I don't see how you can really argue with this.
"Mr Michael Sherrard apparently opened the defence at the trial by saying appositely that this was a case “sagging with coincidences”. Just let us consider some of the more striking coincidences in the light of the DNA evidence if Hanratty was not guilty. He was wrongly identified by 3 witnesses at identification parades; first as the person at the scene of the crime and secondly (by 2 witnesses) driving a vehicle close to where the vehicle in which the murder was committed was found; he had the same identifying manner of speech as the killer; he stayed in a room the night before the crime from which bullets that had been fired from the murder weapon were recovered; the murder weapon was recovered from a place on a bus which he regarded as a hiding place and the bus followed a route he could well have used; his DNA was found on a piece of material from Storie’s knickers where it would be expected to be if the appellant was guilty; it was also found on the handkerchief found with the gun. The number of alleged coincidences means that they are not coincidences but overwhelming proof of the safety of the conviction from an evidential perspective."
You see if somebody paid Peter Louis Alphon to frame James Hanratty then of course the former is going to speak in a Cockney accent (which he was well capable of simulating), he was going to follow him into the Vienna Hotel and plant cartridges in his room (why did Hanratty leave them there?), nobody recognized Hanratty that day the gun was found on the bus, Hanratty had an alibi for the day in question, though suffered from changing it midway through the trial.
Hanratty was a professional, urban thief, not a cold-blooded murderer. I'm trying to find the name of the witness who told authorities Hanratty told him he wanted to become a "stick-up man", which began to turn my mind against him. Otherwise he was not a violent criminal, nor a rapist, neither is the motive clear at all.
As for the DNA evidence, once I read Peter Wright's book "
Spycatcher" in 1987 it became clear to me that the secret services are beyond the reach of government ministers and therefore democratic accountability. It would therefore not surprise me if the DNA was tampered with to make it look like Hanratty was the killer. For me this is not the decisive factor in me changing my mind, just one contributory factor.
By the way, Alphon did confess to the crime, you know..
