The Bucks Row Project Summary Report.

[Fisherman]

Batman: Here is where "the route to work" explanation becomes "routes to all the places he worked + relatives living in one area".

This is nothing short of saying - "JtR went places where he had experiences walking before."

That includes probably tens of thousands of people.

Which is of no interest at all, since these people are NO SUSPECTS! It is beyond comprehension how it is used as an argument at all. It is a splendid example of intellectual corruption.
Once we track a suspect - and a suspect is somebody with a real connection to a case, who have acted in a manner that evokes suspicion (compare to what James Cobie says, "he is somebody a jury would not like"). The rest of a community are NON-SUSPECTS until anything surfaces to change that for one or more of them.

It then applies that suspects are checked for whatever geographical ties they may have to an area where cries have occurred.

It does not conclusively prove the they are guilty, but it goes a long way to strengthen whatever suspicions that attach to them.

This is the most basic of police work, Batman. Surely you have heard of the process? Or? Donīt embarass yourself if you donīt need to.



No it isn't. It is a few roads above from Mitre Square and Lechmere still has 90% of Whitechapel to cover to get home. It might be in the same direction, but it far from "smack, bang on his route". It is just one road of many in the direction he could have taken.

It "might be in the same direction"? Genius! You hit the nail on the head. As a matter of fact it IS in the same direction.
The fact that Lechmere could have chosen another route on the night, is of no material interest. To begin with, the whole premise is that he was there because he was the killer, and if he WAS, then he did pass through Goulston Street. If he was not the killer, he was probably sound asleep at home. The gist of the matter, though, is that the rag matches a logical return route home from Mitre Square/Broad Street to Doveton Street. It fits, in other words. That is all that matters here. If the rag had been dumped west of Liverpool Street station, it would not fit Lechmere in any shape of form that we are aware of, and this detail would not line up with the rest of the evidence pointing to his guilt.
But you know what? As it stands, it DOES line up.

This makes no sense. If he cleaned up in Broad Street, then he would have cleaned up there instead of cleaning up on Goulston Street. Also Mitre Square and places around had water basins which JtR could easily use. Also, he is spending just a few minutes in work? Hello/goodbye. That this doesn't catch anyone's attention given the double murder the next day?

I said that he may have had his organ stash at the depot. If he did, can you see how it works that you need to actually access the depot to be able to stash the organs there?

I have said that he may have cut himself and used the rag as a makeshift bandage. Can you see how this may have meant that he took the rag with himself leaving Broad Street?

We have absolutely no idea which premises he had access to, but we know that he had served with Pickfords for twenty years, making it very reasonable that he knew all the nooks and crannies - and that he may have had access to keys.

Hello/goodbye? In Sweden, we say "Good day, ax handle" when we think somebody has embarassed himself. So Good day, ax handle.

[Fisherman]

I am asking for an intellectual criticism of the theory - and THIS is what I get...? "There were others living in the area, maybe one of them did it?" "Why would he carry a knife?" "People living close by are the more likely killers!"

I think this pretty much exonerate Ted Bundy of the Lake Sammamish murders. I mean, why would anyone bring a ligature, handcuffs and a crowbar to a day out on the beach? Ridiculous!
And surely, it would not be someone from outside the Lake Sammamish area who was the killer? Certainly, it must have been somebody living by the lake!
Bundy lived in Tacoma, Washington, some fifteen miles southwest of the lake, so he will naturally be innocent.

Can we be just a teenzie weenzie bit realistic about these matters?

[Sam Flynn]

I am asking for an intellectual criticism of the theory - and THIS is what I get...? "There were others living in the area, maybe one of them did it?" "Why would he carry a knife?" "People living close by are the more likely killers!"

Yes. All perfectly reasonable points to make, especially when phrased as they were presented, not as you've just caricatured them.

"There were others living in the area, maybe one of them did it?"/"People living close by are the more likely killers!" (the same point, really) - What's actually being said is that there were thousands of truly local residents with legitimate reasons for being in the locale, with quick and easy access to the murder sites at all times - and quicker routes back to safety - with no need to invoke additional reasons/excuses to place them there.

"Why would he carry a knife?" - What was asked was why he would have carried a razor-sharp knife on a visit to his mother.

I think this pretty much exonerate Ted Bundy of the Lake Sammamish murders. I mean, why would anyone bring a ligature, handcuffs and a crowbar to a day out on the beach?

Bundy had a Volkswagen, Cross only had shoe-leather and some pockets.

Can we be just a teenzie weenzie bit realistic about these matters?

Yes, let's. It's far more realistic to posit a yet-to-be-found Spitalfields based killer than an already-known witness living in Bethnal Green.

[Abby Normal]

Yes. All perfectly reasonable points to make, especially when phrased as they were presented, not as you've just caricatured them.

"There were others living in the area, maybe one of them did it?"/"People living close by are the more likely killers!" (the same point, really) - What's actually being said is that there were thousands of truly local residents with legitimate reasons for being in the locale, with quick and easy access to the murder sites at all times - and quicker routes back to safety - with no need to invoke additional reasons/excuses to place them there.

"Why would he carry a knife?" - What was asked was why he would have carried a razor-sharp knife on a visit to his mother.
Bundy had a Volkswagen, Cross only had shoe-leather and some pockets.
Yes, let's. It's far more realistic to posit a yet-to-be-found Spitalfields based killer than an already-known witness living in Bethnal Green.

is it though?the old phantom ripper theory?
lets face it-Lechmere is as good a suspect for the Nichols murder as anybody-named or unnamed- and hence as good a suspect for the ripper.

I have a handful of men who I beleive are better (or less weak) but thats my personal take on it.

on the face of it, out of so many named suspects, persons of interest and witness suspects- to me seems the balance is that the name is out there.

[Harry D]

You speak of circular reasoning, stating that I use Lechmereīs innocent behavior as a pointer to guilt.
That is not a very nice thing to do when I have just agreed that the things you point to do not implicate guilt at all.
I posted a long list of things that are NOT looking innocent (like disagreeing with the police), and I extremely clearly said that THESE were the matters that made me suspect him, not the innocently coloured stuff you pointed to. Calling a passer-by to help and searching out a PC can NEVER be a suspicious thing. It CAN be part of a guilty pattern, but in itself it is totally innocent.

I then pointed out that a man who has been arrested for something he does not want to own up to, will naturally try to supply the police with innocent reasons for his being in place at a crime scene. I am 100 per cent certain that you will realize this too. Putting it differently, I am suggesting that criminals lie to save their behinds. Can we agree on that?

Now, please donīt use this fact to claim that I am saying that the parts of Lechmereīs behavior that look innocent MUST BE sinister instead! Once more, it is a lot of OTHER things that look guilty, and if they are guilty, then and only then can we conclude that he may have done what I say very many criminals do: lied.

It is not as if we can accept that once a person says "I did not do that", that seals the deal of his innocence! To do that would be to think and act as circular as it gets, right?

So please, letīs not argue the way you do here. Letīs look at the different options without denying either that people can tell the truth or that they can lie.

Then do you concede that Lechmere's behaviour (i.e. approaching Paul, alerting a policeman, attending the inquest, and volunteering his personal details) are congruent with an innocent witness?

[Batman]

Batman: Here is where "the route to work" explanation becomes "routes to all the places he worked + relatives living in one area".

This is nothing short of saying - "JtR went places where he had experiences walking before."

That includes probably tens of thousands of people.

Which is of no interest at all, since these people are NO SUSPECTS! It is beyond comprehension how it is used as an argument at all. It is a splendid example of intellectual corruption.
Once we track a suspect - and a suspect is somebody with a real connection to a case, who have acted in a manner that evokes suspicion (compare to what James Cobie says, "he is somebody a jury would not like"). The rest of a community are NON-SUSPECTS until anything surfaces to change that for one or more of them.

It then applies that suspects are checked for whatever geographical ties they may have to an area where cries have occurred.

It does not conclusively prove the they are guilty, but it goes a long way to strengthen whatever suspicions that attach to them.

This is the most basic of police work, Batman. Surely you have heard of the process? Or? Donīt embarass yourself if you donīt need to.



No it isn't. It is a few roads above from Mitre Square and Lechmere still has 90% of Whitechapel to cover to get home. It might be in the same direction, but it far from "smack, bang on his route". It is just one road of many in the direction he could have taken.

It "might be in the same direction"? Genius! You hit the nail on the head. As a matter of fact it IS in the same direction.
The fact that Lechmere could have chosen another route on the night, is of no material interest. To begin with, the whole premise is that he was there because he was the killer, and if he WAS, then he did pass through Goulston Street. If he was not the killer, he was probably sound asleep at home. The gist of the matter, though, is that the rag matches a logical return route home from Mitre Square/Broad Street to Doveton Street. It fits, in other words. That is all that matters here. If the rag had been dumped west of Liverpool Street station, it would not fit Lechmere in any shape of form that we are aware of, and this detail would not line up with the rest of the evidence pointing to his guilt.
But you know what? As it stands, it DOES line up.

This makes no sense. If he cleaned up in Broad Street, then he would have cleaned up there instead of cleaning up on Goulston Street. Also Mitre Square and places around had water basins which JtR could easily use. Also, he is spending just a few minutes in work? Hello/goodbye. That this doesn't catch anyone's attention given the double murder the next day?

I said that he may have had his organ stash at the depot. If he did, can you see how it works that you need to actually access the depot to be able to stash the organs there?

I have said that he may have cut himself and used the rag as a makeshift bandage. Can you see how this may have meant that he took the rag with himself leaving Broad Street?

We have absolutely no idea which premises he had access to, but we know that he had served with Pickfords for twenty years, making it very reasonable that he knew all the nooks and crannies - and that he may have had access to keys.

Hello/goodbye? In Sweden, we say "Good day, ax handle" when we think somebody has embarassed himself. So Good day, ax handle.

There were official suspects in this case and none of them were Lechmere and many were most certainly believed to have been in all of the murder areas at the time, and even living there, such is the case with Kozminski.

So we can dismiss this idea that there aren't other suspects and certainly question Lechmere's candidacy for 'suspect'. Officially he never was.

Your claim he wore Eddowes apron piece with excrement on it as a bandage to explain why he goes up Goulston St., after visiting his place of employment to dump off Eddowes insides, makes no sense at all.

Lechmere goes from Berner St., Westwards to Mitre Sq., then Westwards again to his place of work and then decides to head right back into the heart of the murder zone, with a cut hand bandaged in a piece of the victim's apron, with excrement on it, and then just dumps it on Goulston St., without anyone seeing this bloody bandaged man around despite officers all over the place like a swarm.

The fact is there is no reason for Lechmere in any form of a getaway to go through Whitechapel this way at all because there is a clear route to his home through Bethnal Green Road without having to go near Duke St., Mitre Sq., or the Goulston area.

[Sam Flynn]

is it though?the old phantom ripper theory?

Not quite. There were tens of thousands of men living in Whitechapel[*], any one of which might have been the Ripper, yet the number of named suspects who might loosely be deemed viable can barely be assembled into a Top Ten. The chances that this tiny subset of named individuals contains the actual Ripper are extremely small, and the likelihood that there were stronger candidates among the hordes of unnamed individuals is correspondingly high.

[* if we extend the radius out as far as Bethnal Green, Bromley-by-Bow and West India Dock to cater for other suspects like Cross, Bury and Kłosowski, we can add many tens of thousands more.]

[Fisherman]

Sam Flynn: Not even Cross fits that description, strictly speaking.

You ridiculously disagree about some of the terms used - but you cannot disagree about the core of the matter. When Paul arrived, Lechmere was already in place, he was close to the body and Nichols was still bleeding and freshly killed. That is what matters - other than Lechmeres own assertions, nothing at all stops him from having had opportunity to kill, and to have taken advantage of that opportunity. After that, quibbling over whether he was "found", "discovered" etcetera is blaha-blaha.

That's just one case and, if there was to be any disagreement at all, it was going to be between the police and the witnesses present. Who's to say whose account was true or in error? Any discrepancies might lie with the police, Cross, Paul, or a combination of all three - to say nothing of the press who wrote all this up, with varying (and hardly comprehensive) results.

"Just" one case? He disagreed with the police in "just" one case? How many cases would you want him to disagree with the police abut before you realize the potential implications, Gareth? Two? Twenty?
As for whoīs to say who was in error, there can be no certainty. But there IS certinty that if Lechmere lied to Mizen - and that is entirely on the cards as a very real possibility - then that could point to how a killer chose to try and pass by the police.
We do not need to know who was in error to accept that this is a point that calls upon us to be very, very careful about Charles Lechmere and totally open to the suggestion that he may be the killer. It is an anomaly that should definitively NOT be there, least of all since there are so many other anomalies relating to him. Once that happens, we must accept that he needs to be treated as a very serious suspect.

I mean a resident of Whitechapel, more specifically Spitalfields, not the "rest of the East End".But a killer resident in Whitechapel/Spitalfields had greater advantages than Cross ever had, and every reason in the world for being present near the murder sites with no excuses needed to place them there. No suppositions about work rotas or routes, no need to favour particular opinions of times of death, no "he might have been visiting his mum", no "he might have been pub-crawling", no nothing.He was not "found", and he was standing in the road.

How silly. You speak about how I would need an "excuse" to put Lechmere on the murder spots. I need nothing like that at all. He is already effectively connected to these spots, and the only "excuses" I can see are the ones "excusing" this. Charles Lechmere is and remains the ONLY totally viable suspect once we demand geographical evidence of a connection to the murder areas. Nobody else can compete. I hear a lot of coughing and whining, but that pill is gonna go down, regardless of itīs foul taste.

I haven't put my foot in anything. What I've said is perfectly true and entirely reasonable.

If it is entirely reasonable to dismiss a man as a suspect on account of how we should deny that he would ever have access to a sharp knife on evenings when he visits his mother, then yes. If that is true, then you are entirely reasonable.
If it is not true, the argumentation is instead entirely ridiculous.

If you need a safe tip as to what applies, let me know.

[Sam Flynn]

Lechmere is and remains the ONLY totally viable suspect once we demand geographical evidence of a connection to the murder areas. Nobody else can compete.

I raise you Michael Kidney, Joe Barnett, Joseph Lis, Hutchinson, and any other named suspects who lived in the very heart of the murders.

[Fisherman]

Sam Flynn: Yes. All perfectly reasonable points to make, especially when phrased as they were presented, not as you've just caricatured them.

"There were others living in the area, maybe one of them did it?"/"People living close by are the more likely killers!" (the same point, really) - What's actually being said is that there were thousands of truly local residents with legitimate reasons for being in the locale, with quick and easy access to the murder sites at all times - and quicker routes back to safety - with no need to invoke additional reasons/excuses to place them there.

So basically, until Ted Bundy was apprehended, any person living by Lake Sammamish was more likely to be the killer than him? Thatīs poppycock, Iīm afraid.
And do not forget what I said before: None of the local residents you speak of were suspects. They are not on equal footing with Lechmere in any way at all. Positing that it is more likely that the killer lived in the midst of the victims is rubbish - he may or he may not have. And Charles Lechmere was a man who spent hours every week in Whitechapel, passing through it. He was totally familiar with the district, and he lived no further away from any of the victims than half an hours walk.
Of course, if he had piled the victims up on his doorstep at 22 Doveton Street, he would have gone from uninteresting to a serious suspect, but we can only ask for so much.

"Why would he carry a knife?" - What was asked was why he would have carried a razor-sharp knife on a visit to his mother.

Thatīs a tricky one. But I will try and explain to you how I reason when I make up my "excuses"!

First: I am not sure that he DID go to visit his mother. He could have been in St Georges for a number of other reasons. After all, it was an area where he had grown up and lived for many a year, and so it can be reasoned that he would have had contacts a plenty there.
But letīs go with the suggestion that he DID go to St Georges to visit his mother! In such a case, I am not suggesting that he brought the knife along BECAUSE he was to see his mother. That is not how I reason at all. I instead reason that he may either;
a/ have brought the knife along since he thought that he would like to kill somebody AFTER having seen his mother (maybe that was something he knew she would bring out in him eh? )
b/ have been in the habit of ALWAYS carrying a sharp knife, owing to how he was an opportunistic killer. If you take a look at the so called Ripper murders, one common factor seems to be an element of opportunism, something that is not rare at all among serial killers.
Can you see how I fabricate my excuses now?
If you can prove that people cannot kill somebody on the same night as they visit their mothers, then you have a very good point. But we both know that the mere suggestion is Monty Python stuff, so letīs not pretend otherwise:
"Please Sir, donīt kill me!"
"Shut it, you! I am the ruthless Ripper, and I will ... No! No, mother! why must you always pop up and ruin my murders?"

Bundy had a Volkswagen, Cross only had shoe-leather and some pockets.

Nevertheless, Bundy killed away from home, much further so than Lechmere. Lechmere could reach the sites in under half an hour which equates to the time it would have taken Bundy to drive to Lake Sammamish. So there you are.

Yes, let's. It's far more realistic to posit a yet-to-be-found Spitalfields based killer than an already-known witness living in Bethnal Green.

The second he has a working route that takes him through Spitalfields on a daily basis, that problem evaporates. Any killer living in Spitalfields would need to walk a few miles to carry out all the C5 deeds - which is exactly what Lechmere did. In both cases.

[Abby Normal]

Not quite. There were tens of thousands of men living in Whitechapel[*], any one of which might have been the Ripper, yet the number of named suspects who might loosely be deemed viable can barely be assembled into a Top Ten. The chances that this tiny subset of named individuals contains the actual Ripper are extremely small, and the likelihood that there were stronger candidates among the hordes of unnamed individuals is correspondingly high.

[* if we extend the radius out as far as Bethnal Green, Bromley-by-Bow and West India Dock to cater for other suspects like Cross, Bury and Kłosowski, we can add many tens of thousands more.]

I disagree Sam. whereas I think all the suspects are weak-the viable suspects put together would tip the scales in favor of the ripper being among them. IMHO the least weak-Hutch, blotchy, Bury, Koz, chapman, kelly alone would put it at slightly over 50/50 one of these men were the ripper.


the next group-barnett, flemming, Bowyer, richardson, lech, donston, francis thompson, jacob levy, tumblety, oswald puckridge, Piggot, legrange, druitt puts the number closer to 20 men (ive probably forgot a couple). so with this group included I think were looking at closer to 60-70 percent chance we got the ripper.


All of these men were known to be in the area at the time, were suspects or persons of interest at the time or (need to be ruled out) witnesses. All have some kind of viable connection to the case and most have had very valid arguments for their candidacy.


The annals of serial crime are riddled with suspects who were on the radar, but only busted later (much later) when such modern tools as DNA, video, and cell phone evidence finally nailed them. without which they would have walked scott free-tools they didnt have back then.


to be extremely conservative-i would give it 40% that its a totally unnamed and unknown person. personally I beleive its only really probably closer to 30-20 percent unknown/unnamed.

specifically in the case of lech, how many of these unnamed men were in between the typical SK killing age of 25-45, were found hovering around a freshly killed victim (before raising an alarm), have discrepency with the police and whos route to work and former residence place them within yards of the murder spots and at approx TOD? Probably only one. Not saying this makes Lech the ripper, but surely puts him squarly in the ranks of possibility far more than any of the unnamed hordes.

as you can see Im not a huge fan of the phantom ripper theory, LOL, especially as an argument against a perfectly viable suspect.

[Fisherman]

Then do you concede that Lechmere's behaviour (i.e. approaching Paul, alerting a policeman, attending the inquest, and volunteering his personal details) are congruent with an innocent witness?

I already did that in my first answer to you, Harry - there are many aspects of what he did that seem to point to innocence. And as you will appreciate, those are not the aspects by which I accuse him.

Think of it - how could I NOT concede this? How would I argue that for example volunteering personal information is a sign of guilt? Searching out the police? Attending an inquest?

What I identify is how he could have other reasons for doing what he did than pure and simple innocence - he could have volunteered his personal information because he felt it could be checked out, he did not give the name he was expected to and he may have tried to keep his address from the papers, he may have searched out the police only to keep Paul away from suspicion and he may have gone to the inquest to lie about his role.

There are two sides to the coin, but I would not claim that the parameters you bring up was ever anything but signs of innocence - on the surface, if nothing else.

[Fisherman]

Batman: There were official suspects in this case and none of them were Lechmere and many were most certainly believed to have been in all of the murder areas at the time, and even living there, such is the case with Kozminski.

There is not a iot of evidence placing him at or anywhere near any of the murder sites. Of course, once one suspects a person, one must also accept that he would have been at the sites, otherwise he cannot be the killer. In that respect Bury, Levy, Kosminski, Carroll, van Gogh, Sickert, Barnett, Fleming and a whole lot of people must ALL have been at the sites. Simultaneously, even.
But that is something else than what we have in Lechmeres case, where there is absolute proof that he was at one of the sites at the relevant hour (and even found standing alone, in close proximity to the victim), and where he had viable and logical reasons to have visited the rest of the sites too.

So we can dismiss this idea that there aren't other suspects and certainly question Lechmere's candidacy for 'suspect'. Officially he never was.

We can say for sure that he is not a contemporary suspect. And we can say with equal certainty that he IS a suspect today. And far from saying that there are not any other suspects, what I DO say is that none of them fits the biill geographically the way Lechmere does.
Oh dear; thatīs your argument in shreds. Sorry.

Your claim he wore Eddowes apron piece with excrement on it as a bandage to explain why he goes up Goulston St., after visiting his place of employment to dump off Eddowes insides, makes no sense at all.

If itīs about making sense, then what the heck are YOU doing here?

Lechmere goes from Berner St., Westwards to Mitre Sq., then Westwards again to his place of work and then decides to head right back into the heart of the murder zone, with a cut hand bandaged in a piece of the victim's apron, with excrement on it, and then just dumps it on Goulston St., without anyone seeing this bloody bandaged man around despite officers all over the place like a swarm.

There would have been numerous streets that were empty, and you can put your hand in a pocket. Far from being submerged in shite, there were spots of faeces on the rag. And beggars canīt be choosers; he reasonably took what he could lay his hands on. Plus, of course, were hou not one of those who argue that it was pitch dark in Mitre Square? Dark enough perhaps, for **** on a rag to stay undetected?

The fact is there is no reason for Lechmere in any form of a getaway to go through Whitechapel this way at all because there is a clear route to his home through Bethnal Green Road without having to go near Duke St., Mitre Sq., or the Goulston area.

Ah, well that settles it then. I was not aware that you got to make the call about which streets he used.

[Fisherman]

I raise you Michael Kidney, Joe Barnett, Joseph Lis, Hutchinson, and any other named suspects who lived in the very heart of the murders.

Explain to me how you know that any of these people had reason to pass by all the six murder sites in question? Including the ones in St Georges and on City territory.

I donīt want your assertions that they MAY have, for so may Queen Victoria. I want your evidence that these men had established reasons to visit the murder sites at the relevant hours.

[Sam Flynn]

I disagree Sam. whereas I think all the suspects are weak, the viable suspects put together would tip the scales in favor of the ripper being among them

Can't see how that would work. We can heap as much scrap iron onto the pile as we like, but that doesn't increase our chances of striking gold.

In contrast, it's a fairly safe bet that there'd be a good few dozen much stronger Ripper candidates among the tens of thousands of other locals who haven't yet been named.