Tweet
Hello all....
Hopefully someone can educate me here....any help will be appreciated...
It seems the general consensus is that Lawende was the key witness of the two.
Just dipping my toes into the water here before looking in a bit more detail. Would like to hear from posters who disagree with the following - and why - before I proceed.
It is fair to say Lawende could have been mistaken with the woman he saw due to the fact he didn’t know her and recognised her only by her clothes. Having said this - he saw them near the square 10 minutes or so before she was killed and found. Fair enough - it seems far fetched to suggest that they would leave and another couple would come along (including Eddowes) with sufficient time for her to have been killed and found. I’d imagine that had her body been discovered an hour later and the estimated time of death 45 minutes later then people would have doubted Lawende had seen Eddowes on merely the basis of the clothes she was wearing. So it seems the critical factor is the time Lawende saw this couple and the time Eddowes was killed and her body discovered.
Now to Schwarz - of all the people who could have had their times wrong surely the least likely is the official who timed his arrival at 1.16 - presumably he would have had a watch and recorded it - and as he estimated the time of death at 20 to 30 minutes previously then I’m going to go with the time of death being between 12.46 - 12.56 - which doesn’t mean that Deimschutz couldn’t have disturbed the killer by the way (he is more likely than the official to have had his time wrong on reflection). So - were the death between 12.46 and 12.56 then surely the exact same logic applied to Lawende must apply to Schwartz - that is that it is equally unsual for someone else to come along and kill Stride and her body being discovered within 10 minutes.
In sum: surely Schwartz is at least as good a bet for seeing the killer. And considering he said he had taken sight of the killer and Lawende said he wasn’t sure he’d be able to recognise them - then surely if you’re going to take someone round an ID parade it would be Schwarz and not Lawende. But then this opens up another question: the police may have took Lawende or Schwarz on an ID parade on the off chance that either one of them may ID the man - but why would a man who had no intention of picking out a suspect (as he was a fellow Jew) go on an ID parade and further incriminate the suspect through identification - when he could just refuse to go and it follows thus achieve the aim of protecting the suspect’s identity?
So - I’m going to proceed on the basis that Schwarz’s testimony is more useful than Lawende’s - as in my logic they are equally likely to have seen the killer and Schwarz by their own admissions got a better look at him. I’m also going to view the options that they both saw the killer or neither of them saw the killer as a better bet than only one of them saw the killer - as there is less logic in the latter option. And I’m going to steer clear of the supposed identification at a seaside home at this stage.
Any thoughts please?
Edited to add: I suppose what I'm arguing here is something akin to Pascal's Wager - where he argued that it was logical for human beings to believe in a god rather than the existence of a god being logical. Similarly it is logical for us to believe that Schwarz's account is a better bet than Lawende's - though Schwarz may not have seen the killer at all.
Hopefully someone can educate me here....any help will be appreciated...
It seems the general consensus is that Lawende was the key witness of the two.
Just dipping my toes into the water here before looking in a bit more detail. Would like to hear from posters who disagree with the following - and why - before I proceed.
It is fair to say Lawende could have been mistaken with the woman he saw due to the fact he didn’t know her and recognised her only by her clothes. Having said this - he saw them near the square 10 minutes or so before she was killed and found. Fair enough - it seems far fetched to suggest that they would leave and another couple would come along (including Eddowes) with sufficient time for her to have been killed and found. I’d imagine that had her body been discovered an hour later and the estimated time of death 45 minutes later then people would have doubted Lawende had seen Eddowes on merely the basis of the clothes she was wearing. So it seems the critical factor is the time Lawende saw this couple and the time Eddowes was killed and her body discovered.
Now to Schwarz - of all the people who could have had their times wrong surely the least likely is the official who timed his arrival at 1.16 - presumably he would have had a watch and recorded it - and as he estimated the time of death at 20 to 30 minutes previously then I’m going to go with the time of death being between 12.46 - 12.56 - which doesn’t mean that Deimschutz couldn’t have disturbed the killer by the way (he is more likely than the official to have had his time wrong on reflection). So - were the death between 12.46 and 12.56 then surely the exact same logic applied to Lawende must apply to Schwartz - that is that it is equally unsual for someone else to come along and kill Stride and her body being discovered within 10 minutes.
In sum: surely Schwartz is at least as good a bet for seeing the killer. And considering he said he had taken sight of the killer and Lawende said he wasn’t sure he’d be able to recognise them - then surely if you’re going to take someone round an ID parade it would be Schwarz and not Lawende. But then this opens up another question: the police may have took Lawende or Schwarz on an ID parade on the off chance that either one of them may ID the man - but why would a man who had no intention of picking out a suspect (as he was a fellow Jew) go on an ID parade and further incriminate the suspect through identification - when he could just refuse to go and it follows thus achieve the aim of protecting the suspect’s identity?
So - I’m going to proceed on the basis that Schwarz’s testimony is more useful than Lawende’s - as in my logic they are equally likely to have seen the killer and Schwarz by their own admissions got a better look at him. I’m also going to view the options that they both saw the killer or neither of them saw the killer as a better bet than only one of them saw the killer - as there is less logic in the latter option. And I’m going to steer clear of the supposed identification at a seaside home at this stage.
Any thoughts please?
Edited to add: I suppose what I'm arguing here is something akin to Pascal's Wager - where he argued that it was logical for human beings to believe in a god rather than the existence of a god being logical. Similarly it is logical for us to believe that Schwarz's account is a better bet than Lawende's - though Schwarz may not have seen the killer at all.