The Mizen scam

[Sally]

Moonbeggar -

You are the Voice of Reason in a sea of fishes that say 'Baa'.

Hmm, I seem to have mixed my metaphores somewhat there...

That being so, I feel quite safe in knowing that you will continue to adopt a sensible attitude in the face of conjecture spun into fact.

I think I'm off to pastures new, where the quality of debate is more to my taste.

Adios - nice to have met you, briefly.

[Lechmere]

Ooops
Have I been too rough?

Cog
Joe Strummer was the lead singer in The Clash - the group that originally released 'Should I stay or Should I Go'.
He has no relevance to the Ripper case beyond that.
I used his name in jest.
By the way, Winthrop Street had several people awake and working down it - not a good place to flee.
Cutting straight down an alley into Whitechapel Road could lead into the arms of PC Neil... just as Paul is crying 'Murder'.

Caz
I forgot to add that Cross/Lechmere, once he confronted (and frightened Paul) and then did the touchy feely act on the corpse, walked down Bucks Row to Baker Street (Vallance Road). No doubt talking to Paul al the way and confirming his innocence to Paul. Then they turned right and bang, met Mizen at the junction with Old Montague Street and Hanbury Street.
My best guess is that if Mizen had not been there, Cross/Lechmere would have walked off alone down Old Montague Street, while Paul went down Hanbury Street.
My guess is that the Mizen meeting pushed Cross/Lechmere up Hanbury Street with Paul because it would cement the view in Mizen and the police's mind that they were 'together' (and the police did get confused about this togetherness). Cross/Lechmere would not want to be thought of as a lone nightwalker. Secondly it would give Cross/Lechmere the opportunity to find out more about Paul - where he worked, in case he needed that information. Thirdly it avoided him walking down Old Montague Street in the direction of the Tabram murder which could have triggered a series of unfortunate connections in the mind of the police.
He would have been an idiot to just leave Paul to his own devises.

The nonsense that has been put forward about Old Montague Street being a place to avoid as it was rough can be dismissed as Bucks Row was supposed to be rough and Hanbury Street wasn't exactly Knightsbridge.

Mindboggles
I notice you didn't answer my question?
Nevertheless I will answer yours.

It is virtually certain that Cross/Lechmere wasn't 'checked out' by the police as that would have uncovered his real name and that would have been recorded. Also Dew couldn't remember his name which suggests he was regarded as insignificant. I think he probably did come across as insignificant.
Yes it is a fact that the police didn't suspect him - he did not meet any of the criteria they had for criminals. They were not used to dealing with serial killers who are often totally unlike normal criminals.

I don't know that many walked that route. Many no doubt went down Bucks Row if that's what you mean. However all the witnesses testifed that they saw no one else about so it clearly was not very busy and not many people walked down there at that time in the night/morning.

We can say with a very strong degree of certainty that his real name was not discovered by the police. They recorded aliases.

You are persisting with this theory that the police allowed the name swap to avoid retribution?
This makes zero sense. It has zero credibility.
The police would have recorded his real name in their internal reports. They would have mentioned that fact in their reports that refer to him. They would not have publicised his address.
You are the Voice of Reason - surely you can see this?

[Fisherman]

Before you go, Sally, can you please tell me how a poster that presents as a "fact" that many men walked the Lechmere route to job, can be taken seriously - when we know that the PC:s that walked the routes adjoining the murder spot - and that would include Hanbury Street, Old Montague Street, Brady Street and all the other streets connected to Buckīs Row - unanimously stated that nobody had walked these streets in the relevant hours?

Since you are so impressed with Moonbeggers "reason", is this the quality of "reason" you prefer to see on the boards? We KNOW for an absolute fact that the streets of interest were completely deserted at the relevant hours, and still you commend a poster for claiming it to be a fact that many men walked them?

If you can come up with a respectable answer to that one, then I would be more than happy to see you leave the thread afterwards. If not, Iīm ready to take that loss anyway.

All the best,
Fisherman

[caz]

but, but...he would have had to have had a crystal ball to forsee that Paul would blab in the Press...

I think that people, even if they are 'planners' by nature, are obliged to make snap descisions when confronted with pressing situations.

If Lechmere were the murderer of Polly, then what more pressing situation could there be than Paul imminently arriving on the spot ? I can imagine that his mind would be taken up with the immediate descision whether to turn or run...and during that time Paul was growing closer (we're talking about seconds, here).

How could he possibly have had the time to ponder on all the possible ramifications of that descision, further than taking control of the situation that he was in at that instant?

Well Ruby, the killer had to be an idiot if he wasn't aware beforehand of the distinct possibility that other people would be out and about wherever and whenever he went on the attack. As I said, Paul was a stranger to Lechy and therefore an unknown quantity. The killer knew he would have to make do without that crystal ball.

But to have control, he would badly want to make sure that Paul didn't meet the Policeman alone and say the 'wrong' thing. Also being two men walking along the street, when coming from the direction where a body was found, would be rather less suspicious than being one lone man scurrying away.
Paul would appear to be an alibi. Even if Mizen had stopped to take details, there might be an assumption that the two men had discovered the body together, and generally avoid the issue that Paul had infact found a stranger alone with the body. It makes total sense.

Maybe to you, but this would still take a good deal of thinking on his feet. The man had supposedly just cut the throat of a woman with the nasty sharp knife he was carrying for the purpose. If, as you rightly went on to suggest, the killer himself would have been very much on the defensive and highly dangerous, a third option if this was Lechy would have been to do the same for Paul's throat if he was really that worried about him. Two dead bodies for Neil to find instead of one, and no murderer in sight. One can just imagine the confusion that would now be causing us all!

Certainly -so why are you using that argument ? It is a fact about the Ripper that he outwitted the Police. Ergo, if Lechmere were the Ripper, it is one more fact about him.

It was not my circular and pointless argument; it was Fishy's first, and now yours. This is what Fishy wrote:

And, for the umpteenth time, the by far best solution to not coming clear about his name with the police, staying free to go on killing, would be to use a name that he could substantiate a right to use - IF the police came a-knocking, something he would have hoped they would not do. And as it turns out, he got that exactly right.
Is that why you call him an idiot - since he got all the details absolutely correct and managed to stay undetected? Because he pulled off the most infamous string of killings in the history, all the while being well known to the police? Is that where the idiocy lies...?

Of course, I am now predisposing that he WAS the killer, and not an idiot.

This is completely circular and completely pointless, because the same would apply to whoever the killer was. We already know that he managed to avoid the consequences so I might as well argue that Blotchy was the killer because he got it 'exactly right' by avoiding the cops like the plague after Cox had seen him with MJK. He was certainly no idiot either if he was the killer. But so what?

We can have no possible idea whether the killer would have got it right if he had acted as some claim Lechy did, and for the reasons some claim Lechy did. It's all built on speculation. If the killer made sure he never came to police attention, that to my mind would provide a more realistic explanation for the case remaining unsolved.

Love,

Caz
X

[Observer]

Maybe to you, but this would still take a good deal of thinking on his feet. The man had supposedly just cut the throat of a woman with the nasty sharp knife he was carrying for the purpose. If, as you rightly went on to suggest, the killer himself would have been very much on the defensive and highly dangerous, a third option if this was Lechy would have been to do the same for Paul's throat if he was really that worried about him. Two dead bodies for Neil to find instead of one, and no murderer in sight. One can just imagine the confusion that would now be causing us all!

Hi Caz

If I might intrude. Serial killers seem to be particularly adept at thinking on their feet. Look at Sutcliffe, upon arrest he had the nerve to feign the need to relieve himself, dumping the knife and hammer he was carrying in the process. If it wasn't for the arresting officer remembering this fact, and actually retrieving the weapons, Sutcliffe would have walked free, and retrieved the weapons himself.

Regards

Observer

[Lechmere]

Caz
Much of your opposition to lechmere as the ripper is based on your view that the 'lechmere was the ripper' theory makes him an idiot.
I completely fail to follow your reasoning here. Most criminals think they will never get caught - even though other people are invariably about while they commit their crimes. Psychopaths often have a superiority complex And believe they are better, smarter, quicker thinking than everyone else. Hence they can show incredible nerve. They are often also quick thinkers. In any case who is to know that lechmere didn't have a half formed plan of what to say if caught in a semi compromising situation.
If he is caught up to his elbows in a victims stomach then I rather doubt any smart words would get him off.
If he was caught fleeing with the cry 'murder' echoing across the night streets and ran or swiftly walked into the arms of Neil then I don't any smarmy words would get him away unscathed.
If he feels someone is just too close for comfort but will not have actually seen too much then that is exactly the sort of scenario where someone might opt to bluff it out.
Some posters stubbornly maintain that no one would bluff it out and that everyone in that circumstance would flee. I am afraid that this merely demostrates a very poor grasp of human nature.

[Fisherman]

Caz:

"It was not my circular and pointless argument; it was Fishy's first, and now yours. This is what Fishy wrote:

Quote (my words):
""And, for the umpteenth time, the by far best solution to not coming clear about his name with the police, staying free to go on killing, would be to use a name that he could substantiate a right to use - IF the police came a-knocking, something he would have hoped they would not do. And as it turns out, he got that exactly right.
Is that why you call him an idiot - since he got all the details absolutely correct and managed to stay undetected? Because he pulled off the most infamous string of killings in the history, all the while being well known to the police? Is that where the idiocy lies...?
Of course, I am now predisposing that he WAS the killer, and not an idiot.""

Your words, Caz:

"This is completely circular and completely pointless, because the same would apply to whoever the killer was."

Of course, Caz, we know that the killer stayed undetected. But that does not mean that we - as long as we attach an identity to that killer - cannot conduct a discussion about the built-in usefulness of the methods he USED to STAY undetected (I am now working from the assumption that you cannot only spew venom, but in fact also follow a logical train of thought, since you usually have this gift).
And indeed, the discussion we were having was one where you SPECIFICALLY pointed to Lechmere being an idiot for offering another name than his own, and where I answered that the SPECIFIC circumstances involved pointed to anything but idiocy, not least since IF he was the killer, then his ruse worked very well. And not only that, if it had NOT worked in the respect that the police might have found out that he was a Lechmere, then the ONLY name/s he could have used and presented a useful excuse for using, would have been a name/names that he had some sort of legitimate claim to. If he had called himself Mr Idiot, he would have been up for grabs, but calling himself Cross ensured that he would be able to present at least some sort of reason for not having come clear about the Lechmere status to which he confessed otherwise.

"We can have no possible idea whether the killer would have got it right if he had acted as some claim Lechy did, and for the reasons some claim Lechy did."

If Lechmere was the killer, Iīd say we can be pretty damn sure he got it right. At least if we judge by the outcome, and I fail to see what other parameters there are...?

"It's all built on speculation."

Itīs built on fact-based speculation, Caz. I donīt speculate that he called himself Cross. We KNOW he did. I donīt speculate that he fooled Mizen. We KNOW he did. I donīt speculate that he was later in Buckīs Row than he should have been. We KNOW he was. Etcetera, etcetera.
And I would warn against calling me a speculator if YOU are going to speculate that he was just a stand-up carman and good citizen. You see, that TOO is speculation, and a speculation that is a bit harder to sustain, given that you TOO have to deal with the facts that he swopped names, lied to a PC, arrived too late, etcetera.

I may even go so far as to make Lynnīs day by saying that the Ripper is speculation - we have five dead women and SPECULATE that one killer slayed them all. Lynn SPECULATES that there were multiple killers. I think he is dead wrong, but that is my guess, not facts.

Things like these need to go into your thinking before you start accusing others of speculating. Very, very little is firmly established in the case, and itīs everybodyīs prerogative to have a go at the few facts we have and try and make sense of them. Keep that in mind, that is my advice.

"If the killer made sure he never came to police attention, that to my mind would provide a more realistic explanation for the case remaining unsolved."

Perhaps so - but who is to say that realism always takes the upper hand to begin with. If this applied, nobody would ever be killed, since that is the more probable outcome of an encounter between two people. And serial killers move the goal posts, Caz - they are nothing like us, they donīt respond to our needs and morals, they donīt conform to what WE would have done in the situations they were in. To speculate that he would have run, is to speculate that he would have done what you and me would have done - and we would not have killed in the first place, so who are we to put ourselves in a serial killersīplace?

I hope you read my post on Dahmer. If not, give it a quick glance (itīs on page 60 of this thread) and then tell me that serial killers will do all they can to stay away from the police. They live in a different universe, Caz, and you need to come to terms with that.

The best,
Fisherman

[Jon Guy]

Joe Strummer was the lead singer in The Clash - the group that originally released 'Should I stay or Should I Go'.
He has no relevance to the Ripper case beyond that.

I don`t know, Lechmere. Joe Strummer, an outspoken anarchist who used an alias... murderer... murderer ... !!

[lynn cates]

consistency

Hello Christer. Thanks.

"the Ripper is speculation - we have five dead women and SPECULATE that one killer slayed them all. Lynn SPECULATES that there were multiple killers. I think he is dead wrong, but that is my guess, not facts."

I agree. We all connect dots in a different way. The first requirement is consistency. After that, evidence is desirable. The first is very rare--many scenarios are internally inconsistent. The second, all but non-existent.

By the way, none of my remarks are aimed at your theory.

Cheers.
LC

[Jon Guy]

I hope you read my post on Dahmer. If not, give it a quick glance (itīs on page 60 of this thread) and then tell me that serial killers will do all they can to stay away from the police. They live in a different universe, Caz, and you need to come to terms with that.

..and you were only just telling us all off for using Sutcliffe as a comparison, Christer... Dahmer`s crimes and the Ripper`s are a universe apart.
Dahmer did not have a choice in the instance you provided.

[Fisherman]

Jon:

"..and you were only just telling us all off for using Sutcliffe as a comparison, Christer..."

Telling you off...? When did I do that??? I noticed Colin Roberts making the comparison on an adjacent thread and I commended him on that post very much. Sutcliffe surely is a very useful comparison, and remains so - as to the outcome, at least.

"Dahmer`s crimes and the Ripper`s are a universe apart."

Maybe so - but we donīt know that, do we? Of course, Dahmer preyed on boys and men, that is a difference. But since we do not have any solution to the Ripper, we canīt tell just how far apart they would have been, can we? That is not to say that I think they were much alike. I donīt. And I did not use Dahmer in that context, as you may appreciate - I used him to show how serialist not necessarily run and hide when they have that option. Dahmer took full control of the situation, impressed the police very much - and bluffed them totally. THAT was what I was after, that particular mechanism. I could have used other killers, but Dahmer is a very obvious example.

"Dahmer did not have a choice in the instance you provided."

Depends on what you mean. He was in place as the paramedics arrived, and therefore he would have known that there were policemen to follow, meaning that he could have left the scene before this happened. He could also have skipped going after Konarak to begin with, but chose to do so publically, instead of legging it. Any which way, once again the cool, calculating behavior, the unphazed, eloquent manner in which he met the police, the tidy appearance that impressed them so much was what I was pointing at. Dave had spoken of "nutters" in the post I was answering, and Dahmer is a first-class nutter, I think all would agree on that. But NOT the policemen he spoke to - to them he cleverly and cooly obscured what he was about, and thet left him with the impression of having met a nice, tidy, well-spoken citizen.

All the best,
Fisherman

[caz]

Hi Caz

If I might intrude. Serial killers seem to be particularly adept at thinking on their feet. Look at Sutcliffe, upon arrest he had the nerve to feign the need to relieve himself, dumping the knife and hammer he was carrying in the process. If it wasn't for the arresting officer remembering this fact, and actually retrieving the weapons, Sutcliffe would have walked free, and retrieved the weapons himself.

Regards

Observer

You are not intruding, Observer, although I'm beginning to feel slightly outnumbered here.

You make a fair point, but of course Sutcliffe didn't walk free in the end. It took just the one shrewd move by one police officer to outsmart him - albeit after he had managed to kill thirteen times.

It's a good job too, or people would now be conjuring up cases against all those who first stumbled across his victims (including an ex-star of Coronation Street) and all their boyfriends too.

If Lechy had already killed at least once, why would he not have used his trusty knife on the oh-so-troublesome Paul and been done with it, instead of tapping him on the shoulder and inflicting upon himself the 'double trouble' of bluff (with Paul), double bluff (with Mizen and Paul) and triple bluff (with the police and at the inquest), all of which has to be speculated to give the theory legs?

Love,

Caz
X

[Fisherman]

Caz:

"It's a good job too, or people would now be conjuring up cases against all those who first stumbled across his victims (including an ex-star of Coronation Street) and all their boyfriends too."

Eh ... no. I prefer the ones who lie about their names to the police, lie their way past the police and have a series of killings arriving at their doorsteps - or routes to work. To me that makes a difference.

Not to you though.

"If Lechy had already killed at least once, why would he not have used his trusty knife on the oh-so-troublesome Paul and been done with it"

Go to page one and start reading, Caz. You will find the answer. Or shall I save you all that trouble? Okay!

Lechmere killed weak women. That was easy. How could he know that he was able to subdue and kill a fellow carman? That was a larger bite, Caz! It could have gotten him in all sorts of trouble.

And that is not all! Have you not noticed how Swanson wrote, in October, that the carmen had found the body TOGETHER? And have you missed out on Mizen being of the meaning that Lechmere and Paul were working chums, walking to job TOGETHER? Paul was a very useful key for Lechmere, as things turned out. Why kill him and chance things on his own, when Paul represented half an alibi for him? It would have been idiotic - to quote a famous thinker - to do so. Quite a waste and with unnecessary risks involved. The police looked for one killer - not two, travelling in company.

All the best,
Fisherman

[Jon Guy]

Hi Christer

Telling you off...? When did I do that???

Did Jack Only Kill 3 thread.. post 139

Dahmer preyed on boys and men, that is a difference. But since we do not have any solution to the Ripper, we canīt tell just how far apart they would have been, can we? That is not to say that I think they were much alike. I donīt. And I did not use Dahmer in that context, as you may appreciate - I used him to show how serialist not necessarily run and hide when they have that option. Dahmer took full control of the situation, impressed the police very much - and bluffed them totally. THAT was what I was after, that particular mechanism. I could have used other killers, but Dahmer is a very obvious example.

He had to bluff the police or at least be prepared to do so at some point, as he took his victims home with him. It`s just my personal belief that just because they`re serial killers it does not mean we can use them as comparisons in any way with the Ripper, Sutcliife`s crimes not withstanding

[Observer]

Hi Caz

By the way, I don't subscribe to Cross being Jack the Ripper, although he's infinitely more likely to have committed the crimes than those nasty Russian's and irate Irishmen we have rampaging around Casebook.

Regards

Observer