Did Astrakhan Man exist?

[Ben]

Hi Hatchett,

“It is not a "fact" that Hutchinson's statement was discredited. There is no extant police statement that supports this.”

The discrediting of Hutchinson is an inescapable inference as I observed in my last post, and unless it is to be argued that all sources pointing towards this conclusion are wrong, it doesn’t make a lot of sense – and it’s certainly a waste of time – to attempt to resist it. All senior police memoirs support the view that Hutchinson was discredited, as has been discussed ad nauseam. He was not Anderson’s witness, and it is clear that a Jewish witness was used in subsequent attempts to identify suspects, despite none of them getting anywhere near as good a description as the one Hutchinson alleged.

Abberline stated that the witnesses only acquired a back view of their suspects, and while this allows for possible confusion with the Church Passage sighting (one of the Jewish trio, Harry Harris, mentioned a rear sighting) and perhaps one or two others, he could hardly have forgotten about a witness of Hutchinson’s potential importance, unless he had good reason to dismiss his account in 1888, which was obviously what happened.

The press reports I’ve referred to provide the earliest indications that Hutchinson’s statement was discounted. I have no idea how you formed the impression that there was a “definate (sic) block on communication between the police and the press”, but I can assure you that this was not the case at all. We know for a fact that the Echo approached the police station in order to ascertain what we now know to be the truth about the Astrakhan account, which created confusion when it arrived in mildly different forms on the 13th and 14th November and gave the impression that it originated from two separate, independent sources.

“It is not illogical at all that a witness's statement could automatically put them into the frame of being a suspect. There are numerous examples in history where this has happened.”

Not before 1888 there weren’t.

Policing in general was in its infancy at the time, and large-scale investigations into serial murders were simply unheard of. They would not have entertained for one moment that the real killer would waltz into the police station requesting an interview. There are no grounds whatsoever for assuming he was suspected, and even if he was, there are even less grounds for assuming the police were able to ascertain whether or not he was guilty. I’d steer well clear of using one zero-evidence assertion to support an even worse one.

“Considering that the police believed that at the time that the murders continued after Kelly you would naturally have expected him to have been reinterviewed.”

For what possible reason?

“That he was not mentioned in the others points to the inescapable fact that they found nothing suspicious about him.”

It suggests that they never even considered him in the capacity of a suspect, let alone exonerated him as one. It suggests that he was dismissed as a witness only.

“John Douglas may have vast experiance, but that does not mean that he is right.”

It means he might not necessarily be right, but he’s certainly worth listening to over those whose “experience” on the subject is virtually non-existent.

“I was pointing out that Abberline may have made a mistake about Chapman, but the circumstances of him making that mistake were different to when he made his decision on Chapman.”

If he can “make a mistake about Chapman” he can make a mistake about Hutchinson – that’s just obvious, and in the latter case, it appears that the mistake was clearly rectified.

“I think the difficulty here is not throwing the baby out with the bath water but trying to find the baby under the suds.”

Well, nobody is compelled to discuss Hutchinson if they don’t think him worthy of their time. You’d be amazed how many people do, though. You’d also be amazed how many times I’ve had this identical discussion with certain people, and that’s only this year.

All the best,
Ben

[Fisherman]

Ben:

"would it kill you to stay out of a discussion I’m having with another poster, especially after you cautioned me “NEVER!” to interfere with what you post to others?"

Wrong again, I´m afraid - what I cautioned you about was to butt in and tell me not to argue my case. That´s wholly unacceptable. I read all the posts in ongoing discussions and if I want to enter the discussions, I do so. I suspect the same goes for you, since you never start any threads yourself?
But entering a discussion with the intention of telling other posters not to speak their mind, that´s another thing altogether.

I NEVER do that.

You do, however.

I hope that you see what I mean now, and that you will refrain from these antics in the future.

Unless...?

The best,
Fisherman

[Wickerman]

Much as I appreciate everyone's research and the sincerity of their convictions, I believe that the case against Hutchinson being the Ripper is very weak for a number of reasons.

Indeed it is Hatchett, and all it consists of is ideas & conjecture.

Some of which revolve around the issue of whether Astrokan man really existed.

Which is another fabricated idea, no-one accused Hutchinson of making this man up at the time.
Some people are very perceptive, typically those who are not will claim "no-one can be so perceptive". If someone does not have this ability they cannot understand those who do, but this is just human nature.

There is another aspect to this, when a person has just lost out on a chance to obtain something desired they tend to become more perceptive of those who took it away from them. Whether this be a contest, or a prize, or award for some task.

Here's a little bit of science to explain the rationale behind it...

"....the researchers suggest that becoming mildly depressed (dysphoric) can heighten concern about your surroundings. “People with mild levels of depression may initially experience feelings of helplessness, and a desire to regain control of their social world,” says Dr. Harkness. “They might be specially motivated to scan their environment in a very detailed way, to find subtle social cues indicating what others are thinking and feeling.”

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/11/051121164438.htm

Which is one way of explaining why Hutchinson, once he realized he could have spent the night with Mary Kelly, for the sake of a few pence, he felt shut-out by this weird-looking intruder. Hence, Hutchinson's state of awareness was heightened concerning the man who took his place.
There's nothing strange about it, nothing to do with lying, just pure science, we are dealing with human sensitivity.
Hutchinson was cheated out of a night of bliss by this toffy-nosed scoundrel.

And, without quoting the rest of your very perceptive post, I agree with you entirely!

All the best, Jon S.

[Ben]

The case against any suspect is predicated on “ideas & conjecture”, less so with Hutchinson, obviously, because it can at least be demonstrated that he was present near a crime scene at a time relevant to a murder, and that he probably lied about his reasons for being there. That is considerably more than can be said for most other suspects, many of whom can’t even be placed in the East End at the time, let alone loitering opposite a crime scene an hour or so before the commission of that crime. I would suggest that those of a niggling, gainsaying disposition might have better luck if they picked on one of those instead. Yes, there are other possible reasons for his behaviour that don’t involve him murdering anyone, but it’s ludicrous to make such a dissenting, noisy fuss about the proposal that he might have been responsible, especially when we know other serial killers have inserted themselves into investigations as “witnesses”.

If anyone seriously thinks that someone can detect eyelash shade in darkness for a fleeting moment, they need their head seeing to. It’s implausible to the point of being impossible, and it was discredited by the police at the time because they doubted his credibility.

It seems that more and more outlandish excuses are being conjured up by the obstinate in attempt to refute this obvious reality. We even have the suggestion now that Hutchinson was able to notice and memorise that which the vast majority of human beings are incapable of memorizing because he got a bit a depressed! Well that’s got to be it. There’s nothing like a bit of “mild depression” for making out those eyelashes, horseshoe tie-pins and light buttons over button boots at 2.00am on a miserable night in Victorian London. If people really pay more attention to the objects of their depression, I can safely say that I’ve been responding to some truly eye-catching and memorable posts of late!

Good grief.

[babybird67]

the Police must have been meticulous...

and checked him out, seems to be one of thos arguments popping up now as well. We can't assume anything. We know they were not experienced in the behaviour of serial killers, which we have the benefit of history to school us in. Even if it could be assumed, which I don't think it safely can, that they would have checked out Hutchinson's story or him as a suspect rather than a witness, we cannot possibly know if the stories Hutchinson gave were remotely verifiable (which, if he was the killer, they obviously wouldn't be) or whether they mirrored the story he told of his whereabouts on the night of Kelly's murder.

Walking about all night is not something that can be checked out. Maybe he 'walked about all night' quite a bit? And as Ben's posts have pointed out, who on earth is going to remember him being present one particular night in a lodging house of 400 lodgers who come and go when they please?

I think Hutch is a good candidate in at least being there on the night so close to the murder, and in his behaviour mirroring that of what we now know of serial killers. Also, he is the archetypal 'unknown local male'. He was local;male; we don't know who he was.

[Sally]

The Police..

appear to have been quite thorough following Kelly's death - this from the Times:-

During the whole of yesterday, Sergeant Thicke, with other officers, was busily engaged in wrting down the names, statements and full particulars of persons staying at the various lodging-houses in Dorset Street. That this was no easy task will be imagined when it is known that in one house alone there are upwards of 260 persons, and that several houses accommodate over 200

12th November 1888, p.6.

The police, prior to Hutchinson coming forward the next day, appear to have been seeking a perpetrator in a common lodging house - in Dorset Street.

The Times again:-

The street being principally composed of common lodging-houses, persons are walking along it during all hours of the night, so that little notice is taken of any ordinarily attired man. The murderer, therefore, had a good chance of getting away un-observed.

10th November 1888, p.7

Hutchinson's description of his Astrakhan coat-wearing gent was sufficiently similar to other reports of well-dressed 'foreign' suspicious men to divert police (and press) attention away from this line of enquiry.

Whether or not Hutchinson had any reason to worry, I think that his coming forward voluntarily probably absolved him of any suspicion of involvement of murder in contemporary terms. I think he was dropped because the police eventually concluded that Astrakhan Man did not exist - or if he did, he was nobody of interest.

[Lechmere]

Ben

“I would suggest that those of a niggling, gainsaying disposition might have better luck if they picked on one of those instead.”

Many of the other ‘suspects’ as you point out are so threadbare as to make detailed discussion rather pointless. There are points of contention about Hutchinson which makes him an interesting character in the whole story. I am sure you don’t actually mean what you said above, otherwise you’d be shouting at yourself in the mirror, and I feel sure you never do that.

It is a little odd to characterise those who don’t think the ‘Hutchinson as the Ripper’ allegation adds up as nigglers and gainsayers though.

“If anyone seriously thinks that someone can detect eyelash shade in darkness for a fleeting moment, they need their head seeing to. It’s implausible to the point of being impossible, and it was discredited by the police at the time because they doubted his credibility.”

As Hutchinson supposedly looked at his face quite close up in a lit main street, he conceivably could have detected the eyelash shade. In any case it is not unlikely that superfluous extra ‘recreated’ details are added to what was otherwise an accurate description. Peoples’ minds work in funny ways.
However you have absolutely no grounds for saying that the police discredited his story on the basis of the eyelash shade.

Babybird:

The nascent police force didn’t have to be experienced in investigating serial killer murders in order to have experience to or the nous to ‘check out’ witnesses and suspects. I have previously provided numerous evidence were they did ‘check out’ people they took interest in. They clearly took interest in Hutchinson.
In my opinion, an attempt to build Hutchinson as the culprit that denies the likelihood that Hutchinson was ‘checked out’ is one that admits it is itself threadbare.

As I have pointed out the purpose of ‘checking out’ would be to provide corroboration for the person’s story.
If it could not be ‘checked out’ as the person said he was alone or unaccounted for the whole time, then that person would fail the ‘check out’ process and would likely come in for closer inspection.

Building a case against Hutchinson that denies that a witness who placed himself at the crime scene and then failed the ‘check out’ as his story could not be corroborated is threadbare and utterly flawed in my opinion.

What was that unique expression ‘the negative alibi’ or something? Meaning that saying one was alone all the time, wandering the streets, would be accepted by this nascent police force in the absence of a proper alibi. As if!
I repeat the nascent police force was experienced enough in solving normal crimes and would have applied their normal methods to this case – such as ‘checking people out’ – such as witnesses to check their reliability.

Even with 400 inmates, if Hutchinson was a regular at the Victoria Home then his late night comings and goings would have been noticed. Also by the time of the Kelly murder the police were doing regular checks on establishments such as the Victoria Home which would have increased the vigilance of the deputies.
Why he went to Romford could have been checked easily.
If he just said ‘I went there to see if there was any work, but couldn’t find any,’ that would mean he had asked around for work – so who had he asked? If he failed to ‘remember’ he could have been taken there and asked what streets he asked in. If he ‘couldn’t remember’ then I would suggest that he would have risen in the suspect rankings as his story hadn’t ‘checked out’.

If you think through all these ‘negative alibis’ (if that was the expression) they would either increase suspicion or invite further questions.

Sally
I would guess the police took statements from the inhabitants of Dorset Street to try and find witnesses rather than to try and find the killer as such.

The Times report suggests that the police should have looked at someone like Hutchinson. If the Times could suss that out I am pretty sure the police could also.
Just because Hutchinson provided an alternative description to the common local bloke did not mean that the police immediately switched all efforts to looking for an A-man type. We know they arrested and interrogated several lodging house dwellers around that time for starters.

I think we can assume the police were able to have several different suspect types in mind when looking for the culprit.

Again while the police were inexperienced in serial killing crimes they were not inexperienced in normal crime solving. In normal crime solving the perpetrator often comes forward to ‘help’.

[babybird67]

In my opinion, an attempt to build Hutchinson as the culprit that denies the likelihood that Hutchinson was ‘checked out’ is one that admits it is itself threadbare.

One has to respond to the evidence, Lechmere. There isn't any evidence that he was checked out as a suspect. The evidence that he was checked out as a witness lies in the reports of his testimony being discredited by the Police. Therefore I think we can safely accept the story he told the Police about seeing Mary and Astrakhan was discovered to be false. We cannot make assumptions and jump from that view, for which there is contemporary evidence, and conclude a totally different view, that he therefore MUST have been cleared as a suspect, for which there is no contemporary evidence, for the latter view would merely be based on assumption alone.

Building a case against Hutchinson that denies that a witness who placed himself at the crime scene and then failed the ‘check out’ as his story could not be corroborated is threadbare and utterly flawed in my opinion.

Of course you're entitled to think so, but there is no evidence suggesting he would have been checked out as anything other than a witness.

I repeat the nascent police force was experienced enough in solving normal crimes and would have applied their normal methods to this case – such as ‘checking people out’ – such as witnesses to check their reliability.

Ah I see so experience means infallibility. Right.

So this didn't happen then, in the case of Jeffrey Dahmer in which the Police, experience in solving crimes, were called and actually visited his foul-smelling apartment?

In the early morning hours of May 27, 1991, 14-year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone (by coincidence, the younger brother of the boy whom Dahmer had molested) was discovered on the street, wandering naked, heavily under the influence of drugs and bleeding from his rectum. Two young women from the neighborhood found the dazed boy and called 911. Dahmer chased his victim down and tried to take him away, but the women stopped him.[30] Dahmer told police that Sinthasomphone was his 19-year-old boyfriend, and that they had an argument while drinking. Against the protests of the two women who had called 911, police turned him over to Dahmer. They later reported smelling a strange scent while inside Dahmer's apartment, but did not investigate it. The smell was the body of Tony Hughes, Dahmer's previous victim, decomposing in the bedroom. The two policemen did not make any attempt to verify Sinthasomphone's age and failed to run a background check that would have revealed Dahmer was a convicted child molester still under probation.[31] Later that night, Dahmer killed and dismembered Sinthasomphone, keeping his skull as a souvenir.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Dahmer

Those officers were experienced officers and failed to even carry out a basic background check on Dahmer. They could have saved lives if they had. They did not. So we cannot safely assume that the Police, experienced or otherwise, always do what they should do, can we?

Same with Peter Sutcliffe. He was interviewed on several occasions in relation to the Ripper murders.

1978The police discontinued the search for the person who received the £5 note in January 1978. Although Sutcliffe was interviewed about the £5 note, he was not investigated further (he would ultimately be contacted, and disregarded, by the Ripper Squad on several further occasions). That month, Sutcliffe killed again. His victim was 21-year-old Bradford prostitute, Yvonne Pearson. Sutcliffe hid her body under a discarded sofa and it was not found until March. He killed 18-year-old Huddersfield prostitute Helen Rytka, on the night of 31 January. Her body was found three days later. On 16 May Sutcliffe killed again after a three-month hiatus. The victim was Vera Millward whom he killed during an attack in the car park of Manchester Royal Infirmary

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Sutcliffe

More deaths that could have been averted had the Police thoroughly investigated him.

These are examples of experienced officers in experienced forces letting suspects go/not invesitgating suspicious activites thoroughly. I am sure there are more examples out there.

Sorry but I do not share what I would describe as your rather naive belief in the infallibility of the Police force, especially in the very early days of its operations. I cannot see any evidence that they would have made the mental connection between a witness actually having significance as a potential suspect, and even if they had, that they would have had the resources or capabilities of obtaining the information they would need to rule Hutchinson out of earlier murders.

Even with 400 inmates, if Hutchinson was a regular at the Victoria Home then his late night comings and goings would have been noticed.

I very much doubt that.

Also by the time of the Kelly murder the police were doing regular checks on establishments such as the Victoria Home which would have increased the vigilance of the deputies.

Which may explain why Hutchinson, if he was the killer, stopped/changed his behaviour after coming under the radar of the Police.

Why he went to Romford could have been checked easily.

How do you know that?

If he just said ‘I went there to see if there was any work, but couldn’t find any,’ that would mean he had asked around for work – so who had he asked? If he failed to ‘remember’ he could have been taken there and asked what streets he asked in. If he ‘couldn’t remember’ then I would suggest that he would have risen in the suspect rankings as his story hadn’t ‘checked out’.

People don't get arrested for not being able to remember things. It isn't a crime. It may well be that the Police had suspicions about him, and that may very well be part of the reason he was discredited, but suspecting and proof are two different things. If he insisted he couldn't remember who he had seen that day, what would have been the next step? He couldn't be arrested for that. Bad memory isn't a crime.

If you think through all these ‘negative alibis’ (if that was the expression) they would either increase suspicion or invite further questions.

No I agree. I think they did make him a suspcious character and I think the Police agreed with that and this was part of their reasoning for dismissing the tale about Astrakhan man.

Again while the police were inexperienced in serial killing crimes they were not inexperienced in normal crime solving. In normal crime solving the perpetrator often comes forward to ‘help’.

The Police force was established in 1829. Historically, that was not a long time to gather experience of crimes and criminals or to notice patterns such as witnesses being suspects in disguise. My examples above show the Police are not infallible, and that's after another hundred years plus in crime solving; they are only human like the rest of us.

[Ben]

I agree entirely with your thoughts, Jen, and I’m very glad you brought up that very apt comparison with Jeffrey Dahmer.

Hi Lechmere,

“It is a little odd to characterise those who don’t think the ‘Hutchinson as the Ripper’ allegation adds up as nigglers and gainsayers though.”

Not all of them, by any means. I don’t wish to extort belief from unwilling people, but on the other hand, I’m very anxious that Hutchinson is not ruled out as a viable suspect for spurious reasons, such as this “checking out” confusion that surfaces time and time again. As Babybird has sensibly pointed out, the police were very unlikely to cast anyone who came forward as a witness in the role of a potential suspect. There was simply no precedent back then for offenders injecting themselves into their own police investigations as witnesses, and anyone who claims that Hutchinson must have been investigated, despite the total absence of evidence to that effect, is simply pronouncing weightily with nothing to back those pronouncements up.

More to the point, even if we embrace the fantastically implausible suggestion that Hutchinson was suspected at some point, there is even less reason to assume that the police were able to make any progress with those suspicions. It’s one thing to have a suspicion, but quite another to convert mere suspicions into tangible results, as anyone who has ever investigated anything will tell you.

Matthew Packer and Emmanuel Violenia were considered to have been false witnesses, but despite the latter having “admitted” to being at the crime scene at an hour critical to Chapman’s murder, neither was investigated as a suspect.

“As Hutchinson supposedly looked at his face quite close up in a lit main street, he conceivably could have detected the eyelash shade.”

It’s not just inconceivable. It’s impossible. Once again people are getting themselves awfully confused about this issue of a “lit main street”. I get the impression that some people are envisaging a modern day Strand or something, but I can assure you that the light emitted from a Victorian gas lamp (which in 1888 consisted of a naked flame) was negligent in the extreme. It could not have illuminated the man’s face to the extent that the shade of his eyelashes could have been discerned, and to be honest, I don’t trust the sincerity of anyone who argues that this eyelash sighting constituted a genuine sighting. I’m not suggesting that his statement was discredited on account of this detail alone, however, as I have made clear elsewhere.

It was a discredited description that was not used in subsequent attempts to identify suspects.

Do you really want to go through this all over again?

“What was that unique expression ‘the negative alibi’ or something? Meaning that saying one was alone all the time, wandering the streets, would be accepted by this nascent police force in the absence of a proper alibi.”

I think you’re referring to my observations, but no, this was not my argument at all. My argument was that the “walking about all night” was a useful lie that conveniently disposed of the question of an alibi in the event that the police did come to suspect him. Such an activity could not be corroborated, nor could it be disproved. Please let’s not have this nonsense again about his Victoria Home activities being noticed. This was absolutely not the case. Nobody is going to remember, on the 12th November, whether or not one particular fellow lodger in 400 was absent from his lodgings on the night of the Nichols murder. The notion is beyond preposterous.

Even worse is the suggestion that the police could easily have verified whether or not he was in Romford. There were all sorts of excuses that Hutchinson could have provided that explained his non-alibi for his alleged Romford journey, and in an age before CCTV, he could have pulled this off very easily indeed.

All the best,
Ben

[Sally]

I would guess the police took statements from the inhabitants of Dorset Street to try and find witnesses rather than to try and find the killer as such.

I'm not convinced, Lechmere. At the time there was a strong theory that the Whitechapel Fiend worked on the cattle boats - hence was more often around at the weekend. I think the police were looking for a killer who had 'gone to ground' in one of the numerous local lodging houses as much as for witnesses - this being why the names and details of all current lodgers on Dorset Street were taken down.

And I think that other recent reports involving a well dressed man of 'foreign' appearance coupled with Hutchinson's account did persuade the police, albeit temporarily, that the man they wanted was of that type - not your typical lodging-house dweller, if such can be said to have existed.

I know, the concept of a well dressed, shiny-hat-wearing, black-bag-carrying foreign gent prowling the streets of Whitechapel in search of his next victim is clearly preposterous - I don't think it would ever have caught on...

[Lechmere]

Babybird
I certainly don’t have a view that the Victorian police were infallible. My overall view is that they blundered repeatedly and tried to cover up their mistakes and continued to do so with their later self-serving memoirs claiming to know who did it all along.

I merely state that in my opinion Hutchinson would have been ‘checked out’ and checked out fairly rigorously. It would not be an infallible ‘check out’ but it would have exposed certain obvious lies, if they were lies – such as the Romford story, where he worked when he did get work, where he lived and so on.
He would have been ‘checked out’ as a witness, and if that checking out was unsatisfactory then as a potential suspect. Maybe he was ‘checked out’ as a witness and so discredited but in a way that did not raise the prospect of him being a suspect. That seems the most likely outcome, because there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that he graduated to become a suspect.
Hutchinson was a major witness - not a casual lead as Sutcliffe was nor an apparent by-stander where no apparent crime had been committed as in the case of Dahmer.

Do you suppose that no one at the time considered Hutchinson a potential suspect? Perhaps if it occurred to a newspaper in Washington DC it might just have occurred to the police in the East End? I will make that presumption anyway...

Evening Star (Washington, D.C.) Wednesday, 14 November 1888
“in the meantime, it would be just as well to keep a sharp eye upon Hutchinson himself. He may be a convenient person to have about at a critical stage of the investigation which is soon to follow. The man popularly known as "Jack the Ripper" is full of devices, and it would not be surprising if it were found necessary later to put Hutchinson in his turn on the defensive.”

Then
“Which may explain why Hutchinson, if he was the killer, stopped/changed his behaviour after coming under the radar of the Police.”
Surely Hutchinson didn’t come under the radar of the police – he put himself in their radar – he inserted himself – that is the theory isn’t it? I know he is supposed to have felt compelled to do so as he magically heard the details of Lewis’s testimony. But he could just have moved to another district within half an hour’s walk and been totally anonymous. If he did the crime then he chose to insert himself.

“People don't get arrested for not being able to remember things. It isn't a crime. It may well be that the Police had suspicions about him, and that may very well be part of the reason he was discredited, but suspecting and proof are two different things. If he insisted he couldn't remember who he had seen that day, what would have been the next step? He couldn't be arrested for that. Bad memory isn't a crime.”
Indeed he wouldn’t be arrested for having a bad memory, but I would suggest that if he had tried that gambit his name would be recorded in the later memoirs of the various police officers as a viable suspect, rather than having been forgotten about (apart from by Dew). Failing to pass the ‘check out’ would have led to his status changing from witness to suspect, just as the Washington Evening Star suggested.

[Lechmere]

That’s it - ‘alibi disposal’ – I had forgotten the name for that term.

However Ben, your refusal to believe that Hutchinson could have been ‘checked out’ or would have been ‘checked out’ is one of the key things that to me undermines the proposition that Hutchinson was the Ripper. The ‘checking out’ – which could easily have been done – would either have exonerated him or initiated suspicion (although as we have seen the newspapers were savvy enough to suspect him anyway). If he was not exonerated it would have led to more checks and if unanswered he would surely be a named suspect. As he never got to that stage, he clearly passed his ‘checking out’ which tends to exonerate him. Not absolutely, as of course as mistakes are made.
The refusal of the ‘Hutchinsonites’ to countenance the possibility that he was ‘checked out’ and that he evidently passed his ‘checking out’ – although possibly in a manner which undermined his witness statement – demonstrates the weakness of their case – to me.

[babybird67]

I merely state that in my opinion Hutchinson would have been ‘checked out’ and checked out fairly rigorously. It would not be an infallible ‘check out’ but it would have exposed certain obvious lies, if they were lies – such as the Romford story, where he worked when he did get work, where he lived and so on.

Quite possibly which is why I think he was discredited the more times he told his story and described Astrakhan man adding more and more detail that he cannot possibly have seen.

He would have been ‘checked out’ as a witness, and if that checking out was unsatisfactory then as a potential suspect.

I don't think the one follows the other.

Maybe he was ‘checked out’ as a witness and so discredited but in a way that did not raise the prospect of him being a suspect. That seems the most likely outcome, because there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that he graduated to become a suspect.

Yes exactly. This is what I think happened.

Hutchinson was a major witness - not a casual lead as Sutcliffe was nor an apparent by-stander where no apparent crime had been committed as in the case of Dahmer.

Dahmer was not a bystander! He managed to persuade the Police that a 14 year old boy half naked running the streets obviously drugged and in an utter state was his 19 year old lover. They all went back to Dahmer's apartment where the stench of Dahmer's last victim's rotting body permeated the environment, yet they found none of this suspicious enough to warrant a background check which could have save this child's life, and those lives of Dahmer's subsequent victims. It is so easy to assume a or b 'must' have happened or 'must' have been checked out because, with hindsight, we would expect it to have been.

Do you suppose that no one at the time considered Hutchinson a potential suspect? Perhaps if it occurred to a newspaper in Washington DC it might just have occurred to the police in the East End? I will make that presumption anyway...

I think they harboured suspicions about his motives, but were not in a position to do the sort of checks that could prove or disprove them and therefore dismissed him as a time waster.

Failing to pass the ‘check out’ would have led to his status changing from witness to suspect, just as the Washington Evening Star suggested.

Not necessarily. And again, even if he was, there is a big gap to bridge between harbouring suspicions and being able to garner any evidence to support them.

[Lechmere]

But my point is that if he was an unrequited suspect – where they couldn’t exonerate him but couldn’t prove it either, then he surely would be on the list with Ostrog– or at least mentioned by one policeman in future years. They were not embarrassed by a surfeit of non-exonerated suspects were they? Whereas all we get is Hutchinson remembered by Dew as being someone who may have got muddled up over his dates.

Again with Dahmer – he was not linked with a murder at that stage was he – that is why it didn’t occur to those officers. It is not a comparable example.

[babybird67]

But my point is that if he was an unrequited suspect – where they couldn’t exonerate him but couldn’t prove it either, then he surely would be on the list with Ostrog– or at least mentioned by one policeman in future years. They were not embarrassed by a surfeit of non-exonerated suspects were they? Whereas all we get is Hutchinson remembered by Dew as being someone who may have got muddled up over his dates.

We seem to be agreeing! I believe he was checked out as a witness but never graduated to being a suspect, partly because the Police did not have the experience we have now to compare the known behaviour of serial killers. They knew he was lying about seeing Astrakhan man. They couldn't know why...timewaster, publicity seeker etc is most likely what they put it down to.

Again with Dahmer – he was not linked with a murder at that stage was he – that is why it didn’t occur to those officers. It is not a comparable example.

The comparison doesn't need to be about murder. It's about situations where we would expect the Police to do thorough checks which aren't done. And this is when they had the capability to run a simple background check that would have taken how long?