Tell me who JTR was

[Barnaby]

Charles Allen Lechmere is to my mind by far the best suspect ever to have been suggested. The chances that he was the Ripper are significantly larger than the chances that he wasn´t, if you ask me.

All the best,
Fisherman

I think that Lechmere is a viable suspect and I have learned much from reading Fisherman's and Lechmere's posts, but I believe that this is an overstatement. Relative to a bad lot of suspects he may be the best. But in absolute terms I wouldn't bet on it. I'd throw my money down on James Kelly to get back to Harry's original post.

Two things bother me about Lechmere:

First, I find it hard to believe that the police didn't investigate him at some point. Fisherman and Lechmere make strong arguments for this man's guilt 125 years later. Surely contemporary law enforcement could make similar inferences. The fact that he wasn't a suspect leads me to believe he was cleared, much like Hutchinson.

Second, if we grant that the Ripper killed all or most of the canonicals, then it wasn't unusual for him to take weeks off between murders. In fairness, he could also get to work quickly between murders too (perhaps very quickly!). But my point is it was within his capacity to refrain from killing for whatever reason for weeks at a time.

Now suppose Lechmere is the Ripper and he is interrupted with Nichols. So much so that he is interjected into the case, provides an alias, has to testify, etc. I would think that this would be a really good reason to take a break, yet he is at work next week.

To be equally critical of my own suspect, one thing bothers me about James Kelly. He can't be placed in Whitechapel during any of the murders. Otherwise, he is a spectacular suspect.

[GUT]

OK sorry mate, I thought you were saying he walked past Miller's Court at the right time of day, my bad.

I'd love to hear the explanation for a 10:30 ish time of death.

Of course it was show holiday so he wouldn't be working.

[Lechmere]

GUT
I was referring more to date time rather than o'clock time.
In that he moved to an address that meant his most direct walk to work would have taken him within 20 yards of the Tabram murder scene while her body was lying their undiscovered. He moved there about six or seven weeks before Tabram's murder.
Where if he took the route he took on the morning of 31st August, it would have meant he passed within 20 yards of Chapman's dead body (if the doctor's estimated tome of death was correct).
Where he may well have passed just 20 yards from Kelly's undiscovered dead body - depending on her time of death.
And there are explanations that can cover later times of death.

[GUT]

G'day Lechmere

However I will observe that Charles Lechmere’s children attended Betts Street School until mid-June 1888. He moved to Doveton Street and his walk to work then took him through the murder district ay exactly the ‘right’ time.

Considering the range of times open to us re Kellys death just what time would that be. From memory one Dr said 1-2, one said 3-4, Lewis says he saw her at 8:30 and Maxwell says she saw MJK at 10:30.

So what is "Exactly the right time"?

[Lechmere]

I don’t put much store in these theories that insist that the Ripper knew Kelly and this is the reason where face was supposedly covered. Or the somewhat convoluted theories about whether or not she would have let someone in her room or whether the key was missing or whether her clothes were folded neatly.
However I will observe that Charles Lechmere’s children attended Betts Street School until mid-June 1888. He moved to Doveton Street and his walk to work then took him through the murder district ay exactly the ‘right’ time.
When Kelly’s lived at Breezers Hill, her landlord/pimp’s also sent his children to Betts Street School.
They would have been there at the same time as Lechmere’s children.
So there is a potential connection between Charles Lechmere and Mary Kelly.

I can see triggers for Charles Lechmere starting the type of attack associated with the Autumn of Terror and a reason for them stopping. But I also think there is a good chance that he was responsible for attacks both before and after this, so I don’t think he did stop until he probably got a bit too old for it – in the late 1890s. There are several unsolved murders of women of a similar class and unexplained deaths or bodies found in locations that Charles Lechmere had connections to.

As for motive, what was Peter Sutcliffe’s motive? Or Fred West’s. Or Ian Brady’s? Or any of them. Their motive was that they were sick individuals. They don’t have Agatha Christie motives.

[Hatchett]

Hi Fish,

That was the first time I have read your article. I enjoyed it very much.

Best wishes.

[Fisherman]

Which is?

It's one thing to hate prostitutes and murder them, but why collect the uterus? Why remove MJK's heart?

The murder itself is the motive, Harry, that´s how I see it. And the eviscerations may well be the driving factor behind it.
We don´t know that he DID collect the uterus - or even that Kellys heart was missing. But many serialists collect things to enable them to revisit the murders in their thoughts.

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Fisherman,

Have you ever done any work identifying the Mad Trapper of Rat River? He spoke Swedish.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Johnson_(criminal)

Did you and poster "Lechmere" come to your conclusions separately or in conjunction?

I´ve read about the Mad Trapper, that´s all - somebody pointed out to me that he was a Swede.

Lechmere has been tracking down Charles Allen Lechmere for fifteen odd years or so, and he convinced me of the usefulness of the bid a couple of years ago when we met in London.
After that, we have done some work on Lechmere together, and other work on our own. He is a very accomplished researcher, I can say that much ...

The best,
Fisherman

[pinkmoon]

Which is?

It's one thing to hate prostitutes and murder them, but why collect the uterus? Why remove MJK's heart?

If you are going to the trouble to remove organs you must have someway to take them without arousing suspicion I would say our killer lived alone .

[Harry D]

The motive?
I think we are looking at the motive when we see the pictures of the gutted Kelly.

Which is?

It's one thing to hate prostitutes and murder them, but why collect the uterus? Why remove MJK's heart?

[MayBea]

Fisherman,

Have you ever done any work identifying the Mad Trapper of Rat River? He spoke Swedish.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Johnson_(criminal)

Did you and poster "Lechmere" come to your conclusions separately or in conjunction?

[pinkmoon]

Couldn´t say, Pink - I have cooperated with the poster Lechmere on this, and he has speculated that perhaps a traumatic experience in his life could have been what caused him to stop. And he had a little daughter who died around the time, for example.

However, there are other ways to look upon it - DID he stop killing...? There are other unsolved murders around Lechmere in the years following the Ripper scare, and he may well have been active for many years after 1888. And we know that there are serial killers - like Rader - who stopped short after having killed many victims.

All the best,
Fisherman

Hi fisherman,you have put forward a very good case proposing lechmere as our killer and he is just as likely as my personal favourite which is Druitt.when viewing the appalling photo of Mary Kelly we can safely say whoever was doing this was a million miles away from being normal that murder was far and beyond murder and mutilation so I cannot see our killer simply going of and retiring and living happily ever after.

[Fisherman]

Very impressive however why did he stop killing?

Couldn´t say, Pink - I have cooperated with the poster Lechmere on this, and he has speculated that perhaps a traumatic experience in his life could have been what caused him to stop. And he had a little daughter who died around the time, for example.

However, there are other ways to look upon it - DID he stop killing...? There are other unsolved murders around Lechmere in the years following the Ripper scare, and he may well have been active for many years after 1888. And we know that there are serial killers - like Rader - who stopped short after having killed many victims.

All the best,
Fisherman

[pinkmoon]

Hi.
If there is a suspect, its someone who knew the victim Mary Kelly, she was too aware of the dangers in the area, and I believe she would have never walked out at 2am in the morning, unless there was a very good reason, end most certainly would not have taken a complete stranger back to her room , without feeling absolutely safe..
It was all very well going to the pubs amongst others, but alone on near deserted streets ..no way.
The most likely suspect is Joseph Fleming, or another man named Joe, we are not aware off.
The Joe that ill-used her, is the person who killed her..
Regards Richard.....By the way..I doubt if I am right....

Hi Richard ,I think Mary Kelly would have been a lot more carefull in selecting her clients however could a respectably dressed client offering a larger than usual sum of money have short circuited her reasoning.

[pinkmoon]

Others won´t, but here it is anyway - this is an article I wrote for Sydsvenskan, a Swedish daily, on the subject. It sums the case up pretty well, although other things have surfaced since the publication:

Early on the 31:st of August 1888, the carman Robert Paul was on his way to work in Corbett´s Court in London´s East End. He was late; the time was 3.45 as he briskly walked down Buck´s Row after having turned into it from Brady Street. At the intersection between the streets he passed a gas lamp. There were a further couple of lamps along Buck´s Row, but none of them functioned, so the darkness deepened around Paul with every step he took. Having walked a hundred yards or so, and with the light from the gas lamp as a haze in the distance, he suddenly discerned a man standing still in the middle of the street. Robert Paul felt uneasy, and as the other man took a step or two towards him, Paul chose to step down from the pavement to walk round him. Then the other man stretched out his arm, put his hand on Paul´s shoulder and said:
- Come and have a look, there´s a woman lying over here.
At the entrance to Brown´s Stable Yard, a figure was stretched out on its back. The men crossed Buck´s Row to take a look.
The woman lying on the southern side of the narrow street was the 43-year old prostitute Mary Ann ”Polly” Nichols. The man that had stopped Robert Paul was also a carman, 38 years of age, answering to the name Charles Allen Lechmere. And the murder – for it was a murder – was the first in the series attributed to Jack the Ripper.
The Ripper murders were all knife slayings. They were so violent that they made Londoners presuppose that they were dealing with a complete maniac. They would remain unsolved. There were five of them according to traditional opinion, and they were perpetrated over a period of around ten weeks.
When the story about them is told, a number of elements are usually involved: the competent Victorian police, the dark labyrinth of crime-infested streets called the East End and the skill that allowed the killer to avoid the police net.
Those who dig deep enough into the case will discover that one of these elements was not really there. Sadly, that element was the police competence. It is a controversial view, but an inevitable one. The police force had no experience of serial killings, it was led by men who in many instances had peculiar qualifications for police work and it carried out its duties in an era when racism abounded and phrenology – the belief that criminality could be read into people´s differing physiognomies – was an accepted ”science”.
If the investigation had been handled the way investigations are handled today, then Polly Nichols would probably never have come to be regarded as the first Ripper victim. The killings would probably have ended there and then. A modern police force would arguably have concluded that the man Robert Paul found standing by Polly Nichols, was also her probable killer: Charles Allen Lechmere. But let´s return to Buck´s Row and find out what it is that points towards him.
At the inquest after the murder, Lechmere claimed that he had noticed that there was something – his guess was a tarpaulin – lying on the southern side of Buck´s Row. He had then walked out into the street. At that same stage, he heard somebody – Robert Paul – was approaching. But he did not notice Paul until he was some thirty-forty yards away.
And yet we know that a policeman during the same night heard his colleague´s steps from 130 yards away. Reasonably, Lechmere should have already heard Paul when the latter turned into Buck´s Row. The street was resting in silence and the shoes of that time had hard, loud heels.
Likewise, Paul should have heard Lechmere walking in the darkness some thirty, forty yards ahead of him. But he didn´t.
The conclusion is inescapable: Lechmere was in place before he admits to have been. And once he noticed the approaching Paul, he chose to bluff the newcomer instead of running for it, and attracting attention to his person.
They then went over to the woman together to feel her. Her hands were cold, but the face was warm, and as Paul felt her chest he discerned some small movement.
- I believe she is alive, but only just, he said. Let´s prop her up, he suggested. But Lechmere then said that he would not touch her.
The reason for this is easy to see: as long as the woman was lying on the ground, it could not be made out in the darkness that she had had her neck severed down to the spine, and it provided Lechmere with the opportunity to procure an alibi for whatever blood he could have gotten on himself. But the moment they tried to sit her up, what had happened to her would become obvious.
Paul now remembered that he was late. He suggested that he should go and fetch a policeman to send to Buck´s Row. This made Lechmere say that he too was late, and throw forward a proposal that they should seek out that policeman together. If he had the murder weapon stashed on himself – no weapon was found at the spot when it was searched later – one can understand that he did not wish to wait for a policeman. And Paul had seen him and could identify him, so running was no longer any alternative. Lechmere was forced to improvise.
Before they set off, Paul respectfully pulled the woman´s clothes down as best as he could. Before that, they had been pulled up to the hip region, leaving the legs bare. But the clothes had covered her belly completely, and therefore her other wounds had been hidden – she had had the stomach ripped open from the breast bone down to the pelvic region. So somebody had taken the time to conceal this by using her clothes. Only one person stood to gain something by such a thing: a killer that had not been able to flee.
The carmen now left Buck´s Row and walked westwards. A couple of hundred yards from the murder scene, they ran into PC Jonas Mizen, who was in the process of knocking people up by tapping on doors and windows, a practice that was common amongst the police. Mizen would later at the inquest say that only one of the carmen – Lechmere – had spoken to him, and that this carman had told him that he was needed in Buck´s Row, where a woman was lying on the ground and where a fellow PC awaited his arrival.
But wait a second …?
There was no other PC in Buck´s Row, was there?
Exactly.
But if Lechmere was the killer, then he was still carrying his murder weapon on his person. Therefore he would have been anxious not to be searched, and determined to avoid being forced back to the murder site. That would have been why he invented a fictive PC, something that made Mizen accept that the carmen had already been cleared.
That is how easily the probable killer of Polly Nichols got past the police! And actually, there was another PC in place as Mizen arrived in Buck´s Row – PC John Neil had found Nichols on his beat a few minutes after the carmen had left her.
Could Lechmere possibly have known that Neil would be in place as Mizen arrived? Yes, that is an obvious possibility. He had probably picked Nichols up on Whitechapel Road, a known prostitute haunt. At that stage, the couple would reasonably have checked where the beat PC was before they sneaked up to Buck´s Row; prostitution was a crime.
The fact is that John Neil for a couple of days remained the man believed to first have discovered the body. But Robert Paul apparently had gotten word that Nichols had been killed, which was why he went to the press and gave a (probably well-paid) interview. It was published on the Sunday, two days after the murder and the day before the inquest. In the interview, Paul claimed to have found Lechmere standing ”where the body was”.
That was alarming news for Lechmere, and it arguably made him report himself to the police to provide his own version of the story, after which he was summoned to the Monday inquest. If he had avoided going to the police, then they would have had a situation where they knew a man had been standing by Nichols´ body at the approximate time of her death, only to later disappear. And Lechmere knew that both Paul and Mizen could identify him. Therefore he chose to come forward and present himself – but not fully. For he chose to call himself Charles Cross as he witnessed!
As a child, he had for a duration of around a decade had a stepfather called Thomas Cross, but there are no signs that Lechmere used his stepfathers name in any other context than the murder of Nichols. On the contrary; there are around ninety instances when the carman´s name is recorded in different official contexts. Every single name he writes himself Lechmere.
The secret about the name was unrevealed for more than a hundred years – it was not until some years ago that a genealogist made the connection.
The particulars Lechmere gave to the police where otherwise – apart from the name – correct. He stated 22 Doveton Street as his home address and he added that he worked for a Pickfords depot since an approximate twenty years. But when he witnessed before the inquest he added another anomaly to the false name: he did not state his home address before the jury, something witnesses normally do.
He said his name was Charles Cross and that he worked at Pickfords. But hundreds of men worked there, and without any home address he became unidentifiable to those who took part of the inquest proceedings in the papers. Consequently, his neighbours and his family could read about the murder without understanding that it was Lechmere who had found the victim.
But what about the police – surely they must have checked him out?
Not at all – a check in the registers, a visit at his home address or at Pickfords would immediately have disclosed that his name was not Cross. But Lechmere swiftly disappeared from the investigation, suspected of nothing at all. To be sure, a juryman did ask him if he had really told PC Mizen that another policeman was awaiting him in Buck´s Row, but this Lechmere denied. He added that he actually could not have said such a thing since there had not been any PC in Buck´s Row. This Robert Paul could of course confirm, and therefore everything pointed to Mizen having misunderstood things. And deeper than that nobody went – a murder inquest´s aim is merely to establish the cause of death.
Why then did the police fail to check Lechmere out? Well, they decided at an early stage that they were looking for a lunatic, very possibly a foreign such.
After the fourth Ripper killing, that of Catherine Eddowes, the detective Daniel Halse met two men in a street adjacent to the murder spot. His only measure was to establish that the men had legitimate reasons to be there. After that, he let them go. They were probably British, and they probably stated that they lived in the street or nearby, or perhaps that they were on their way to work. Exactly such a statement was also enough, as we have seen, for Charles Lechmere to gain a free passage from the inquest. He was British, he was a family father with eleven children, he was en route to his work. He was everything the Victorian police did not expect the killer to be.
And still, he was alone with a murder victim, a victim that may well still have been alive as Paul thought he discerned a small movement in her chest. When John Neil laid eyes on her, perhaps some three or four minutes afterwards, there was still blood running from her neck. And Mizen claimed the exact same thing, being in place a couple of minutes after Neil. The extensive damage she had suffered ought to have emptied her of blood quickly, it would not have been a matter of many minutes.
To tell the truth, Charles Lechmere should not even have been in Buck´s Row at 3.45 in the morning. For he claimed that he had left his home at 3.30, and to walk from Doveton Street to the murder spot is easily done in six or seven minutes. That means that Charles Lechmere should have left Buck´s Row well behind him long before Robert Paul turned into it. Therefore the time window is in place for Lechmere to have committed the murder.
All in all, a substantial amount of accusations can be raised against Charles Lechmere. But do we have something to check it against, something that can strengthen the case?
Yes we have, actually! We can take a look at the five Ripper killings, and we can add another knife slaying that may have been perpetrated by the same man, three weeks before the Ripper series. After that, we can compare the times and places the murders occurred at with Charles Lechmere´s route to work. When doing so, an amazing pattern emerges.
Lechmere had two roughly comparable thoroughfares from Doveton Street to Pickfords in Broad Street, where today’s Liverpool Street station is situated. They were Hanbury Street and Old Montague Street.
-On the 7:th of August, Martha Tabram was killed at the approximate time when Lechmere went to work. She died in George Yard, only thirty yards or so off Old Montague Street.
-On the 31:st of August Polly Nichols died on Buck´s Row – along Lechmere’s working route.
-On the 8:th of September Annie Chapman was murdered early in the morning on a working day, in the back yard of 29 Hanbury Street.
-On the 9:th of November Mary Kelly met with her killer, early in the morning of a working day, in Miller´s Court, Dorset Street. And Dorset Street offered a short cut to Pickfords along the Hanbury Street route.
There are two murders left to account for, both of them on the 30:th of September, when first Liz Stride and later Catherine Eddowes were killed. Here is a deviation: Stride was killed shortly before one o clock in the morning. That was not a time at which Lechmere was en route to his job. Eddowes died a little less than an hour later, that too being too early to be tied to Lechmere´s working trek.
Nor did these victims die along Lechmere´s working route. Stride met her end on Berner Street, a couple of hundred yards south of the Hanbury Street/Old Montague Street area, and Eddowes fell prey in Mitre Square, that too being situated south of the Lechmere working trek territory.
These cases can, however, be regarded as confirmation of Lechmere´s culpability. For they took place on the night leading up to a Sunday, Lechmere’s day off. And the Stride case took place in the exact territory where Lechmere had grown up and lived for a long stretch of years. Furthermore, Berner Street was a thoroughfare to Cable Street, where Charles Lechmere´s mother and one of his daughters were living!
For a hard-working carman, there was only one real evening off, and that was Saturday evening. What could be more natural than to use that evening to visit your mother and daughter?
The Stride killing was different from the other canonical cases in the sense that her stomach was not ripped open. There is an obvious possibility that Lechmere was disturbed, and frustrated fled Berner Street. After that, he sought out Catherine Eddowes and killed her in Mitre Square – alongside his old working route from James Street to Pickfords! Lechmere lived in James Street until June 1888, when he made the move to Doveton Street. That means that he left his old grounds – and the close proximity to his mother – only weeks before the murders began.
The British police hunted the Ripper up until 1892. After that, scores of armchair detectives have tried to catch the illusive killer. Hundreds of suspects have come and gone, one more fantastic than the other. Lately, a theory that Vincent van Gogh was the killer has seen the light of day.
Many ripperologists have made a quid by throwing a speculation in along the rugged road that winds through the gas lit East End streets of the 1880:s. There now being a rationally functioning, everyday, grey suspect is not something all Ripper researchers have wished for.
They can find consolation in the fact that Lechmere actually has a glamorous family history, counting an archbishop and one of Admiral Nelson´s closest men. Lechmere’s branch of the family, however, had the bad luck of being hit by a waster, namely Charles´ grandfather, who threw away his fortune.
So, to top things off, Charles Lechmere had good reason to feel a strong urge for revenge as he wandered the streets of the East End together with prostitutes, pimps and robbers, carrying the insight that he was made up of another material altogether himself than they were.
Did that insight ultimately drive him over the edge?
Charles Allen Lechmere died at the age of 71, on the 23:rd of December 1920, in Bow, London, after having suffered brain hemorrhage two days earlier.

All the best,
Fisherman

Very impressive however why did he stop killing?