Broad Shoulders, Elizabeth's Killer ?

[The Rookie Detective]

Hi RD,

You're assuming here that Diemschutz is the only possible source of interruption. It could be that BS Man killed her and would have mutilated her, but something in the club spooked him, causing him to take off.

I'd say that the Nichols murder was in the open. I can accept the idea that he didn't leave witnesses if what you mean is that he didn't act violently in front of witnesses, but there are other people who may have seen him just before other Ripper murders.

FrankO's timeline is my favorite of the three too.

I accept your point of course, but for me the overriding purpose, effect and consequence of Schwartz's story is 3 fold.

Firstly, his story is dramatic and yet subtle enough to indirectly imply that the man who most likely killed Stride was an intoxicated thug who randomly assaulted her first; ergo suggesting that BS Man was the killer.

Secondly, by introducing an assault on Stride AFTER Parcelman was seen with her by PC Smith approximately 10 minutes prior to the assault; his story practically rules out Parcelman as being the killer. Before Schwartz came along it was indeed Parcelman who was the prime suspect. This then changed with the introduction of the assault by BS Man.

And thirdly, it not only pushes the kill time back to AFTER 12.45am, but it implies that Stride was still alive between 12.40am-12.45am. This then rules out Eagle as the killer and also Lave; because they both claimed to have been back inside the club circa 12.40am. In turn, this by proxy protects members of the club and suggests it was a random man off the street who approached and assaulted Stride.

Of course, there is a possibility that Lave was also Parcelman.

So let's give a chronological sequence of events that supports a viable working hypothesis...


12.30am - Letchford returns

12.30am - The Nelson Beer House closes

12.35am - Stride arrives in Berner Street

12.35am - The transient on-the-run Joseph Lave goes out to the street with a parcel containing cigars (illegally imported contraband) as part of a pre-arranged meet; hence why Stride is dressed to impress and has Cachou that were primarily marketed towards women smokers. Stride is wearing a flower so that Lave knows who to meet.

12.36am - Lave and Stride are talking in Berner Street.

12.36am - PC Smith turns into Berner Street from the Commercial road.

12.36am - PC Smith sees Lave and Stride talking as he reaches the victiny of the club.

12.37am - Mortimer is now situated close to the front of her house

12.37am - PC Smith turns around and walks back past Lave and Stride and heads North up Berner Street.

12.37am - Mortimer hears PC Smith walk past her door.

12.38am - Eagle returns and walks back past Lave and Stride without acknowledging them. He tries the front door and after finding it locked, he walks into the darkness of the yard and enters the side door of the club.

12.40am - Having observed Eagle walk into the yard and having waited for PC Smith to leave, Lave convinces Stride to enter the yard. Lave and Stride walk into the yard. Lave convinces Stride to conduct business out of sight of the street after PC Smith had passed only a few minutes prior. Stride tries a cigar lit by Lave from his parcel. She doesn't like the taste and take out her cachou; perhaps implying the cigars are of poor quality.

12.42am - Lave then attacks Stride from behind and drags her back violently by her own scarf and as she is about to lose consciousness he lowers her to the floor and pulls out a knife. With a single violent cut he almost severs her head as he pushes the left side of her face into the floor to give his physical leverage to make the cut.

12.42am - Stride is dead

12.43am - Lave conceals his knife, picks up his parcel and then casually reenters the club.

12.43am - Another couple arrive at the corner of the Street.

12.44am - Brown walks past and sees the couple.

12.45am - Mortimer comes to her door just moments after Brown passes the end of the street. Mortimer stays there for around 10 minutes and remarks to her husband how quiet it seems.

12.55am - Goldstein is seen walking hurriedly down Berner Street

1am - Diemschitz finds the body

Now here's the crucial part...

Some time between 12.43am and 12.53am, it has possibly transpired that some members of the club may have become aware that Lave has committed a vile deed.

The relatively unknown entity that they took in as a temporary help to a man who they know relatively little about.

From this point the club realise that damage limitation is priority.
They send Diemshitz out through a Northern exit into the warehouse that stands between the northern side of the club and the side alley running west off of Berner Street which leads through into Back Church lane.
Goldstein is given a black bag and is asked to deliberately walk around the perimeter of the club and back down Berner Street, so that he can be seen walking past the club and therefore the murder site. The intention is to give the impression that when Goldstien walks past the club, there is no body in the yard. But Goldstein can't resist the natural human instinct of giving a brief subconscious look up towards the club and the approximate location of where the body is.

However, when the impact of Goldsteins movements doesn't accomplish the desired effect; a Jew; possibly an actor, who is loyal to the club; is bought in to give a completely bogus story of an incident involving a random drunk attacking the victim in the street at a time that would then supply an alibi for Parcelman aka Lave, because anyone who observed Lave talking to Stride would then consider him innocent if a drunken non- Jewish anti semitic man attacks the same woman AFTER Parcelman is seen with her.

The story of the contraband or empty cigarette boxes is also added by Goldstein because it then gives a reason for any subsequent evidence of cigars and the use of Cachou.

However, by pure coincidence, Eddowes is murdered shortly after in Mitre Square and the press, police and public link the 2 murders together.

Le Grand is bought in to convince Packer he saw a man resembling the generic stereotype of the Ripper and from there the papers start making money from selling the story that the Ripper had struck twice in 1 night.

Reaffirmed by the faux letter written by a member of the press conveniently suggesting a "double event."

In the meantime, the man giving the name of Schwartz and playing an acting role; is then considered unreliable because his timings and story directly conflict with everyone else's. He is eventually disregarded, but that being part of the plan, because he has no intention of appearing at the inquest for fear of his acting performance being exposed.

The man Lave is then asked to leave and he disappears into history having been the man who nearly decapitated his victim with just one cut and perhaps inadvertently helped the club to gain more publicity by trying to make it look as though Stride was a Ripper victim.

Whereas in reality, Stride may have just been the victim of an illegal contraband deal gone wrong. She was then dispatched accordingly for saying the wrong thing or for insulting Lave and his product.

Oh and what happened to the murder weapon?


Well, perhaps, just perhaps... Goldstein disposed of it when he concealed it in his "empty" black bag.


Of course, all of the above works without the club knowing anything about the murder whatsoever.

The point is that Stride was dead by 12.43am and everything that was said to happen after that is just smoke and mirrors



RD

[Herlock Sholmes]

Fanny Mortimer:

“I had just gone indoors, and was preparing to go to bed when I heard a commotion outside, and immediately ran out..”


As she “immediately ran out,” just after 1.00 how soon before 1.00 was it that she went indoors? Let’s estimate that she went indoors at 12.55 after spending an unspecified length of time on her doorstep. So let’s also estimate that she’d gone onto her doorstep at around 12.45, as she didn’t see Eagle return at around 12.40 but she did see Goldstein.

This would have meant two things. 1) that her claim to have been on the door most of the time between 12.30 and 1.00 was probably untrue. Where did she get that from? If she had gone onto her doorstep just after Smith passed why didn’t she see the couple, why didn’t she see Lave at the gateway or more importantly why didn’t she see Eagle return?

And 2) the incident could have occurred sometime between Eagle’s return at around 12.40 and Fanny going onto her doorstep at 12.45. Recall that Fanny said that she’d gone onto her doorstep after hearing the tread of a Constable. So it’s either a case of a) Fanny went onto her doorstep after Smith, fairly soon went back inside and then came out again almost straight away at around 12.45 and then went back inside again just before 1.00, yet Fanny makes no mention of this going in and out. Or b) the footsteps that Fanny heard were those of Eagle as he returned to the club.

This seems a likelier version of events to me.

[Sunny Delight]

I accept your point of course, but for me the overriding purpose, effect and consequence of Schwartz's story is 3 fold.

Firstly, his story is dramatic and yet subtle enough to indirectly imply that the man who most likely killed Stride was an intoxicated thug who randomly assaulted her first; ergo suggesting that BS Man was the killer.

Secondly, by introducing an assault on Stride AFTER Parcelman was seen with her by PC Smith approximately 10 minutes prior to the assault; his story practically rules out Parcelman as being the killer. Before Schwartz came along it was indeed Parcelman who was the prime suspect. This then changed with the introduction of the assault by BS Man.

And thirdly, it not only pushes the kill time back to AFTER 12.45am, but it implies that Stride was still alive between 12.40am-12.45am. This then rules out Eagle as the killer and also Lave; because they both claimed to have been back inside the club circa 12.40am. In turn, this by proxy protects members of the club and suggests it was a random man off the street who approached and assaulted Stride.

Of course, there is a possibility that Lave was also Parcelman.

So let's give a chronological sequence of events that supports a viable working hypothesis...


12.30am - Letchford returns

12.30am - The Nelson Beer House closes

12.35am - Stride arrives in Berner Street

12.35am - The transient on-the-run Joseph Lave goes out to the street with a parcel containing cigars (illegally imported contraband) as part of a pre-arranged meet; hence why Stride is dressed to impress and has Cachou that were primarily marketed towards women smokers. Stride is wearing a flower so that Lave knows who to meet.

12.36am - Lave and Stride are talking in Berner Street.

12.36am - PC Smith turns into Berner Street from the Commercial road.

12.36am - PC Smith sees Lave and Stride talking as he reaches the victiny of the club.

12.37am - Mortimer is now situated close to the front of her house

12.37am - PC Smith turns around and walks back past Lave and Stride and heads North up Berner Street.

12.37am - Mortimer hears PC Smith walk past her door.

12.38am - Eagle returns and walks back past Lave and Stride without acknowledging them. He tries the front door and after finding it locked, he walks into the darkness of the yard and enters the side door of the club.

12.40am - Having observed Eagle walk into the yard and having waited for PC Smith to leave, Lave convinces Stride to enter the yard. Lave and Stride walk into the yard. Lave convinces Stride to conduct business out of sight of the street after PC Smith had passed only a few minutes prior. Stride tries a cigar lit by Lave from his parcel. She doesn't like the taste and take out her cachou; perhaps implying the cigars are of poor quality.

12.42am - Lave then attacks Stride from behind and drags her back violently by her own scarf and as she is about to lose consciousness he lowers her to the floor and pulls out a knife. With a single violent cut he almost severs her head as he pushes the left side of her face into the floor to give his physical leverage to make the cut.

12.42am - Stride is dead

12.43am - Lave conceals his knife, picks up his parcel and then casually reenters the club.

12.43am - Another couple arrive at the corner of the Street.

12.44am - Brown walks past and sees the couple.

12.45am - Mortimer comes to her door just moments after Brown passes the end of the street. Mortimer stays there for around 10 minutes and remarks to her husband how quiet it seems.

12.55am - Goldstein is seen walking hurriedly down Berner Street

1am - Diemschitz finds the body

Now here's the crucial part...

Some time between 12.43am and 12.53am, it has possibly transpired that some members of the club may have become aware that Lave has committed a vile deed.

The relatively unknown entity that they took in as a temporary help to a man who they know relatively little about.

From this point the club realise that damage limitation is priority.
They send Diemshitz out through a Northern exit into the warehouse that stands between the northern side of the club and the side alley running west off of Berner Street which leads through into Back Church lane.
Goldstein is given a black bag and is asked to deliberately walk around the perimeter of the club and back down Berner Street, so that he can be seen walking past the club and therefore the murder site. The intention is to give the impression that when Goldstien walks past the club, there is no body in the yard. But Goldstein can't resist the natural human instinct of giving a brief subconscious look up towards the club and the approximate location of where the body is.

However, when the impact of Goldsteins movements doesn't accomplish the desired effect; a Jew; possibly an actor, who is loyal to the club; is bought in to give a completely bogus story of an incident involving a random drunk attacking the victim in the street at a time that would then supply an alibi for Parcelman aka Lave, because anyone who observed Lave talking to Stride would then consider him innocent if a drunken non- Jewish anti semitic man attacks the same woman AFTER Parcelman is seen with her.

The story of the contraband or empty cigarette boxes is also added by Goldstein because it then gives a reason for any subsequent evidence of cigars and the use of Cachou.

However, by pure coincidence, Eddowes is murdered shortly after in Mitre Square and the press, police and public link the 2 murders together.

Le Grand is bought in to convince Packer he saw a man resembling the generic stereotype of the Ripper and from there the papers start making money from selling the story that the Ripper had struck twice in 1 night.

Reaffirmed by the faux letter written by a member of the press conveniently suggesting a "double event."

In the meantime, the man giving the name of Schwartz and playing an acting role; is then considered unreliable because his timings and story directly conflict with everyone else's. He is eventually disregarded, but that being part of the plan, because he has no intention of appearing at the inquest for fear of his acting performance being exposed.

The man Lave is then asked to leave and he disappears into history having been the man who nearly decapitated his victim with just one cut and perhaps inadvertently helped the club to gain more publicity by trying to make it look as though Stride was a Ripper victim.

Whereas in reality, Stride may have just been the victim of an illegal contraband deal gone wrong. She was then dispatched accordingly for saying the wrong thing or for insulting Lave and his product.

Oh and what happened to the murder weapon?


Well, perhaps, just perhaps... Goldstein disposed of it when he concealed it in his "empty" black bag.


Of course, all of the above works without the club knowing anything about the murder whatsoever.

The point is that Stride was dead by 12.43am and everything that was said to happen after that is just smoke and mirrors



RD

Why would members of a club put their freedom on the line with such a fantastical story- one which the Police would surely have rumbled very early. This scenario envisages two things:

1) Members of the club were both unscrupulous and cold beyond belief. Sociopathic almost. Not only risking their freedom for perverting the course of justice but also able to coldly hatch a plan within seconds- a convoluted plan that looked at the situation not as a murder, but as a problem that needed to be solved. It is up there with the McCann's done it type idea.

2) It also implies the Police were easily fooled, unable to discern truth from lies and be misled by a story concocted within seconds of club members realising Lave had just committed a murder.

It is just not feasible whatsoever that there was a club conspiracy. Your scenario also goes completely against almost everything we know.

[Sunny Delight]

Fanny Mortimer:

“I had just gone indoors, and was preparing to go to bed when I heard a commotion outside, and immediately ran out..”


As she “immediately ran out,” just after 1.00 how soon before 1.00 was it that she went indoors? Let’s estimate that she went indoors at 12.55 after spending an unspecified length of time on her doorstep. So let’s also estimate that she’d gone onto her doorstep at around 12.45, as she didn’t see Eagle return at around 12.40 but she did see Goldstein.

This would have meant two things. 1) that her claim to have been on the door most of the time between 12.30 and 1.00 was probably untrue. Where did she get that from? If she had gone onto her doorstep just after Smith passed why didn’t she see the couple, why didn’t she see Lave at the gateway or more importantly why didn’t she see Eagle return?

And 2) the incident could have occurred sometime between Eagle’s return at around 12.40 and Fanny going onto her doorstep at 12.45. Recall that Fanny said that she’d gone onto her doorstep after hearing the tread of a Constable. So it’s either a case of a) Fanny went onto her doorstep after Smith, fairly soon went back inside and then came out again almost straight away at around 12.45 and then went back inside again just before 1.00, yet Fanny makes no mention of this going in and out. Or b) the footsteps that Fanny heard were those of Eagle as he returned to the club.

This seems a likelier version of events to me.

I don't think it is. We get fixated on the comment- at my doorstep nearly the whole time. But if we take everyone else statements then we can discern what Mortimer meant and what time she was stood there. We can be certain that she was not at her door when Schwartz witnessed the struggle between BS man and Stride at approx 12:45am. We can be certain Mortimer was at her door at 12:55am as she saw Leon Goldstein. We can be certain she was not at her door at 1am as she heard the commotion and immediately rushed outside.

Anything prior to 12:45am is likely not all that important if we see Schwartz as accurate. Going on what we know about the timeline it can really only be BS man who passed her door. The initial report stated she came to the door following the measured footsteps of a Policeman passing her door. We know PC Smith passed at 12:35am. If she came to the door then she would have been there for 20 minutes and would have seen Eagle, Lave, Stride- possibly Parcelman, Schwartz, BS man and maybe even Pipeman. She could not have been at her door after Smith passed.

Let's work backwards. Mortimer is at her door around 12:55am- she is co-orborated by Leon Goldstein. She had to have come to her door after Eagle, Lave, Parcelman, Stride, BS Man and Pipeman were no longer on the street. She said she had been at her door for 10 minutes meaning she first came out around 12:45 or a few minutes after as we know how hard it is with timings. She had just heard measured footsteps pass- they sounded like a Policeman. The only person she saw in those 10 minutes was Leon Goldstein.

If Mortimer had come to her door after Eagle passed returning to the club- how did she miss Schwartz?

[The Rookie Detective]

Why would members of a club put their freedom on the line with such a fantastical story- one which the Police would surely have rumbled very early. This scenario envisages two things:

1) Members of the club were both unscrupulous and cold beyond belief. Sociopathic almost. Not only risking their freedom for perverting the course of justice but also able to coldly hatch a plan within seconds- a convoluted plan that looked at the situation not as a murder, but as a problem that needed to be solved. It is up there with the McCann's done it type idea.

2) It also implies the Police were easily fooled, unable to discern truth from lies and be misled by a story concocted within seconds of club members realising Lave had just committed a murder.

It is just not feasible whatsoever that there was a club conspiracy. Your scenario also goes completely against almost everything we know.

Ah, yes, I agree!

Which is exactly why the club conspiracy angle doesn't work.

It's too fantastical and not believable.

And yet somehow Schwartz's story often passes unchecked and unchallenged in comparison to the twaddle i wrote in order to highlight my point.


Here's a similar chronological hypothesis of events again, but this time without the club conspiracy rubbish...


12.30am - Letchford returns

12.30am - The Nelson Beer House closes. People disperse.

12.35am - Stride arrives in the vicinity

12.35am - The transient on-the-run Joseph Lave goes out to the street with a parcel containing cigars (illegally imported contraband) as part of a pre-arranged meet; hence why Stride is dressed to impress and has Cachou that were primarily marketed towards women smokers. Stride is wearing a flower so that Lave knows who to meet.

12.36am - Lave and Stride are talking in Berner Street.

12.36am - PC Smith turns into Berner Street from the Commercial road.

12.37am - PC Smith sees Lave and Stride talking as he reaches the victiny of the club.

12.38am - Mortimer is now situated close to the front of her house

12.38am - PC Smith turns around and walks back past Lave and Stride and heads North up Berner Street.

12.38am - Mortimer hears PC Smith walk past her door.

12.39am - Eagle returns and walks past Lave and Stride without acknowledging them. He tries the front door and after finding it locked, he walks into the darkness of the yard and enters the side door of the club.

12.40am - Having just observed Eagle walk into the yard and having waited for PC Smith to leave, Lave convinces Stride to enter the yard. Lave and Stride walk into the yard. Lave convinces Stride to conduct business out of sight of the street after PC Smith had passed only a few minutes prior. Stride tries a cigar lit by Lave from his parcel. She doesn't like the taste and take out her cachou; perhaps implying the cigars are of poor quality.

12.42am - Lave then attacks Stride from behind and drags her back violently by her own scarf and as she is about to lose consciousness he lowers her to the floor and pulls out a knife. With a single violent cut he almost severs her head as he pushes the left side of her face into the floor to give his physical leverage to make the cut.

12.42am - Stride is dead

12.43am - Lave conceals his knife, picks up his parcel and then casually reenters the club.

Meanwhile...

12.42am - James Brown passes along the end of the street on his way to the shop.

12.43am - Another couple have arrived at the corner of the Street.

12.45am - Brown walks back past and sees the couple.

12.45am - Mortimer comes to her door 7 minutes after hearing PC Smith's measured footsteps pass by and just a few moments after Brown has passed the end of the street. Mortimer stays there for around 10 minutes and remarks to her husband how quiet it seems.

12.54am - Goldstein is seen walking hurriedly down Berner Street

12.56am - Mortimer goes inside

12.58am - Diemshitz cart turns into the street

12.59am - Diemschitz discovers Stride

1am - The alarm is raised


The point i am making is that sometimes you have to flush out the twaddle before you can reach a more reasonable and realistic scenario.

IMO the above scenario goes a long way to explain a lot of the supposed mysteries surrounding the Stride murder.

Fascinating

[c.d.]

I accept your point of course, but for me the overriding purpose, effect and consequence of Schwartz's story is 3 fold.

Firstly, his story is dramatic and yet subtle enough to indirectly imply that the man who most likely killed Stride was an intoxicated thug who randomly assaulted her first; ergo suggesting that BS Man was the killer.

Secondly, by introducing an assault on Stride AFTER Parcelman was seen with her by PC Smith approximately 10 minutes prior to the assault; his story practically rules out Parcelman as being the killer. Before Schwartz came along it was indeed Parcelman who was the prime suspect. This then changed with the introduction of the assault by BS Man.

And thirdly, it not only pushes the kill time back to AFTER 12.45am, but it implies that Stride was still alive between 12.40am-12.45am. This then rules out Eagle as the killer and also Lave; because they both claimed to have been back inside the club circa 12.40am. In turn, this by proxy protects members of the club and suggests it was a random man off the street who approached and assaulted Stride.

But was all this intentional or simply the natural consequences of his statement? You keep wanting to turn Schwartz into some sort of criminal mastermind with a cunning we can't even begin to imagine. He would have had to have had access to an Excel spread sheet to figure all this out and pull it off successfully.

Sorry, not trying to be sarcastic just trying to make a point.

c.d.

[c.d.]

Hi Sunny,

All good points about the whole club conspiracy theory. I would also add it seems to imply that they had no other viable option such as simply cooperating fully with the police.

c.d.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I don't think it is. We get fixated on the comment- at my doorstep nearly the whole time. But if we take everyone else statements then we can discern what Mortimer meant and what time she was stood there. We can be certain that she was not at her door when Schwartz witnessed the struggle between BS man and Stride at approx 12:45am. We can be certain Mortimer was at her door at 12:55am as she saw Leon Goldstein. We can be certain she was not at her door at 1am as she heard the commotion and immediately rushed outside.

Anything prior to 12:45am is likely not all that important if we see Schwartz as accurate. Going on what we know about the timeline it can really only be BS man who passed her door. The initial report stated she came to the door following the measured footsteps of a Policeman passing her door. We know PC Smith passed at 12:35am. If she came to the door then she would have been there for 20 minutes and would have seen Eagle, Lave, Stride- possibly Parcelman, Schwartz, BS man and maybe even Pipeman. She could not have been at her door after Smith passed.

Let's work backwards. Mortimer is at her door around 12:55am- she is co-orborated by Leon Goldstein. She had to have come to her door after Eagle, Lave, Parcelman, Stride, BS Man and Pipeman were no longer on the street. She said she had been at her door for 10 minutes meaning she first came out around 12:45 or a few minutes after as we know how hard it is with timings. She had just heard measured footsteps pass- they sounded like a Policeman. The only person she saw in those 10 minutes was Leon Goldstein.

If Mortimer had come to her door after Eagle passed returning to the club- how did she miss Schwartz?

Hi Sunny,

My first point has to be that we have no time for Leon Goldstein. He never mentioned a time, only that he walked down Berner Street. 12.55 is a figure that has been suggested because she talked about him being the only person that she’d seen before she’d gone inside. I used to bring this up with a certain other poster who continued to use it as if it was a fact. Don’t get me wrong Sunny, he may well have passed at 12.55 but we have no way of pinning this time down.

In answer to your last sentence..if Eagle said that he returned to the club at ‘about 12.40,’ so clearly he was estimating. Fanny Mortimer said, in one report I believe, that she was on her doorstep for 10 minutes. I have to ask how she arrived at 10 minutes as there was no clock visible in Berner Street so I assume that she was estimating.

This is part of the statement from the Evening News, Oct 1st:

“A woman who lives two doors from the club has made an important statement. It appears that shortly before a quarter to one o'clock she heard the measured, heavy tramp of a policeman passing the house on his beat. Immediately afterwards she went to the street-door, with the intention of shooting the bolts, though she remained standing there ten minutes before she did so. During the ten minutes she saw no one enter or leave the neighbouring yard, and she feels sure that had any one done so she could not have overlooked the fact.”

These are the words of a journalist of course and not a direct quote from Fanny, so was it really immediately or a couple of minutes later. So if the steps were Eagle returning then there could have been a 2 minute gap before she came out in which a very short incident occurred.

or,

Could she really have mistaken Eagle’s step for a Constable’s regulation tread? To the locals this would have been a most familiar sound at night. Would Eagle, returning to the club in the cold of the early hours, have meandered at the slow pace that a Constable was expected to walk at? Or is it likelier that she did indeed go onto her doorstep just after Smith passed (anytime between 12.30 and 12.35) If she spent approximately 10 minutes on her doorstep this means that she could have been back inside for approximately 12.40 when Eagle returned.

In neither The Times, the PMG, the Morning Advertiser or the London Evening News does she even hint at the part about following the Constable onto her doorstep. I have to say that I’ve always been slightly wary of Mrs Mortimer.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I still say that there was no mystery in Berner Street. A woman got killed by an unknown man and no one saw it happen…just as the vast majority of murders occur with no one witnessing them. At the risk of sounding like a scratched record we only hit upon ‘mystery’ if we take the frankly bizarre step of assuming that all of these stated times were spot on and perfectly synchronised. If they were then, for that time, we probably have a near miracle on our hands.

I general terms what is likelier?

a) that there was some kind of club based conspiracy involving false times and false witnesses all created on the spur of the moment.
b) that some random bloke just decided to claim that he was at a murder scene when he wasn’t (at a time when the papers were awash with stories of there being a monster at large) with absolutely no way of proving his innocence.
c) a man cut a woman’s throat in an incident of a few seconds duration in a Whitechapel backstreet in the early hours of the morning and no one witnessed it.

I’d suggest that we’ve all made harder decisions today.

[Wickerman]

Pretty selective theorizing, the one witness who saw Stride with a man, walk up to his shop from the lower end of Berner St. is completely written out of every scenario - amazing.

[Sunny Delight]

Pretty selective theorizing, the one witness who saw Stride with a man, walk up to his shop from the lower end of Berner St. is completely written out of every scenario - amazing.

Packer was discredited in 1888 and there is no reason 136 years later why we should think any differently. I think Sugden was the one to really lay it all out in black and white to be honest.

[Sunny Delight]

Hi Sunny,

My first point has to be that we have no time for Leon Goldstein. He never mentioned a time, only that he walked down Berner Street. 12.55 is a figure that has been suggested because she talked about him being the only person that she’d seen before she’d gone inside. I used to bring this up with a certain other poster who continued to use it as if it was a fact. Don’t get me wrong Sunny, he may well have passed at 12.55 but we have no way of pinning this time down.

In answer to your last sentence..if Eagle said that he returned to the club at ‘about 12.40,’ so clearly he was estimating. Fanny Mortimer said, in one report I believe, that she was on her doorstep for 10 minutes. I have to ask how she arrived at 10 minutes as there was no clock visible in Berner Street so I assume that she was estimating.

This is part of the statement from the Evening News, Oct 1st:

“A woman who lives two doors from the club has made an important statement. It appears that shortly before a quarter to one o'clock she heard the measured, heavy tramp of a policeman passing the house on his beat. Immediately afterwards she went to the street-door, with the intention of shooting the bolts, though she remained standing there ten minutes before she did so. During the ten minutes she saw no one enter or leave the neighbouring yard, and she feels sure that had any one done so she could not have overlooked the fact.”

These are the words of a journalist of course and not a direct quote from Fanny, so was it really immediately or a couple of minutes later. So if the steps were Eagle returning then there could have been a 2 minute gap before she came out in which a very short incident occurred.

or,

Could she really have mistaken Eagle’s step for a Constable’s regulation tread? To the locals this would have been a most familiar sound at night. Would Eagle, returning to the club in the cold of the early hours, have meandered at the slow pace that a Constable was expected to walk at? Or is it likelier that she did indeed go onto her doorstep just after Smith passed (anytime between 12.30 and 12.35) If she spent approximately 10 minutes on her doorstep this means that she could have been back inside for approximately 12.40 when Eagle returned.

In neither The Times, the PMG, the Morning Advertiser or the London Evening News does she even hint at the part about following the Constable onto her doorstep. I have to say that I’ve always been slightly wary of Mrs Mortimer.

Hi Herlock,

Some very good, fair points. We don't have a time for Goldstein from official sources and it is also fair to say that Eagle was also estimating. I think Mortimer was certainly being truthful and although her testimony is convoluted, we must accept that she was not at her door at 12:45 when Schwartz and BS man passed but was when Goldstein passed. Mortimer said she went back inside shortly after seeing Goldstein so 12:53-12:57 could be the possible timings? I think that is why most go with 12:55am as the time of that sighting.

In regards Eagle maybe being the measured footsteps culprit- again it would be the case that surely Mortimer would have seen Schwartz, Stride and BS man on the street had she come out afterwards? I also take your point though that in her directs quotes she does not mention the footsteps. This is a valid and fair point.

Can I ask why you are slightly wary of Mortimer?

My own view is that Mortimer was truthful although estimating timings which can be problematic. I think with common sense though her testimony fits in rather well.

[c.d.]

Can I ask why you are slightly wary of Mortimer?

My own view is that Mortimer was truthful although estimating timings which can be problematic. I think with common sense though her testimony fits in rather well.

Truthfulness needn't be the issue if she was simply mistaken with her times. We have the very nebulous "nearly" in her statement and she also had a sick husband and five children which might have required her attention for a few minutes.

c.d.