The Missing Evidence - New Ripper Documentary

[Lechmere]

Moonbeggar
I am glad and gratified that you are suitably entertained.
However
Team Lechmere (aka the Lechmere Brigade) do not make the case that Lechmere was standing over or crouched over Nichols's body - at least when seen by Paul. That is an interpretation that 'lay' people put on it - an understandable interpretation as it is not much different from Paul's description of seeing him where the woman was.
The Cross thing is a bit different. I would suggest that it is likely that no one knew him as Cross anywhere and it was just a name he plucked out from his past. There is a slight possibility some people knew him as Cross but that doesn't explain why he chose to call himself Cross in this instance when we know he called himself Lechmere four times that year when dealing with various forms of officialdom - yet he made the deliberate choice in this instance to call himself Cross.

You are however right that these things don't make him guilty - it is the combination of these and others things that suggests he may very well have been guilty.

Hercule - the evidence we have of those streets at that late hour is that they were almost deserted - hence there would not have been hundreds of others walking by.

Sally
I'm afraid I didn't read that long post of yours some time back.

[Lechmere]

Robert
I don’t think that Lechmere walked in front of Paul anywhere.
But according to his account he did.
Yet Paul didn’t see him until he was in the road near Nichols’ body.

If Lechmere was telling the truth when he left his Doveton Street home he must have got to Bucks Row via Bath Street, unless he took a very eccentric route.

Robert Paul lived in Foster Street. To get to Bucks Row from Foster Street Paul would have turned right out of his front door, walked 39 yards (very roughly) and then turned right into the self same Bath Street and onto Bucks Row.

Lechmere was reportedly 30 to 40 yards in front of Paul when Paul saw him.
There is no indication that Lechmere stopped, paused or hesitated in the street for any length of time when he saw the body and before Paul saw him. In walking across the road Paul will have caught him up by a couple of yards but that is about it.

Therefore if Lechmere was telling the truth about his movements that morning he will have crossed the bottom of Foster Street – where it meets Bath Street – while Paul was coming out of his house. Paul will have started to walk down Foster Street was Lechmere passed and then Paul will have followed behind Lechmere all ten way to Bucks Row when he eventually saw him. And in all that time he didn’t see or hear Lechmere

In an attempt to minimise this an attempt has been made to make out that Lechmere must have been stationary for a period of time in the middle of the road allowing Paul to catch him up or it was suggested that Paul was walking much quicker so he caught him up, or its even claimed that Paul didn’t say he only noticed Lechmere when he was in the road. Such is the quality of the arguments raised by those who oppose the idea that Lechmere is a good suspect.

My hunch has always been that Lechmere picked up Nichols on Whitechapel Road.
However if I was to adopt a minimalist approach then I would say I don’t know where he picked her up but he had time to do it and can’t have been immediately in front of Paul.

[Robert]

OK, thanks Ed.

[moonbegger]

You are however right that these things don't make him guilty - it is the combination of these and others things that suggests he may very well have been guilty.

I think that myself , and most folk on these boards would have not doubt agreeing that faced with all these unanswerable questions and accusations regarding his name , and his actions on the night of Polly's murder , he should have come under closer scrutiny at the time .

But here is the thing ! The Police at the time had no such handicap , they could ask questions and get answers .. and we have no way of knowing if they did or not or satisfied themselves that he was not a suspect .

They knew back then , a lot more than we do now .

[Hercule Poirot]

...
Hercule - the evidence we have of those streets at that late hour is that they were almost deserted - hence there would not have been hundreds of others walking by...

My comment was not intended to dismiss Cross but to simply consider it as an opinion given by Holmgren which would most probably be rejected by a court as being irrelevant.

Of course, if actual 'human night traffic' data for that period is available it would tend to confirm what he said. Could you kindly offer more information regarding this evidence you claim having?

Thank you in advance.
Cheers,
H.P.

[GUT]

I think that myself , and most folk on these boards would have not doubt agreeing that faced with all these unanswerable questions and accusations regarding his name , and his actions on the night of Polly's murder , he should have come under closer scrutiny at the time .

But here is the thing ! The Police at the time had no such handicap , they could ask questions and get answers .. and we have no way of knowing if they did or not or satisfied themselves that he was not a suspect .

They knew back then , a lot more than we do now .

But don't you know he pulled the wool over their eyes. They didn't even visit his home or Pickfords, his poor wife didn't even connect the witness with her husband who had been raised, for at least a period of time, in the Cross household.

Sheesh give me a break.

[Hercule Poirot]

Inspector Jacques Clouseau must have read everything on the Whitechapel case before becoming one of their most promising French element years later. LOL

[Fisherman]

David Orsam:

perhaps like you, I don't fully understand the enormous resistance to this on the forum.

I believe I DO know why there is a resistance.

However, I would be interested to know if you would accept that the case against him collapses entirely if, for the cogent reasons put forward on this forum by Stewart P. Evans, PC Mizen's evidence (about being told by him that there was already a policeman in Buck's Row) was false.

No, the case does not collapse entirely - there was a case before the Mizen scam entered the stage.
But as such, I would regard it as seriously diminsishing the implications of the case.

I think, however, that a very strong case can be made that Mizen did NOT lie. His actions after having spoken to Lechmere are in total accordance with having been lied to.
It seems the seriousness of the errand had been played down (Mizen proceeded to do some knocking up before he went to Bucks Row, and thus did not rush as he would have if all he had been told was that there was a woman in bucks Row who could be dead).

It also seems that Mizen had been told that there was a PC in Bucks Row awaiting his arrival. This is displayed by how he never corrected Neil when the latter - on the first day of the inquest and in a subsequent interview - claimed to have been the person who found the body.
If Lechmere had not mentioned that fake PC, Mizen would have thought that the carmen were the initital finders, not Neil, and so he would have informed his superiors and the mistake would have been cleared up. But it never was.

If Mizen was told about a second PC, then Neil would have been the first finder, the carmen would have arrived later and Neil would have sent them to Mizen. In that scenario, there is nothing that needs correcting!

All the best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

OK, thanks Ed.

Surely, Robert, you did not think that we actually argue that Lechmere WAS thirty, forty yards ahead of Paul...? Surely you must know that we are saying that Paul never seeing or mentiong having heard another man right in front of him is something that implicates that Paul did his trek from Foster Street to Browns Stable Yard in splendid isolation, while Lechmere arrived in Buck´s Row many minutes before Paul - perhaps after having dropped down to Whitechapel Road via Brady Street first, to pick up Nichols?

Please tell me you were just joking?

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Lets just say for argument sake , we allow the pendulum to swing Team L's way on most of the contentious decisions (ie) CrossMere was indeed crouched over , or standing over Polly's body . Also no one knew him as Cross ( apart from himself and his family ) .

Even considering both of these plausible scenarios , a guilty man it does not make , As many have commented , there Innocent explanations in abundance for both , and furthermore , we know he had good reason to be walking those streets , along with thousands of others ..

Its seems like we are debating pointless outcomes to creative and inventive theory's the whole day through .. And we love it

That's Entertainment !!

moonbegger

The fact that there are alternative innocent explanations to each and every point we have presented on Lechmere as indications of him potentially having been the killer, is something neither of us have ever disputed.

I hope you have noticed this.

The case against Lechmere is built on the fadct that there are too many such points to allow for always choosing the innocent answer. As Scobie put it: the coincidences mount up in his case.

Scobie also said that there was enough in the case to put it before a jury, and that the jury would not like what they saw since Lechmere acted suspiciously.

This is the exact equivalent of doing something that MAY be innocent, but looks like something else. Like the namechange, for example - he MAY have been called Cross colloquialy, but the many signatures with the suthorities make the namechange look suspicious.

Scobie would know quite well that there is not one single point of absolute proof - if there was, I would not spend time out here with you, trying to explain the implications of the case.

At any rate, what we are left with is Andy Griffiths who says that Lechmere is a person of tremendeous interest and Scobie who says that the coincidences mount up in his case, and enough so to allow for a trial.

So what you briung up is nothing new. The one thing that IS new, is that we now have the expert team from the documentary supporting us. And since it has earlier been possible to say "what do YOU know about police work?", "what do YOU know about criminal psychology?" and so on, I like that very much.

The fact that we have people saying that as long as they are not shown exactly what the experts were told, they will rather beleive that they were either underinformed or outright lied to, is of course sad, but that is an element that will never go away from ripperology, and so it was to be expected. At the end of the day, it says a whole lot about the state of ripperology, a good deal about the ones who express these matters - and nothing at all about anything else.

All the best,
Fisherman

[GUT]

Were the experts told that his step father was Cross and that he started at Pickford's [t seems] while his step-father was still alive?

[Monty]

Sad?

You seem to be confusing the word 'sad' with 'thorough'.

One of your experts has supposedly admitted to seeing a bullet point report presented to him by a third party AND, also, admitted not to have taken his task seriously.

What is sad is the constant inability to accept reasoned agreement against the theory, and the martyred approach taken by its presenters.

Sad, but not unexpected.

Monty

[Chris]

Surely you must know that we are saying that Paul never seeing or mentiong having heard another man right in front of him is something that implicates that Paul did his trek from Foster Street to Browns Stable Yard in splendid isolation, ...

Unless you can produce any evidence that Paul didn't see anyone ahead of him, this speculation collapses immediately.

[GUT]

Unless you can produce any evidence that Paul didn't see anyone ahead of him, this speculation collapses immediately.

But this applies to every area of speculation about Cross, especially the "Biggy" "HE WAS JACK" and the police made no inquiries about him.

[Chris]

There is no indication that Lechmere stopped, paused or hesitated in the street for any length of time when he saw the body and before Paul saw him.

At least you've dropped the silly stuff about "not the slightest suggestion of a wait or hesitation".

Now then. We know he did stop to look at the body. The question is for how long. The truth is that we simply don't know, much as you would like to believe it couldn't have been more than five seconds.