Originally posted by Fisherman
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Back from (to?) the party!
I find that the debate out here has now reached the point I was looking for - we have moved from a flat out denial that Paul could have been out of earshot to a position where the next step will inevitably be posting material saying that we can ALMOST be certain that Paul was not within earshot. He MAY technically have been out of earshot, but that possibility is laughably small, and so on and so on and so on.
As it should be. Everything points to the fact that CL and Paul met with Mizen together. It is a wilful stretch of the imagination to say that Paul was out of earshot just because you require it to be true.
After all, these are boards were posters can say that there is a 0,0000000000000001 possibility that Lechmere was the killer, and then move on to assure us that Bury was almost certainly the Ripper.
No. If anyone says that Bury was almost certainly the ripper then they are just as wrong as you are if you say that Lechmere was almost certainly the ripper. What they do have in their suspects favour is that we know that Bury was a violent man, who consorted with prostitutes and murdered a woman using a knife. We know nothing of Lechmere’s character or capacity for violence (which doesn’t count him out of course.)
On such boards, you can never get fairness on a general level. All you can do is to point out where people are going too far in their determination to confirm or deny what cannot be confirmed or denied, and as I said, it´s mission accomplished on that point.
I will comment on a few posts.
In post 907, Gareth posts the Morning Advertiser take on what was said between the coroner and Mizen, and we can once again see how Mizen gave a generalistic answer to a generalistic question: Yes, there was a other man there.
Who he’d been with at the crime seen. Who he’d left the crime seen with. Who he’d found Mizen with. So it’s reasonable to say that they were in each other’s company and not apart.
If it had all boiled down to whether Paul was very close to Lechmere as the latter spoke, if the inquest had wanted to clear Lechmere from any suspicion, the question should have been phrased accordingly. But Lechmere was never suspected and all Baxter wanted to establish was whether there were one or two carmen in the street. He didn´t even ask about how many of them spoke to Mizen, and why would he? Mizen had already answered that.
Post 914 is a good one, by Abby;
Nothing wrong with Abby’s post of course but it’s unsurprising that it’s the only one that you think is a good one as you only appear to respect the opinions of those that agree with you.
"I also think all this back and forth about paul is obsfuscating the main issue:
Mizen, a PC in good standing, with no reason to lie testified under oath that Lech told him that he was wanted in bucks row by another policeman.
But if, and it’s only an If, he made a mistake, or felt that he might have come in for some criticism he might have lied for reasons of self-preservation. We cant assume that a policeman wouldn’t lie just because he was a policeman.
Probably a misunderstanding in my view, but he said it, its written in stone and he may have heard correctly-which means Lech said it and lied.
its a red flag. OK potential red flag."
Things like these are very important to keep in mind. Gareth earlier asked "Why on earth would Paul not be within earshot as Lechmere spoke, when they examined the body together, and walked away together?"
A very valid question from Gareth and one that under other circumstances (ie. if we weren’t trying to shoehorn CL into the role of Jack The Ripper) we would barely discuss.
If there was nothing more to it, then yes, it would be a useful question. But once we have these matters, like how it seems Mizen was lied to, then it suddenly becomes of the utmost importance to check every little bit of information there is about the carmans doings on the murder night and in combination with the deed.
And you have checked every detail about CL’s actions that night and no alarm bells go off for most people.
Once a single little thing (and this is NOT a single little thing, of course) seems odd, then we must scrutinize all the information to see if a path can be discerned that may lead to our capture of the killer.
Not if our killer isn’t present in the first place. This is what conspiracy theorists do. They find a misspelling, or an inconsistency or a coincidence and start to get excited. Then they start to look for more and more flimsy connections and clues. Then when someone points out a fatal flaw or statement they say things like “well they would say that wouldn’t they.”
The sad thing that follows is when it is said that I only point to matters like the one with Paul perhaps being out of earshot in Bakers Row, because I am obsessed with Lechmere and willing to go to any lengths to pin the murders on him.
You are.
That is doing ripperology a great disservice.
No. Misplaced over-confidence is doing Ripperology a great disservice. Allowing a desire to be the one that solved the case to override calm reason does Ripperology great harm.
It applies that for Lechmere to remain a viable candidate, he must have taken the knife with himself from Bucks Row. No weapon was found there. And so, if he was the killer, then he will have had it stashed on his person as the two carmen met Mizen. And in such a case, Lechmere would be faced with a situation where he could absolutely not allow himself to be searched.
Aaargh Then why would he ‘refuse’ to escape in the first place? Why the hell would he stand around waiting for someone, who for all that he knew, might even have been a police officer, but whoever he was it would certainly mean that the police would be involved? “ Lechmere would be faced with a situation where he absolutely could not allow himself to be searched.” But. Of his own volition, he puts himself in that exact position. Surely, surely, surely you can see that this makes no sense?!
Therefore, when Mizen tells us that the carman served him a story where he made it look like he was NOT the finder of the body, where he did NOT own up to how serious the errand was and where he claimed that a PC was in place, we can see that if I am on the money about Lechmere being the killer, then he served a story that is in every detail perfectly consistent with that suggestion.
And again we assume that Mizen couldn’t have lied or been mistaken.
It is not me trying to pin the murder on Lechmere. It is the sources confirming that what happened in Bakers Row is entirely consistent with the idea of the carman being the perpetrator, and not only that - it becomes entirely logical to
say that if Mizen was correct, then there is ample reason to suspect Lechmere.
Just because something isn’t impossible doesn’t make it so.
We can of course say that Nah, Mizen will have lied or he will have been mistaken. But that does not detract in any way from the justification in saying that Lechmere passes the test here as a viable suspect, and that what happened actually encourages us to keep researching him as a suspect in his own right.
A garbled version events does not mean that CL passes the test. even if he did he had an innocent reason for doing so. Nothing about CL’s actions suggest a guilty man. But yes you should keep on researching and perhaps one day you might come up with some evidence.
Sooner or later we will come to the situation where we say "Okay, there are a number of things that allow for entertaining suspicion about the carman - or even urges us to see him as a suspect - and so we should move on to doing the mandatory geographical test - what can we say about his paths and the possible ties to one or more of the murder sites?"
Ah the ‘mommy’s house’ theory. Why would he kill on the way to someone’s house? Why is this even remotely relevant? It’s not. We can not eliminate CL on geography. End of story. Anything else is a pointless exercise in imagination.
This is where some of you will say "we really should not check that, because London and it´s East End was so crammed with people that any dovetailing we may find becomes irrelevant."
Yup.
And that in it´s turn is why I say that we cannot always listen to what posters suggest out here, we need instead to press on and do it the accepted way: check and see if the suspicions are verified in any way by the geography.
The location of his mother’s house is in no way suspicicious, suggestive or indicative of guilt.
And you all know how that check works out.
The last post I would like to comment on is post 920. In it, Joshua Rogan writes "Which makes me wonder why a scamming Lechmere would have openly contradicted a policeman in court, when he could have just put it down to such a mishearing."
I personally think that it would sound more suspicious if Lechmere had suggested a mishearing: "No, the PC must have misunderstood me, I only said that the case required a policeman".
I think that denying it altogether was a better option, since the missing Paul would always stand as a guarantee for the carman being correct - he could possibly be found and questioned, and so Lechmere would reasonably never lie about it. That, I suspect, is how the jury must have reasoned, and it cemented their view of him as a truthful man, whereas Mizen simply HAD to be wrong.
Not much need for comment.
As long as Lechmere was never suspected, he was destined to get away with this kind of a lie, the whole scenario disenabled Mizen to be correct. Regardless of HOW Mizen would have gotten it wrong, it must have appeared to the jury that this was the only option.
As for Mizen, I think he would be quite likely to press his point about having been told about another PC if Lechmere suggested a wording that Mizen knew was not correct. As long as you are not served that kind of a specific wording, you are left to use your own phantasy about how you caould have gotten it wrong, and such a thing will make it easier to accept. "Maybe I did mishear him?" instead of "No, he certainly did not say that!"
I find that the debate out here has now reached the point I was looking for - we have moved from a flat out denial that Paul could have been out of earshot to a position where the next step will inevitably be posting material saying that we can ALMOST be certain that Paul was not within earshot. He MAY technically have been out of earshot, but that possibility is laughably small, and so on and so on and so on.
As it should be. Everything points to the fact that CL and Paul met with Mizen together. It is a wilful stretch of the imagination to say that Paul was out of earshot just because you require it to be true.
After all, these are boards were posters can say that there is a 0,0000000000000001 possibility that Lechmere was the killer, and then move on to assure us that Bury was almost certainly the Ripper.
No. If anyone says that Bury was almost certainly the ripper then they are just as wrong as you are if you say that Lechmere was almost certainly the ripper. What they do have in their suspects favour is that we know that Bury was a violent man, who consorted with prostitutes and murdered a woman using a knife. We know nothing of Lechmere’s character or capacity for violence (which doesn’t count him out of course.)
On such boards, you can never get fairness on a general level. All you can do is to point out where people are going too far in their determination to confirm or deny what cannot be confirmed or denied, and as I said, it´s mission accomplished on that point.
I will comment on a few posts.
In post 907, Gareth posts the Morning Advertiser take on what was said between the coroner and Mizen, and we can once again see how Mizen gave a generalistic answer to a generalistic question: Yes, there was a other man there.
Who he’d been with at the crime seen. Who he’d left the crime seen with. Who he’d found Mizen with. So it’s reasonable to say that they were in each other’s company and not apart.
If it had all boiled down to whether Paul was very close to Lechmere as the latter spoke, if the inquest had wanted to clear Lechmere from any suspicion, the question should have been phrased accordingly. But Lechmere was never suspected and all Baxter wanted to establish was whether there were one or two carmen in the street. He didn´t even ask about how many of them spoke to Mizen, and why would he? Mizen had already answered that.
Post 914 is a good one, by Abby;
Nothing wrong with Abby’s post of course but it’s unsurprising that it’s the only one that you think is a good one as you only appear to respect the opinions of those that agree with you.
"I also think all this back and forth about paul is obsfuscating the main issue:
Mizen, a PC in good standing, with no reason to lie testified under oath that Lech told him that he was wanted in bucks row by another policeman.
But if, and it’s only an If, he made a mistake, or felt that he might have come in for some criticism he might have lied for reasons of self-preservation. We cant assume that a policeman wouldn’t lie just because he was a policeman.
Probably a misunderstanding in my view, but he said it, its written in stone and he may have heard correctly-which means Lech said it and lied.
its a red flag. OK potential red flag."
Things like these are very important to keep in mind. Gareth earlier asked "Why on earth would Paul not be within earshot as Lechmere spoke, when they examined the body together, and walked away together?"
A very valid question from Gareth and one that under other circumstances (ie. if we weren’t trying to shoehorn CL into the role of Jack The Ripper) we would barely discuss.
If there was nothing more to it, then yes, it would be a useful question. But once we have these matters, like how it seems Mizen was lied to, then it suddenly becomes of the utmost importance to check every little bit of information there is about the carmans doings on the murder night and in combination with the deed.
And you have checked every detail about CL’s actions that night and no alarm bells go off for most people.
Once a single little thing (and this is NOT a single little thing, of course) seems odd, then we must scrutinize all the information to see if a path can be discerned that may lead to our capture of the killer.
Not if our killer isn’t present in the first place. This is what conspiracy theorists do. They find a misspelling, or an inconsistency or a coincidence and start to get excited. Then they start to look for more and more flimsy connections and clues. Then when someone points out a fatal flaw or statement they say things like “well they would say that wouldn’t they.”
The sad thing that follows is when it is said that I only point to matters like the one with Paul perhaps being out of earshot in Bakers Row, because I am obsessed with Lechmere and willing to go to any lengths to pin the murders on him.
You are.
That is doing ripperology a great disservice.
No. Misplaced over-confidence is doing Ripperology a great disservice. Allowing a desire to be the one that solved the case to override calm reason does Ripperology great harm.
It applies that for Lechmere to remain a viable candidate, he must have taken the knife with himself from Bucks Row. No weapon was found there. And so, if he was the killer, then he will have had it stashed on his person as the two carmen met Mizen. And in such a case, Lechmere would be faced with a situation where he could absolutely not allow himself to be searched.
Aaargh Then why would he ‘refuse’ to escape in the first place? Why the hell would he stand around waiting for someone, who for all that he knew, might even have been a police officer, but whoever he was it would certainly mean that the police would be involved? “ Lechmere would be faced with a situation where he absolutely could not allow himself to be searched.” But. Of his own volition, he puts himself in that exact position. Surely, surely, surely you can see that this makes no sense?!
Therefore, when Mizen tells us that the carman served him a story where he made it look like he was NOT the finder of the body, where he did NOT own up to how serious the errand was and where he claimed that a PC was in place, we can see that if I am on the money about Lechmere being the killer, then he served a story that is in every detail perfectly consistent with that suggestion.
And again we assume that Mizen couldn’t have lied or been mistaken.
It is not me trying to pin the murder on Lechmere. It is the sources confirming that what happened in Bakers Row is entirely consistent with the idea of the carman being the perpetrator, and not only that - it becomes entirely logical to
say that if Mizen was correct, then there is ample reason to suspect Lechmere.
Just because something isn’t impossible doesn’t make it so.
We can of course say that Nah, Mizen will have lied or he will have been mistaken. But that does not detract in any way from the justification in saying that Lechmere passes the test here as a viable suspect, and that what happened actually encourages us to keep researching him as a suspect in his own right.
A garbled version events does not mean that CL passes the test. even if he did he had an innocent reason for doing so. Nothing about CL’s actions suggest a guilty man. But yes you should keep on researching and perhaps one day you might come up with some evidence.
Sooner or later we will come to the situation where we say "Okay, there are a number of things that allow for entertaining suspicion about the carman - or even urges us to see him as a suspect - and so we should move on to doing the mandatory geographical test - what can we say about his paths and the possible ties to one or more of the murder sites?"
Ah the ‘mommy’s house’ theory. Why would he kill on the way to someone’s house? Why is this even remotely relevant? It’s not. We can not eliminate CL on geography. End of story. Anything else is a pointless exercise in imagination.
This is where some of you will say "we really should not check that, because London and it´s East End was so crammed with people that any dovetailing we may find becomes irrelevant."
Yup.
And that in it´s turn is why I say that we cannot always listen to what posters suggest out here, we need instead to press on and do it the accepted way: check and see if the suspicions are verified in any way by the geography.
The location of his mother’s house is in no way suspicicious, suggestive or indicative of guilt.
And you all know how that check works out.
The last post I would like to comment on is post 920. In it, Joshua Rogan writes "Which makes me wonder why a scamming Lechmere would have openly contradicted a policeman in court, when he could have just put it down to such a mishearing."
I personally think that it would sound more suspicious if Lechmere had suggested a mishearing: "No, the PC must have misunderstood me, I only said that the case required a policeman".
I think that denying it altogether was a better option, since the missing Paul would always stand as a guarantee for the carman being correct - he could possibly be found and questioned, and so Lechmere would reasonably never lie about it. That, I suspect, is how the jury must have reasoned, and it cemented their view of him as a truthful man, whereas Mizen simply HAD to be wrong.
Not much need for comment.
As long as Lechmere was never suspected, he was destined to get away with this kind of a lie, the whole scenario disenabled Mizen to be correct. Regardless of HOW Mizen would have gotten it wrong, it must have appeared to the jury that this was the only option.
As for Mizen, I think he would be quite likely to press his point about having been told about another PC if Lechmere suggested a wording that Mizen knew was not correct. As long as you are not served that kind of a specific wording, you are left to use your own phantasy about how you caould have gotten it wrong, and such a thing will make it easier to accept. "Maybe I did mishear him?" instead of "No, he certainly did not say that!"
The ‘leap’ from ‘interest’ because was there to ‘probably the ripper’ with the help of a made up ‘scam’ and the non-point of the name thing (which has been shamelessly persisted with) is a leap far to far. It’s over zealous. It’s getting carried away. And no amount of accusing people of ‘bias’ or ‘ignorance’ will disguise the fact.
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