James Hanratty

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James Hanratty : biography

4 October 1936 – 4 April 1962

Second defence – The Rhyl alibi

Hanratty confessed to his defence barrister that he had invented part of the Liverpool story as he was unsure he could prove where he was. He then stated that he had in fact been in the Welsh coastal town of Rhyl. Within a few days, the defence had checked and assembled a new alibi for Hanratty. According to this, Hanratty had gone to Rhyl to sell a stolen watch to a ‘fence’. He had arrived there late in the evening of Tuesday 22nd and had stayed in a boarding house near the railway station, in the attic room, which had a green bath. Private detectives tracked down a Mrs Grace Jones, a landlady with a guest house whose layout exactly matched the description given by Hanratty, including the green bath in the attic. She remembered a man resembling Hanratty, and was sure it was during the week of 19–26 August.

Following the prosecution’s dropping of the book’s leaves in the court, her hotel registers and accounts were in chaos, and little information could be extracted from them. Worse still, the prosecution produced a string of witnesses attesting that all the rooms were already occupied at the time. The prosecution accused Mrs Jones of lying simply to gain publicity for her guest house, leaving her almost in tears. However, counsel for the defence managed to salvage something, showing in fact that the attic was empty on the night of the 22nd, and a bedroom exactly as described by Hanratty was free on the 23rd, demonstrating that he could have stayed there as claimed. Eventually, the jury retired, and after six hours returned to ask the judge for the definition of ‘reasonable doubt’. They returned to the court and entered a unanimous verdict of guilty, after nine hours. Hanratty’s appeal was dismissed on 13 March, and despite a petition signed by more than 90,000 people, Hanratty was hanged by executioner Harry Allen at Bedford on 4 April 1962, still protesting his innocence.

The investigation

The first policeman on the scene was handed a census form on which Kerr had written down Storie’s gasped account of what she recalled at that moment; the document was never seen again. Storie gave another statement to the police later that morning, just before she underwent surgery in Bedford Hospital. Almost at once, the evidence began to throw up anomalies. Storie recalled what the man had said about being on the run for four months, yet he was immaculately dressed in a dark three-piece suit and with well-shone shoes. Moreover, there appeared to be a complete lack of motive.

The gun was discovered on the evening of 24 August, under the back seat of a 36A London bus, fully loaded and wiped clean of fingerprints. With the gun was a handkerchief which was to provide DNA evidence many years later. The police issued an appeal to boarding-house keepers to report any unusual or suspicious guests. The manager of the Alexandra Court Hotel reported a man who had locked himself in his room for five days after the murder, and the police picked him up. The suspect falsely identified himself as Frederick Durrant; he was actually Peter Louis Alphon, a drifter surviving on an inheritance and the proceeds of gambling. He claimed he had spent the evening of 22 August with his mother, and the following night at the Vienna Hotel, Maida Vale; the police quickly confirmed this and Alphon was released.

On 29 August, Valerie Storie and another witness, Edward Blackall, who had seen the driver of the Morris Minor, compiled an Identikit picture which was then released. However, only two days later, Storie gave a different description of her assailant to the police.

On 7 September, Meike Dalal was attacked in her home in Richmond, Surrey, by a man claiming to be the A6 murderer, whom she later identified as Alphon in an identity parade on 23 September. The investigation then stalled until 11 September, when two cartridge cases were found in the guest basement bedroom of the Vienna Hotel, which were matched with the bullets that killed Gregsten and to the ones in the gun found on the bus. The hotel manager, William Nudds, made a statement to police naming the last occupant of the room as ‘James Ryan’. At the trial Nudds also stated that the man, upon leaving, had asked the way to a bus stop for a 36A bus, though his statement to police had merely mentioned the 36 bus. Nudds’ statement also said that Alphon had stayed in the hotel as he claimed, and had remained in his room, Room 6, all night. The police raided the hotel, and questioned Nudds again, who then changed his story, claiming that Alphon had in fact been in the basement and Ryan in Room 6 but, for reasons unknown, had swapped rooms during the night. Nudds also now added that Alphon had left the hotel ‘calm and composed’.