What makes Druitt a viable suspect?

[Wickerman]

I am not suggesting that evidence is proof.What I have written is that the evidence was subjected to assessment by MM,and found to lack proof.

Yes, that is what circumstantial evidence is.

The evidence against Druitt never went beyond the police,and I do not need to even know what that evidence was,to know that a policeman,MM,decided that there was no proof against anyone,and MM was obviously referring to evidence.

The evidence Mac. was party to did not prove guilt, not all evidence does.
Proving guilt is a very tall order, most criminal cases are determined by a jury on circumstantial evidence.
Apparently circumstantial evidence did exist.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi Herlock,

Hello Simon,

Did anyone else hear what the Druitt family allegedly told Macnaghten . . . no.

Id suggest that a more accurate answer to that one would be.....we don’t know.

If, for example, Macnaghten heard about Druitt via Majendie then he would have heard what the family had said. How can we know that no one else was present? Macnaghten appears to have found it convincing.

.
Can it be proved that the Druitt family ever said anything about MJD having murderous feelings towards women . . . no.

No, but no one is suggesting that anyone had said that Druitt had told anyone that he had murderous feelings.

.
Is someone to be considered reliable who apparently has valuable information about the Whitechapel Murders but can’t be bothered to mention it to the police or perhaps even write a letter to The Met detailing his info but rather just goes to the press . . . Yes: how about Farquharson?

True but the suggestion of Druitt being a likely suspect comes primarily from Macnaghten and not Farquharson. The suggestion the CF was a suspect comes directly from Lawton, who didn’t go to the police when he had every chance to. He was a Lawyer after all and so a letter to The Met might have merited some kind of investigation.

. Therefore, can it be corroborated that the Druitt family ever said any such thing to Macnaghten . . . no.

Again this could have been done through an intermediary but of course I accept that we only have Mac’s word on that.

I haven’t claimed certainty Simon but my original point was with regard to Trevor repeatedly saying that Macnaghten was unreliable. My question is still one of consistency. Why is it ok to say that Mac was unreliable whilst at the same time trusting the uncorroborated word of a lawyer when he reports an alleged statement taken from a known compulsive liar who was facing death? How can it be justified in labelling CF a very likely suspect based primarily on that source and yet dismiss The ACC Of The Met as a liar or an incompetent imbecile?

[Herlock Sholmes]

I agree that the facts are plain and simple, so why is it so important to you to argue against them?



You don’t think Macnaghten was lying and you have no evidence that he was gullible. So what precisely are you saying and what evidence or halfway decent argument do you have to back it up?



And your point is? Bearing in mind that the information implicating Druitt was received ’some years’ after mid-1889, what difference does it make? For all you know, the information was received close to when he wrote the report.



Utterly irrelevant. He was a senior officer with access to the information about murders. He is known to have had an interest in the Ripper case and kept photos of the victims in his desk drawer, he was in office when the information implicating Druitt was received… So, if you have a point, explain it.



And Macnaghten states that the information implicating Druitt wasn’t received until some years after mid-1889, so in 1890 Monro wouldn’t have known about it. For goodness sake, Trevor, you have had this explained to you just a little while back. The math surely isn’t beyond you. Are you incapable of taking any information on board?



It depends on what sources were consulted, but it’s irrelevant to the fact that information implicating Druitt was received and that Macnaghten was persuaded by it.



There are some scattered errors which are irrelevant to whether or not information implicating Druitt was received.



Macnaghten explains that Jack the Ripper only killed five women, so it is manifestly obvious that he didn’t think the 1891 murder was committed by Jack the Ripper. The idea that Macnaghten stayed silent is yours and unsupported by any evidence.



What does Macnaghten write that you are analysing?



I don’t know how or why the family formed an opinion that Druitt was Jack the Ripper, but evidently that is what Macnaghten thought. How they formed that belief needn’t have required that the family lived with him. It could have been based on things he said or how he behaved when they were in his company, or personal papers, or how people said he behaved… We’ve been through this before.



Where is there any evidence that Druitt wasn’t mentally ill. What do you think Macnaghten meant by ‘sexually insane’?



Yes, the information implicating Druitt ‘could’ have been nothing more than hearsay, but you consistently use hearsay in the sense of being ‘unsafe and unreliable’, but hearsay could be safe and very reliable. But you don’t know what the information was, so you can’t say it was hearsay. So, you don’t know what Macnaghten’s evidence was, yet you conclude on no evidence whatsoever that it was hearsay, which in turn you equate with being unsafe and unreliable, ignoring the fact that it could have been solid gold, and on that you advocate that Druitt not be treated as a suspect - although you insist on employing 21st century police jargon that you have been told you can’t use because it involved judging the quality of evidence which you don’t know and which you admit ‘I accept we dont know the strength of its accuracy.’



I’m not asking questions to which there is no definitive answer, I am asking you to support your arguments or abandon them. You claimed that Macnaghten’s information was hearsay, but the reality is that you can’t say that because you don’t know what his information was. Asking you, how can you say the information was hearsay when you don’t know what the information was isn’t a question without a definitive answer, it’s a question which you either answer by explaining how you know the information was hearsay (and unsafe and unreliable)

Excellent post Paul

.
And Macnaghten states that the information implicating Druitt wasn’t received until some years after mid-1889, so in 1890 Monro wouldn’t have known about it. For goodness sake, Trevor, you have had this explained to you just a little while back. The math surely isn’t beyond you. Are you incapable of taking any information on board?

I slipped up by missing this point but it was easily done as you’ve only explained it to Trevor around half a dozen times before.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Oh how we tie ourselves up in semantics

How do the jews come into it Wick?

[Trevor Marriott]

Excellent post Paul



I slipped up by missing this point but it was easily done as you’ve only explained it to Trevor around half a dozen times before.

He has explained nothing,and like you he is desperately trying to prop up Druitt as a suspect, with nothing to support what MM stated, and like you he seems to have his own agenda, and neither of you have any concept when it comes to assessing and evaluating what is and what is not evidence, in determining whether a person is a suspect, or a person of interest, and I really cant be arsed to continue to flog this proverbial dead horse.

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[John G]

I think it obvious that Druitt was a suspect, because Macnaghten said he was, but that of course is a pretty meaningless statement, which says little about Druitt's candidature. It doesn't, for instance, mean that he had reasonable grounds for suspecting Druitt, although he may have thought he had.

As I see it, it's a bit like Fermat's Last Theorem: Fermat thought he had solved the problem, although tantalizingly we don't know how, but he almost certainly hadn't.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Herlock,

You're not cutting Trevor any slack, yet at the same time packing your argument with loads of ifs, buts, coulds, perhaps and maybes.

You don't believe Trevor's Feigenbaum theory, and I don't blame you. I didn't believe it right from the get go, when Trevor made a compelling argument in his TV documentary. But then, all Ripper theories are compelling when given the quick cut, strident music, lone seeker of the truth TV treatment. Even Christer's Lechmere TV documentary sounded feasible until you started to think about it.

But, back to Macnaghten. You seem to want to believe him simply because he was a cop. Policemen tend to respond best to orders from above rather than rumours circulating from below, and I would suggest that Macnaghten was instructed by Anderson to cook something up in case the Sun story looked like it was about to turn septic.

I can't prove it any more than you can, but at least I'm not holding anyone up as a putative Ripper which, on the evidence to hand, is unreasonable and unfair.

Regards,

Simon

[harry]

Jon,
'Yes,that's what circumstantial evidence is'. What are you trying to prove?
I believe you and others are saying there is no known evidence.How can you classify evidence that is unknown?
MM had personnel information.Druitts family had suspicions.Thats all we know.We do not have the content,either of the information,or of the suspicions.Yet you claim it was all circumstantial.What was?

[PaulB]

He has explained nothing,and like you he is desperately trying to prop up Druitt as a suspect, with nothing to support what MM stated, and like you he seems to have his own agenda, and neither of you have any concept when it comes to assessing and evaluating what is and what is not evidence, in determining whether a person is a suspect, or a person of interest, and I really cant be arsed to continue to flog this proverbial dead horse.

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

Ah, your usual response of bluff, bluster, and old nonsense. You can't even find original nonsense to say!

In 1890, Monro said the police had no clues, but Macnaghten says the information implicating Druitt wasn't received until some years after mid-1889. That FACT nullifies your argument about Monro, it completely destroys it. Now, in a situation like this, normal people would either defend their argument or admit they are wrong and never use the argument again. You don't do that. You rarely defend your argument, you just change the subject or stop discussing it or disappear in pretended high-dudgeon, only to start up the same old argument later on, using the same faulty reasoning as if your error had never been made clear to you.

Almost every point you made in your long post has been answered before, in most cases several times, yet here you are trotting the old nags out for an airing yet again, and what is clear is that you can't defend your arguments, and, further, that you're not interested in the case at all, just in undermining our understanding of the evidence we have with silly and often stupid half-thought through arguments.

So, to make this clear, I have explained something, I have explained why your statement about Monro is wrong. If you think I am incorrect, you have your opportunity to defend it. Put up or shut up, as some people say. The same goes for all the points you raise in your long post, all of which have already been discussed at some length and, like the Monro argument, crashed and burned, undefended by you.

[PaulB]

Excellent post Paul
I slipped up by missing this point but it was easily done as you’ve only explained it to Trevor around half a dozen times before.

Thank you, but Trevor is simply regurgitating his same old arguments, all of which have been discussed but he's taken nothing on board. He just can't grasp that according to Macnaghten the information implicating Druitt was received by the police closer to 1894 than to 1888. Most of his arguments are similarly not thought through, but the objections are often so obvious that it's hard to accept that Trevor has given them any thought at all. He simply isn't a voice anyone should treat seriously.

[PaulB]

I think it obvious that Druitt was a suspect, because Macnaghten said he was, but that of course is a pretty meaningless statement, which says little about Druitt's candidature. It doesn't, for instance, mean that he had reasonable grounds for suspecting Druitt, although he may have thought he had.

As I see it, it's a bit like Fermat's Last Theorem: Fermat thought he had solved the problem, although tantalizingly we don't know how, but he almost certainly hadn't.

That's the crux of the argument succinctly expressed, John. Information implicating Druitt was received by the police, Macnaghten thought about it and concluded that Druitt was probably Jack the Ripper. We don't know what the information was, so we can't say whether the information and Macnaghten's reasoning was good or not.

[John G]

That's the crux of the argument succinctly expressed, John. Information implicating Druitt was received by the police, Macnaghten thought about it and concluded that Druitt was probably Jack the Ripper. We don't know what the information was, so we can't say whether the information and Macnaghten's reasoning was good or not.

Thanks Paul. Much appreciated.

[PaulB]

Excellent post Paul
I slipped up by missing this point but it was easily done as you’ve only explained it to Trevor around half a dozen times before.

Thanks, Herlock.

[harry]

Macnaghten received information,thought about it,and concluded there was no proof.

[PaulB]

Macnaghten received information,thought about it,and concluded there was no proof.

Information implicating Druitt was received by the police, Macnaghten thought about it and concluded that Druitt was most likely to be Jack the Ripper. The fact that he had no proof had no bearing on his conclusion that Druitt was most likely to be Jack the Ripper.