Criteria for plausibility

[Fisherman]

Bridewell:

"The evidence ties Cross/Lechmere to the place where Polly Nichols was found, because he found her. My recollection is that the links to the other sites amount to speculation based on the route he is likely to have taken to work etc. "

My recollection, Bridewell, is that you are an ex-copper yourself? Then you would know what parameters the police look for in cases like these, right? Evidential links? Fine, Iīm all for them. But 124 years down the line, they may be hard to find, which is why the completely amazing fact that the murdersites were situated along the two main thoroughfares to Broad Street, counting from Buckīs Row is something that looks very useful. And the same goes for the Berner Street site, being situated very close to a place he arguably had verygood reason to visit on the weekends. And when does that murder occur? Oh yes - on a weekend.

You know just as well as I do that when a suspect answers to this pattern, AND can be firmly tied to one of the murder sites at the pertinent time, then we have a case here that it would be malpractice not to investigate. Add to it that the guy in question used an alias, Bridewell, and THEN tell me that he is a weak candidate, looking at it from a police-investigation point of view!

It is when somebody exhibits these things that we may hear the DSI in our favourite tv show say that "we have made a breakthrough". Then there are the unrealistic episodes where all these parameters only are coincidental and the real crook stays undetected in the longest. But those scripts belong mainly to Hollywood. I like the realistic stuff better, where clear indicators of lies and a pattern of movements, tallying with the deeds, give away the perpetrator.

And that is what we seemingly have here.

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Garry:

"That's odd, Fisherman. I distinctly recollect your recent assertion that you were just about to place a noose around Cross's neck."

Find it, copy it, paste it and we will talk about it, Garry. Promise!

The best,
Fisherman

[Bridewell]

Bridewell:

You know just as well as I do that when a suspect answers to this pattern, AND can be firmly tied to one of the murder sites at the pertinent time, then we have a case here that it would be malpractice not to investigate. Add to it that the guy in question used an alias, Bridewell, and THEN tell me that he is a weak candidate, looking at it from a police-investigation point of view!

The best,
Fisherman

Hi Fish,

I haven't told you that Cross is a weak candidate. I have said that there is an evidential link to one murder site only - as opposed to the six links claimed by yourself.

The use of more than one name is inconsequential. Not everyone who uses an alias is a criminal, still less a serial killer.

Regards, Bridewell

[Fisherman]

Bridewell:

"I haven't told you that Cross is a weak candidate."

Good. I wouldnīt have listened anyway, to be honest!

" I have said that there is an evidential link to one murder site only - as opposed to the six links claimed by yourself."

"Claimed"? I "claim" that there were two thoroughfares between Buckīs Row and Broad Street, and they would be Hanbury Street and Old Montague Street. The murders occured on, directly alongside or close to those streets. The Stride killing occured adjacent to his motherīs house. Nobody can state that he was there on the exact times the women died - but anybody can see that Hanbury Street and Old Montague Street were the two useful bids to choose from, going to Broad Street. That much I DO claim, and I also claim that this presents a potentially very useful lead to who the Ripper was.

"The use of more than one name is inconsequential."

The use of more than one name is suspicious, not least when what we have on record never mentions the name Cross, but instead Lechmere, over and over again. And using an alias was NOT the common manīs or womanīs pastime, by the looks of things. The ones we have on record using aliases are mainly people of a more questionable status, right?

All the best,
Fisherman

[Tom_Wescott]

And in Crossīcase, he is - as far as I can tell - way ahead of for example Le Grand.

LOL...which begs the question, 'How far can Fisherman tell?'

Youīre the doc when it comes to our Danish marauder, but I feel pretty sure that you cannot tie him to seven murder spots in the way Cross/Lechmere can be tied!

I can even tie Le Grand to spots where no murders are known to have been committed!

You can of course point to the fact that he changed names, but in all honesty, I think that by 1888, Le Grand would have forgotten what he was called in the first place

I've never understood the perception that someone changing their name or taking on an alias is an indicator of homicidal guilt. In Le Grand's case, it certainly benefitted his criminal career, but I've seen many, many people from that era go by different names who were not murderers.

You have more on him, I realize that, but is it of any real weight?

Well, his associates thought he was the Ripper, the policeman who knew him for years thought he was the Ripper, and he had that human kidney on him, did he not?

Finally, I do hope that you are not of the opinion that I have dubbed Lechmere the Ripper at this stage. I have not. I have just gone over the evidence and found something that may well point to guilt on his behalf, something that has not been picked up on before as far as I know.

Iīm anxious to hear what you have to say about it. Maybe you will elevate Lechmere to suspect status even, who knows?

Anything is possible. I hadn't intended to talk about specific suspects on this thread, and my opinions as to what makes a suspect a 'suspect' haven't really changed. As for Cross, I really have nothing to say until I've read your article. And I'm not going to talk any more about Le Grand.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Simon Wood]

Hi All,

My money is still on the Easter Bunny.

Regards,

Simon

[Tel]

Not at all, the true identity of the Ripper is - Charles Dickens. The fact that he cunningly contrived to die 18 years beforehand only serves to show how deviously evil he really was!

[Bridewell]

For a suspect to be plausible it has to be demonstrated that he was in the right geographical area at the right time. Sadly it makes little difference to some. There are still those who pluck names (usually famous) from the pages of history and think that, if their views are shouted loud enough they will somehow mutate into evidence.

On that basis, by way of example, I can see how Cross (though I don't personally believe that he was anything other than what he claimed to be) can be viewed as plausible. Ditto Hutchinson. Van Gogh, Lautrec etc, by contrast, are simply laughable.

Regards, Bridewell

[Cogidubnus]

Not so fast!

Whoa there Colin...I spotted that, and so, therefore will all the rest! Linking Hutch with Toulouse and Vincent was slightly more than disingenuous!

Dave

[Garry Wroe]

Find it, copy it, paste it and we will talk about it, Garry. Promise!

Well, Fish, here's one example:-

So in all probability, we are not holding on to the same end of the stick after all! But we are apparently placing the noose around the same neck ...

Then there's this:-

And yes, Lechmere did kill Nichols, in all probability, the way I see things too.

Both quotations are contained within post 254 of your Lechmere thread, and there are plenty more besides. It would seem, therefore, that contrary to your recent assertion, you have 'dubbed Lechmere the Ripper'.

[Ben]

Cross' home was located outside the area circumscribed by the crime scenes.

Cross' workplace was located outside the area circumscribed by the crime scenes.

The vast majority of serials are perpetrated by offenders who live and/or work inside the area circumscribed by the crime scenes. Now, people can either embrace or reject geo-profiling, but if they're going to embrace it, they have to accept that it argues very strongly against Cross as a ripper candidate. To make matters even worse, I can't think of a single commuter-type offender (already "very rare" according to expert opinion) who both selected and disposed of his victims in the same small area. The exceptionally rare commuters who select victims from a close-knit area (Ireland, Picton) dispatch and dispose of them elsewhere. This is merely to provide an outline of just how poorly Cross fares in terms of historical and geographical precedent with regard to serial crime. I wouldn't normally get too hung up on such a point, but the Cross promoters are seemingly anxious to "tie" him to as many crime scenes as possible.

[Garry Wroe]

Didn't John Richardson stop off at a crime scene on his way to work?

Case solved.

[curious]

Didn't John Richardson stop off at a crime scene on his way to work?

Case solved.

Now THERE is someone who should be researched thoroughly. Or has he already?

[Jonathan H]

Jack as Jekyll?

I think that there are opposing views here of what plausible criteria means:

If you want to try and work out the best suspect yourself, from this distance, like an amateur detective (for that matter, Cornwall and Evans and Runbelow are arguably not amateur as detectives) and negate all of the contemporaneous police sources, then that's your right.

It's just that you would have to find evidence, or primary sources, that the police of the day had somehow missed.

Again, not impossile: for example, if the hoax 'Maybrick' diary had been real it would have been a spectacular find (but the provenance is self-servingly dubious, the handwritng does not match, and there are textual bits and piuces which strongly suggest it has been influenced by modern works).

Historical methodology, on the other hand, when you look at this subject afresh showsl, arguably, that modern, secondary sources have got the wrong end of the stick.

Sir Melville Macnaghten and Montague Druitt are not a sideshow let alone a footnote; they are the show.

They are not, of course, the whole show but the pair get top billing, followed by Littelchild-Tumblety, followed by Anderson/Swanson-Aaron Kosminski' (the drowned doctor solution, which led Edwardians to believe that it was not a mystery anymore, combined elements of all three of these real people).

Why that order? Because that is how Macnaghten [anonymously] put it to the public, and he was there (see: Sims, 1907).

To C-4

Macnaghten conceded that he knew that Druitt did not kill himself immediately after his 'awful glut'.

But there was some kind of internal collapse which, if the 1899 North Country Vicar is talking about Druitt, then his confession to a priest precipitated his suicide because he was about to be sectioned, or even arrested and hung.

No, I don't think the body fished from the Thames was anybody but Druitt.

Henry Winslade must have been an honest man, I guess?

I do not understand your comment about Jekyll and Hyde referring to drunks rather than the mad?

We seem to be at cross-purposes.

In 1896, Major Arthus Griffiths, under his pseudonym Alfred Alymer, wrote a piece for Cassells magazine in which he asserted that the police were substantively nowhere on the Ripper case. Yes, they had several theories, one of which was that the murderer was a 'real life' Dr Henry Jekyll and Mr Edward Hyde figure; he had a dual personality: one civilized and the other savage. But there was no proof for such a theory.

Not two years later, Griffiths, in his 'Mysteries of Police and Crime', reversed himself in the book's introduction. He now claimed that there was a trio of promising suspects, one of whom was very like a Jekyll and Hyde figure (though the author does not make this comparsion explicity) even to the extraordinary coincidence that the real, likely 'Jack' was also an English, medical man.

From 1899 George Sims took this remarkable parallel with Robert Louis Stevenson's novella (1886) even further.

Dr Jekyll was a middle-aged, English, respectable, wealthy recluse who had no patients, and so apparently was the real Jack.

Jekyll has no family, only concerned friends who suspect the worst, and so did the real Jack.

Jekyll as Hyde was a notorious murderer who vanished into his lab and took his own life, as his other repellent personality had assumed total control and before he could be arrested, and so with the real Jack, who took his own life in a river, a 'shrieking, raving fiend', as the police and pals were closing to have him taken into custody.

Edwardian readers felt very comfortable with this Ripper solution (Sims had clubby, top police contacts) partly because it was so familiar; eg. similar to a classic blockbuster of the page and stage.

It is my contention that Macnaghten deliberately and deflectively clothed the young barrister Druitt in fiction, in fact borrowed a fictional from a handy classic.

It was not a completely contrived borrowing; for Druitt did have a 'Protean' madness if he could be both a 'barrrister of bright talent' and Jack the Ripper.

[Fisherman]

Tom W:

"which begs the question, 'How far can Fisherman tell?'"

Fishermen, Tom, spend a lot of time on the sea. And that means that they can see all the way to the horizon ...

"I can even tie Le Grand to spots where no murders are known to have been committed!"

Man - you HAVE been busy!

"I've never understood the perception that someone changing their name or taking on an alias is an indicator of homicidal guilt."

Whoa there! Letīs not move too fast here. I canīt recall having said such a thing. WHat I HAVE said, and what I will stand by is A/ that people in the East End who used aliases were more likely to be involved in the shadier sides of life than those who did not do so, and B/ that the fact that Lechmere, who was named Lechmere, actually also called himself Lechmere whenever the authorities put the question to him, but for one occasion: in combination with the Nichols murder.
If his postbox back home had "Lechmere" written on it, if his wife had changed her name to Lechmere as she married him, if his kids all called themselves Lechmere, if the census takers over and over again watched our carman scribble Lechmere on the forms they handed him - then why did he not simply say that this was his name when the cops asked him for it in relation to the Nichols murder?

"his associates thought he was the Ripper, the policeman who knew him for years thought he was the Ripper, and he had that human kidney on him, did he not?"

Druitts aquaintances thought HE was the Ripper. Scores of people contacted the police, naming scores of other people the Ripper. If we cmpare this detail to the name-swop Lechmere furnished the police with, I think the latter is a lot more compelling as relating to guilt, to be honest.
Scores of policemen, by the way, came up with a significant heap of Ripper candidates.
Both of these things are interesting and should be mentioned, but they do not amount to much when it comes to telling evidence. The question WHY the associates and that policeman harboured their suspicions needs a good answer to begin with, before we can assess how much we may invest in it.

As for the kidney, would that be Michael K...?

"I'm not going to talk any more about Le Grand. "

No?

The best,
Fisherman