The Mizen scam

[Lechmere]

FrankO
I think it is clear that the dress was not up over her chest exposing her stomach - which was cut open. That is how the other victims were left. Paul touched her breast and would surely have noticed. The dress was not fully 'down' either which is why Paul tried to yank it down but only succeeded partially.

[Rubyretro]

Hello Retro ,

Soooo we can actually agree , people in all walks of life lie ..

No Moonberk, we don't agree; The differences may appear subtle, but they are fundamental :
"not all policemen are corrupt, not all politicians are liars (well -that one is iffy !),and not all priests are paedophiles."

No Ruby , They are Not .. BUT some do and some are .. thats all i was putting across ..

You were trying to put across the idea that Mizen was the man who lied under oath (rather than Cross), because Mizen was a policeman.

You made a suggestion ('how many policemen in prison for corruption' or some such thing ), which I pointed out to you was merely a very fashionable view about policemen (no doubt a continuation of a 1960s anti-establishment
wave), and which is not objective. It stems from sensationalist reporting and
alternative comedians and trendy films -pop culture.

If we were going to be objective, and ignore 20th/21st century pop culture, and consider the question of whether a policeman or a complete unknown off the street were lying under oath -surely we would have to give more weight to the policeman, from respect for his office ?

Certainly we don't know for sure -but forced to make a choice, then the logical choice is -has to be- for Mizen.

I

have the greatest respect in the world for our police force and the mainly thankless job they undertake , but for every bunch of good apples there are always a few with worms in .. thats just the way it is . In Life , in General !

Yes, there are a few. There are few. You said it.

What makes you think that Mizen was one of the few with worms?

There is nothing against Mizen. There is his profession that tips the balance in his favour of speaking the truth.

You only have to take look at the Rodney King case in the US to see how SOME Officers with a Badge and a Baton will go to great lengths to cover up a misdemeanor. But once again not ALL Police officers are Corrupt ..

Well evidently..we've already been here...the sensationalist exception makes the tabloids, and all the thousands of honest Plods aren't news...but they are the rule.

I am all about keeping it real ruby , not kissing ass because it may offend someone .

Um...I want to keep it 'real', that's why I disagree with you. I would say what I believe is right, and put aside the idea of offending. If you had been posting longer, then you would know that Fisherman and Lechmere have been my traditional enemies in the past, over Hutchinson as 'suspect'-and insults have flown in both directions in the past.
I am still undecided as to who is my favourite suspect -Hutchinson or Lechmere/Cross ? Even that might change
If tomorrow I find myself on a thread opposing Fish and Lechmere, then it will be business as usual...

[FrankO]

I think it is clear that the dress was not up over her chest exposing her stomach - which was cut open. That is how the other victims were left. Paul touched her breast and would surely have noticed. The dress was not fully 'down' either which is why Paul tried to yank it down but only succeeded partially.

“With the assistance of Police-sergeant Kirby and Police-constable Thane, the body was removed to the Whitechapel-road mortuary, and it was not until the unfortunate woman's clothes were removed that the horrible nature of the attack which had been made upon her transpired. It was then discovered that in addition to the gash in her throat, which had nearly severed the head from the body, the lower part of the abdomen had been ripped up, and the bowels were protruding. The abdominal wall, the whole length of the body, had been cut open, and on either side were two incised wounds almost as severe as the centre one. This reached from the lower part of the abdomen to the breast bone.” – Woodford Times, 7 September 1888

“There were no injuries about the body till just about the lower part of the abdomen. Two or three inches from the left side was a wound running in a jagged manner. It was a very deep wound, and the tissues were cut through. There were several incisions running across the abdomen. On the right side there were also three or four similar cuts running downwards.” – Evening Standard, 3 September 1888

“The abdominal wounds are extraordinary for their length and the severity with which they have been inflicted. One cut extends from the base of the abdomen to the breastbone. Deceased's clothes were loose, and the wounds could have been inflicted while she was dressed.” – Evening News, 1 September 1888

“Dr. Llewellyn, of Whitechapel road, whose surgery is not above 300 yards from the spot where the woman lay, was aroused, and at the request of constable dressed and went at once to the scene. He inspected the body where it was found and pronounced the woman dead. He made a hasty examination, and then discovered that besides the gash across the throat the woman had terrible wounds in the abdomen, from which the intestines were protruding. The police ambulance from the Bethnal green station having arrived, the body was removed there. A further examination revealed the horrible nature of the crime, for the lower parts of the woman's body were found to be laid open, some sharp cutting instrument having been used, and three or four separate gashes inflicted. One part of the person had been sliced off, and from the vagina to the breast bone the knife had ripped the poor creature right up. There were other gashes, right and left, dividing the stomach and its coatings to the intestines.” – Morning Advertiser, 1 September 1888

What is also quite clear is that not all wounds were covered by the dress and not all severe wounds were to the stomach. So, why only partially pull it down? If her killer actually pulled the dress down somewhat for the very purpose of covering the wounds, he did a poor job and was lucky that it was too dark for Cross & Paul to see anything and that Paul finished the job for him.

All the best,
Frank

[Cogidubnus]

Hi Christer, Lechmere

Widely ASSUMED, yes. But you ask for evidence yourself, remember? Tom (Wescott) has suggested that the killer set out to kill two on the "double event" night, and therefore just cut the throat of number one, in order to stay neat enough to go searching for another. If this applies, then the cool calculator is back in the picture again, right?

All the evidence (such as it is) suggests that Jack had a killing technique (partial stragulation, laying the victim half-sideways on the ground, and cutting the throat with the front of the neck angled away from himself) which precluded his getting particularly messy...Now his mutilation technique may well be something different...but isn't mutilation what these killings are actually all about? Surely if he hasn't mutilated he hasn't achieved his end? So, with all due respect to Tom, I don't buy this at all...

Nor do I necessarily buy Jack as a cool calculator...both yourself and Lech have quoted FBI profilers in the past...well OK I've been reading the Rob House book, wherein is quoted Roy Hazelwood, a former FBI agent, who reckons Jack was a "disorganised, primitive and impulsive killer, whose murders were frenzied, involved post-mortem mutilation, and exhibited a pogression of brutality". Neither the image of Jack as a cool calculator, nor a deliberate and planned omission of mutilation to Long Liz, fit this profile.

Interestingly Hazelwood continues:
"Jack the Ripper wasn't good, he was lucky. I don't see how anyone who knows anything at all about violent crime can say that was an organised crime"

Anyhow, he would have had a lot better reason to leg it in Berner Street, as I am sure you can appreciate. For he would have stood no chance to get away with ANOTHER charade ā la Buckīs Row. How would that have looked? "Hi, itīs me again, Charles Cross. Guess what ...?"
After Buckīs Row, that option was closed to him, and so he HAD TO flee if disturbed.

Taken in conjunction with:

The killer at Duffields Yard is often thought to have hidden themesleves in the dark recesses until Diemschutz had withdrawn.

How very convenient for your argument...or inconvenient for Cross if he's a killer...however, I would contend that if he's bold and calculating enough to bluff the world (as you insist he is with Nicholls) there's a very simple expedient available to him in Berner Street - when he's disturbed by Diemschutz - simply stab him in the back, and continue until he's achieved his objective (which vide Mitre Square he can do very quickly indeed)...

But he doesn't do this, doesn't fulfil his primary objective, and flees...hence, not overly bold, not overly calculating...more a will of the wisp as I suggested...

And how do these explanations cover the fact that he signed himself Lechmere att sixty contacts with the authorities, but Cross at the sixty-first? Your McCarthy/Carty comparison does not really hold up, I think - the names are nicknamishly alike to begin with. And did your relative SIGN himself Carty or McCarthy? And did he use one name colloquially and the the other officially? My father-in-law was born Skog but added another o and made it Skoog, but that does not compare either, does it?

My relative formally signed himself Carty or McCarthy as the mood took him...the bugger even signed as Carty on his wedding certificate...The names are alike enough/different enough to be deceptive and I'm sure that was his particular objective...the family apparently dubbed him "Fly by Night"...which is a difference between him and Cross...and which, coupled with the disclosure of the latter's address, and his employers details, disposes me to think that whereas gg grandad may have been a bit of a natural crook, Cross may well not have been!

But he did not spend five minutes with the body. Paul is adamant that the discovery, the examination, the walk down to Hanbury Street and the meeting with Mizen would have taken no more than four minutes altogether. And the weighed-together timings of the involved people tells us clearly that the body was discovered (by Paul, at least!) at around 3.40-3.45. No ten minutes can be deducted from that, rationally.

So how accurate are your own estimates of time, without access to a clock or watch? I suggest you experiment. Sit in a room without any time cues for anything between 20 minutes and an hour and 20 minutes - get the missus to disturb you at a point of her choosing, and get her to record how many minutes you think have passed...I actually tried this three times a while back, (she thought I was cracked!) and seven minutes was the MINIMUM time I was out with a maximum of nearly a quarter of an hour...and I knew the test was coming (and tried to count) - the late Victorian witnesses didn't know what was coming, and their timings were accordingly, mostly vague.

I don't suppose any two church clocks were that accurately synchronised in any event (quote from Wikipedia re the adoption of a standard railway time: "Despite this early reluctance, railway time rapidly became adopted as the default time across the whole of Great Britain, although it took until 1880 for the government to legislate on the establishment of a single Standard Time and a single time zone for the country" ...do you suppose an overnight germanic attitude towards time, overtook a lifetime's devotion to sloppiness by church vergers?)

I donīt see suspicion in anybody going to work. Not at all. Itīs not until I can see that someone is out on the timings, uses the wrong names, lies to the police and has a string of killings happen along his work route that I get suspicious. And thatīs not "somehow", Dave. Like I have said before, any police force worth itīs salt would have jumped on somebody with a rap sheet such as Lechmereīs - had they known about it. Surely you must realize this? Knowing, as we do, that the police was uninformed about the name swop, the correlation between his work route and -times and the victims, the lie to Mizen, the correlation between his motherīs lodgings and the Berner Street slaying ON A SATURDAY NIGHT, Lechmereīs recent move to Doveton Street, his old haunts in James Street and Mary Ann Street, I fail to see that they would not have become convinced that they had a red-hot suspect on their hands if they had been handed this information. But they had no idea - and they were looking for a monster, not a family father.

So here we go again ... conflating unproved facts with educated guesswork to produce a seemingly very convincing argument...until, as I would contend, one starts pulling out the individual bricks and the wall falls down...With just as much actual proof as you've mustered, I'd suggest the police checked out Cross and he was clean...they may have been a little dilatory at first, but they weren't outright stupid (well, excepting perhaps Mizen!)

And again from Lech

The evidence that the killer had not gone before Cross hove into view is that the killer droppeed the skirt to cover the abdominal injuries. The display of the abdominal injuries seems to have been important in all other cases where there were abdominal injuries - Tabram, Chapman, Eddowes, Kelly. The dropping of the skirt made it less obvious that the victim was dead and would buy time for the killer. But this would only be necessary if there was an immediate prospect of discovery.

So if the woman wasn't exposed...if her abdomen wasn't openly on view, then how come Paul (not Cross you note) felt obliged to pull down her dresses to decently cover her? He for one, incidentally, didn't notice her mutilations while doing so, therefore, it was pretty damned dark.

Furthermore the beat policemen at either end of Bucks Row, plus the beat policeman who patrolled Bucks Row, plus all the other witnesses failed to see anyone. Not even a shabby genteel chap or someone who looked like a sailor.

The police weren't omnipotent - they couldn't simultaneously be everywhere...even later on in the series of killings with huge reinforcements and a much heightened sense of awareness, Jack flitted away every time...so at the time of the first canonical you can hardly argue that the police would automatically have caught someone fleeing the scene. It's simply not sustainable.

For Mizen to fail to take their names and addresses and to continue knocking up (and I strongly suspect that he did continuing knocking up) he would have to have been an utter incompetant.

Indeed...and I suspect the Coroner formed this view of him too...

I would suggest that would be plenty of time to aquaint himself with the local police beats - Neil's for example. He would cartainly have passed him several times, almost certainly unnoticed.. But then carmen were as common a sight on the streets of the East End as a cocksparrow.
To form counter arguments I would suggest that you have to think things through from Cross's persepective - as if he were the culprit. That would save many of these exchanges.

Just for a moment, turn the argument on it's head...assume Cross is innocent...why would he have the slightest interest in police beats? Why should he even care? I grew up in the times of foot patrols, and I don't remember ever being the slightest bit interested...Yes his stepfather was a copper but he'd died nearly 20 years before... I would suggest that you have to think things through from an innocent mans perspective, as well as that of a guilty man...now THAT would certainly save many of these exchanges.

All the best

Dave

[Cogidubnus]

Hi Ruby

Bog standard base logic. It is just laughable to suggest otherwise.

It's OK, I like a good laugh...

I must have inadvertently zapped one of Dave's suggestions somewhere that the body was cold -I'm sure that I read that it was still warm above the elbows, when 'discovered' by Neil. Wasn't there a suggestion by Paul that she might still be breathing ? It was a very fresh kill -whoever did it.
(even if you say that it wasn't Lechmere who killed her, it just has to be admitted that Lechmere disturbed the killer. Either way, Polly had only just expired when Paul arrived).

Who said anything about a cold body? But regarding the body still being warm, I would refer you to the Eddowes Inquest, and in particular the evidence of Frederick Gordon Brown...her body was still "slightly warm" when?

All the best

Dave

[moonbegger]

Oh Dear .. Ruby , is it pill time yet

"Yes, there are a few. There are few. You said it"

[Yes i did .. quite a few times , in quite a few way's infact , but still you missed it ]


"What makes you think that Mizen was one of the few with worms?"

[ i really dont know or care if he lied or not ] my point was that just because he was a policeman does not mean he was incapable of lying .. it does not make him Jesus Christ ..

"You were trying to put across the idea that Mizen was the man who lied under oath (rather than Cross), because Mizen was a policeman"

[Oh really ! in what dream of yours was that ? ]

You made a suggestion ('how many policemen in prison for corruption' or some such thing ), which I pointed out to you was merely a very fashionable view about policemen (no doubt a continuation of a 1960s anti-establishment
wave), and which is not objective. It stems from sensationalist reporting and
alternative comedians and trendy films -pop culture.

[ What has films fashion or pop culture to do with anything here , are you suggesting that Rodney King beat him self up ( just like the officers did ) or it was a made up TV show ? is this also a figment of my broad imagination

[Three former Scotland Yard police officers and a serving detective have been arrested as part of an investigation into allegations that members of the force's anti-corruption unit were paid thousands of pounds in bribes.

The Metropolitan police said the 45-year-old male detective was arrested on suspicion of receiving payments for information at a residential address outside London.

Two of the former police officers, men aged 53 and 58, were arrested during raids at a business address in central London. The pair were arrested on suspicion of bribery of a police officer and remain in custody.

The third former police officer attended a south London police station by appointment and was also arrested on suspicion of bribery of a police officer. He also remains in custody]

S##t Happens .

And Retrog You really don't know the first thing about being objective .

[moonbegger]

And this was my offending post that set Retrog off frothing at the mouth ..

Hello Retro ,

Soooo we can actually agree , people in all walks of life lie ..

"not all policemen are corrupt, not all politicians are liars (well -that one is iffy !),and not all priests are paedophiles."

No Ruby , They are Not .. BUT some do and some are .. thats all i was putting across ..

Yes CrossMere Could have lied , Yes Mizen could have lied , yes those German folk who live in Buckingham palace ( who coincidentally had no qualms switching there Name about ) could lie Too

I have the greatest respect in the world for our police force and the mainly thankless job they undertake , but for every bunch of good apples there are always a few with worms in .. thats just the way it is . In Life , in General !

You only have to take look at the Rodney King case in the US to see how SOME Officers with a Badge and a Baton will go to great lengths to cover up a misdemeanor. But once again not ALL Police officers are Corrupt ..

I am all about keeping it real ruby , not kissing ass because it may offend someone .

moonwhatever

[Rubyretro]

I was half asleep, not frothing, Moonbegger (work is hard going at the mo'),
but not so asleep that I couldn't see that you were insinuating that Mizen was the liar.

It is you who is not objective. Giving some examples of corrupt policemen will not work -you know their names because they made the papers; They made the papers because they were exceptional. The papers do not print the names of the hundreds and thousands of honest policemen all over the world because they are not exceptional -they are the rule. Putting aside cynicism, policemen, by their jobs, chose to uphold law and order.

If you have two people under oath (Mizen and Lechmere) contradicting each other, it is fair to give more weight to the policeman -objectively. That is because we know that policemen are there to uphold the law, and only a very few of them are corrupt, and we have no reason to conject that Mizen would be one of these rare creatures. In this case, we also already know that Lechmere was a liar, since he had lied about his name.

Therefore -objectively- when deciding whether Mizen or Lechmere gave the correct version of events to the inquest, we should conclude
that it was Mizen who was correct.

Now go back to your burrow, and stop bending my mind over my cuppa tea.

[moonbegger]

K Retro ..

If you say so , then it must be so .

[Rubyretro]

K Retro ..

If you say so , then it must be so .

(good morning !) Ah, a sensible reply at last ! (have you been talking to my sons ?).

[moonbegger]

(good morning !) Ah, a sensible reply at last ! (have you been talking to my sons ?).

Not if your sons are Lechmere and fisherman

good morning to you Retro .

Moonbegger .

[Rubyretro]

[QUOTE]

Not if your sons are Lechmere and fisherman

They weren't born, Moonbegger, they were spawned -so watch out....!

[Fisherman]

Frank:

""A woman had been found there" seems to have been a newspaper transcription of "a woman is lying there", rather than that those, according to Mizen, were the actual words used by Cross, Fish. I've seen the former in 3 newspapers out of 11, while the latter 6 times out of 11."

Hi Frank! Iīm afraid that, either way, Lechmere seems to have taken great care not to disclose that HE had found her. "A woman is lying there" in combination with "Another policeman wants you there" produces the inevitable picture of a PC having found her. And that remains the bottom line - the lie about the PC and the omittment to say that Lechmere himself was the discoverer gives him away. Together, of course, with the ensuing lie at the inquest, where he flatly denied it. He was even so brazen as to mock Mizen by saying that he had not said anything about a PC because there was no PC there. It would have sufficed to just answer "No, Sir" to the coronerīs question, but I believe he was too satisfied with his own ruse to refrain from expanding on it.
Not that I can prove THAT, though!

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Ruby:

"If tomorrow I find myself on a thread opposing Fish and Lechmere, then it will be business as usual..."

... meaning that I need to take you up on that breakfast offer while the opportunity is still there ...!

The best,
Fisherman

[moonbegger]

Fisherman ,

I still don't get why Mizen would not take umbrage at the fact that CrossMere basically accused him of telling an untruth .

moonbegger .