Broad Shoulders, Elizabeth's Killer ?

[Herlock Sholmes]

BS Man is very un-Ripper like, yet "and then Jack the Ripper came along" has a very forced feel to it. Things do not add up.

There’s nothing to ‘add up.’ Stride was killed by an unknown man. Either the ripper or someone else. That we don’t know who it was is the only mystery.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Stride was found to have no money on her person. No money equals no soliciting, unless it is claimed that she immediately commenced soliciting after being seen with Parcelman, who must conveniently leave the scene.

No. No money might equal no soliciting or it might equal ‘spent it.’

Chapman had no money on her. Nichols had no money on her.

It’s you that is doing all of the ‘assuming’ here.

[Michael W Richards]

Deimschitz: I had never seen her before.

Herschburg: None of us recognised the woman.

She was not the cleaning lady.

I think the idea is that she is perhaps there for the first time, that she heard of this job since her time working "among the Jews" in the weeks leading up to this event. Its because its on the edge of the High Holidays and they had a particularly large attendance apparently...approx 200 people. Likely a larger mess than Mrs D could handle alone. This might be a singular job, not a regular job, if that is why she is there.

[The Rookie Detective]

Am I correct when I say that Stride spoke fluent Yiddish?

If so, when combined with the knowledge that she had a connection to the Jewish community, could her appearance at the club have been more of a formal affair than we realize?

The idea that it's peculiar why she was there, isn't as peculiar as some might think.


How would a woman of the "unfortunate" class, who had a connection to the Jewish community, who could speak the language, but who wasn't Jewish herself, be received by some of the more conservative members of the club? (ironic due to the socialist element)

Could her sheer presence there have been enough for someone from the club to calmly approach her and slit her throat?


The idea that she was seemingly laid down and gently placed on the floor, whilst having her neck harshly severed, rings true of 2 separate people having been involved.

Perhaps the couple on the corner...

A couple was alleged to have been seen talking with MJK shortly before she was murdered, and so is there a realm of possibility that the killer we perceive as Jack the Ripper, may have instead been a Killer Couple?

Just a thought



RD

[Michael W Richards]

No it’s not. Firstly, we don’t know exactly what time she was on her doorstep because we have contradictory versions of what she said and did. And secondly, it was a gateway. Stride might have been standing a couple of feet back out of Mortimer’s sight.

I dont think its fair to say we have contradictory versions of her story, its that the story itself is not specific about her time at the door and inside during that half hour. She generalizes, and the only thing we have to validate her being there at all is the fact that she sees and later talks with the young couple and that she sees Leon Goldstein. But the "off and on" and "nearly the whole time" remarks leave many things unexplained. One thing though, what Fanny says she hears she interprets herself, and her interpretation cannot be validated because we have no other witness that could do so.

I wont belabour the issue of the interruption idea, my position should be clear by now, but I will say that the problem I see with this investigation isnt what may have happened on the street that no witness happened to see, its that there are so many contradictory statements when assembled made by the witness who said they did see the street during that time, and were there. One stood at the gate. One came around from the front door. Several witnesses recall an approximate time they knew of the body, although their respective statements share the same approximate time they as a group directly contradict the club stewards statement..all by approx 20 minutes. The facts are that people had access to clocks, and some that night wore watches. That is not to say they would all display the same time, but I think they would be closer than 20 minutes off.

The site of this murder was a location already known by the police, who referred to attendees as "anarchists", it was not held in high regard by the neighbours and often "low men" would be seen loitering around long after Saturday meetings, talking and smoking in the passageway to the gates. Ive suggested those factors made it imperative that anyone responsible for the clubs operations should try and present the "facts" in the best possible light. Show that no club member was around the gates or in the passageway on that particular Saturday night, and that they responded to this crime in a responsible manner. I guess thats why Eagle and Lave didnt see anyone though they both claimed to be in a very small area at the very same time, and that might address why Diemshutz claim of his arrival time is directly contradicted by multiple witnesses, both from the club and the street. His stated arrival time might have been to address why, if the body was discovered earlier, they are only seen running for help by a PC some 20 minutes later. I think in that void, where we have no witnesses watching the street, some senior staffers were deciding what to do about this murder they just discovered. Just a few men at first, Louis, Morris, Lave, ....maybe Leon is then skirting by after looking in and seeing trouble, Mrs D, then the rest heard and came out to see as well. Its why we have a set of stories for one time by Louis, Morris, Lave and Mrs D, and another from the men who came down later and the people not at the club that night. The fact there is 20 minutes difference in those sets of stories is concerning.

[Michael W Richards]

I should add that I believe its possible Broad Shouldered Man existed, and that if so it was him that likely killed Liz, but I dont believe that the story Israel gave, if not fictional,... accurately reconstructs what he saw, at what time he saw it, and where he was when he saw it. If he was actually inside the club and leaving via the side door and saw essentially the same kind of altercation with Liz but inside the passageway, maybe even a few minutes earlier, then a lot of issues would be explained.

Like why Israel Schwartz, who is moving from who knows where that day, after leaving his wife to move a few belongings at noon, is standing outside a club on Berner Street at 12:45am just after a large meeting of Jewish socialists had ended claiming to be checking to see if his wife had finished moving their meagre belongings. First off, where is that address again? Secondly, she couldnt move what likely amounted to a few suitcases in over 12 hours? Is it possible Israel and his wife, who knew Woolf Wess, were staying in one of the passageway cottages until that day? No-one has found his pre-move address. It could explain why he was there as he said.

[The Rookie Detective]

It seems to me that Schwartz may have been out looking to have relations with a prostitute himself and probably was one of the men seen talking with Stride.

He then has to give a valid reason why he's there to save his marriage and/or to not be seen as a suspect and so makes up a story that he witnessed the victim being assaulted just minutes before she was murdered by men who didn't even exist.

There was no better way to sell a convincing story than to throw in an antisemitic comment made by one of the suspects, knowing that it would draw focus from what happened in reality.

The fact that nobody else saw OR heard anything that Schwartz claims he saw and heard, should automatically tell us that he's not to be trusted.

We know he was there, and he places himself at the scene shortly before the murder....but why do that?

Reverse psychology would determine that a person is less likely to be suspected if they place themselves at the scene, but then provide a compelling story that displays them as someone trying to help the case, because it doesn't compute why a guilty person would place themselves anywhere near a crime scene.

But if he knew he was spotted at the scene, then he had no choice but to make up a story to explain why he was present.


Israel Schwartz or "Jack" Schwartz is as dodgy as Hutchinson was in the Kelly case.


RD

[c.d.]

Stride may or may not have been soliciting. There is simply no way to tell. As for the club members' statement, they might have been reluctant to admit occasional soliciting as it reflected badly on the club. And there is a first time for everything.

Did Wess, Eagle and Diemschitz all lie about this? Anything else they all lied about?

I have no way of knowing if they were lying or not, do you? I only pointed out a possible reason why they may have done so. Are you claiming they were some how immune or incapable of lying?

The bottom line is that Stride did not have to be actively soliciting to be a Ripper victim as we have no way of knowing her response if approached by Jack.

The bottom line is that Schwartz's tale is uncorroborated, so any speculation as to why Stride was supposedly standing in the gateway is based on an assumption. Further speculation builds on top of this ...

Schwartz's tale is uncorroborated which only tells us that well...it was uncorroborated. Nothing else. I completely agree that any speculation as to why she was in the gateway is based on assumption. And again, the most important take away from all this is that she did not have to be soliciting to be a Ripper victim.

I wouldn't say no money equals no soliciting if she had no takers for her favors that night or possibly she had money and was robbed by her killer.

Are you making this up as you go? Stride had been seen with other men during the evening. Were these men not takers? As for being robbed by her killer, the story would go something like this. BS man throws Stride to the ground, she gets up and he demands money, which she hands over. She then submits to going into the darkness of the yard with him, which she does without making a sound.

I could do without the little snarky comment, thank you. What would prevent her killer from going through her pockets when she was dead? Would we expect to see evidence for this if he had done so? I don't know what that would be.

That there are no traces of the men described by Schwartz only tells us that there were no traces. It does not tell us that they did not exist.

BS Man is very un-Ripper like, yet "and then Jack the Ripper came along" has a very forced feel to it. Things do not add up.

I agree that BS man is very un-Ripper like which is why I don't think he was her killer. But Schwartz can hardly be blamed for that as he never saw a murder take place. Regardless of how forced you think it is that "then Jack the Ripper came along" the idea was given credence by Swanson in his report.

No, things do not add up and I can't see any scenario where they do. All part of the mystery of this case.

c.d.

[c.d.]

The fact that nobody else saw OR heard anything that Schwartz claims he saw and heard, should automatically tell us that he's not to be trusted.

No, it only tells us that his story is uncorroborated nothing else. People witness things all the time where they are the sole witness.

c.d.

[Michael W Richards]

It seems to me that Schwartz may have been out looking to have relations with a prostitute himself and probably was one of the men seen talking with Stride.

He then has to give a valid reason why he's there to save his marriage and/or to not be seen as a suspect and so makes up a story that he witnessed the victim being assaulted just minutes before she was murdered by men who didn't even exist.

There was no better way to sell a convincing story than to throw in an antisemitic comment made by one of the suspects, knowing that it would draw focus from what happened in reality.

The fact that nobody else saw OR heard anything that Schwartz claims he saw and heard, should automatically tell us that he's not to be trusted.

We know he was there, and he places himself at the scene shortly before the murder....but why do that?

Reverse psychology would determine that a person is less likely to be suspected if they place themselves at the scene, but then provide a compelling story that displays them as someone trying to help the case, because it doesn't compute why a guilty person would place themselves anywhere near a crime scene.

But if he knew he was spotted at the scene, then he had no choice but to make up a story to explain why he was present.


Israel Schwartz or "Jack" Schwartz is as dodgy as Hutchinson was in the Kelly case.


RD

I highlighted a few of your remarks above because I see value in seriously questioning his value here. I personally think that his story was tailored to link an offsite assailant to Liz and to insert some antisemitic tone. To me it appears to be insurance.

[Michael W Richards]

The members of the club seen by Spooenr and the one seen by the PC had one thing in common, they were heard to exclaim "another murder" had occurred. This reference is based on the at-large, unknown killer's terrorizing of the area for just over a month. They sought to present this event as "another" murder, not A murder. Is this what the GSG addresses? That "The Jews are not the men who will be named for nothing" chalk message might be suggesting that they are seeking to evade blame that is due them. Perhaps "Nothing" is synonymous with "without good reason". Makes me wonder whether the man from Mitre Square might be a gentile who was in the immediate area of Berner Street at the time of the discovery of the murder.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I believe that all issues vanish if we consider two things. Firstly is that plots, plans, false witnesses are the stuff of thrillers and not the stuff of street murder. This alone should caution us against going off in flights of fancy….the sheer unlikeliness of it. A woman is killed outdoors…nothing remarkable in the slightest.

The second, and by far the most important, is the issue of times and timing. We’ve had many discussions on here on this subject (and even a poll) and I think that I can say with confidence that 99+% of posters on here accept as obvious that we have to make allowances. We have also seen the evidence that Victorian clocks were often very poorly synchronised. This isn’t my opinion…it’s a fact. Clocks can be wrong; clocks can be poorly synchronised; people can misjudge periods of time (especially when remembering); people might estimate time by seeing an event which might have occurred at a different time than it usually did. It happens today but was even more likely then at a time when there were even police officers without watches (like Lamb) So these events were fertile grounds for error and conflict. All very understandable and none of them in any way remarkable.

Much in this case can’t be corroborated but this doesn’t mean that we should dismiss it. What is likelier - Schwartz saw an incident which was over in a matter of a very few seconds, which made little noise, in a back street well after midnight and no one else saw it…..or…. he wasn’t there and there was a cover up involving club members who decided on the spot to use a false witness and then selected a non-English speaker to take the huge risk of lying to the police about being in Berner Street when he wasn’t when they had absolutely no way of knowing that if someone might come forward and prove him (and them) a liar?

Not much competition really. There is no mystery here…..just a bit of an obsession with uncovering one.

[A P Tomlinson]

People with cut throats can’t scream or shout. Or tell people what’s happening to them.

If she was yanked by her scarf in effect strangling her in order to subdue her, before the slicing of the artery takes place, then it was done to stop her reaching her desired destination. The perceived safety of the club.

I stand by the belief she was trying to raise alarm about someone she did not trust or like the look of and probably tried to discreetly get away from him. He was not going to allow that to happen. This is in no way a good place to commit your murders if you are JtR. You only take such a risk because you are worried you will get caught. Killing Liz there and then was the lesser of two evils.

I believe the Schwartz story was a concoction to try and throw the police off the theory that she was murdered by a Jew. It was right next door to a place full of Jews. The whole schtick of IWEC was to protect the interests of working Jews like them. Also, bear in mind the Leather Apron debacle was still very fresh on the minds of locals. They would be convinced a Jew would be suspected.

The fact Israel Schwartz cannot be found reliably in any records is something to consider. The fact the address that Swanson had was similar to where a young girl called Sarah Schwartz was “outraged” by numerous men a year or two before and the fact that Israel Lipski lived locally, screams to me this man was a character created by members of IWEC. A man calling himself Israel Schwartz gave a statement to Abberline, but I don’t believe a word of it. I am with Bruce Robinson on the belief Schwartz is a total red herring.

The Star is the only paper claiming to have interviewed Schwartz (and conveniently his interpreter).

Thats in itself is enough for me to be highly suspicious.

This, or a version of it, has long been my belief.
I'm still not 100% it was the same killer, not by some way.
But assuming it was...
The location of Stride's death was not conducive to the "work" the killer of the other women was intent upon.
Again, assuming it WAS him, I think he tried to get her to "relocate", she became obstructive, he maybe threatened her with the knife and rather than comply, she became more agitated. He grabbed the scarf and twisted it to both apply the choke and "sleeper" method of controlling/keeping her quiet, and then realising she would remember his face (maybe even knew his name) cut her throat to silence her for good, before heading off across town to fulfil his needs.

I don't think he was disturbed by a horse, I think he quite literally "Cut and run."

[Michael W Richards]

I believe that all issues vanish if we consider two things. Firstly is that plots, plans, false witnesses are the stuff of thrillers and not the stuff of street murder. This alone should caution us against going off in flights of fancy….the sheer unlikeliness of it. A woman is killed outdoors…nothing remarkable in the slightest.

I agree that this is a simple killing, (not remarkable at all), but not that the potential repercussions to the club and its employees might be profound if they were believed at fault or culpable. Basic business operator 101 actually.

The second, and by far the most important, is the issue of times and timing. We’ve had many discussions on here on this subject (and even a poll) and I think that I can say with confidence that 99+% of posters on here accept as obvious that we have to make allowances. We have also seen the evidence that Victorian clocks were often very poorly synchronised. This isn’t my opinion…it’s a fact. Clocks can be wrong; clocks can be poorly synchronised; people can misjudge periods of time (especially when remembering); people might estimate time by seeing an event which might have occurred at a different time than it usually did. It happens today but was even more likely then at a time when there were even police officers without watches (like Lamb) So these events were fertile grounds for error and conflict. All very understandable and none of them in any way remarkable.

Again you misrepresent the facts. It is remarkable that multiple witnesses believed they knew of the dying woman 20 minutes before its alleged she is even discovered. It is remarkable that one witness from the street is one of those 3 witnesses. You try and defeat an argument no-one has ever made here...no-one ever claimed all clocks were synchronized, no-one ever claimed that the various times given were taken from the same source, and no-one ever claimed that witness approximate times are in fact fixed at that time. Allowances have always been made by everyone serious about the study here, a few minutes here or there, not a major issue. Never has been. What is an issue though is what I stated yet again, 20 minutes before Louis says he arrived ...(which no-one saw or heard), we have no less than 3 witnesses, 1 from the street, state they were by the body with other men. What you fail to understand is that 20 minute variances in even approximated times are troublesome, a few minutes, no, but 20, yes. You would dismiss the majority in favour of a singular account. Thats your call, of course. But please dont condescendingly suggest its the most reasonable manner of dealing with these issues.

Much in this case can’t be corroborated but this doesn’t mean that we should dismiss it.

No-one is dismissing anything....well you are, anything remotely resembling dissent from your own ideas of whats acceptable or not. The uncorroborated accounts will always have more scrutiny when there are corroborated accounts on record that do not agree with them. When its multiple corroborated accounts that all state the same approximate time and they all disagree with the single one uncorroborated one, well, you are making this unnecessarily difficult. They dont make the single account necessarily the wrong time, they make a stronger case for a time to be established by virtue of their numbers. One independent statement can easily be wrong, but its highly improbable that 3 independent statements that coincidentally agree with each other are all wrong by the same amount.

What is likelier - Schwartz saw an incident which was over in a matter of a very few seconds, which made little noise, in a back street well after midnight and no one else saw it…..or…. he wasn’t there and there was a cover up involving club members who decided on the spot to use a false witness and then selected a non-English speaker to take the huge risk of lying to the police about being in Berner Street when he wasn’t when they had absolutely no way of knowing that if someone might come forward and prove him (and them) a liar?

The clubs most serious risk began when they found a dying woman on their property, what they likely would have done to prevent possible catastrophic results for the club and its employees is quite understandable under the circumstances. Manage the damage. Any salient being would react to avoid any linkage with this crime.

Not much competition really. There is no mystery here…..just a bit of an obsession with uncovering one.

When you believe your right no matter what evidence is shown to you that shows gaping flaws in whatever you proposed, thats when you might make a statement like that.

Your expressed comfort with what youve decided happened here is like Trumps ongoing insistence that the 2020 election was rigged, despite being proven wrong..by the courts...62 times.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Originally posted by Herlock Sholmes View Post

I believe that all issues vanish if we consider two things. Firstly is that plots, plans, false witnesses are the stuff of thrillers and not the stuff of street murder. This alone should caution us against going off in flights of fancy….the sheer unlikeliness of it. A woman is killed outdoors…nothing remarkable in the slightest.


-I agree that this is a simple killing, (not remarkable at all), but not that the potential repercussions to the club and its employees might be profound if they were believed at fault or culpable. Basic business operator 101 actually.


The newspapers were awash with stories of a maniac killing women at random locations; no one could have been unaware of this fact. No one at that club could possibly have felt, after the discovery of the body, that the police might have felt that the killer was operating from the club or that the club might have been connected to the murders. How could they have thought that the police would have thought that the killer would have been so stupid as to kill at a spot that was so connected to himself? You are assuming that the club members were not only stupid but that they felt that the police were stupid too. Or even that they would try and fabricate a connection between the club and the murders just to get some kind of revenge on a few socialists; no matter how much the establishment feared socialists. It’s simply a non-starter. All that you’ve done is to ‘imagine’ a motive and then you’ve proceeded to weave a plot using the usual tool…understandable discrepancies. Fertile ground for fiction.


The second, and by far the most important, is the issue of times and timing. We’ve had many discussions on here on this subject (and even a poll) and I think that I can say with confidence that 99+% of posters on here accept as obvious that we have to make allowances. We have also seen the evidence that Victorian clocks were often very poorly synchronised. This isn’t my opinion…it’s a fact. Clocks can be wrong; clocks can be poorly synchronised; people can misjudge periods of time (especially when remembering); people might estimate time by seeing an event which might have occurred at a different time than it usually did. It happens today but was even more likely then at a time when there were even police officers without watches (like Lamb) So these events were fertile grounds for error and conflict. All very understandable and none of them in any way remarkable.


Again you misrepresent the facts. It is remarkable that multiple witnesses believed they knew of the dying woman 20 minutes before its alleged she is even discovered. It is remarkable that one witness from the street is one of those 3 witnesses. You try and defeat an argument no-one has ever made here...no-one ever claimed all clocks were synchronized, no-one ever claimed that the various times given were taken from the same source, and no-one ever claimed that witness approximate times are in fact fixed at that time. Allowances have always been made by everyone serious about the study here, a few minutes here or there, not a major issue. Never has been. What is an issue though is what I stated yet again, 20 minutes before Louis says he arrived ...(which no-one saw or heard), we have no less than 3 witnesses, 1 from the street, state they were by the body with other men. What you fail to understand is that 20 minute variances in even approximated times are troublesome, a few minutes, no, but 20, yes. You would dismiss the majority in favour of a singular account. Thats your call, of course. But please dont condescendingly suggest its the most reasonable manner of dealing with these issues.


The problem is an obvious one and one that I’ve explained before but you simply go back to repeating the same things. Your 3 witnesses are hardly strong are they? One of them, Spooner, gives an inaccurate estimate (which you parade as ‘evidence’ but which is immediately found out when Spooner himself admitted that he’d got there 5 minutes before Lamb arrived…so nowhere near 12.40…so that’s 1 of your 3 completely eliminated. Gone.

That leaves Heschberg’s and Kozebrodski. We have no idea how they came by their estimates but estimates they were and estimates can be out by much more than 20; especially when we don’t know how they arrived at them. It’s even possible that whilst waiting to be interviewed one asked the other. Who knows? What we do know though is that the police didn’t find it at all suspicious that your 3 got their estimates wrong. They spoke to everyone and knew far more than we do and clearly saw that the evidence told them when the body was discovered.

And then of course, to top it off, we have to assume that whilst coming up with this risky plan of lying to the police, and knowing that everyone would be interviewed, no one bothered to tell Heschberg’s and Kozebrodski about these ‘amended’ times! It’s not even vaguely plausible. Not for a minute.


Much in this case can’t be corroborated but this doesn’t mean that we should dismiss it.


No-one is dismissing anything....well you are, anything remotely resembling dissent from your own ideas of whats acceptable or not. The uncorroborated accounts will always have more scrutiny when there are corroborated accounts on record that do not agree with them. When its multiple corroborated accounts that all state the same approximate time and they all disagree with the single one uncorroborated one, well, you are making this unnecessarily difficult. They dont make the single account necessarily the wrong time, they make a stronger case for a time to be established by virtue of their numbers. One independent statement can easily be wrong, but it’s highly improbable that 3 independent statements that coincidentally agree with each other are all wrong by the same amount.


I’ve dealt with this point above.


What is likelier - Schwartz saw an incident which was over in a matter of a very few seconds, which made little noise, in a back street well after midnight and no one else saw it…..or…. he wasn’t there and there was a cover up involving club members who decided on the spot to use a false witness and then selected a non-English speaker to take the huge risk of lying to the police about being in Berner Street when he wasn’t when they had absolutely no way of knowing that if someone might come forward and prove him (and them) a liar?


The clubs most serious risk began when they found a dying woman on their property, what they likely would have done to prevent possible catastrophic results for the club and its employees is quite understandable under the circumstances. Manage the damage. Any salient being would react to avoid any linkage with this crime.


I’ve dealt with this point too. Imagine a motive then build a plot around it. A non-starter.


Not much competition really. There is no mystery here…..just a bit of an obsession with uncovering one.


When you believe your right no matter what evidence is shown to you that shows gaping flaws in whatever you proposed, thats when you might make a statement like that.

Your expressed comfort with what youve decided happened here is like Trumps ongoing insistence that the 2020 election was rigged, despite being proven wrong..by the courts...62 times.


.

The police at the time had all of the evidence and saw no issue. Everyone on here and elsewhere (apart from a couple) can see that there was no plot. No plan. Don’t you ever get bored flogging this dead horse of a theory Michael?