A Whip and a Prod

[NotBlamedForNothing]

I believe you are correct, Jeff.

Dr. Blackwell @ the inquest: There were no spots of blood, but there was a little trodden about near to where the body was lying.

That's fine, but then you need to at least speculate on the transfer of blood, from neck to ground near body.
JtR did not 'tread about' the body after cutting the throat - he is disturbed by the clip-clop of heels, and immediately leaves the body to hide deeper in the yard.
Isn't that the theory you support?
There should be spots of blood up that way then, from the bloody knife and hand. No?

If not Jack, then who has managed to put a hand or foot in the bloodstream, and transfer some of that blood to the ground?
Every witness who claimed to touch the body, stated that they were careful enough not to move the body, or get blood on their hands.
Every person within the closed gates had their hands and soles of shoes checked for blood, and all were clean.

Seems we have a mystery!
At least, we do in the interruption model.
On the other hand, if the body had been moved to the discovery location, then it is easy to suppose that some trace of that movement, would remain evident.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Blood clotting is usually due to a reaction to damaged vessels causing platelets to bond together to the affected area , and it begins when the body recognizes that kind of damage. So initially, you wouldn't see clots in the stream, you would as time progressed and the clotting process advanced. That's why clots would be seen in subsequent blood flow, closest to the wound site, not in the initial flow or spill that's now further from the injury in this case.

Okay, thanks.
Why does Edward Johnston say this:

I left the body precisely as I found it. There was a stream of blood down to the gutter; it was all clotted.

Does he mean clotted, or congealed?

[c.d.]

The interruption model is not limited to the arrival of Diemschutz. It could have been any number of things including just basic paranoia regarding the situation.

c.d.

[JeffHamm]

That's fine, but then you need to at least speculate on the transfer of blood, from neck to ground near body.
JtR did not 'tread about' the body after cutting the throat - he is disturbed by the clip-clop of heels, and immediately leaves the body to hide deeper in the yard.
Isn't that the theory you support?
There should be spots of blood up that way then, from the bloody knife and hand. No?

If not Jack, then who has managed to put a hand or foot in the bloodstream, and transfer some of that blood to the ground?
Every witness who claimed to touch the body, stated that they were careful enough not to move the body, or get blood on their hands.
Every person within the closed gates had their hands and soles of shoes checked for blood, and all were clean.

Seems we have a mystery!
At least, we do in the interruption model.
On the other hand, if the body had been moved to the discovery location, then it is easy to suppose that some trace of that movement, would remain evident.

Yes, if the body was moved after she was killed, there would be a great big trail of blood from the point where her throat was cut originally. I think Phillips' statement clearly negates that possibility. The trodding on a bit of the blood, and such, would also be hard to spot given the alley was a bit muddy, so such transfer would easily be missed when checking boots and such. It's not clear the transferred stains are supposed to be by hands near the throat area, we don't know where those stains were that Phillips is talking about other than somehow in relation to the flow of blood, which went from the body and down the gutter quite a ways.

- Jeff

[Robert St Devil]

That's fine, but then you need to at least speculate on the transfer of blood, from neck to ground near body.
JtR did not 'tread about' the body after cutting the throat - he is disturbed by the clip-clop of heels, and immediately leaves the body to hide deeper in the yard.
Isn't that the theory you support?
There should be spots of blood up that way then, from the bloody knife and hand. No?

If not Jack, then who has managed to put a hand or foot in the bloodstream, and transfer some of that blood to the ground?
Every witness who claimed to touch the body, stated that they were careful enough not to move the body, or get blood on their hands.
Every person within the closed gates had their hands and soles of shoes checked for blood, and all were clean.

Seems we have a mystery!
At least, we do in the interruption model.
On the other hand, if the body had been moved to the discovery location, then it is easy to suppose that some trace of that movement, would remain evident.

The only theory that I support, NB4N, is that there is a 30-minute window of time, from when the constable sees her at approx. 12:35a until another constable is brought to her dead body, when Elizabeth Stride is murdered presumably by the serial killer known as Jack the Ripper. Within that thirty minutes, I try to favor probability over possibility (but that still offers very little consolation in terms of the general mystery of her death). For instance, a) was her murderer interrupted by the arrival of L. Diemschutz; or b) was he spooked by I. Schwartz and decided to scram before a constable was brought round; or c) did her murderer leave after discovering that location under that shade-wall too dim of light that he couldn’t see well enough to harvest her organs; or d) {to be determined}…

I don’t believe that Dr. Blackwell was referring to a transfer of blood from neck to ground because he used the word “trodden”, which means that he is referring of a transfer of blood (by someone’s footstep) from the pooled or stream of blood to the ground nearby. Also he follows up this statement: “There were no spots of blood, but there was a little trodden about near to where the body was lying” with this statement: “There was no blood on the soles of [Elizabeth Stride’s] boots as far as I could see by the light, which was a policeman’s lantern”. So obviously, Dr. Blackwell must have been aware that someone stepped in her blood, and he was trying to ascertain if that person was Elizabeth Stride. Could it have been her murderer? Likely; but then again, there were several people in Dutfield Yard by the time Dr. Blackwell made this observation.

As far as repositioning of her body, I’ll add this much: it was observed that she had bruises over both of her shoulders. However, she was found lying (mostly) on her left side. I just can’t imagine a positioning where someone could be exerting pressure over both shoulders while she is lying on her left side. There’s room for speculation: someone sitting atop of her and forcing pressure down on her chest until she expired or passed out (for instance!); regardless, it would just seem that she was positioned onto her side before the cut was made.

*all emphasis my own
**I am still contemplating the connection between her bonnet and the mud in her hair. Mr. E. Johnson mentioned that her bonnet “was lying on the ground by the side of her head – beyond her head, in fact”. Some people believe that her (and Polly Nicholl’s) bonnet fell off in the fracas; however I tend to believe that it was removed by the murderer. Her bonnet must have been off in order to get the mud in her hair , but it was found near the body, so was there mud near that rut|gutter? Questions, questions…

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Yes, if the body was moved after she was killed, there would be a great big trail of blood from the point where her throat was cut originally. I think Phillips' statement clearly negates that possibility.

Do you really suppose I hadn't considered that, before suggesting she'd been moved?
In post #322 I give a possible scenario, that attempts to work with 13 'criteria'.
It has problems but this is a very difficult murder to explain.
Just look at all the talk about just one element - the scarf - over the last few pages.
People should be trying to put forward a scenario that covers at least most of those 13 bullet points, rather than just mentioning things in isolation.

Perhaps you'd also like to have a read of post #309, in which I deny the possibility of Jack having cut the throat, with Liz as close to the wall as she was found.

The trodding on a bit of the blood, and such, would also be hard to spot given the alley was a bit muddy, so such transfer would easily be missed when checking boots and such.

The passageway wasn't muddy. Whatever small amount of dirt had accumulated on the ground, had mostly been washed away by the heavy rain, earlier that evening.
The stones were no more than damp. Her clothes were dry. There was no mud for soles to pick up, nor does a police constable indicate otherwise.

It's not clear the transferred stains are supposed to be by hands near the throat area, we don't know where those stains were that Phillips is talking about other than somehow in relation to the flow of blood, which went from the body and down the gutter quite a ways.

You're talking words out of Phillips' mouth - he specifically says the blood was 'from the original flow from the neck' - not just somewhere from between neck and door.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

The interruption model is not limited to the arrival of Diemschutz. It could have been any number of things including just basic paranoia regarding the situation.

That is fortunate, considering the improbability of Diemschutz interrupting the murderer, who then hides further up the yard.
Consider this exchange, at the inquest...

[A Juror] Was it possible for anybody to leave the yard between the discovery of the body and the arrival of the police?
[Diemschutz] Oh, yes - or, rather, it would have been possible before I informed the members of the club, not afterwards.

Presumably Louis means, the killer could have escaped when he goes inside to inform members of his discovery.
That's fine, but what comes next is really interesting...

[Coroner] When you entered the yard, if any person had run out you would have seen them in the dark?
[Diemschutz] Oh, yes, it was light enough for that. It was dark in the gateway, but not so dark further in the yard.

So the possibility of the Ripper hiding deeper in the yard, is denied by none other than Louis Deimschutz!
So much for that theory!

That the leaves us with the period of time in which Israel Schwartz claims to have walked by the club, witnessed the altercation, and then been chased away by Pipeman, merely in response to being labelled with an ethnic slur, by that un-JtR like thug, we know as BS Man.
Too bad no one witnessed this, or even heard it.
Too bad no one has more than a vague clue as to who these two men might have been.
Too bad Scotland Yard decided to keep this seemingly critical witness, away from the inquest.
Too bad no one wants to consider that the reason for all this, is that Schwartz was running away from the vicinity of the club just after 12:45, but not for the reason given!

[Michael W Richards]

Okay, thanks.
Why does Edward Johnston say this:



Does he mean clotted, or congealed?

Likely the second.

[Michael W Richards]

The interruption model is not limited to the arrival of Diemschutz. It could have been any number of things including just basic paranoia regarding the situation.

c.d.

This Interruption Model needs to have some meat to begin with to rank it as a possible theory cd, as it is, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the killer of Liz Stride had any further intentions after the single throat cut, nor is there that the killer was "interrupted" in the process.

[Michael W Richards]

I hope that the people who include Israel Schwartz in their viable investigation smorgasbord have also looked at how this scenario plays out without him. Without Israel, the only thing really that cannot be validated is Louis's arrival time. Empty street after 12:35 and PC Smith "carries on", validated by the young couple, Fanny, Morris and Joseph,...multiple witness statements independently giving the same approximate time they were alerted to the body in the passageway, an estimate of the earliest cut time being within a minute or so of those witnesses timings,... (in another physicians opinion, it might have been as early as shortly after 12:35 when everyone is off the street), ..the time the Police encountered the running for help club members, and the time they and the physician arrived on scene.

The important markers here have to be 12:35, 12:40-12:55, and around 1:02-1:04. Who can be trusted at those points? Based on the vetted evidence we already have.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

The only theory that I support, NB4N, is that there is a 30-minute window of time, from when the constable sees her at approx. 12:35a until another constable is brought to her dead body, when Elizabeth Stride is murdered presumably by the serial killer known as Jack the Ripper. Within that thirty minutes, I try to favor probability over possibility (but that still offers very little consolation in terms of the general mystery of her death). For instance, a) was her murderer interrupted by the arrival of L. Diemschutz; or b) was he spooked by I. Schwartz and decided to scram before a constable was brought round; or c) did her murderer leave after discovering that location under that shade-wall too dim of light that he couldn’t see well enough to harvest her organs; or d) {to be determined}…

I'm not accusing you of this Robert, but I'm wary of thinking that tackles the problem by choosing a broad overall scenario, and then trying to fit in the details.
For example:
Was Stride a Ripper victim?
If No, move on to the other murders.
If Yes, why no mutilations?
Easy answer #1: Jack was interrupted.
Who by?
Easy answer #2: The guy with the pony.
Proceed from there...

The problem is, this locks you in to a fixed way of looking at it.
It leads to conformation bias, and explanations that garner a lot of support (because that style of thinking is so common), but which lack thoroughness.
For example:
Is BS Man, JtR?
Yes - what are the chances of one woman being attacked by different men, 15 minutes apart?
Okay fine, but this is at 12:45, and the body is not discovered until 1:00.
What happens in this 15 minute period of apparent limbo?
Does BSM/JtR kill Stride, get bored and walk off?
Or does he keep manhandling her until 1 am, when he finally puts her out of her misery?
The 'limbo period' is never explained, and that's because the Interruption Model gains most of its strength through numbers, not explanatory power.

I don’t believe that Dr. Blackwell was referring to a transfer of blood from neck to ground because he used the word “trodden”, which means that he is referring of a transfer of blood (by someone’s footstep) from the pooled or stream of blood to the ground nearby. Also he follows up this statement: “There were no spots of blood, but there was a little trodden about near to where the body was lying” with this statement: “There was no blood on the soles of [Elizabeth Stride’s] boots as far as I could see by the light, which was a policeman’s lantern”. So obviously, Dr. Blackwell must have been aware that someone stepped in her blood, and he was trying to ascertain if that person was Elizabeth Stride. Could it have been her murderer? Likely; but then again, there were several people in Dutfield Yard by the time Dr. Blackwell made this observation.

Remember it is Phillips statement re the transplanting of blood.
This is Blackwell's exchange:

[Coroner] Were there no spots of blood about?
[Blackwell] No; only some marks of blood which had been trodden in.
[Coroner] Was there any blood on the soles of the deceased's boots?
[Blackwell] No.

I don't think he is implying that the blood has been transferred via shoes.
He merely clears up the notion that the trodden in marks of blood, could be due to Liz.
How the blood actually got onto the ground is not discussed.

As far as repositioning of her body, I’ll add this much: it was observed that she had bruises over both of her shoulders. However, she was found lying (mostly) on her left side. I just can’t imagine a positioning where someone could be exerting pressure over both shoulders while she is lying on her left side. There’s room for speculation: someone sitting atop of her and forcing pressure down on her chest until she expired or passed out (for instance!); regardless, it would just seem that she was positioned onto her side before the cut was made.

She also has bruise points below each collar bone.
Somehow he has to push her down to the ground, while keeping her quiet, and also still enough that he can cut along the line of the scarf.
Obviously he wants her on her side, so he can (with great difficulty) cut mainly the same side of the neck, to avoid arterial spray on himself.
So he had to release his grip, roll her over, and then cut.
All the while she is fairly quiet and more or less clinging to the cachous packet!
Oh, and all this occurs in darkness that Louis Diemschutz described as 'intense'.
A truly 'heroic' effort!

Her bonnet must have been off in order to get the mud in her hair , but it was found near the body, so was there mud near that rut|gutter?

Unless she were moved, what choice is there but to believe; Yes

[NotBlamedForNothing]

I hope that the people who include Israel Schwartz in their viable investigation smorgasbord have also looked at how this scenario plays out without him. Without Israel, the only thing really that cannot be validated is Louis's arrival time.

A suspect cannot be used to validate anything.

[Michael W Richards]

A suspect cannot be used to validate anything.

A suspect? What? Israel is not now nor ever was considered a suspect, nor is Louis, in any official records.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

A suspect? What? Israel is not now nor ever was considered a suspect, nor is Louis, in any official records.

First read posts #282 & #290.

Now let's think about this...

Schwartz claims to have gone out on a day that he and his wife are moving address.
To 'go out' does not imply 'to go to work' - therefore we have to wonder what the hell he is doing out all day.
He inexplicably leaves the packing and moving to his wife.
This might make sense if he leaves fairly early, but if we suppose he leaves just before 9 am, he is out for 16 hours. Why?
If he leaves late in the morning, he is still out for well over 12 hours, but then has time to help his wife move, but he doesn't. Why?
Furthermore, leaving late in the morning leaves us to contemplate this:

A young Jewish man named Israel Schwartz, leaves behind his wife at their Berner St address, late on the morning of Sep 29.
We have no idea what he does all day, but we do know what his wife does!
He is returning home at 12:45 the next morning, when he has a close encounter with Jack the Ripper.

A young Jewish man named Louis Diemschutz, leaves behind his wife at their Berner St address, late (why?) on the morning of Sep 29.
He spends the day alone, working at the markets.
He returns home at 1 am, and just misses having an encounter with Jack the Ripper.
Jack, by the way, is in a street that prostitutes - according to Louis and two of his comrades at the club - are rarely if ever seen in.

Louis is returning to his wife and home at the club, which by 1 am, still contains tens of other members and guests.
What about Israel?
He claims to be going to the old address to see if his wife has managed to vacate the premises, well over 12 hours after he left there.
She surely has, so what does that mean?...

On the night of the double event, Israel Schwartz has access to a vacated residence!

How utterly convenient! Or is it just a coincidence that he access to this empty place?

This is incredible to contemplate, but it gets worse, or better, depending on your point of view.
Remember I asked about the bleed time to death after cut? I guessed 2 minutes. Here is a better estimate...

Dr Blackwell: Deceased would take about a minute and a half to bleed to death.

So the ~12:52 time of death looks a pretty safe bet.
Schwartz told Abberline, that at just after 12:45, he was running away from the vicinity of the club.
Why do you think he was running as if his life depended on it, a few minutes before the victim dies?

There are only 2 things that can possibly save him:

1. The fantastical story he tried to sell to Abberline
2. Louis' claim to have arrived at exactly 1:00, and discovered the body

Schwartz' story is so unlikely, bizarre, uncorroborated, unstable, and uncertain in terms of the characters within it, that it simply cannot be taken seriously.
It may appear that Abberline did take it seriously, but he didn't.
Schwartz positively identified Stride at the mortuary, after supposedly the briefest and indirect of encounters on that dimly lit street.
Impossible! He did identifier her, but that's because the interaction was much more involved that we are led to believe.

As for the 1 am arrival time, as you and I know from multiple witness statements, that is also a load of old cobblers.
But then why not make out that the discovery time was closer to the actual time of death? Why not say 12:50, for example?
Simple, it is to protect the identity of the murderer, by making it look like the kill time was several minutes after Schwartz ran away frantically.

Now see if you can make sense of the GSG, including the misspelling of 'Jews'...

[Robert St Devil]

I'm not accusing you of this Robert, but I'm wary of thinking that tackles the problem by choosing a broad overall scenario, and then trying to fit in the details...

The problem is, this locks you in to a fixed way of looking at it.

I have serious reservations that I am locked into “a fixed way of looking at [the mystery of Elizabeth Stride’s murder]” simply because I have book-ended her death with official markers [ie. PC Smith’s sighting and PC Lamb’s finding]. The truth of the matter is, there isn’t sufficient evidence available within that timeframe to "blatantly|obviously" solve two of the largest mysteries concerning her murder:

1. What time was Eliz Stride murdered?
2. Did the Schwartz encounter truly occur?

So, of course you are going to fit in the details with meticulous measure to determine a probable answer or, at the very least, a miniscule advance towards a probable line of reasoning (ie. a better set of questions with which to approach the scenario). You, on the other hand, want to hang the Interruption Model on any open-minded Ripperologist who doesn’t agree with your alternative and dismiss their approach with ham-handed examples when it seems since the start of this thread that you have been trying to hammer a square peg into a non-existent hole. You have:

1. Calculated that the only way Diemschutz could be sitting in his barrow is center-upright when he reached to prod Stride’s body without any possibility that he could have… oh, I dunno… leaned over in his seat
2. Diemschutz fabricating an imaginary pony & barrow merely for his deceitful amusement when it would have been 10-fold easier to simply claim that he walked to the club, tripped over something in the passageway, lit a match and saw a woman. Why the need to elaborate on a lie with an aspect [pony & barrow] that could have been verified by asking one of the constables present in the yard {ie. Coroner to PC Lamb: By the way, about this pony & barrow that Diemschutz mentioned…]?
3. Fanny Mortimer married to Patek Phillipe and whose very nature is seemingly designed around her accuracy for time. This when we have examples at the inquest of people being uncertain about time in general – PC Lamb says that he was alerted around 1am, but later says he arrived 10 to 12 minutes prior to Dr. Blackwell (who says that he arrived promptly at 1:16a). So, which is it – is he at Dutfield Yard around 1a or is PC Lamb on site at 1:04, 1:06… or maybe even 1:08,…
4. “trodden” meaning something other than “stepped in” - even after the Coroner asks, “was there any blood on the soles of the deceased” in light of the word “trodden” being spoken by Dr. Blackwell and “soles” being in reference to her boots.

To employ a term used by mi amigo DJA: Crikey!

However. I do enjoy that the thread has been a continuous effort and I have made realizations of my own through the endeavor. Just like the aspect of the un-muddied bonnet beside her head has been tossing about in my contemplations, I have also been considering the “what-if” aspect. As in, what-if Louis Diemschutz hadn’t arrived at 1am as he claims? Maybe my general sense of direction is wrong but it seems that PC Smith would have been coming up on Berner Street in very short time. Would the murder have occurred so near in time (1am) to having a constable walk-by and within a dead-end scenario such as Dutfield Yard?