Favorite suspect/s?

[Elamarna]

So we do not agree that Paul could have been out of earshot as Lechmere spoke to Mizen?

Is that correct?

You are of the meaning that Paul could not possibly have been out of earshot as this happened?

Or what are you saying? Or trying to say?

To use your phrase, which is good, obviously your training coming into play,

"In that context and with these predispositions, it would not have been possible for Paul to have been out of earshot"

Provide some source based evidence in addition to what we already have, as i have said all along, and i will concede that such was possible.

Which of course is NOT me claiminhg to have PROVED anything its saying you have not PROVED.


I not sure how much clearer i can make my position and how it differs from yours.


Steve

[Elamarna]

1315. And I didnīt say "question", I said "point".

Good point, however if it requires answering it still must by definition pose a question.

I will now go and look and answer.


Steve

[Elamarna]

Found your point, sorry i honestly beleieved i had covered it in my reply, clearly i didn't

Not only was there no contesting TOD:s in Chapmans case, it also applies that the time elapsed was much shorter, and so the task of establishing a TOD becomes easier.

Moreover, in Chapmans case, Phillips gave a span, not a decided time. He said that she had been dead at least two hors and probably more.

"The time elaspsed was much shorter" in what context?
Kelly could (I only say could) concevably been killed up to 10am, While i do not think that is the case, it cannot be ruled out on medical grounds of on witness statements, and that does remain a possibility(that term again), however unlikel on those grounds.

Therefore the time comaparison cannot be said to be "much shorter"
I contest also that a shorter period between death and examination will necessarily make TOD estimation easier, particularily so in the conditions and with the knowledge in 1888.


You may not agree, but there is my considered response to your point (certainly a point, not a question, I concur).


Steve

[Fisherman]

To use your phrase, which is good, obviously your training coming into play,

"In that context and with these predispositions, it would not have been possible for Paul to have been out of earshot"

Provide some source based evidence in addition to what we already have, as i have said all along, and i will concede that such was possible.

Which of course is NOT me claiminhg to have PROVED anything its saying you have not PROVED.


I not sure how much clearer i can make my position and how it differs from yours.


Steve

Much as I havent proved that Paul was within earshot, surely if it cannot be excluded it cannot be said that it CAN be excluded...? I feel you are making very simple matter very hard here.

[harry]

The biggest thing going for Cross's innocence?As there are several,i'll explain one.
He gave evidence under oath.An element of that evidence was that the Injuries to Nichols were made before he(Cross)reached the spot where she lay.As no evidence has surfaced,or was presented as contradictory to that claim,he cannot ,under the law of that time,be held reasponsible for her death.The presumption of innocence must prevail.That is why no Prima Faci hearing of guilt would succeed.

He is innocent,not because I say so,but because the Common Law of England demands it.

[Elamarna]

Can anyone offer an 'innocent' explanation of why Charles Lechmere (as he seemingly described himself in every other recorded situation where he had dealings with officialdom) might have used his long deceased stepfather's surname alone when reporting his finding of Polly's body to the police and subsequently appearing at her inquest? Even if he was known by the name of Cross at Pickfords, isn't it just a bit odd that he didn't mention that his real name was Lechmere? Or that if he did, no record of the fact exists?

Could it really have been a simple oversight?

Gary

Good question.

Of course we do not know what details he gave to the Police, a record of such would have been so helpful. We are left to assume he gave the same info to the police as at the inquest, lacking any evidence to the contrary.

Of course it may be possible that he was know to some Police as the step son of the late PC Cross and that he used the name for that reason.

The incident which you mention in the next post, is tantilisingly is it not Gary?
If it was him, it suggests that he used the name at Pickfords, indeed to provd it was him would require an address which could be link to Lechmere. All records of which no longer exist. Of course purely hypothetically if such records showed him listed as Cross, it would suggest that nothing significant can be drawn from it use, as he gave it for the earlier incident. If however he was listed as Lechmere, there are questions to answer.
Of course if he was listed as Lechmere, it would be impossible to link him to the man in the accident unless a report existed giving the carman's addresss.

To answer your question It may have been, but i think it unlikely. Morelikely there was a reason, which need not be suspicious.


Steve

[Herlock Sholmes]

Pick the one detail that you think speaks loudest for his innocence, and we will scrutinize it together. Then we will see how strong an argument you have.

Go ahead, donīt be shy! Which single detail is most out of line with Lechmere possibly being guilty?

Probably the fact the CL didn’t make his escape when he could but decided possibly drop himself right in the You-know-what.

[Herlock Sholmes]

“One of them only was found close to the body while it was still bleeding.”

I have no books with me at the moment to check this but remind me how you know that she was still bleeding?

[Fisherman]

Found your point, sorry i honestly beleieved i had covered it in my reply, clearly i didn't



"The time elaspsed was much shorter" in what context?
Kelly could (I only say could) concevably been killed up to 10am, While i do not think that is the case, it cannot be ruled out on medical grounds of on witness statements, and that does remain a possibility(that term again), however unlikel on those grounds.

Therefore the time comaparison cannot be said to be "much shorter"
I contest also that a shorter period between death and examination will necessarily make TOD estimation easier, particularily so in the conditions and with the knowledge in 1888.


You may not agree, but there is my considered response to your point (certainly a point, not a question, I concur).


Steve

Generally speaking, if a body is long dead, it is harder to determine a TOD than for a body that has been dead for a short time only.

We can make all sorts of objections based on specific conditions, but if we treat the question from a general perspective only, we canīt.

And the only way there is to bring Kelly and Chapman closer to each other in the perspective of elapsed time since death, is to accept that Kelly died much later than is generally beleived, and that Chapman die much earlier.

If Chapman had been dead for around an hour only as she was examined by Phillips, then Kelly will have been dead much longer than so when she was examined, given that she was first seen dead on her bed at 10.45, and then the door was not broken open until around 1.30 if I remember correctly, so that means that if Kelly was killed at, say, 10.30 (which nobody believes anyway, but for the sake of clarity...), three would have passed.

So if we want to have the same time frame for Chapman, we need to put her murder at 3.30.

Iīm fine with that, and I think it is close to the truth.

In her case.

Not in Kellys.

[Herlock Sholmes]

“One of them only is known to have used an alias that he otherwise did not use in authority contacts.”

Which gained him no advantage in terms of ‘throwing the police off the scent’ so, for the life of me, I can’t see why you keep bringing it up as if it in any remote way points toward CL’s guilt. Its no more incriminating than if we discovered that CL had knocked a couple of years off his true age.

[Fisherman]

“One of them only was found close to the body while it was still bleeding.”

I have no books with me at the moment to check this but remind me how you know that she was still bleeding?

Itīs either that or she started bleeding inbetween the time when Lechmere found her and when Neil arrived. Effectively meaning that she either did not initially bleed from the wounds in abdomen and neck for some reason, or somebody else arrived at the scene between Lechmere and Neil and cut her.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Much as I havent proved that Paul was within earshot, surely if it cannot be excluded it cannot be said that it CAN be excluded...? I feel you are making very simple matter very hard here.

I’d put it this way....

We have no tangible reason for believing that Paul was out of earshot.

Unless you need him to be of course.....

[Herlock Sholmes]

Itīs either that or she started bleeding inbetween the time when Lechmere found her and when Neil arrived. Effectively meaning that she either did not initially bleed from the wounds in abdomen and neck for some reason, or somebody else arrived at the scene between Lechmere and Neil and cut her.

Ok, we’ve gotten the sarcasm out of the way. What makes you think that the blood was still flowing when Neil found her? I only asked to be reminded.

[Elamarna]

Much as I havent proved that Paul was within earshot, surely if it cannot be excluded it cannot be said that it CAN be excluded...? I feel you are making very simple matter very hard here.

Actually, i don't think i am. And please let me explain my reasoning.
I would hope that even if you don't agree, you can at least see where i am coming from.

Too often in this field of study we see the term "possible" used to encompass just about anything, hence some of the utterly rediculious "suspects" and "Theories" on the grounds that we cannot conclusively prove something is not so.

Such i hope you will agree leads to the astonising number of suspects proposed, most of whom are complete non starters.

Take H H Holmes for instance, there is evidence which suggests he is in the USA in late 1888, yet the supporters claim its possible he travelled. But they provide no evidence to counter the evidence which rules it out.

Now Paul and being in earshot is not in the same league as that, but the same principles apply surely?



I honestly feel that we must go past this point of claiming anything is possible, and only apply such views when there is no evidence, which is not challenged by other evidence.

Its really tbat simply to me.


Steve

[Fisherman]

Probably the fact the CL didn’t make his escape when he could but decided possibly drop himself right in the You-know-what.

And on that point, you were gainsaid by An ex-murder squad leader, who phrased it "certainly, he couldnīt have run away, having realized that there was somebody else in the street".

Regardless if he was correct or if you are, calling his deduction idiotic, it applies that there can be no doubt that this can be looked upon in a very different manner from the one you suggest.

There is also another aspect to consider in this matter: If Lechmere, predisposing that he was the killer, had subdued Nichols and cut her very severely in the abdomen and in the neck, then if he decided - as I suggest - to bluff it out, then he would need to cover up the wounds so that Paul could not see what had happened. He would also need not to move the body, since that would give away that had happened.

Without taking these precautions, he could not pull the bluff of.

Donīt you think it is very odd that this is perfectly in line with the evidence? The wounds WERE covered up by the clothing and when Paul suggested that they should prop the body up, Lechmere simply refused.

I know EXTREMELY well tat you can offer innocent alternative explanations. As always.

But the fact must go before the fiction here, and the facts tell us that the precautions Lechmere would have needed to take were in place - covered up wounds and a refusal to move the body.

If is is coincidences, it is coincidences that are in line with what I suggest.

On the whole, far from thinking that I need to agree with you on this point - and what you asked was whether there was one single point that gave me reason to doubt that Lechmere was the killer - I find there is every reason not to do so.

It does not mean that I rule out that Lechmereīs pshychological disposition was one that would have urged him to leg it, but I do know that psychopathic killers will not panic, like to play games and are very apt liars. And more than ninety per cent of serial killers are psychopaths, so it pans out in this discipline too.

I thnk we are all at risk to reason that the killer would have done this or that, and then we lean against how we think we would have done ourselves. But as long as we are not psychopathic serial killers ourselves, we really do not reason in the way they do.

So if this is your strongest point against Lechmere being the killer, I must say that I consider it a very weak point instead, and no reason whatsoever for me to reconsider.

Consider - yes, already done. Reconsider - no.