Valerie Storie's 3 part story as published in 'Today' magazine, June 1962

[Natalie Severn]

The only Alexander Baron I'd ever heard of was an author, mostly about his experiences during WW2. I did have a look at the other Baron's Twitter page, and he strikes me as a self-styled political commentator with strong views. He and his comments mean nowt to me.

Graham

Alexander Baron the author you first refer to died in 1999 -so long before 2002/ 2005 whatever-he could hardly have commented posthumously .I refer to the only named person so far linked to the quote ,the Alexander Baron who was fined for writing the scurrilous material I quoted above in 1997.He remains so far the only name linked to a report about Michael Sherrard's alleged remark .I am in the process of writing to someone who knew Sherrard well and will see what they have to say.
Regards

[Natalie Severn]

Thanks SH-as I said to Graham I am in the process of following this up in an effort to clarify the matter.

I find it rather strange and puzzling that Mr Sherrard makes no reference to this alleged remark of his in "Wigs and Wherefores".

According to two posts from Graham on the Mrs Dalal thread, namely 288 and 290, this alleged address took place either on February 12th 2005 or February 22nd 2005, which conflicts with Spitfire's claim that it took place sometime during 2002 before November 8th at some girl's school where he assumes that a Law Society existed. Spitfire assumes a lot I might add. I can find absolutely no evidence that this school has or ever had any law society.

It's a very vague and threadbare Internet article, the first sentence of which states that Michael Sherrard.... "came to City to talk to members of the Law Society". Came to City ??? Which City for goodness sake ? Did Sherrard visit the Etihad Stadium ? Was he a City fan perhaps ? No definite article used there. Author anon, no comeback there is there ? Says it all.

I'd take it all with the proverbial pinch of salt.

[NickB]

It's a very vague and threadbare Internet article, the first sentence of which states that Michael Sherrard.... "came to City to talk to members of the Law Society". Came to City ??? Which City for goodness sake ?

The news pages on the school’s website are deleted after a while.

This is the oldest news page currently.

You will note that the school is called ‘City’ for short. For example: “the managing director of Europe Economics came to City to talk to the Economics students ...”

You will also see that there is a report called ‘Helen Dunmore Visits The Literary Society’. So why would it be strange for a report about Michael Sherrard visiting the Law Society?

The address I was trying to link to above is:

http://www.clsg.org.uk/news/?pid=0&nid=1&page=17

[Dupplin Muir]

To me the phrase 'The wrong man was not hanged' sounds strange as a stand-alone sentence. It seems more like the end of a longer sentence. Perhaps Sherrard said something like "I know that many people think that the wrong man was not hanged, but I disagree'. Like a dishonest theatre-manager might turn an unfavourable review into a favourable one, whoever wrote the article simply cut out the words that didn't fit his agenda.

[moste]

To me the phrase 'The wrong man was not hanged' sounds strange as a stand-alone sentence. It seems more like the end of a longer sentence. Perhaps Sherrard said something like "I know that many people think that the wrong man was not hanged, but I disagree'. Like a dishonest theatre-manager might turn an unfavourable review into a favourable one, whoever wrote the article simply cut out the words that didn't fit his agenda.

Or DM. Sherrard may well have been giving an explanation to a class of students,a body of would be solicitors,or even an after dinner speech, where, he was explaining how 'there are various ways of making a statement of fact, whereby some statements may be much more ambiguous than others'. I have compared this phrase in the past "the wrong man wasn't hanged' (which I wouldn't think could sensibly be attributed to a person with a legal background, let alone a barrister of high repute) with the more direct phrase 'the right man was hanged' In this latter phrase,there is no room for misinterpretation, however the former phrase is more like a double negative,where we could say 'Alphon was the wrong man,and wasn't hanged', or' France was the wrong man and wasn't hanged'.
I can't see this business being worthy of serious debate to be honest. It would be interesting to see what Natalie comes up with all the same.

[moste]

Spitfire,
I see you are jumping from one thing to another to avoid addressing the trustworthiness of the source of this alleged remark attributed to Michael Sherrard .The source has been identified as Alexander Baron the man described in the following statement.It is clearly bogus .

Yes Natalie, It sounds like somebody is bordering on the 'straw man argument' attributed in reason weeks to members of the 'Hanratty did it platoon!'

[Spitfire]

Yes Natalie, It sounds like somebody is bordering on the 'straw man argument' attributed in reason weeks to members of the 'Hanratty did it platoon!'

I am not sure what this means, but as Natalie Severn is keen to establish that someone called Alexander Baron was the 'source' of the 'wrong man was not hanged' piece, I am happy to contradict that for reasons already given.

If it then be said that I am bordering on the straw man argument attributed in reason weeks to members of the Hanratty did it platoon, then so be it.

[OneRound]

Thanks SH-as I said to Graham I am in the process of following this up in an effort to clarify the matter.

Hi Natalie,

As your post above is from 30th October this year, I assume you have not received an immediate and adamant rebuttal of the comment attributed to Sherrard that ''the wrong man was not hanged''.

Regards,
OneRound

[caz]

To me the phrase 'The wrong man was not hanged' sounds strange as a stand-alone sentence. It seems more like the end of a longer sentence. Perhaps Sherrard said something like "I know that many people think that the wrong man was not hanged, but I disagree'. Like a dishonest theatre-manager might turn an unfavourable review into a favourable one, whoever wrote the article simply cut out the words that didn't fit his agenda.

Or DM. Sherrard may well have been giving an explanation to a class of students,a body of would be solicitors,or even an after dinner speech, where, he was explaining how 'there are various ways of making a statement of fact, whereby some statements may be much more ambiguous than others'. I have compared this phrase in the past "the wrong man wasn't hanged' (which I wouldn't think could sensibly be attributed to a person with a legal background, let alone a barrister of high repute) with the more direct phrase 'the right man was hanged' In this latter phrase,there is no room for misinterpretation, however the former phrase is more like a double negative,where we could say 'Alphon was the wrong man,and wasn't hanged', or' France was the wrong man and wasn't hanged'.
I can't see this business being worthy of serious debate to be honest. It would be interesting to see what Natalie comes up with all the same.

Straw man, or clutching at straws?

Surely to goodness, if either of the above 'interpretations' applied, or had Sherrard not said anything of the kind, because he still believed the wrong man was hanged, he would have set the record straight if he cared a fig about Hanratty's family and doing right by them. I see nothing odd about the phrase, particularly as Sherrard allegedly used it in the context of his immense relief to know that the wrong man had not been hanged. In fact, I can't see any other reasonable alternative if he did express his personal relief.

I too would be interested to hear if and when Nats receives any response to her enquiry.

Love,

Caz
X

PS I've just seen there's a more recent thread discussing the response Nats received, so please ignore my final sentence.

[a_baron]

"In December 1997 Alexander Baron who wrote the following article you quote, was charged with Violations of the Malicious Communications Act and fined by a Magistrates Court in London in 1998 on the charge of sending anti-semitic leaflets to Jewish Courts and to Police Stations.[and for other similar offences besides ]."

This is simply not true. Get your facts straight before you write anything about me because I always bite back.

[louisa]

The wrong man was hanged. Hanratty could NOT have been guilty of these crimes because the timeline doesn't add up. He couldn't have been in two places at once.

Reading anybody's autobiography is a waste of time because an autobio is self serving and only tells us the good things that the author wishes us to know about themselves. The facts will always be biased and readers must always remember that.

As we now know from plentiful research - eye witness accounts are the least reliable evidence.

Storie's original description of the man who raped and shot her was of a totally different man to the one she described later. Are we really to believe that, over time, Storie's memory improved? Yes, she would have remembered more details, but a face shape, hair colour and style - would they really have changed so dramatically? She originally described a man who looked exactly like Peter Alphon - the polar opposite, lookswise - of Hanratty.

Once she had mis-identified Alphon in the ill-fated line-up then he had immunity and went free, and the detective HAD to find after another man - the public were clamouring that the culprit be caught.

There is more to this story than we know. I believe that Gregson's wife (and her lover) had a hand in the whole thing. Valerie Storie's eye witness ID changed once the wife had visited her in hospital.

Far from having courage - Storie went with the 'plot' and the truth became buried forever.

Everyone will feel sorry for a person who is crippled - but her description of that night and of her attacker became the most crippled part of this horrendous miscarriage of justice.

[caz]

The wrong man was hanged. Hanratty could NOT have been guilty of these crimes because the timeline doesn't add up. He couldn't have been in two places at once.

Hi Louisa,

Well he couldn't have been in Liverpool and Rhyl, and somewhere between the two, at the same time, I'll grant you that.

As we now know from plentiful research - eye witness accounts are the least reliable evidence.

Which would of course explain why the timings and fine details given by the Rhyl 'witnesses' were incompatible with Hanratty's own account. This is presumably why his own defence chose not to use their 'evidence' in 2002 to try and establish he was indeed in Rhyl on the crucial night.

If the Rhyl witnesses were only shown a photo of Hanratty and were asked if this was the man they saw, it would only have made matters worse. At least Valerie had the dubious advantage (!?) of spending several hours in the car with the gunman, up close and personal, listening to him rabbiting on before being forced into the most intimate physical contact with him. Then not too long afterwards she saw and heard Hanratty in the flesh and declared herself certain this was the same man who had raped her. There is no comparison between this and any of those well-meaning, but unreliable and ultimately impotent folk from Rhyl. The mere fact that Hanratty himself had so little faith in anyone being able to put him in Rhyl, that he initially plumped for a fictional overnight stay in Liverpool, tells its own story.

She originally described a man who looked exactly like Peter Alphon...

But Valerie failed to recognise Alphon and picked out someone else, whose photo has never to my knowledge been published. It would be puzzling indeed if the two men were dead ringers for each other. Did the police never think this could cause the witness confusion at best, and lose them their prime suspect at worst?

Far from having courage - Storie went with the 'plot' and the truth became buried forever.

Everyone will feel sorry for a person who is crippled - but her description of that night and of her attacker became the most crippled part of this horrendous miscarriage of justice.

Poor Valerie. Didn't she suffer enough at the time, without her name being dragged through the mud, fourteen years after the appeal process examined her identification of Hanratty and found it sound beyond reasonable doubt? If just one of the supposed Rhyl sightings had been sound, why did Hanratty's defence team fail him so miserably by not bringing the evidence to the table for the appeal?

Love,

Caz
X

[NickB]

Hanratty came up with the Rhyl alibi on 29-Jan-62 when Sherrard got him to sign the disclaimer letter asking his defence to “try to find the landlady in the house there”. A full week went by before they started doing this. Did they spend this time trying to persuade him out of it?

Three doors down from Ingeldene was a betting shop. Betting shops were a novelty in the summer of 1961 as they had only been allowed since May. The one in Kiinmel Street had a sign outside showing a jockey’s cap and a whip. The sign was lit up at night and would have been seen by Hanratty when he arrived at Ingledene and provided a guide for him when he returned on the second night.

The 1966 Panorama narrator says: ‘Near the railway station, a few doors from a betting shop, he said, there was a boarding house where he found a room.’ But the part of Hanratty’s evidence where he describes the guest house location was reported in the newspapers and does not include anything as specific as it being a few doors from a betting shop.

In fact it was Ingeldene’s landlady Grace Jones who told the court about the betting shop. Swanwick asked her to specify what a visitor to Ingledene would have seen. The point of him doing this was to demonstrate to the jury that Hanratty had not mentioned the two most obvious landmarks - the Windsor Hotel directly opposite and the betting shop three doors down.

[NickB]

Also ...

If he was in Ingledene, in which room did Hanratty stay on 22-Aug-61? All the legitimate rooms were taken by other guests.

The landlady Grace Jones told the trial he stayed in room 4. Swanwick called for Joe Sayle to be brought into court. Sayle testified that he had occupied room 4 from 21-Aug to 24-Aug. Then Jones was asked who she now thought was the single man in Room 4. She looked towards Hanratty and said “I recognised him to be that gentleman there.”

The jury had a straight choice of whom to believe: Jones or Sayle.

Joe Sayle was a communist party activist who worked as a British Railways guard. He was in Rhyl on business as secretary of the Liverpool and North Wales District Council of the NUR. Not exactly a member of the Establishment.

Grace Jones kept up the ‘room 4’ story on the 1966 Panorama programme. The following year, in the Nimmo enquiry, someone must have finally persuaded her (perhaps Nimmo himself) that this was contradicted by Sayle’s evidence. Then she said if Hanratty had stayed at Ingledene that week it must have been in the green bathroom. However this was also untenable because Hanratty said his bedroom was at the back of the guest house, whereas the green bathroom was at the front.

Woffinden’s solution was that Hanratty stayed in the green bathroom on the first night and then a back room which became available on the second night.

But look at what Hanratty said about his room in the context of his arrival at the guest house:

“I went up a flight of stairs and it was on the second floor and it was a back room.”

And again ...

“Well it was dark when I eventually entered the house and I did not draw the curtains because it was a back room.”

He did not just say he stayed in a back room, but in a back room on the first night.

So the question remains: if Hanratty was in Ingledene, in which room could he have possibly stayed on 22-Aug?

[Graham]

Louisa's post simply trots out many of the old, tired arguments that Hanratty's supporters have resorted to almost from the outset. No point in going over all of what she says here, but I'll make a couple of brief comments:

1] if JH really had stayed at Ingledene, than why was he not able to give his defence a clear description of where it was located? Had he really been there, he must have seen the betting-shop sign and the pub. Gillbanks was obliged to scurry all over Rhyl before landing on Ingledene and a compliant and helpful Mrs Jones. JH was definitely in Rhyl in the July, but absolutely nowhere near the place on August 22.

2] Trevor Dutton said he was approached by a man answering, or so he claimed, JH's description, who was selling a watch. Unfortunately JH never mentioned this incident to his defence, which wasn't known about until Mr Dutton himself contacted the police. Whoever tried to see him a watch, it wasn't James Hanratty.

3] Valerie described a man who looked exactly like Peter Alphon? There are numerous photos of Alphon on the internet, and examining these gives one the eerie impression that no two photos of Alphon showed precisely the same man; as if he had the ability to change his facial features at will. This is not fanciful on my part, and in fact has been mentioned before on these boards. If you don't believe me, get Googling! And then tell me which of all these photos depicts the Peter Alphon described by Valerie!

Graham

PS: good to see the A6 discussion starting up again.