Jack's Escape Route?

[Herlock Sholmes]

And before you complain, which you will because it’s your hobby, it’s not against Forum rules to respond to posts that weren’t originally aimed at you. So I’ll respond.

You also alleged that I 'piled assumption upon assumption' but, as I responded, in some detail, I had in fact made reasonable deductions and explained how I arrived at them.

And I’ve pointed out numerous times that there is no issue with anyone making deductions/interpretations. The issues arise when a single poster assumes that they are infallible and throws a fit every time someone disagrees and posits an alternative deduction/interpretation. Most things in this case have more than one possible interpretation and you shouldn’t expect every other poster to accept yours as some kind of benchmark.

You claimed there are 'multiple possible explanations' for the murderer's cutting of the apron in two, other than the one I gave, but when I asked you whether you could provide a more plausible explanation than mine, you made no reply.

Its not a case of being ‘more plausible.’ Again it’s a case of possible alternatives. The suggestion that the killer, acknowledging that he wouldn’t have time for any clean up in Mitre Square, took away a piece of cloth so that he could check himself over and then clean up away from the crime scene, is both plausible and possible. No less plausible than your preferred explanation. It’s also possible that he might have cut himself in Mitre Square and used the cloth to wrap a wound. Maybe he took it as some kind of souvenir, intending to give it so some woman as a handkerchief so that he could gain some kind of thrill. But when he got near to a light he saw that it was covered in blood and faeces so he threw it away. Who knows. There are alternatives but none can be verified.

Any outside observer reading our exchange would doubtless conclude that a strange game is being played on this forum.

And it’s only started since you began posting.

In addition to being accused routinely of making assumptions instead of deductions from the evidence, I am being accused of making statements for which I have no evidence and - by implication - for which there is no evidence.

Correct. You have no evidence about the coat and yet rather than admit this you continue to wriggle.

Yet, time and again, I am proven right.

Perhaps you should try and get control of that ego?

You weren’t right about the coat. You weren’t right when you accused me of saying 8 things that were said by someone else.

Any such observer would rightly conclude that all the assumptions are being made by my critics - and that those assumptions are demonstrably unfounded, as your silence confirmed.

And of course this is why you have so many people rushing to agree with you…….don’t you? Oh….no you don’t. Not a single person.


As for your comments above:

Joseph Lawende was considered by the police to be an important and reliable witness and royally treated by them.

And that’s why the Police began looking for a sailor. Oh…..hold on…..no they didn’t did they?

His description of the suspect was evidently considered valuable, or else it would not have been withheld at the inquest.

Of course it was valued. It was hardly cctv footage though. We all know that witnesses can be fallible on identification, especially at night under a gas lamp by a man who was paying little attention.

I suggest your point about poor lighting is not valid: Lawende could judge the colour of the man's moustache, the colour and pattern of his jacket, the colour of his neckerchief, and the colour of his cap.

This is woeful reasoning. He ‘judged’ the colour but we have no way of verifying if he was correct or not. Think about it. And, despite your refusal to accept the fact, lighting affects our perception of colour.

It is hardly believable that the man was bathed in light while the woman, who had her hand on his chest, was enveloped in gloom.

You do realise that this was 1888 don’t you. Have you ever stood near a gas lamp. It’s hardly a lighthouse.

There was not a big enough time gap for someone else to have murdered Eddowes.

This is simply untrue. The man could have moved on at 1.35 and Eddowes could have entered Church Passage to pass through Mitre Square where she meets her killer coming from the opposite direction.

We had Trevor Marriott yesterday questioning whether the murderer had time to excise Eddowes' kidney, so how could Eddowes have parted from the man she was so obviously interested in, found another man, and that man still have had time to excise her kidney - and yes, I do believe that all the excisions were done by the murderer.

See above. She could still have met her killer at 1.35 or 1.36. If the man walked away as soon as Lawende passed Kate could have met her killer 20 seconds later. We simply don’t know despite your assumptions and leaps of faith.

The police themselves did acknowledge at the time the lack of time for someone other than the man seen by Lawende to have committed the murder.

If they did (and I can’t recall this fact being stated explicitly - though it might have been) it doesn’t mean that they can’t have been wrong unless they took the same ‘infallibility pills’ that you do.

As I stated previously, I believe the murderer was living in accommodation in Spitalfields throughout the period in which the murders occurred and did not take his trophies back to a family, wife, relatives, friends or colleagues.

And you might be correct but it’s not correct just because you’ve said it. He might not have lived in Spitalfields. Any suggestion that this isn’t possible is simply wrong.

My reading of the arrival and departure dates of ships convinced me beyond any doubt that the murderer could not have been coming and going on any ships.

Thats fine, because there’s no evidence that he was a sailor.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

Joseph Lawende saw the back of a woman he did not know at a distance of about 10 feet for a short amount of time in poor lighting. He later identified the woman's clothes, as he had never seen the woman's face.

If the woman that Lawende saw was Eddowes, then the man she was talking with probably was was her killer.

But there's a significant chance that the woman that Lawende saw was not Catherine Eddowes, meaning the man that Lawende saw was completely unrelated to the crime.

Even if Lawende did see Eddowes, there is a big enough time gap that the man he saw might not have been her killer.

We also have no way of judging how accurate Lawende's description of the man was.

The Ripper might have been a sailor, but there's not enough information to know that. And if he was a sailor, why weren't the killings closer to the docks?

I refer to # 145 in the thread Would a Doctor or a Policeman participate in major crimes such as these?


You claimed that I described the condition of the apron piece inaccurately.

I then quoted a report by Dr Frederick Gordon Brown, which proves that my description was accurate.

There was no response from you.


You also alleged that I 'piled assumption upon assumption' but, as I responded, in some detail, I had in fact made reasonable deductions and explained how I arrived at them.


You claimed there are 'multiple possible explanations' for the murderer's cutting of the apron in two, other than the one I gave, but when I asked you whether you could provide a more plausible explanation than mine, you made no reply.

You then challenged me to produce 'any' evidence to support what I had written about Scotland Yard's views about the graffito.

I did so, but again there was no response.

You then claimed that I had 'produced no evidence to back' my claim that Wentworth Dwellings was inhabited mainly by Jews.

I did so and, once again, you made no response.

Any outside observer reading our exchange would doubtless conclude that a strange game is being played on this forum.

In addition to being accused routinely of making assumptions instead of deductions from the evidence, I am being accused of making statements for which I have no evidence and - by implication - for which there is no evidence.

Yet, time and again, I am proven right.

Any such observer would rightly conclude that all the assumptions are being made by my critics - and that those assumptions are demonstrably unfounded, as your silence confirmed.


As for your comments above:

Joseph Lawende was considered by the police to be an important and reliable witness and royally treated by them.

His description of the suspect was evidently considered valuable, or else it would not have been withheld at the inquest.

I suggest your point about poor lighting is not valid: Lawende could judge the colour of the man's moustache, the colour and pattern of his jacket, the colour of his neckerchief, and the colour of his cap.

It is hardly believable that the man was bathed in light while the woman, who had her hand on his chest, was enveloped in gloom.

There was not a big enough time gap for someone else to have murdered Eddowes.

We had Trevor Marriott yesterday questioning whether the murderer had time to excise Eddowes' kidney, so how could Eddowes have parted from the man she was so obviously interested in, found another man, and that man still have had time to excise her kidney - and yes, I do believe that all the excisions were done by the murderer.

The police themselves did acknowledge at the time the lack of time for someone other than the man seen by Lawende to have committed the murder.

Your question about the location of the killings relative to that of the docks seems to rest on the assumption - a luxury apparently reserved for anyone except this writer - that the man was living on a ship.

As I stated previously, I believe the murderer was living in accommodation in Spitalfields throughout the period in which the murders occurred and did not take his trophies back to a family, wife, relatives, friends or colleagues.

My reading of the arrival and departure dates of ships convinced me beyond any doubt that the murderer could not have been coming and going on any ships.

[Abby Normal]

Joseph Lawende saw the back of a woman he did not know at a distance of about 10 feet for a short amount of time in poor lighting. He later identified the woman's clothes, as he had never seen the woman's face.

If the woman that Lawende saw was Eddowes, then the man she was talking with probably was was her killer.

But there's a significant chance that the woman that Lawende saw was not Catherine Eddowes, meaning the man that Lawende saw was completely unrelated to the crime.

Even if Lawende did see Eddowes, there is a big enough time gap that the man he saw might not have been her killer.

We also have no way of judging how accurate Lawende's description of the man was.

The Ripper might have been a sailor, but there's not enough information to know that. And if he was a sailor, why weren't the killings closer to the docks?

that all might be true Fiver but peaked cap man. peaked cap man. this aint rocket science

[Abby Normal]

The only comment that I’ll make on this point (again) is that we should be wary of being too confident that we can accurately reverse engineer what went on at any murder scene. We can’t know what the killer or victim where thinking or intending. It’s my opinion that the odds strongly favour than the man seen by Lawende and co was her killer but it can’t be impossible that, like Kelly with Hutchinson, the man that she spoke to might have been someone that she was acquainted with and so she tried to borrow money or persuade him into ‘business’ but he either wasn’t interested or he had no money. Then the killer approached her from the same direction the Lawende had walked? Maybe the killer had been watching and saw her encounter. Or maybe, after the man walked away she headed through Mitre Square via Church Passage where she ran into her killer who entered from one of the other two entrances?

We can’t know for certain but that Lawende’s men was the killer has to be a strong favourite as her killer imo.

totally agree herlock
considering all the witnesses describe the suspect as wearing a peaked cap, including the ones in strides case, we can be pretty certain the ripper was wearing a peaked cap that night and both stride and eddowes were killed by peaked cap man aka the ripper.
and of course while he was also described as having the appearance of a sailor, it dosnt mean he actually was a sailor.

[Fiver]

Eddowes is seen with her hand on a man's chest a short walk from the murder site, nine minutes before her body is found, and is mutilated and eviscerated in such ways that would have taken several minutes to perform, and you are suggesting that instead of her going with the man into the Square, she walked alone into the empty, dark Square for no particular reason, and that the murderer, again for no particular reason, entered the same Square, and that he then murdered her there.

Joseph Lawende saw the back of a woman he did not know at a distance of about 10 feet for a short amount of time in poor lighting. He later identified the woman's clothes, as he had never seen the woman's face.

If the woman that Lawende saw was Eddowes, then the man she was talking with probably was was her killer.

But there's a significant chance that the woman that Lawende saw was not Catherine Eddowes, meaning the man that Lawende saw was completely unrelated to the crime.

Even if Lawende did see Eddowes, there is a big enough time gap that the man he saw might not have been her killer.

We also have no way of judging how accurate Lawende's description of the man was.

The Ripper might have been a sailor, but there's not enough information to know that. And if he was a sailor, why weren't the killings closer to the docks?

[Herlock Sholmes]

Of course, it is far-fetched.

Eddowes is seen with her hand on a man's chest a short walk from the murder site, nine minutes before her body is found, and is mutilated and eviscerated in such ways that would have taken several minutes to perform, and you are suggesting that instead of her going with the man into the Square, she walked alone into the empty, dark Square for no particular reason, and that the murderer, again for no particular reason, entered the same Square, and that he then murdered her there.

I have never seen any evidence that the police ever took such a theory seriously or even considered it.

Or that they began looking for a sailor after Lawende’s description either. But I guess that doesn’t matter because it suits you.

It is ridiculously far-fetched.

Whatever you say PI. To be honest, with your level of unequivocal deductions I’m only surprised that you haven’t solved the case.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

I'm suggesting you quit this argument that which started from a ridiculous statement of yours , stop throwing your toys out of the crib and Get a good night sleep .

You started the argument and anyone viewing our exchanges can see that all the infantile remarks were made by you and that none was made by me.

[FISHY1118]

What do you mean by fooling?

Are you suggesting I have joined this forum in order to fool people?

I'm suggesting you quit this argument that which started from a ridiculous statement of yours , stop throwing your toys out of the crib and Get a good night sleep .

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

Ahh the old sober and reasoned ploy ,yeah thats a good one keep it up, your not fooling anyone here.

What do you mean by fooling?

Are you suggesting I have joined this forum in order to fool people?

[FISHY1118]

I used colours for clarity, to show quotes and distinguish yours from mine, but you have to make a flippant comment about that too.

You continue to use completely inappropriate language, such as describing my sober and reasoned comments as a silly rant.

You risk bringing this forum into disrepute.

Ahh the old sober and reasoned ploy ,yeah thats a good one keep it up, your not fooling anyone here.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

You use the phrase ‘far fetched’ regularly. So we can substitute ‘far fetched’ for ‘doesn’t agree with my theory.’

Theres nothing ‘far fetched’ about a woman bumping into someone that she knew. There’s nothing ‘far fetched’ about him not wanting to come forward. If they ran into each other as they crossed Mitre Square then they had no need to go elsewhere.

Of course, it is far-fetched.

Eddowes is seen with her hand on a man's chest a short walk from the murder site, nine minutes before her body is found, and is mutilated and eviscerated in such ways that would have taken several minutes to perform, and you are suggesting that instead of her going with the man into the Square, she walked alone into the empty, dark Square for no particular reason, and that the murderer, again for no particular reason, entered the same Square, and that he then murdered her there.

I have never seen any evidence that the police ever took such a theory seriously or even considered it.

It is ridiculously far-fetched.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Well, Hutchinson was not considered as reliable a witness as Lawende, but the proven proximity of Lawende's sighting to the time of the murder is absent
in Hutchinson's case.

Christer Holmgren suggested to me the possibility that Eddowes met the murderer in Mitre Square.

I countered that that was rather like suggesting that Annie Chapman met the murderer in the back yard of 29 Hanbury Street.

Another suggestion would be that Stride met her murderer in Dutfield's Yard.

Such ideas are, I suggest, fanciful and farfetched.

We know that prostitutes met their customers in the open and then went with them to a darker, more secluded spot and that this is where, unfortunately, Chapman,
Stride and Eddowes met their ends.

The idea of Eddowes and the murderer converging on the murder site from opposite directions is obviously farfetched.

You use the phrase ‘far fetched’ regularly. So we can substitute ‘far fetched’ for ‘doesn’t agree with my theory.’

Theres nothing ‘far fetched’ about a woman bumping into someone that she knew. There’s nothing ‘far fetched’ about him not wanting to come forward. If they ran into each other as they crossed Mitre Square then they had no need to go elsewhere.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

Oh now were using pretty colors hmmm i little desperate but it to be expected i guess.

Again there was no need for any arguement, it was a silly comment to begin with one which i made my point in explaining to you . However you went off on some silly rant that proved nothing what you said about Lawende or anythnig that disproved that another person could have killed Eddowes .

Enough now, youve made yourself look even less credable than when you started that reckless comment by trying to defend it .

I used colours for clarity, to show quotes and distinguish yours from mine, but you have to make a flippant comment about that too.

You continue to use completely inappropriate language, such as describing my sober and reasoned comments as a silly rant.

You risk bringing this forum into disrepute.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

The only comment that I’ll make on this point (again) is that we should be wary of being too confident that we can accurately reverse engineer what went on at any murder scene. We can’t know what the killer or victim where thinking or intending. It’s my opinion that the odds strongly favour than the man seen by Lawende and co was her killer but it can’t be impossible that, like Kelly with Hutchinson, the man that she spoke to might have been someone that she was acquainted with and so she tried to borrow money or persuade him into ‘business’ but he either wasn’t interested or he had no money. Then the killer approached her from the same direction the Lawende had walked? Maybe the killer had been watching and saw her encounter. Or maybe, after the man walked away she headed through Mitre Square via Church Passage where she ran into her killer who entered from one of the other two entrances?

We can’t know for certain but that Lawende’s men was the killer has to be a strong favourite as her killer imo.

Well, Hutchinson was not considered as reliable a witness as Lawende, but the proven proximity of Lawende's sighting to the time of the murder is absent
in Hutchinson's case.

Christer Holmgren suggested to me the possibility that Eddowes met the murderer in Mitre Square.

I countered that that was rather like suggesting that Annie Chapman met the murderer in the back yard of 29 Hanbury Street.

Another suggestion would be that Stride met her murderer in Dutfield's Yard.

Such ideas are, I suggest, fanciful and farfetched.

We know that prostitutes met their customers in the open and then went with them to a darker, more secluded spot and that this is where, unfortunately, Chapman,
Stride and Eddowes met their ends.

The idea of Eddowes and the murderer converging on the murder site from opposite directions is obviously farfetched.

[FISHY1118]

The only comment that I’ll make on this point (again) is that we should be wary of being too confident that we can accurately reverse engineer what went on at any murder scene. We can’t know what the killer or victim where thinking or intending. It’s my opinion that the odds strongly favour than the man seen by Lawende and co was her killer but it can’t be impossible that, like Kelly with Hutchinson, the man that she spoke to might have been someone that she was acquainted with and so she tried to borrow money or persuade him into ‘business’ but he either wasn’t interested or he had no money. Then the killer approached her from the same direction the Lawende had walked? Maybe the killer had been watching and saw her encounter. Or maybe, after the man walked away she headed through Mitre Square via Church Passage where she ran into her killer who entered from one of the other two entrances?

We can’t know for certain but that Lawende’s men was the killer has to be a strong favourite as her killer imo.

''she could hardly have been murdered by anyone other than the man seen with her by Lawende.''


Which is why this statement worded incorrectly imo ,

Yes Lawende may well be the obvious choice, but to say Eddowes could hardly have been murdered by anyone ''other'' than the man'' seen with Lawende is plain silly and reckless, and he was called out for it as you yourself have correctly pointed out the number of possiblities that could have taken place .