jury placed on Miss Storie's eye witness identification of Hanratty but we should be assured that all valid points against it were put before them.

For the sake of completeness, I quote (1) the post of Sherlock Houses (the attachment gives the date of 7 December 1935) on which you made your mistaken comment (2) your mistaken comment and (3) your apology.

Attached is Basil Acott's description of Michael Clark. It is an extract taken from page 174 of his notebook. You will notice how he has emphasised Clark's dark eyes feature by underlining it. Acott made sure he didn't slip up at the Bedford trial by leaking to the court, jury and judge the fact that Michael Clark was dark-eyed.

Perhaps slightly off topic,
But why is Acott so precise in the dating of the suspect (7.12.35.) I consider myself, at my advanced years, as a reasonable judge of a person's age, but I could never be as precise at Acott.

Was he suggesting some horoscope significance? 7.12.35 is very precise, ludicrously so. From photos most of us, of a certain age perhaps and aware of fashions at the time, would put Hanratty in his early 20s and Alphon in his late 20s early 30s. You could hardly be more exact than that.

Apologies for my misreading of Acott's description which I initially thought was in relation to a general suspect, rather than for a particular member of an ID parade.

[cobalt]

Thank you Spitfire for observing the proprieties of the site. I was wrong as you indicate and I acknowledged that clumsy error as quickly as I could. We are all prey to fitting the facts according to our theory, and the value of this site is that anything we say is tested by an opposing view. Long may that continue.

From memory, I seem to remember that you were at one time sceptical regarding Hanratty’s guilt, but then moved towards the prosecution case. There may be good reasons for this, and it would be a foolish man who refused to change his view in light of the weight of evidence. My own view regarding Ewer’s bizarre ID of Hanratty has been tempered by this site, albeit not absolutely changed.

However as you suggest, the ID evidence of Ms Storie is far from secure, and her mistake may unfortunately have had far greater ramifications than mine as a mere armchair jurist.

[Ed James]

October 12th 1961 was the date Michael Gregsten's probate will was disclosed.
His personal effects amounted to a tidy £3,269.

Sherlock

A tidy sum indeed for a man that rented the marital home, was driving a car owned by his aunt (having sold his own car to raise money) and according to a number of different sources (including Valerie) was always in financial difficulties. Janet had even sold his beloved piano to raise funds.

To gauge the value of his estate, £2,530 is quoted as the average house price in the 1960s.

So what was the source of his estate? Presumably life insurance - with possibly double indemnity for a violent death ! Though not sure if this was a feature of British insurance policies. I suspect his mother in her overbearing concern maintained the premiums.

Or were his mother and aunt foolish enough to advance him money to start a new chapter in his life - either with Janet (of whom they did not have much regard) or Valerie. I doubt it.

ATB

Ed

[Derrick]

...Presumably life insurance...

Hi Ed

I support that source as being most likely. As you say he was profligate with money, among other things.

El Del

[NickB]

I think anyone taking out a life insurance policy for Mike would have been advised to name Janet as the beneficiary so that the money would have gone straight to her upon his death - rather than going into his estate and being subject to delay, creditors and death duty.

[caz]

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

A woman called Gareth? Interesting.

But if she is only referring to a single identity parade (where the witness is obviously not permitted to make more than one positive identification, as it would show equivocation and uncertainty), it's not irrelevant to Valerie's situation, because she made the second positive identification at a second parade, featuring a different suspect and new volunteers. If that wasn't permissible, there could have been no second parade, could there?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

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.

I don't know, Nats. I don't know she was quite certain. What I do know is that she was hardly likely to come up with that description by pure chance, and stick with it, if it applied to a scapegoat chosen beforehand, and if the actual gunman's eyes were really as dark as Newgate's knocker. Let's focus on the odds of Hanratty working as a scapegoat from start to finish.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Caz,
I note that you have not contributed one single incontrovertible piece of evidence to support Hanratty's guilt.

The 2002 appeal judgement does all the work for me, Nats. The onus is entirely on you to dispute it with one single incontrovertible piece of evidence to demonstrate that Hanratty was elsewhere at the time and his DNA was cooked up, planted or misidentified, or only present on the victim's underwear by some vanishingly unlikely contamination event, while the rapist's DNA did an equally unlikely vanishing trick.

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?

Where did I suggest the gunman was busy practising shots in the area before the hold-up? The gunman wasn't seen in the cornfield; he wasn't seen approaching the couple; he wasn't seen all the time he was with his victims, whoever he was. That doesn't make him invisible, or the stuff of Valerie's imagination. He raped her, he shot them both and she described a man with Hanratty's eyes and blood group, and recognised his voice from the hours he spent talking to her in that car.

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!

But looking is not the same as finding. And motive can only finally be established when you have your man - and often not even then. Since there was nobody with a domestic motive who could have been prosecuted for the murder itself, what do you suggest they should have done? How could they have let Hanratty go, even if they were convinced the motive was domestic? The rapist and gunman's motive (whether Alphon, Hanratty or A.N.Other) would not have been domestic anyway if he was simply hired to frighten the couple into separation, so how would that have affected the case against Hanratty?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

But the fact of the matter is she DID pick someone out at the first parade. And there is no point in saying 'It wasn't her fault' because it clearly was. It was her fault and hers alone if she IDd an innocent member of the public. The police conducted the first parade under the regulations of the time and made it clear she was under no obligation to pick anyone out? How could it be their fault?

Please don't misrepresent me, cobalt. What I said was that it was not Valerie's fault that Hanratty didn't appear until the second parade.

The jury was aware that she had picked out a volunteer from the first parade and the fact remains she did not pick out the suspect on that occasion, Alphon. If all you Hanratty defenders were really so concerned about the rules and regulations of fair play, Alphon should have ceased being a suspect in your eyes from that moment on. If Valerie had similarly failed to pick out Hanratty from that second parade, you'd rightly have the screaming ab-dabs if he was still being fingered today as the more likely killer. How can none of you seem to see the double standard here regarding the outcome of both id parades?

It was entirely Hanratty's fault that he lied about his whereabouts and then admitted lying by changing his alibi. Had he stuck with the Liverpool lie, or said he was in Rhyl to begin with and stuck with that instead, it is quite possible that the jury would have given him the benefit of the doubt, coupled with Valerie picking out someone from the first parade when Hanratty was not present. The judge warned the jury about the doubt issue, so they could not have had any, arguably thanks to nobody but Hanratty himself.

That was not Valerie's fault either.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

But if she is only referring to a single identity parade (where the witness is obviously not permitted to make more than one positive identification, as it would show equivocation and uncertainty), it's not irrelevant to Valerie's situation, because she made the second positive identification at a second parade, featuring a different suspect and new volunteers. If that wasn't permissible, there could have been no second parade, could there?

Sorry, I meant it's not relevant...

[Ed James]

I think anyone taking out a life insurance policy for Mike would have been advised to name Janet as the beneficiary so that the money would have gone straight to her upon his death - rather than going into his estate and being subject to delay, creditors and death duty.

Hi Nick

Well spotted. You are right.

A surviving beneficiary of a life insurance policy receives the life insurance proceeds directly outside of probate and out of reach of the deceased creditors. I assume that was the law then,as now.

This suggests that Janet was not a designated beneficiary if as I have assumed the estate was largely made up of life insurance payments. Similarly, if his mother was a designated beneficiary she would have received the sum outside of probate too.

That leaves two possibilities: first, there were no designated beneficiaries for the life insurance policy ;or secondly, the estate did not involve any life insurance entitlement.

Does it matter? Well, if life insurance , then those who speculate about a deliberate assassination (not me) may suggest this provides a (further) motive. And you might question if ,or why not, the police apparently did seek to establish who financially benefitted from Mike Gregsten's death.

And if not life insurance source, then the apparently impecunious civil servant had inexplicable' access' to sizeable financial assets. Were Janet or Valerie aware of this?

ATB

Ed