Broad Shoulders, Elizabeth's Killer ?

[Herlock Sholmes]

Bingo herlock . I think people create mysteries where none is needed, whether that’s because they’re trying to fit the evidence to a favored suspect or find a conspiracy in any little thing .

Surely after 3 weeks the police wouldn’t still be undecided on a witness like Schwartz? Certainly new evidence can surface at a later stage but there comes a point when the police have to decide on which witnesses they believed and which ones they didn’t and which direction the investigation would go?

[Abby Normal]

Swanson’s summary was written three weeks after the murder. Therefore Swanson, and the police in general, were surely way past the point where they might reasonably have expected new evidence to emerge which would throw doubt onto their current way of thinking? The current way of thinking was that Schwartz was telling the truth. I don’t think that the police ever had any real doubts about Schwartz. The Leman Street stuff was just Press/police officer tittle-tattle. Why would they? There is nothing remotely unbelievable about his statement unless you suspect ‘sinister forces’ were at work.

I think Schwartz was saying” if Schwartz evidence is to be believed and all of the evidence so far tells us that it should be…”

Bingo herlock . I think people create mysteries where none is needed, whether that’s because they’re trying to fit the evidence to a favored suspect or find a conspiracy in any little thing .

[Sunny Delight]

Swanson’s summary was written three weeks after the murder. Therefore Swanson, and the police in general, were surely way past the point where they might reasonably have expected new evidence to emerge which would throw doubt onto their current way of thinking? The current way of thinking was that Schwartz was telling the truth. I don’t think that the police ever had any real doubts about Schwartz. The Leman Street stuff was just Press/police officer tittle-tattle. Why would they? There is nothing remotely unbelievable about his statement unless you suspect ‘sinister forces’ were at work.

I think Schwartz was saying” if Schwartz evidence is to be believed and all of the evidence so far tells us that it should be…”

Exactly. This PHD level of analysis is so unnecessary. The thing is there in black and white. Utterly pointless adding in words and trying to bamboozle people into thinking it is logical. What Swanson wrote is so clear to me that it is unfathomable to me how others do not see it the same way.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Swanson’s summary was written three weeks after the murder. Therefore Swanson, and the police in general, were surely way past the point where they might reasonably have expected new evidence to emerge which would throw doubt onto their current way of thinking? The current way of thinking was that Schwartz was telling the truth. I don’t think that the police ever had any real doubts about Schwartz. The Leman Street stuff was just Press/police officer tittle-tattle. Why would they? There is nothing remotely unbelievable about his statement unless you suspect ‘sinister forces’ were at work.

I think Schwartz was saying” if Schwartz evidence is to be believed and all of the evidence so far tells us that it should be…”

[JeffHamm]

Disbelief or doubt regarding Schwartz does not necessarily mean concerns about his personal truthfulness. It could very well have to do with his understanding of what he saw. He didn't have the whole picture. Think of a witness who wears glasses but didn't have them available at the time. If their story is doubted it is not a personal attack on their integrity but a consideration that they were without their glasses.

As for what Swanson wrote, only he and he alone knows what he meant. Any argument, no matter how well reasoned or supported, is speculation.

c.d.

Hi c.d.,

Of course, the only person who knows what Swanson intended would be Swanson himself. However, he cannot be asked to clarify. So either we are left to simply view the recorded words, and go no further, which is to have no discussion on the case, or we discuss the various interpretations and how we get from evidence to interpretation. Through discussions, and comparisons of the arguments presented, we can end up with one conclusion more convincingly argued for than the others or we may end up in a situation where only some suggestions are viewed as poorly supported but a collection of alternatives all seem reasonable, or in the worst case, all possible lines have good arguments in their favour.

For a discussion on the case evidence, we have to present our interpretations of the evidence. And yes, all interpretations are, in the end, a form of speculation because they go beyond the evidence itself. When one just presents "I think it means A", that is pure speculation. When one presents their line of thought that gets them from evidence to "I think it means A", then they are presenting a conclusion that they have drawn, and how they drew it.

What each of us can do, however, is evaluate the reasoning that one has followed from the evidence to their pro-offered conclusion. What we should be avoiding is basing our evaluations of the reasoning based upon on the conclusion itself - as in "I don't like that conclusion therefore the reasoning is wrong" type thing. If the reasoning is sound, whether we like it or not, the conclusion is sound (not necessarily right, but sound and therefore one we need to keep in mind). If the reasoning is weak, or contains too many leaps of faith, or relies on highly unlikely connections, then the conclusion is similarly weak, whether we like it or not.

- Jeff

[c.d.]

Disbelief or doubt regarding Schwartz does not necessarily mean concerns about his personal truthfulness. It could very well have to do with his understanding of what he saw. He didn't have the whole picture. Think of a witness who wears glasses but didn't have them available at the time. If their story is doubted it is not a personal attack on their integrity but a consideration that they were without their glasses.

As for what Swanson wrote, only he and he alone knows what he meant. Any argument, no matter how well reasoned or supported, is speculation.

c.d.

[JeffHamm]

Hi Jeff,

Excellent post and I agree with your conclusion. I've always read the blue section as an observation rather than anything else, as a sort of response to the "If Schwartz is to be believed". If it's supposed to be a 'double conditional', what follows becomes almost meaningless. If it's a 'since', then it strengthens what follows (even though that also contains an 'if').

I think we see Swanson looking for some conclusion he can draw from what Schwartz offered as a witness rather than anything else, even though, as RD suggests, he himself isn't too sure that Schwartz can be believed.

All the best,
Frank

Hi FrankO,

The whole construction is of someone making a logical argument, which is what an investigator does essentially. They draw a conclusion which they have to be able to justify. The argument he's making is for a preference for Schwartz's man over Parcel, provided they are different men. It goes without saying that if the two men seen are the same man, then the whole notion of preferring one over the other as the murderer makes no sense.

With that as the main "point" being made, why not just say "We prefer Schwartz's sighting over PC Smith's?" To do so is to imply to the home office that a member of the public is considered better than a member of the police force. It runs the risk of the police being criticised, rightly or wrongly, of being incompetent. So he has to both present a preference for Schwartz's evidence over that of a PC while also waving off any suggestion of incompetence.

He does this by first, in the initial red/blue "question/answer" section, as that serves to indicate that Schwartz is viewed as a reliable witness. He does not need to do so with PC Smith as he leaves that as "presumed" (I don't need to justify the obvious - in fact, to state PC Smith is also considered reliable could be viewed as him acknowledging that perhaps it can't be assumed a PC is reliable!). He ends with the final purple evidence as that serves to further justify Schwartz's man due to timing, again staving off any suggestion that the preference is due to not trusting a police officer. Schwartz's man is simply seen closer to the time of the murder than the police officer's man. And since he set up Schwartz as being considered reliable with no doubts in the first place, it follows his man is more likely the murderer.

By starting with the red "If we trust Schwartz ..." type thing, he's directing the reader that we have to consider Schwartz's reliability (not so with PC Smith's, it's a given, hence he's not put under the microscope), the blue "answer" tells them "the answer is yes" and does so by linking it to a report (so not an uninformed opinion) and he ends with further evidence supporting his main point (Schwartz's man is more likely the murderer than PC Smith's man). The whole set up and presentation avoids any suggestion that the preference is based upon negative view of a police officer, but in fact it is based upon good and sound police work.

A "double conditional" intention would come across as the police being "wishy/washy", and presenting lines of speculation would be viewed as wasting Home Office's time. If you don't know, don't waffle on about what might be, or long trains of conjecture. In other words, if the police were awaiting a report before evaluating Schwartz's information (the double conditional), then Swanson would be more apt to just say something like "We have a potentially important witness whose information which we are currently investigating to determine it's reliability." He's going to present whatever information they have in a way that puts the police in the most positive light. Dithering on about long trails of speculation that follow from a point that has not yet been established (the double conditional version does just that) would do the opposite.

- Jeff

[FrankO]

The combination of the words "If" and "believed" at the beginning and end of the first sentence prior to any other grammar, is suggestive that the person who wrote the phrase did not believe Schwartz was telling the truth, reagrdless of the police report that did believe him in the first instance.

Good point, RD.

[FrankO]

Anyway, in my opinion, I think it is very unlikely the Swanson intends a double conditional. While in one sense the sentence structure could allow it, I believe the semantic link between the sections, combined with the fact he's embedded the red and blue sections as a lead up to the main point (the green section), which concludes favouring Schwartz's description (bolstered by further reasoning for that - the purple section), make a double conditional almost untennable. Otherwise he's undermining the whole green/purple point he's making. A question/answer intention, however, further strengthens what he ends up concluding, making for a far more coherent communication.

Hi Jeff,

Excellent post and I agree with your conclusion. I've always read the blue section as an observation rather than anything else, as a sort of response to the "If Schwartz is to be believed". If it's supposed to be a 'double conditional', what follows becomes almost meaningless. If it's a 'since', then it strengthens what follows (even though that also contains an 'if').

I think we see Swanson looking for some conclusion he can draw from what Schwartz offered as a witness rather than anything else, even though, as RD suggests, he himself isn't too sure that Schwartz can be believed.

All the best,
Frank

[The Rookie Detective]

Hi,

I will apologize now for the length of this.

This is an interesting topic to me, although I admit, trying to get at the underlying aspects of language and then conveying them through language, is incredibly difficult. There is a whole branch of psychological research into language (Psycholinguistics), that is incredibly dense due to the jargon that is involved. It’s not my area of specialty, but I’ve studied it on occasion, which is where the appeal comes from I suppose.
Anyway, I want to start with the full text, as I think there are some aspects to it that are important with regards to the current debate.
“If Schwartz is to be believed, and the police report of his statement casts no doubt upon it, it follows if they (meaning PC Smith and Schwartz) are describing different men that the man Schwartz saw & described is the more probable of the two to be the murderer, for a quarter of an hour afterwards the body is found murdered.”
The vast majority of the discussions have been on the relationship between the red and the blue text. Specifically, whether or not the exact same meaning of blue text is conveyed by :

1. and if the police report of his statement casts no doubt upon it

or

1. and since the police report of his statement casts no doubt upon it

while versions a and b are unambiguous, the text we have is presented in a way that the grammatical structure allows for either (an “assumed if” version as in a, or an “assumed since” version, as in b).
Most of us will read the original text and automatically read it as either a or b, and once we’ve done so, it becomes very hard to recognize the alternative is possible. Debates focused on “but it means a” vs “but it means b” will get us nowhere. It’s also why, hard as it may be, we have to set aside how we read it ourselves and focus on trying to determine whether or not Swanson intended a or b.
I’m going to refer to a) as the “double conditional”, where the red “if” also applies to the blue text, which is option a (where the “IF” gets inserted into the blue text without changing the meaning). I’ll refer to b) as the “Question/Answer” construction, because the “since” version means the blue text is guiding the reader/lister as to how to evaluate the initial “if”, presented in red.
We do both, and both are common. In a previous post I used this example:

If the weather is fine, and I have the time, I will go for a walk.

That would be an example of where the “double conditional” applies, because the above sentence means exactly the same thing as me saying:

If the weather is fine, and if I have the time, I will go for a walk.

This is because the red “if” is intended as encapsulating both the weather conditions and my time availability into common "orange" text, like this:

If (the weather is fine, and I have the time), I will go for a walk.

But if I change the content of the blue section to read:

If the weather is fine, and the weather report indicates it will be, I will go for a walk.

Then that would be a case of the “question/answer” construction, where the red “if” only applies to the initial question portion in red, and the blue text is telling the reader which side of “if” to consider more likely.
It is, of course, possible to still read both of my sentences “the other way”, meaning in my first sentence my walk is not “conditional” on me having the time but rather I’m stating I know I have the time already. Or in my 2^nd example, my walk is conditional both on the weather being fine and on the weather report indicating that too.
Generally, a double conditional is intended when the red and blue text refer to independent conditions, both of which must be “true” before the following in the green text will occur.

In the sentence If the weather is fine, and I have the time, I will go for a walk, since the weather conditions and my free time are independent of each other, (the weather can be good or bad despite my having free time or not; and my having free time is independent of the weather conditions) it would be unusual to phrase that sentence if, in fact, the blue text was intended as in the “question/answer” use (because my knowing I have the time doesn’t preclude bad weather - it doesn't "answer" the red "if" statement). And knowing I have the time means the only thing I need to convey is that my walk is conditional only upon the weather. (Perhaps one could argue the blue text is just bolstering my conviction behind a healthy outing, so perhaps even with independent red/blue sections, a double conditional is not universal).

In the other sentence, If the weather is fine, and the weather report indicates it will be, I will go for a walk, however, it would be just as unusual to intend a double conditional. The blue text and the red text are referring to the same underlying concept, that my walk is weather dependent. The point of the red text is to convey the idea that my walk is conditional on the weather, and the blue text indicates that I have reason to believe that red “if” will resolve in favour of me taking a walk. It’s a “question/answer” version this time.

Now Swanson’s statement is even more complex than my above simplified versions. My green text (the “consequence”) is a simple statement. Swanson’s green text is yet another “if statement”. In fact, the main question Swanson is addressing is whether or not the men described by Schwartz and PC Smith are the same or different men, but if they are then Schwartz’s man is to be preferred (the purple text explaining why).
So the main focus of the whole text is on that point, about which description is more likely to be of Stride’s murderer, Schwartz’s or PC Smith’s? Swanson favours Schwartz’s, as indicated by the purple, but of course only in the case they are describing different men. In the case they are describing the same man, then both descriptions need to be considered, perhaps creating some sort of composite I suppose.
Given that focus of the text, we can return to the initial section.

Does it make sense for Swanson to intend a “double conditional” when he says: If Schwartz is to be believed, and the police report of his statement casts no doubt upon it, as a lead into the main focus about which description should be preferred? Or does it make more sense for him to be using a “question/answer” version in this case?

I don’t think a “double conditional” really makes sense here. Due to the linkage between the red and blue text, a double conditional makes the red bit superfluous. Clearly, it is the police report that determines if the police are going to believe Schwartz, so if the report he’s referring to were not yet available, all he would need to say is “If the police report of his (Schwartz) statement casts no doubt upon it, …” which signals to the reader to take with caution that which follows (i.e. we would prefer Schwatz’s description, but only in the case of the report coming back positive).

In other words, I don’t think the “double conditional” version works because the red and blue sections are “linked” just like in the case of my “fine weather” and “weather report” example. They are not independent of each other, given that whether or not the police believe Schwartz is not going to be independent of their report. We also know that Swanson has access to Abberline’s report already, and while Abberline thinks Schwartz made some interpretation errors about the events he witnessed, there is nothing to indicate that Abberline had any doubts that the events themselves took place.

Finally, given the main point of his sentence has to do with which man is the more likely murderer (the green text), and Swanson argues that would be Schwartz’s man, then it makes far more sense that he would be using a “question/answer” version. That’s because he is guiding the reader towards the conclusion he is going to present, he’s foreshadowing why Schwartz’s man is to be preferred, and the purple section at the end is there to strengthen his argument.

Anyway, in my opinion, I think it is very unlikely the Swanson intends a double conditional. While in one sense the sentence structure could allow it, I believe the semantic link between the sections, combined with the fact he's embedded the red and blue sections as a lead up to the main point (the green section), which concludes favouring Schwartz's description (bolstered by further reasoning for that - the purple section), make a double conditional almost untennable. Otherwise he's undermining the whole green/purple point he's making. A question/answer intention, however, further strengthens what he ends up concluding, making for a far more coherent communication.

I know that goes on forever, as in my wont, but language is bad enough, and it just gets worse when using language to describe language!

- Jeff

Excellent post Jeff


I personally believe the issue relates to the grammar used.


I believe the statement was meant to read like this...


"If Schwartz is to be believed; and the police report of his statement casts no doubt upon it"...


So the wording is exactly the same, but the difference is the use of a semicolon instead of a comma.

If one reads the statement with a semicolon, the context becomes clear and there's no need to add or change the wording.

With a semicolon, it indicates that the writer is clarifying that the police statement casts no doubt upon the authenticity of Schwartz's account, but that they themselves have a doubt because they begin by using the word "If"
It's a way of appearing to keep an open mind, but also using subtle psychology to indicate that there is a doubt about Schwartz despite the initial police report having no doubt.
A nice way of laying a seed of doubt.

This to me sounds as though the police began by believing Schwartz, and they had no doubt he was telling the truth...but then something changed and the use of the word "If" is perhaps the seed that highlights that doubt and change.

We know that ultimately Schwartz never appeared at the inquest, for whatever reason.

The wording of the phrase "If Schwartz is to be believed..." is also interesting because the word "believed" indicates there's a question concerning the truth of Schwartz's statement.

Rather than say...

"If Schwartz is accurate..."
or
"If Schwartz is correct..."

These would then indicate a question over Schwartz's accuracy of what occurred; ergo, it wouldn't be a question of believing or truth, but rather a question of interpretation.

But because the phrase " If Schwartz is to be believed..."

The combination of the words "If" and "believed" at the beginning and end of the first sentence prior to any other grammar, is suggestive that the person who wrote the phrase did not believe Schwartz was telling the truth, reagrdless of the police report that did believe him in the first instance.


I think that after the initial statement and report on Schwartz, things then slowly began to unravel for Schwartz.

The phrase "If Schwartz is to be believed..." was a nail in the coffin.

[JeffHamm]

Hi,

I will apologize now for the length of this.

This is an interesting topic to me, although I admit, trying to get at the underlying aspects of language and then conveying them through language, is incredibly difficult. There is a whole branch of psychological research into language (Psycholinguistics), that is incredibly dense due to the jargon that is involved. It’s not my area of specialty, but I’ve studied it on occasion, which is where the appeal comes from I suppose.
Anyway, I want to start with the full text, as I think there are some aspects to it that are important with regards to the current debate.
“If Schwartz is to be believed, and the police report of his statement casts no doubt upon it, it follows if they (meaning PC Smith and Schwartz) are describing different men that the man Schwartz saw & described is the more probable of the two to be the murderer, for a quarter of an hour afterwards the body is found murdered.”
The vast majority of the discussions have been on the relationship between the red and the blue text. Specifically, whether or not the exact same meaning of blue text is conveyed by :

1. and if the police report of his statement casts no doubt upon it

or

1. and since the police report of his statement casts no doubt upon it

while versions a and b are unambiguous, the text we have is presented in a way that the grammatical structure allows for either (an “assumed if” version as in a, or an “assumed since” version, as in b).
Most of us will read the original text and automatically read it as either a or b, and once we’ve done so, it becomes very hard to recognize the alternative is possible. Debates focused on “but it means a” vs “but it means b” will get us nowhere. It’s also why, hard as it may be, we have to set aside how we read it ourselves and focus on trying to determine whether or not Swanson intended a or b.
I’m going to refer to a) as the “double conditional”, where the red “if” also applies to the blue text, which is option a (where the “IF” gets inserted into the blue text without changing the meaning). I’ll refer to b) as the “Question/Answer” construction, because the “since” version means the blue text is guiding the reader/lister as to how to evaluate the initial “if”, presented in red.
We do both, and both are common. In a previous post I used this example:

If the weather is fine, and I have the time, I will go for a walk.

That would be an example of where the “double conditional” applies, because the above sentence means exactly the same thing as me saying:

If the weather is fine, and if I have the time, I will go for a walk.

This is because the red “if” is intended as encapsulating both the weather conditions and my time availability into common "orange" text, like this:

If (the weather is fine, and I have the time), I will go for a walk.

But if I change the content of the blue section to read:

If the weather is fine, and the weather report indicates it will be, I will go for a walk.

Then that would be a case of the “question/answer” construction, where the red “if” only applies to the initial question portion in red, and the blue text is telling the reader which side of “if” to consider more likely.
It is, of course, possible to still read both of my sentences “the other way”, meaning in my first sentence my walk is not “conditional” on me having the time but rather I’m stating I know I have the time already. Or in my 2^nd example, my walk is conditional both on the weather being fine and on the weather report indicating that too.
Generally, a double conditional is intended when the red and blue text refer to independent conditions, both of which must be “true” before the following in the green text will occur.

In the sentence If the weather is fine, and I have the time, I will go for a walk, since the weather conditions and my free time are independent of each other, (the weather can be good or bad despite my having free time or not; and my having free time is independent of the weather conditions) it would be unusual to phrase that sentence if, in fact, the blue text was intended as in the “question/answer” use (because my knowing I have the time doesn’t preclude bad weather - it doesn't "answer" the red "if" statement). And knowing I have the time means the only thing I need to convey is that my walk is conditional only upon the weather. (Perhaps one could argue the blue text is just bolstering my conviction behind a healthy outing, so perhaps even with independent red/blue sections, a double conditional is not universal).

In the other sentence, If the weather is fine, and the weather report indicates it will be, I will go for a walk, however, it would be just as unusual to intend a double conditional. The blue text and the red text are referring to the same underlying concept, that my walk is weather dependent. The point of the red text is to convey the idea that my walk is conditional on the weather, and the blue text indicates that I have reason to believe that red “if” will resolve in favour of me taking a walk. It’s a “question/answer” version this time.

Now Swanson’s statement is even more complex than my above simplified versions. My green text (the “consequence”) is a simple statement. Swanson’s green text is yet another “if statement”. In fact, the main question Swanson is addressing is whether or not the men described by Schwartz and PC Smith are the same or different men, but if they are then Schwartz’s man is to be preferred (the purple text explaining why).
So the main focus of the whole text is on that point, about which description is more likely to be of Stride’s murderer, Schwartz’s or PC Smith’s? Swanson favours Schwartz’s, as indicated by the purple, but of course only in the case they are describing different men. In the case they are describing the same man, then both descriptions need to be considered, perhaps creating some sort of composite I suppose.
Given that focus of the text, we can return to the initial section.

Does it make sense for Swanson to intend a “double conditional” when he says: If Schwartz is to be believed, and the police report of his statement casts no doubt upon it, as a lead into the main focus about which description should be preferred? Or does it make more sense for him to be using a “question/answer” version in this case?

I don’t think a “double conditional” really makes sense here. Due to the linkage between the red and blue text, a double conditional makes the red bit superfluous. Clearly, it is the police report that determines if the police are going to believe Schwartz, so if the report he’s referring to were not yet available, all he would need to say is “If the police report of his (Schwartz) statement casts no doubt upon it, …” which signals to the reader to take with caution that which follows (i.e. we would prefer Schwatz’s description, but only in the case of the report coming back positive).

In other words, I don’t think the “double conditional” version works because the red and blue sections are “linked” just like in the case of my “fine weather” and “weather report” example. They are not independent of each other, given that whether or not the police believe Schwartz is not going to be independent of their report. We also know that Swanson has access to Abberline’s report already, and while Abberline thinks Schwartz made some interpretation errors about the events he witnessed, there is nothing to indicate that Abberline had any doubts that the events themselves took place.

Finally, given the main point of his sentence has to do with which man is the more likely murderer (the green text), and Swanson argues that would be Schwartz’s man, then it makes far more sense that he would be using a “question/answer” version. That’s because he is guiding the reader towards the conclusion he is going to present, he’s foreshadowing why Schwartz’s man is to be preferred, and the purple section at the end is there to strengthen his argument.

Anyway, in my opinion, I think it is very unlikely the Swanson intends a double conditional. While in one sense the sentence structure could allow it, I believe the semantic link between the sections, combined with the fact he's embedded the red and blue sections as a lead up to the main point (the green section), which concludes favouring Schwartz's description (bolstered by further reasoning for that - the purple section), make a double conditional almost untennable. Otherwise he's undermining the whole green/purple point he's making. A question/answer intention, however, further strengthens what he ends up concluding, making for a far more coherent communication.

I know that goes on forever, as in my wont, but language is bad enough, and it just gets worse when using language to describe language!

- Jeff

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Another interpretation is that the intended recipient of the report - the Home Office - had expressed scepticism of Schwartz, possibly due to the inability of the police to identify the second man (Pipeman) and so some convincing was deemed necessary.

Whatever the case, if there were no doubts, why mention this hypothetical alternative?

By the way, word of Schwartz's story seems to have reached more than one newspaper.

https://www.jack-the-ripper-tour.com/generalnews/none-of-his-business/

[Sunny Delight]

Mike, if I was going to rephrase Swanson's observation, I would change the beginning of your suggestion (in bold), to be something like:

"If we are to believe Schwartz, and providing the police report from the conclusion of our investigation confirms his story,...then it follows that he and PC. Smith are describing two different men and that the man described by Schwartz is clearly the likelier of the two to have been the killer due to the fact that he was seen in an altercation with the victim just 15 minutes before her body was discovered and just feet from the actual spot."

To answer the question in your final sentence...
The police have not been able to find another witness to the altercation, and they cannot find anyone who can plausibly be BS-man.

It is abundantly clear that Swanson wrote and I rephrase:

"If we are to believe Schwartz(we being the senior officers) and the Police report I have received states they do not doubt him, then it follows that he and PC Smith are describing two different men".

"If we are to place our faith in Schwartz(we being the senior officers) and my subordinates who have interviewed him do not doubt him, then it follows that he and PC Smith are describing two different men".

Don't forget Swanson was writing this to the Home Office. He is summarising what is sent to him. What he writes is so clear that it dumbfounds me that anyone can read or interpret it any differently.

[Herlock Sholmes]

The main point being though is that the police had absolutely no reason to doubt Schwartz story.

a) if he’d placed himself at the scene of a murder with no one to exonerate him just to get a bit of fame then he’d have been crazy.
b) if he’d have been up to no good then he had no need to come forward.

How long do we have to go on with this? Unless someone can provide Schwartz with an alibi proving him elsewhere we should just let it go.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Mike, if I was going to rephrase Swanson's observation, I would change the beginning of your suggestion (in bold), to be something like:

"If we are to believe Schwartz, and providing the police report from the conclusion of our investigation confirms his story,...then it follows that he and PC. Smith are describing two different men and that the man described by Schwartz is clearly the likelier of the two to have been the killer due to the fact that he was seen in an altercation with the victim just 15 minutes before her body was discovered and just feet from the actual spot."

To answer the question in your final sentence...
The police have not been able to find another witness to the altercation, and they cannot find anyone who can plausibly be BS-man.

Wick,

I’m sensing a scenario where you and I are discussing this point in 10 years time.

Your version is certainly valid and could be the case but so is the alternative imo. But.. I still don’t think that, should your version be the correct one, we can assume doubt on Swanson’s part; only caution. So in effect he could still have meant:

”As it stands we would have to say that Schwartz’s man and Smith’s man are two different men, with Schwartz’s man being the likelier killer. However this conclusion might change if new evidence appears.”