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JAMES HANRATTY: EVIDENCE V STORYTELLING
the name was false and that the guest’s real name was James Hanratty. The officer in charge of the case, Detective Superintendent Basil Acott, also found that there were only five men in Britain who had recently ‘done the lot’ of a corrective training sentence and one of them was James Hanratty. Indeed, Hanratty was a known petty criminal who had previously been convicted of housebreaking, theft and car theft. He had spent time in prison for these offences, including three years of corrective training (Miller, 2001). The police put out a call for information on Hanratty’s whereabouts and, when he realised that he was a suspect, he telephoned Acott from Liverpool to claim his innocence, saying that he had stayed with three men in Liverpool on the night of the crime. He said that he could not reveal the names of those who could support his alibi because they were criminals who did not want to get involved. Subsequently, on 11 October, Hanratty was arrested in Blackpool. Three days later, he was placed in an identity parade during which each person was directed to repeat the phrase that had been used by the assailant, ‘Be quiet, will you, I’m thinking’. Storie identified Hanratty, and in a separate identity parade two of the witnesses to the erratic driving in the Morris Minor, Trower and Skillett, identified Hanratty although Blackhall did not. Hanratty was charged with the murder of Gregsten, which he continued to deny and, on 22 January 1962, his trial began at Bedfordshire Assizes4 before Mr Justice Gorman (Foot, 1971). Eighty-three witnesses were called for the prosecution and 15, including Hanratty, for the defence. The trial lasted for 21 days, which at that time was the longest trial in British history (Moles and Sangha, 2002).
The prosecution’s case The lead prosecutor, Graham Swanwick, QC, focused particularly on Storie’s evidence, which described the appearance of her assailant, including his smart dress, his accent, pronunciation and use of the word ‘kip’, and his indication that his name was ‘Jim’ (which was often how Hanratty was referred to). Additionally, the assailant had offered her a quite detailed account of his criminal history. Swanwick argued that these descriptions were all consistent with the characteristics of Hanratty (Moles and Sangha, 2002): He told her he had been to prison, he told her that since he was eight he had been to a remand home and to Borstal, and to CT, corrective training, and that the next one coming up was PD, preventive detention. That might well follow after a sentence of corrective training, but not in a man of the age of the accused. He told her he had done five years for housebreaking, and done the lot, meaning, you may think, that he had served the whole sentence without remission; that he had been on the run for four months and every police force in Britain was looking 25
