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

[caz]

For the very simple reason Caz in that she said so.

Sherrard told the jury that Hanratty's eye colour was a much darker blue.

The plain fact of the matter is that Storie didn't have the faintest clue what the A6 murderer looked like anyway.

On these boards, it appears that every time Storie's identification is questioned, the goal posts are moved!

Hi Del,

Sorry, I must have missed where she actually said the gunman had pale blue eyes. But if she did say that, and you can give me the exact source, I can't for the life of me understand why the word 'icy' kept being used instead, since there can be no possible ambiguity with 'pale', can there?

If one talks about an icy sea, for example, one thinks of deep, freezing cold waters of a dark inky blue - not the pale aqua associated with warm summer shallows.

Funny that Sherrard had to tell the jury that Hanratty's eye colour was a 'much darker blue'. Could they not see for themselves, if Valerie described the gunman's as 'pale' (and not merely 'icy'), that the shade was not right for the man in the dock?

What is also funny is that I have just been reading on the other thread various comments made by Hanratty supporters that blue eyes cannot be 'dark' by any stretch of anyone's fertile imagination! So just how dark was 'much darker blue' meant to be, and if Hanratty's eyes were not pale in colour but 'much' darker, how does that help to make him innocent exactly?

Love,

Caz
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[caz]

Ok. Andrew Scott as Moriarty in Sherlock, doesn't have the darkest eyes and the iciest expression in them.

Oh come on, SH:

http://tinyurl.com/he5q5t7

Love,

Caz
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[caz]

I nearly forgot...

Remind me again when Valerie first claimed the gunman's eyes were blue. Was it before or after your blue-eyed boy entered police consciousness?

If it was before, then I submit that this obsessive clutching at pale, as opposed to any other, less pale shade of blue, is deliberately distracting from the point: whoever committed the crime had blue eyes according to the only surviving witness. So who do you favour as the culprit? And what colour eyes did he have?

Love,

Caz
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[Sherlock Houses]

Hi Del,
Sorry, I must have missed where she actually said the gunman had pale blue eyes. But if she did say that, and you can give me the exact source, I can't for the life of me understand why the word 'icy' kept being used instead, since there can be no possible ambiguity with 'pale', can there?

Derrick never mentioned "pale", it was you who did so, so why are you attributing to him something he didn't say ?

Incidentally Valerie Storie first mentioned the colour of the gunman's eyes on August 28th, a full 5 days after the murder. Her previous descriptions of the gunman's eyes only stated that they were large and staring. On August 26th she chose E49 coding for the eyes while helping Det-Sgt Mackle compile the ident-kit photo. E49 is the coding for DARK eyes.

Also she described the eyes on August 28th as ICY-BLUE ( couldn't resist impersonating SF there), no confusion at all about it. She was definitely not describing an "icy" expression whatever that may mean.

[NickB]

Valerie Storie first mentioned the colour of the gunman's eyes on August 28th

From the notes that James Mackle made on August 26th when he visited Valerie Storie to construct the Identikit picture:

1st page – "eyes blue, deep set"

5th page – "EYES - large blue eyes not sunken, flush with face"

[Sherlock Houses]

From the notes that James Mackle made on August 26th when he visited Valerie Storie to construct the Identikit picture:

1st page – "eyes blue, deep set"

5th page – "EYES - large blue eyes not sunken, flush with face"

Det-Sgt Mackle used E49 coding when he and Miss Storie compiled the famous identikit photo. E49 is the code for very dark eyes. The American inventor of the Identikit system, Hugh McDonald, helped train the UK police in the use of the system and he studied the said identikit photo. It was his expert opinion that E49 coding had been used in determining the eye colour. Had the eyes been a lighter colour a different code would have been used by Det-Sgt Mackle.

Just to reiterate, as this is very important, E49 coding represents very dark eyes .

This would help to explain why Valerie picked out the dark-eyed Michael Clark in the September 24th identification parade. And as has been mentioned more than once on this forum she understood fully that she shouldn't pick out anyone from the line-up unless she was sure he was the A6 gunman.

[Alfie]

So to recap: we have Mackle twice noting that Valerie said the killer's eyes were blue, and then Mackle for some reason using the E49 eyes, which apparently was code for "very dark."

And Jim's apologists want to ignore what Valerie actually said - twice - and go with the cop's formulation. Riiiiight

[gallicrow]

Identi-kit

There's an early example of an Identi-kit for sale on eBay at the moment:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/112147003802

As you can see, the different parts of the face that are printed on the sheets of acetate are in shades of gray.

It would seem natural that in addition to the picture created by the forensic artist and witness from the kit, extra information giving the hair and eye colour (and other, non-facial, characteristics) would have been necessary to include in the description of the person being sought.

Having said that, "very dark eyes" does imply brown or black to me, but perhaps VS chose e49 because the shape of the eye best matched what she remembered.

[Derrick]

On 24th January, Storie tells Swanwick two differing descriptions of the killers eyes.

Firstly she describes them as being;

very large, pale blue, staring icy eyes

when recounting her alleged only real glimpse.

Then, when saying how she first described the man's eyes to Kerr, she said;

he had large, blue, staring eyes

[moste]

So to recap: we have Mackle twice noting that Valerie said the killer's eyes were blue, and then Mackle for some reason using the E49 eyes, which apparently was code for "very dark."

And Jim's apologists want to ignore what Valerie actually said - twice - and go with the cop's formulation. Riiiiight

You may be overlooking the fact that when the police officer conducting the identikit process of matching the features of a suspect,he is doing so with full cooperation and guidance from the victim.
Or are you ,as I suspect ,speaking with a d21 tongue planted firmly in a y45 cheek!

[moste]

From the notes that James Mackle made on August 26th when he visited Valerie Storie to construct the Identikit picture:

1st page – "eyes blue, deep set"

5th page – "EYES - large blue eyes not sunken, flush with face"

Well I believe that's quite a surprising coincidense , because we have Superintendent Morgan from Biggleswade giving the best description available (to the world) (not to mention brown)"eyes deep set/'not very deep set" from the scene,three days earlier. Something funny here!

[moste]

When it comes right down to it,

Storie had absolutely no idea what the guy in the back seat looked like.

Her identikit picture looked nothing like Hanratty at all .

Her first choice of Michael Clark looked nothing like Hanratty at all.

She took an age to pick out what she thought was her assailants voice,

In the end she decided on someone who sounded the most like a cockney,

Her descriptive efforts were rubbish, she even said that the killer was

slightly taller than herself ("and I am" 5' 3 1\2") Hanratty was 5'7" to 5'8".

This meant she would have only come up to the bridge of his nose!

[Spitfire]

When it comes right down to it,

Storie had absolutely no idea what the guy in the back seat looked like.

Her identikit picture looked nothing like Hanratty at all .

Her first choice of Michael Clark looked nothing like Hanratty at all.

She took an age to pick out what she thought was her assailants voice,

In the end she decided on someone who sounded the most like a cockney,

Her descriptive efforts were rubbish, she even said that the killer was

slightly taller than herself ("and I am" 5' 3 1\2") Hanratty was 5'7" to 5'8".

This meant she would have only come up to the bridge of his nose!

And she didn't notice that:

1. Hanratty wasn't in the car at all;

2. Hanratty was wearing a plastic suit with rubber buttons and/or Velcro fastenings.

What has all this got to with the attack on the "Swedish" Mrs Dalal who in fact happens to have been (and still is) German?

Other than Mrs D's assailant's self proclamation that he was the A6 (or Essex) Killer, this incident seems to have little or no relevance to Gregsten's murder.

As I understand it, the Hanratty lobby's argument is that the evidence which points to Hanratty, gun on bus in Jim's hankie and spent cartridges in Room 24, was manufactured to implicate the hapless Jim etc., and was part of an elaborate conspiracy to protect Alphon. Yet the very same Alphon, who ex hypothesi must be regarded as part of that conspiracy, is going round the country advertising that he is the A6 killer.

Hanratty, who murdered Gregsten, was not a full schilling, or five new pence as we would later call it. The person who attacked Mrs D likewise was a bit of a nutter, but in a country of over 50 million souls there will be no shortage of criminally minded fruitcakes.

[Derrick]

As I understand it, the Hanratty lobby's argument is that the evidence which points to Hanratty, gun on bus in Jim's hankie and spent cartridges in Room 24, was manufactured to implicate the hapless Jim etc., and was part of an elaborate conspiracy to protect Alphon. Yet the very same Alphon, who ex hypothesi must be regarded as part of that conspiracy, is going round the country advertising that he is the A6 killer.

Well, as far as I understand it about this lobby thing it is you who are wrong.

I, for one, believe wholeheartedly that Hanratty had nothing whatsoever to do with the A6 murder. Neither do I believe that Alphon had any involvement.

I am perhaps, foolishly, basing my beliefs on all of the facts of the case, taken together (in the round if you like).

There is no evidence against Hanratty that cannot be plausibly explained by another scenario, especially the gun and room 24.

[caz]

Derrick never mentioned "pale", it was you who did so, so why are you attributing to him something he didn't say ?

This is the sequence of relevant posts:

Valerie's description was "icy blue large saucer-like eyes". Nothing about them being pale or pale blue.

Nobody leapt in at that point to contradict Alfie.

James Hanratty had neither icy blue, pale blue or even faded blue eyes. He had normal blue eyes like almost half of the UK population.
It must be obvious to the vast majority of folk what icy blue eyes means.......

Just in case anyone besides yourself is in any doubt about the colour of icy blue eyes I'll let the Collins English dictionary say something......

Hi SH,

How are you so sure she meant the shade of blue was icy, as in pale...?

Then Del leapt in to answer my question to you:

For the very simple reason Caz in that she said so...

I then asked for a source for her actually 'saying so' (ie using the word 'pale'), not caring who might be able to provide one. But I figured it wouldn't be you because you went to all the trouble and sarcasm of finding and posting that Collins definition to argue that icy eyes equate to pale coloured eyes, when you could simply have quoted Valerie 'saying so' in her own words.

Now - finally - Del has mentioned 'pale' and offers a source for Valerie saying so as late as January 24th. Better than nothing I suppose.

This still leaves the question of how much darker blue Hanratty's eyes were supposed to be, or could have been. And why some of those who have very little good to say about the police at the time are happy with the copper who got his 'deep set' and 'not deep set' in a mucking fuddle and won't have it that he could just as easily have misreported Valerie's 'blue' as 'brown'.

So almost half of the population are blue-eyed, while O is the most common blood group. That leaves a majority without blue eyes and of a blood group other than O. Enter the blue-eyed, O-blooded 'Jim', who is supposedly the victim of a set-up, whether deliberately targeted by criminal associates or randomly picked on by the police to fit the crime. Yet Valerie describes blue eyes before she could know Hanratty's eye colour and apparently without having a clue what the man who raped her and left his O group semen on her underwear looked like?

The hankie, bearing Hanratty's DNA, connects him directly or indirectly with the crime. If he was not the gunman and rapist, the hankie tells us he must have had close links with the man who was. But that person - if he had existed - could have had no right to think he had left his surviving victim clueless about his appearance; no right to expect her to describe blue eyes if she was clueless about their real colour; and no right to hope she would pick out the innocent man whose hankie had been deliberately planted on the bus with the murder weapon, let alone express lifelong certainty about the identification. Lastly, he could not have imagined in 1961 that a snotty hankie would be any more use than Valerie in setting up Hanratty's downfall. No use at all, in fact, so what would the point of taking it and planting it with the gun have been?

Love,

Caz
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