By Michael Bourke (Uncle of Barry George & Michelle Diskin Bates) taken from the book ‘Mikes Story’
“I designed a lea flet and Mick made up a prototype which I then got printed. The leaflet described Barry as a proud Englishman with Welsh Irish roots. He was described as not a devil, not a saint, but perhaps a Scapegoat. It then pointed to some shortcomings of the jury, and there followed a description of the case against Barry, and the scant forensic evidence. It also contained a list of people who felt or expressed CONCERN at the safety of Barry’s conviction. Eventually I had a short list, small in number but impressive in quality. The list consisted of Willie O Dea, TD. John McDonnell, MP. Professor Tim Valentine. Jim Nichol, Solicitor. John Witzenfeld. Solicitor. Pat Reynolds, Chairman IBRG. Dr Chris R Tame, Director Libertarian Alliance. Billy Power and Paddy Hill. (Birmingham Six) Andy Parr. (Cricket writer) Paul Foot, Journalist. Later I would get a few more names. They were Jeremy Corbyn, MP. John McManus, MOJO. LA Naylor, author of HOW MANY ARE INNOCENT. Senator Labhras O Murchu. Professor Elizabeth Loftus, ‘Memory expert’ who was concerned at witnesses recollections. Seamus Healy TD. Dan Neville TD. The leaflet ended with information on our website and a request for concerned people to write to their local politician or MEP, and a mention of Martin Jeremiah and his album Day Off For The Queen. I planned to distribute some at the London Saint Patrick’s Day Festival in March. I also sent some to politicians, the Home Office etc. Michelle phoned to tell me that she would also be in London, as MOJO were holding a public meeting in the House of Commons. I was not invited which I thought was a pity as we could perhaps have distributed some more of the leaflets.
In August 1992 Peter Dunn published an article in the Independent with the header,
Hanratty 'confessed his guilt' to RAF corporal“JAMES HANRATTY confessed to committing the A6 murder in 1961 and boasted that the police would never be able to prove he did it, according to a new witness.
The claim coincides with a fresh initiative, by lawyers representing Hanratty's family, calling on the Home Office to reopen the case.
Hanratty, who protested his innocence to the end, was executed in April 1962 for the murder of Michael Gregsten in a lay-by on the A6 the previous August. Gregsten's girlfriend, Valerie Storie, was raped, shot and left for dead at the same time.
A book by Paul Foot, Who Killed Hanratty?, produced witnesses in 1971 who maintained that Hanratty was in Rhyl, north Wales, on the night of the shootings. In April this year, in Hanratty: Mystery of Dead Man's Hill, a documentary for Yorkshire TV, the film-maker Bob Woffinden called for DNA tests to be carried out to establish the true identity of the murderer.
Now, to the dismay of the pro- Hanratty lobby, a former RAF police corporal has come forward with an account of a conversation he says he had with Hanratty at RAF Halton near Wendover, Buckinghamshire, in late 1961. John Needham, now 65 and a security guard at a country club outside Bath, says he was duty NCO in the guardroom on the night Hanratty was brought in to attend an identity parade.
'We stood in the rear of the guardroom and I asked him if he'd like a cigarette and a cup of coffee,' he said. 'We were just chatting. I asked him what he thought his chances were and he replied, 'They know I did it. I know I did it, but I don't think they can prove it. It's not up to me to help them'.
'After 30 years I can't remember anything else about the conversation except that it was very brief.
'He was quite openly cocky about it, very bumptious. I think he looked on it at the time as a bit of a game he was playing.'
Mr Needham gives a number of reasons for not revealing the conversation at the time - including distrust of the civilian police, forged by his own experience as a constable with the Wiltshire force, and preoccupation at the time with personal problems involving the break-up of his marriage.
He says he decided to go public when he saw a newspaper article complaining about miscarriages of justices and citing as an example the Hanratty case. 'I thought: 'God, is this never going to stop?' They all seemed to be talking from their own personal point of view, flogging it to death and I thought: 'At least I spoke to the man'.'
Mr Foot dismisses Mr Needham's evidence as absolute nonsense. 'There's no conceivable way Hanratty could have incriminated himself in this way,' he said. 'There's not one single example anywhere of him saying he'd had anything to do with the killing. We've 14 witnesses, including whole numbers of people who were not at the trial, who showed that Hanratty was in Rhyl.'Geoffrey Bindman, the solicitor representing Hanratty's mother and brother in the latest call for a judicial review, is equally dismissive. 'It's hard to understand why it's not already been accepted that Hanratty was not the murderer,' he said. 'The evidence against him was so full of holes. Frankly, the subsequent inquiry in 1975 was quite unsatisfactory.'
He said Mr Needham's story contained many absurdities, and he regretted that the Independent was giving it publicity.
More:https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/hanratty-confessed-his-guilt-to-raf-corporal-1541371.html
DNA proves Hanratty guilt 'beyond doubt'SCIENTIFIC evidence establishes "beyond doubt" that James Hanratty was the man who committed the notorious A6 murder more than 40 years ago, the Court of Appeal ruled yesterday.
Dismissing Hanratty's posthumous appeal, three judges headed by Lord Woolf, the Lord Chief Justice, said there was "overwhelming proof of the safety of the conviction".
Ironically, it was Hanratty's family who sought DNA tests on two items of evidence that had been preserved since the trial.
During the appeal, Hanratty's counsel conceded that, provided the possibility of contamination could be excluded, analysis of these items pointed conclusively to Hanratty having been the man who murdered Michael Gregsten, 36, a civil servant, and raped Mr Gregsten's lover, Valerie Storie, then 23.
Miss Storie, who was with her colleague on the night he was shot dead on the A6 near Bedford, was shot five times, leaving her paralysed from the waist down.
Hanratty, 25, was hanged in 1962, one of the last to suffer the death penalty in Britain. The case was referred back to the Court of Appeal in 1999 by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.
At a hearing in March, Lord Woolf, Lord Justice Mantell and Mr Justice Leveson heard Michael Mansfield, for Hanratty, argue 17 grounds of appeal.
Eleven of these grounds were based on alleged failures by the prosecution to disclose material to the defence. The others related to the identification parade at which Miss Storie identified Hanratty, police interviews and the conduct of the trial.
However, the Crown relied - unusually - on new genetic profiling of semen samples found on a fragment of Miss Storie's underwear, which had been kept in the police laboratory since 1961.
That, and DNA tests on nasal mucus found on the handkerchief in which the murder weapon had been wrapped, were compared with DNA samples taken from the body of Hanratty in 2000.
To obtain genetic profiles from the small samples available, scientists used highly sensitive DNA amplification techniques that were not available as recently as 1995.
Mr Mansfield had argued that the DNA evidence should not be admitted, saying that the Crown could call fresh evidence only to rebut evidence from an appellant.
He also maintained that the DNA deposits on the underwear and handkerchief could have resulted from subsequent contamination. Rejecting both these arguments, the judges concluded that the "DNA evidence, standing alone, is certain proof of guilt".
The idea that one of the items might have been contaminated was "fanciful". In the court's view, "the DNA evidence made what was a strong case even stronger".
The judges accepted that, "even by contemporary standards of the time, there are criticisms of some substance which can be made as to the procedural defects" in the trial process.
But these "fell far short of what is required to lead to the conclusion that the trial should be regarded as flawed and this conviction unsafe on procedural grounds".
Michael Sherrard, QC, who was Hanratty's defence counsel 40 years ago and was in court yesterday, had opened the defence case by saying that the case was "sagging with coincidences".
The court responded by listing nine coincidences that would have to be explained in the light of the DNA evidence if Hanratty was not guilty.
"The number of alleged coincidences means that they are not coincidences but overwhelming proof of the safety of the conviction from an evidential perspective."
At the end of their judgment, which took the judges three hours to read out, they commended Hanratty's family "for the extraordinary loyalty and commitment they have shown to what they thought was a just cause".
More:https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1393842/DNA-proves-Hanratty-guilt-beyond-doubt.html
2016“
At the subsequent appeal hearing in 2002, Michael Mansfield QC, the barrister acting for the Hanratty family, admitted that, if contamination could be excluded, the DNA evidence demonstrated James Hanratty had committed the murder and rape. He argued the evidence may have been contaminated because of lax handling procedures.
The DNA evidence convinced the Court of Appeal judges in 2002 that Hanratty’s guilt was proved “beyond doubt” but Hanratty’s family and their supporters have continued to contest this conclusion and to press for a further review of his conviction.https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/crime-files-reopened-james-hanratty-11074437Hanratty may still be innocent, OK? by Paul Foot April 2001When the police and prosecution applied some months ago for permission to exhume the body of James Hanratty, who was hanged in 1962 for the A6 murder, lawyers for the Hanratty family did not oppose the application, but denounced it as a pointless exercise. It now appears that the exercise was not pointless at all. The point was to provide a front page story for the Daily Mail.
More than two years ago, I attended a press conference in the offices of Bindman and Partners, lawyers to the Hanratty family for the past 33 years. The press conference was called because the criminal cases review commission had referred the Hanratty case to the court of appeal. The main reason for the referral was that every single new discovery by the commission's investigators pointed to Hanratty's innocence. In particular, two witnesses who identified Hanratty as a man they had seen driving the murder car in London on the morning after the murder were discredited by the rather shocking fact that the murder car was nowhere near London at the time. Moreover, the police knew this perfectly well but had not disclosed the information to the prosecution, let alone the defence.
There were many other matters relating to the police handling of the case that plainly disturbed the CCRC investigators, who were led by a former chief constable of Hertfordshire. The case was one of the first to be thoroughly investigated by the CCRC, and by October 1997 the investigators were quite satisfied that a miscarriage of justice had taken place. They prepared to refer the case to the court of appeal.
Before they did so, they carried out DNA tests on some of the exhibits connected with the murder, including fragments of clothing worn at the time by Valerie Storie, who was in the car with Michael Gregsten when he was murdered and was herself shot by the killer and left for dead at the roadside.
To everyone's astonishment, and in clear contrast to all the rest of the evidence, the tests showed a match between the DNA on the exhibits and swabs taken from Hanratty's brother and mother, who had since died. These DNA findings were plainly and honestly reported in the commission's report. The report made it clear that in the commission's view, given the possibility of contamination over such a long period of time, the tests were not conclusive of Hanratty's guilt and should be discussed and considered, with all the other evidence, in the court of appeal.
Bob Woffinden and I, who have written books claiming Hanratty's innocence, were asked about these tests and could only say that the case for Hanratty's innocence is stronger than it ever was, and that if the DNA suggests otherwise there must be something wrong with the DNA.
In the two and a half years since, several more DNA tests have been carried out, all showing a match between Hanratty and the exhibits. A common feature of all these tests is that their results have been leaked to the Sun or Daily Mail or both. The certain result of the recent tests on the exhumed body was that they would prove a match and would be exclusively reported in the Sun or the Mail.
Last time the lucky recipient of the leak was the Sun, whose laughable headline was "Hanratty was guilty - official". This time the Mail seems to be the lucky paper. It came up with an original headline on the front page to celebrate the point: "Hanratty was guilty".
Well, the matter still has to be decided by the court of appeal, which for all its failings is more likely to give a hearing to a fair argument than the Sun or the Mail has ever been. (Or not quite ever. When my book on the A6 case came out in 1971, it was serialised over two weeks in the Sun.) When the case does finally come to the court, I hope at least that the judges will seek to establish who leaked the confidential results of the DNA tests and how much they were paid for their leaking.
While we wait for the public argument about all the evidence I shall go on believing firmly in what I can understand: such as where Hanratty was at the time of the murder and what he was doing there, how the police dealt with identification evidence, and how anyone arrived at the ludicrous coincidence that the alleged A6 murderer happened by chance to be staying (on the night before the murder) in the same doss house as was the first police suspect, Peter Alphon. It was the police hunt for Alphon that led them to the Vienna Hotel, Maida Vale, where he said he stayed on the night of the murder.
Until someone comes up with something to show that Hanratty was not in Rhyl on the night of the murder (or in Liverpool on the afternoon before the murder) I will go on believing his story and obstinately refusing to accept the carefully considered verdicts of the editors of the Sun and the Mail.
https://www.theguardian.com/Columnists/Column/0,5673,468282,00.htmlPeter Alphon “Doubts about the identity of the killer were dismissed, however, by Mr Alphon. In an interview with The Independent, in which he denied his own involvement, Mr Alphon set out his own theory. He said that
Hanratty was a "psychopath" who had been hired by the wife of the dead man and her lover. Earlier this month, Mr Alphon sent a letter to the Home Secretary, saying
"...the nightmare has persisted through four decades of controversy and speculation surrounding the case".He added:
"My victimisation both at the hands of the police and my defamers in the media dates from when Scotland Yard quite unjustifiably caused my name to be blazoned across the headlines ..."https://www.independent.co.uk/news/wrongly-hanged-hanratty-is-found-innocent-1285402.htmlHow the psychopath can fool you...James Hanrattyhttp://miscarriageofjustice.co/index.php?topic=369.msg7846DNA Proof 40 Years After A Cowardly Murder Shuts Down A Fact-Fogging Campaign For The MurdererExcerpts:
Implications for PR campaigns”The DNA tests carried out by the FFS that finally provided definitive proof that James Hanratty killed Michael Gregsten and raped and shot Valerie Storie more or less stopped the bandwagon dead in its tracks.
But there had been for decades almost fanatical and very vociferous support for someone who’d been unanimously convicted of murder, many of whom stood to gain, though it didnt have too much effect except to have the case looked at and found solid twice.
James Hanratty’s supporters claimed that he had no motive, that the police framed him, and that the DNA evidence was contaminated by the government’s experts. NONE of this was proved. Unless there is actual proof of dastardly plots and contamination, these claims against the authorities are unfruitful and unfair.
The most important lesson to be learnt from the A6 murder case is that a bandwagon of journalists, politicians, human rights campaigners, lawyers, writers, filmmakers and celebrities being absolutely convinced of someone’s innocence does not make him or her innocent in fact.
Even intelligent and well-intentioned people like Paul Foot and David Steel can mistakenly believe a killer is innocent and shrug off the pain the victims’ families must feel.http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/dna_proof_40_years_after_a_cowardly_murder_shuts_down/Would be interested to learn who at the CCRC reviewed the James Hanratty case
https://ccrc.gov.uk/case/hanratty-james/1999“
Vital evidence which could have led to the acquittal of James Hanratty, executed for the A6 murder in 1962, was suppressed at the time of his trial, it emerged yesterday.
One of the most celebrated alleged miscarriage of justice cases was yesterday referred back to the Court of Appeal as the dead man's lawyers, family and campaign supporters expressed astonishment at the extent of evidence which has only now been disclosed.
“The suppression of vital information by senior police officers, a lack of disclosure of information to the defence and a flawed process of identification were given as the reasons for the decision.
“The amount of information not disclosed by the prosecution at the trial is very substantial,' said Geoffrey Bindman, solicitor for the family since 1974. 'If that material had been disclosed, James Hanratty would not have been convicted.'
The CCRC inquiry, led by the former assistant chief constable of the Metropolitan police, Baden Skitt, had been allowed access to material stored by the Metropolitan police but not released to the defence team. Some of the information was not even shown to the prosecution.
'It's quite clear that the CCRC is shocked by the non-disclosure,' said Mr Foot. He said that even people who had been working on the case for more that a quarter of century were amazed at the depth of material suppressed.
'The commission has expressed very serious concerns that vital evidence has been suppressed,' said Mr Bindman. 'There was information which, had it been disclosed, would have led to the acquittal of James Hanratty.'
Cases being examined by the Criminal Cases Review Commission were now being subjected to 'unacceptable delay' , the committee concludes in its assessment of the commission's first two years' work. Chaired by Chris Mullin, it concluded the CCRC had made a good start and congratulated the body on its 'professionalism, independence and openness.'
So far 43 cases have been referred back.https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/mar/30/1
