Suspect Witnesses?

[c.d.]

Yes, we are in agreement about BS not being the killer. However, I'm still trying to get a handle on how the BS incident was real, but he was not the murderer scenario is supposed to play out. Do you have a proposal for how Stride manages to stay at the gateway, unwitnessed, effectively waiting for her killer to come along?

I will take a shot at it but I admit up front that I have not yet thought it through and that it is pure speculation at this point.

She is a bit unsettled by the B.S man incident but still she'll be damned if he is going to run her off. So, she watches him walk away moving back into the passageway where she can keep watch but remain unseen. She remains there for a minute or two. Now I will say I don't know if this would even be physically possible. Would she have that line of sight from there? Her plan is to watch and if she sees he is coming back she plans to run to the door of the club and scream for help. But he does not return and fairly confident he has gone off for good she returns to her previous position at the gateway.

It's the best I can do at the moment.

c.d.

[c.d.]

Here my proposal, B.S man killed Stride and Schwartz witnesses the assault on her by him . Anything else is made up speculation and evidence tampering. End of.

Oh, if only it were that easy.

Except that Schwartz never said he saw Stride being murdered. And according to him she was still alive when he left the scene. So now it appears that you too have entered into the area of speculation and evidence tampering.

c.d.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Strictly speaking or not, when he turned back to the club, he first tried the front door, which was some 12 meters from where Mortimer stood and in Berner Street, and then he entered the yard. Didn’t Mortimer say “and I did not observe anyone enter the gates”?

The timing suggestion I gave for Smith in #568 has him on the street at similar time to Eagle's arrival. So, we may only be dealing with a minute or two away from her door, in this period.

Actually, Lave did say that he go beyond the gateway.

Daily News & Evening Standard of 1 October:
“I passed out into the street, but did not see anything unusual. The district appeared to me to be quiet.”

Evening News of 1 October:
“At half-past twelve I had come out into the street to get a breath of fresh air. There was nothing unusual in the street.”

Irish Times & Morning Advertiser of 1 October:
“went down into the court about twenty minutes before the body was discovered, and walked about in the open air, and for five minutes or more he strolled into the street, which was very quiet at the time…”

Mortimer appears not to have seen Eagle enter the gates, if we assume that her not seeing anyone enter refers to the entire half hour, which I will concede it probably does. Now if Lave does go onto the street and we are entitled to ask why Mortimer does not see him, are we not obliged to ask why Lave doesn't see Stride and Parcelman? According to Smith, they were standing directly across from the Mortimer residence (as you mentioned). How could he have missed them, or thought them unworthy of comment? Something is not right here. Perhaps the couple's location was not quite as Smith recalled.

As shown above, I don't know all this as they're neither relevant nor facts, so my argument still stands in that if Mortimer, as she said, “was standing at the door of my house nearly the whole time between half-past twelve and one o'clock”, then it’s, at least, odd that she didn’t mention seeing Eagle, Lave and Stride & Parcelman. So, it’s clearly arguable that the ‘half-hour-proposition’ is preferable to the ‘10-minute one’. If that’s not clear to you, then I cannot help you.

You seem to have missed my point. It's not that the nearly all of that half hour is preferable to 10-minutes in terms of total time. The issue is that it's precisely because the quote is vague that it affords flexibility of interpretation. A fixed 10-minute period does not. Not only that but the single fixed period doesn't even make sense. If it starts immediately after Smith passes, the time is not a few minutes to 1 when it ends. I'm in agreement with #582.

I have no idea who that is the biggest problem for, Andrew. The way I see it, is that she should have seen the couple if she was actually at her door nearly the whole time between half past twelve and one o’clock. They were standing more or less directly opposite Mortimer’s door, on the pavement on the other side of the street. As to the ‘10-minute story’, it’s not a fact that it must have been policeman’s tramp that she heard – after all, she didn’t say that she saw a policeman pass; and, furthermore, the same goes for the ‘immediately’ you mention. If it really was immediately, she would have seen Smith some yards to her left up Berner Street and it seems unlikely that the couple on the opposite side of the street had just vanished at that point. After all, they were standing there talking when Smith passed.

Okay, so you're not happy with the 10-minute report, either. In my opinion, Mortimer would have been familiar with the sound of the plod, but let's consider two possibilities - the footsteps were of Smith or Eagle. If Eagle, then the report's shortly before 12:45 timing is close to the 12:40 timing given by Eagle. So, the 10 minutes starts then, and continues through until nearly 12:55. No sign of Schwartz and co. If Smith, then we might start a little earlier, but we are still making it to at least 12:50 with no sign of Schwartz and co. Perhaps they came along when, as the 10-minute report states, "she prepared to retire to bed, in the front room on the ground floor". Strange that she managed to hear those passing footsteps, but none of the events described by Schwartz, don't you think?

Well, I’m not one of those posters. But if another man did come along, I think it's most likely that he did so almost directly after Mr BS left and the Schwartz account was over, which could have happened in a minute or so.

Presumably this man did not pass Letchford's sister. Perhaps he came from the board school corner?

[NotBlamedForNothing]

It’s not a critical point by any means. It’s an insignificance which you are constantly trying to load with meaning. She was moving whilst he was elsewhere doing who knows what. Why should that have made the police suspicious?

I'll spell it out in simple terms.

* Abberline stated that there were no other men in the street, other than those described by Schwartz

* We have no good or even poor evidence that either the first or second man was ever identified

* The newspaper that spoke to Schwartz stated a day later that serious doubts had been raised about the truth of Schwartz's story


We are left with the question as to who or what could have caused those doubts. Not BS Man - he was never identified. Not Pipeman - ditto. This question doesn't cease to exist just because it rubs people up the wrong way.

What we can choose to notice in the Star report, is evidence that Schwartz's wife is moving out. She, not they are moving. That is what it says. The report also mentions a move from Berner St to Backchurch Lane. We can reasonably suppose that Backchurch Lane refers to the address Schwartz gave to the police - 22 Ellen St. That is his address when he goes to Leman St police station on Sunday evening. When we drop the naivety, we can start to see what has occurred. Schwartz is out on the street for many, many hours, while his wife moves to an address somewhere on Berner St. Somewhere.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

I wonder whether "most of the time" was not one continuous period, but was a longish but interrupted spell with two or three shorter periods of a few minutes indoors for some household matters. She could then have missed brief events.

A common-sense suggestion.

[FISHY1118]

Oh, if only it were that easy.

Except that Schwartz never said he saw Stride being murdered. And according to him she was still alive when he left the scene. So now it appears that you too have entered into the area of speculation and evidence tampering.

c.d.

Never have i ever said Schwartz witnesses strides murder. Only the assault. Your getting off track.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

I will take a shot at it but I admit up front that I have not yet thought it through and that it is pure speculation at this point.

She is a bit unsettled by the B.S man incident but still she'll be damned if he is going to run her off. So, she watches him walk away moving back into the passageway where she can keep watch but remain unseen. She remains there for a minute or two. Now I will say I don't know if this would even be physically possible. Would she have that line of sight from there? Her plan is to watch and if she sees he is coming back she plans to run to the door of the club and scream for help. But he does not return and fairly confident he has gone off for good she returns to her previous position at the gateway.

It's the best I can do at the moment.

c.d.

The most obvious question as I see it, is why she is determined to stay at that location. What does it afford her?

Presumably the man who comes along after BS is not the man seen by James Brown. Thus, there is another couple about 20 yards away, when he arrives. There seems little scope for defiant protest, let alone not very loud screams, so how does he persuade her to go into the yard with him?

Regarding her line of sight, perhaps some of the (copyright) images created by Jeff Leahy will help.

Correction: https://forum.casebook.org/forum/rip...198#post498198