Biggest mistake

[Hunter]

Hi Don,

Your supposition about the Kelly inquest may be the reason for its quick termination. We should never underestimate what political rivals are capable of doing to each other.

Although inquest are conducted primarily to determine cause of death, it was apparent after the Chapman murder that they were dealing with a unique set of circumstances, hence the use of more medicos in the autopsies. They wouldn't have called various witnesses, other than the doctors, if they weren't at least trying to put the evidence together in some kind of cohesion to help the investigation. They may have received more information that could have been helpful if the inquest had been allowed to continue- i.e.- Hutchinson. Whether MacDonald was concerned about his jury or trying to make a point with Baxter, the end result was less than satisfactory.

[Patches]

Hello Don,


Other than that, however, I believe that the authorities did all that they could do. As you stated, serial killers, even now, are hard to catch. The Boston Strangler gave himself up and people are still uncertain if they got the right person.

My thoughts exactly. If the killer were a stark raving nut job, I'm sure it would have been easy to catch him. It seems he was very good at keeping his cool and laying well below the radar. I don't know what goes into a really good police investigation, but it seems from what I've read that it was at least competent. The police it seems were up against terrible odds.

I don't know if they did, but did the police look into the criminal records of London for crimes in the past year or so of the killings that may have had links? Assaults, arson, ect., in an attempt to maybe bring to light a name that had not been previously looked into.