Lechmere validity

[Harry D]

Fisherman, the term "half-truth" is defined as
1 : a statement that is only partially true
2 : a statement that mingles truth and falsehood with deliberate intent to deceive

The case against Lechmere is built on them. If someone told you that a man was found with the victim, lied to the police about his name, and his work routes took him past the murder sites, it would be sound pretty compelling. However, when you unpack these statements you realise it's not the slam dunk it's made out to be.

"Lechmere was found with the victim" - No, he was found in the middle of the street. Robert Paul (the second witness on the scene, or the first, in your case) didn't know there was a victim until Lechmere went out of his way to approach him.

"Lechmere lied to the police about his name" - No, he gave his stepfather's surname which he may have used in professional circles. A lie implies that Lechmere meant to deceive, which is undermined by the fact he gave his first name, home address, place of business and voluntarily attended the inquest.

"Lechmere's work routes took him past the murder sites" - Wrong, they took him past Buck's Row & Hanbury Street. The second witness followed the same route. Annie Chapman's TOD could exclude Lechmere as the killer, unless he was late for work.

[JeffHamm]

Ah. Now the idea that he mistook Nichols for a tarpaulin is indicative of guilt. I must say, this things is getting more entertaining. Obviously, you're required to add and make-up new bits. It's a bad look for theories, mind you. But, it is entertaining.

Hi Patrick S,

To be fair, I suspect Fisherman is presenting it more tongue-in-cheek than as a serious addition, hence the entertainment value. But I admit, it is hard to tell sometimes.

- Jeff

[JeffHamm]

Hi All,

Just trying to update a map of the locations involved, as it helps, I think, when discussing the "to'ing and from'ing" of those involved to have an idea where they were "to'ing and from'ing". The red dot indicates the crime scene location, the blue dot around where PC Mizen was located when Cross/Lechmere and Paul spoke with him, the dark Green dot is roughly Cross/Lechmere's home location, and the light green dot is roughly Paul's home location. I hope I've got those all correct now.

What I've been trying to locate is Dr. Llewellyn's home location. I think I've found it based upon the address, but I'm not sure if the numbering has changed since 1888 (in which case I'm wrong - hardly a novel event). I've marked it as the question mark to the lower left. Can anyone confirm if that is the correct location? The only other location of interest would be where the ambulance was located that PC Mizen was sent to fetch. I can't seem to recall anything indicating where he went to get it (the mortuary perhaps? Or would it have been the hospital? a police station?).

Anyway, would greatly appreciate any input and/or corrections to what I've indicated.

- Jeff

[drstrange169]

I've been away for a week and I see this thread has ballooned out by nearly a couple of hundred more posts in the meantime. Rather than waste typing answers to specific points, unless someone feels answers are required, I'll just state some facts.

Fact one: Mizen intentionally or unintentionally misled the jury.

He made no mention of the important fact that he saw two men, not one man at the corner of Hanbury and Baker's. At the end of his evidence Coroner Baxter had to correct him.

Fact two: Mizen was the only witness to have two parts of his testimony contradicted by two different people.

Fact three: Mizen entered the witness box after, at least, three major newspapers had printed a story accusing him of dereliction of duty.

Fact four: Mizen was between a rock and a hard place once he met the two men.

Police code tells us, to stop "knocking up," could be a punishable offense. On the other hand, failing to aid another officer was also a possibly punishable offense.

It may be coincidence or not, as the case my be, but it just so happens that Mizen claiming Cross told him "that he was wanted by a policeman in Buck's Row" was, to borrow Christer's phrase possibly, "the perfect lie" to get him out of trouble vis-a-vis the dereliction of duty claim. It could also help his story by pretending there was only one man there that night, turning it into a I said/he said argument.

The above facts are verifiable they are not speculation. They exist as data on the case.

The facts, as opposed to speculation tells us that there is, rightly or wrongly, a very large question mark over Mizen's testimony.

[drstrange169]

Speaking of "the perfect lie to get passed Mizen" that Christer constantly claims, where is the data to support it?

What evidence is there that a guilty Cross needed to lie to get passed Mizen?

Whether you believe his story or not, Robert Paul's Lloyd's interview is telling in this regard. In that version, Mizen never stops Paul proceeding to work or searches him. So, from that, we know of a perception out there in the East End that a policeman will not stop or search you when you give them information, in which case Cross had no reason to lie.

I checked the Old Bailey records for 1887/ 1888 and I couldn't find a single instance of a policeman detaining or searching someone who was reporting an incident to them.

With Mizen we can see, if he was lying, how "the perfect lie" about being "wanted by a policeman" would directly help him, but with a guilty Cross, we have no evidence that he needed to invent a story to get past Mizen. Simply saying what he claimed in court was suffice, it seems, to get him on his way.

[Fisherman]

Missing the point that there had been no murder reported when they reached Mizen and that Emma smith said a gang had attacked her.

Must do Better Christer

Steve

I am doing ever so well. The point I made was a general one - murderers normally do not work on pairs or gangs, they are generally lone wolfs. This is so today and it was the exact same back then. So anybody who killed anybody else would do wisely to hook up with somebody else afterwards.

Can you see how this works, Steve? People trekking in each others company, looking like two carmen en route to work, would have looked like somebody who were quite unlikely to have been involved in any crime. Therefore Mizen will have had very little reason to suspect any would play on behalf of the carman - he seemed to be somebody who was walking to work with a fellow carman. If he had been alone, Lechmere would not have had the implicit kosher stamp on himself that Paul provided.
And this works regardless of what Mizen know or suspected. The innocent apparition of two carmen in company would do Lechmere no harm whatsoever. It also works regardless if Lechmere planned it to work or not.

I would have thought that this was basic, but perhaps it isn't to you?

[Fisherman]

Yes it is shameful, for we were not talking about which route was fastest, and you attempt to divert the discussion.

We were not discussing which route was more likely, nor have I accused you of saying a particular route is, that is the issue under debate.

So let me see it I get this right: You are allowed to point out that there were alternative routes, but I am not allowed to point out that would be illogical to use them? When you say that there were alternative routes, that is commendable and an important conbtribution to our understanding of the case, but when I say that he would not have been likely to use them, it is shameful.
Its good to get to know these things, so that I get a better understanding of how an honest debate should be conducted. Thank you!


Again, missing or maybe not actually understanding what we were talking about.

It was not which route he took? Or even why? The question was if he wanted to avoid Bucks Row, for a reason, which ROUTE could he have taken?

This is getting beyond a joke, and is actually very sad.

Once you present "alternative routes", the need to point out that they would not be any alternative to using Bucks Row on his everyday treks becomes urgent. It has nothing at all to do with any inability on my behalf to understand anything, and everything to do with a deep knowledge about how matters are argued out here.
Saying that you only meant to point out that he could have used alternative routes to avoid the police at a later stage is something that is totally unnecessary, we all know that this will have been so.


Steve

See the above in bold.

[Fisherman]

Why not actually read it? Maybe you would see that my reply is fairly short, it's your comments which are verbose and take up the space.
The only person, clearly failing to understand the debate is you.


Steve

Why not read it? On account of the quality of your two preceding posts. I thought I said that?

[Fisherman]

In a world where one has decided come what may, that Mizen is telling the truth and Lechmere and Paul are not that may hold true; unfortunately for the Lechmere theory in the real world that is not the case.


Steve

And it still applies that the matters under discussion are not consistent with innocence, they are only not incompatible with it. Unless you claim that disagreeing with the police IS consistent with innocence? I would not rule out that you could do that.

[Fisherman]

No it is not. Mizen's testimony is the one that appears to be a factually incorrect recall of what he was told, so disagreeing with PC Mizen is more consistent with innocence.

It is the disagreement as such that should not be there for the matter to be consistent with innocence, Jeff. Whether we want to interpret things in one way or another is beside that point: disagreements between a witness(suspect and a PC is not, and cannot, be consistent with innocence. What you are saying is "Hey, I have thought about this and I have come to the conclusion that Mizen was probably the liar, and if he WAS, then Lechmere was telling the truth, and if he DID, then what he said must have been consistent with innocence".
Good luck with that approach to the evidence.

There are far better and simpler ways for him to avoided the police in the first place.

But how is that even remotely interesting? I am saying that he may have bluffed it out, and the fact that you think that he could have done thin gs differently and in your eyes "better and simpler" does not affect that in any way at all.

The focus on this is nothing more than to create confusion by ignoring the totality of the evidence and to find something that can be blown out of proportion. Each moment in time is not independent of the previous or the following, and as soon as one looks at the entire sequence of events, it is clear that all of the convoluted and improbable events and motives in the Lechmere/Cross as JtR theory are shown to be entirely disconfirmed by the rest of the evidence.

No, it is not. What is shown is that you cannot assess the evidence fairly. Which is what lead you to state whoppers like how it is consistent with innocence to disagree with a PC the way Lechmere did. Once you have confessed to that level of insight, I can only pray that you deduct that Lechmere must have been innocent on the whole too. Taking into account how you assess matters, it would be a lot more worrying if you thought he was guilty.


-Jeff

See the above in bold.

[Fisherman]

Again, where's the story? Describe how these side trips could have happened without resorting to discarding large bullks of evidence we have. We know estimates of time are error prone, no worries about questioning them, but I have always said that the evidence indicates these side trips are so improbable that we can safely conclude they did not happen. "So improbable" does not mean absolute proof, it does mean I''m drawing a conclusion, but it also means I'm accepting that conclusion could be wrong but only with a very small probability. You convert that to absolute proof, which is an entirely different thing.

So yes, you are putting words in my mouth.

And once again, you are fine with saying the carmen may have veered off. Great, so you evaluate those probabilities very differently than I do. So, put your money where your mouth is and tell me a story that includes a side trip that you think fits the evidence. I am not saying you believe they took this side trip, as you have clearly indicated before you don't, but you are claiming that, in your view, the evidence does not constrain us to the degree that I think it does. So fine, I'm willing, still, to reconsider how I evaluate those probabilities if you can present a story that includes a side trip that is not disconfirmed by the evidence we have - you do not need evidence that it happened, only show how it could have and not be exceedingly improbable based upon what we already know.

See, I think you can't do that because, .... the evidence we have is strong enough to discount those side trips. It constrains us so much there isn't room for them. But You think there is room within the evidence, so prove it.

- Jeff

Trying to make a meal out of this will not hide the fact that you were wrong when you said that there could hav e been no time for any of the carmen to duck into a side street, just as you were wrong when you claimed that I would have siad that they would have.

There is no need to lay out the text in spades. It is all very simple.

We don´t have the timings, and so we must accept that there may have been time to do it.

I never said that they WOULD have done it, I in fact said that I don't think they did, but that I am careful not to exclude what I can not exclude.

You are not that careful. Not at all.

[Fisherman]

Fisherman, the term "half-truth" is defined as
1 : a statement that is only partially true
2 : a statement that mingles truth and falsehood with deliberate intent to deceive

The case against Lechmere is built on them. If someone told you that a man was found with the victim, lied to the police about his name, and his work routes took him past the murder sites, it would be sound pretty compelling. However, when you unpack these statements you realise it's not the slam dunk it's made out to be.

"Lechmere was found with the victim" - No, he was found in the middle of the street. Robert Paul (the second witness on the scene, or the first, in your case) didn't know there was a victim until Lechmere went out of his way to approach him.

"Lechmere lied to the police about his name" - No, he gave his stepfather's surname which he may have used in professional circles. A lie implies that Lechmere meant to deceive, which is undermined by the fact he gave his first name, home address, place of business and voluntarily attended the inquest.

"Lechmere's work routes took him past the murder sites" - Wrong, they took him past Buck's Row & Hanbury Street. The second witness followed the same route. Annie Chapman's TOD could exclude Lechmere as the killer, unless he was late for work.

If you are going to claim that it is a half-truth that Lechmere was found with the victim, then it will take for you to dissolve either part from being close to one another in Bucks Row.

The case against Lechmere is not built on any half-true matter at all in this context. My own stance is that there has instead been many an effort to dissolve the case on semantic grounds, and this is where I identify baseless accusations.

It is all very easy, is it not:

Lechmere arrived at the body or its close vicinity alone on that morning. He stopped by the body or in its close vicinity. We don't know for how long he was there before Paul arrived. Lechmere claimed it was seconds only, but of course, when there is no-one to confirm that suggestion, it cannot be taken as gospel, least of all if he was the killer.

Now, to try and claim that I must put this in words that are moire damning to make Lechmere viable as a bid for the killer, is not true. This is quite enough to allow for me to be correct. And so I do not need to build anything at all on any half-truth, intact, I would avoid to phrase myself in a way that I could not bolster in retrospect.

The carman WAS found in the vicinity of the body by Paul. But it is even contested that this ever happened. It is said that "No, Paul did not ´find´Lechmere at all". This is where I identify the REAL tampering with the facts - in the denial of what cannot be denied, and in how a decidedly interesting thing (a man with no provable alibi is found standing close by a still bleeding murder victim) is swept under the carpet by the use of semantics.

He WAS there. He WAS alone for an undefined period of time. Nichols DID bleed as he was there. There is NO evidence that clears him, other than the one he gives himself.

This, Harry, should be quite enough for anybody. And we should take the greatest of care not to lead on that any half-truths need to be employed to allow for Lechmere to have been the killer. It is not so and it never was.

[Fisherman]

I've been away for a week and I see this thread has ballooned out by nearly a couple of hundred more posts in the meantime. Rather than waste typing answers to specific points, unless someone feels answers are required, I'll just state some facts.

Fact one: Mizen intentionally or unintentionally misled the jury.

He made no mention of the important fact that he saw two men, not one man at the corner of Hanbury and Baker's. At the end of his evidence Coroner Baxter had to correct him.

Fact two: Mizen was the only witness to have two parts of his testimony contradicted by two different people.

Fact three: Mizen entered the witness box after, at least, three major newspapers had printed a story accusing him of dereliction of duty.

Fact four: Mizen was between a rock and a hard place once he met the two men.

Police code tells us, to stop "knocking up," could be a punishable offense. On the other hand, failing to aid another officer was also a possibly punishable offense.

It may be coincidence or not, as the case my be, but it just so happens that Mizen claiming Cross told him "that he was wanted by a policeman in Buck's Row" was, to borrow Christer's phrase possibly, "the perfect lie" to get him out of trouble vis-a-vis the dereliction of duty claim. It could also help his story by pretending there was only one man there that night, turning it into a I said/he said argument.

The above facts are verifiable they are not speculation. They exist as data on the case.

The facts, as opposed to speculation tells us that there is, rightly or wrongly, a very large question mark over Mizen's testimony.

Once a post begins with stating as a fact that Mizen misled the jury, there is no real need to read the rest of it. To some degree, that depends on the author of the post, but in this case, the wise course of action is obvious to me.

[Fisherman]

Speaking of "the perfect lie to get passed Mizen" that Christer constantly claims, where is the data to support it?

What evidence is there that a guilty Cross needed to lie to get passed Mizen?

The next magicians trick - suddenly the issue about whether the shaping of the message Mizen claimed to have received was one that was perfect to take the carman past the police, is turned into a question. about whether Lechmere had any need for such a message at all. As if I must first prove that he did for it to become true that the message WAS perfectly shaped to allow for passing by the police...?

Doesn't that mean that Dr Strange must prove that Mizen lied and/or misled for his view to be considered?

But of course, he has already proven that, in his former post...

[drstrange169]

>>The point I made was a general one - murderers normally do not work on pairs or gangs, they are generally lone wolfs.<<

Unfortunately for you, Mizen wasn't looking for a killer and a "gang theory" was under consideration for Mrs Nichols murder when it was finally discovered to be a murder. So your point is irrelevant in this instance.