So would he have run?

[Ben]

Oh, Hutchinson's here again!

Hutchinson, on the other hand, was taking a much bigger risk to come forward because the chances of him ever being traced, if he was Jack The Ripper, was pretty much no chance and he would have known that.

You've just argued against your own point, Fleets. If Hutchinson as Jack the Ripper "would have known" there was no chance of him being pinned down for the crimes, there was no "risk" at all in him coming forward. He could have bared his bottom at the police and dared them to prove it. The reality, however, is that a hypothetically guilty Hutchinson did not know - and could not have known - that previous witnesses weren't being introduced to look new suspects over. But Hutchinson was only likely to become a suspect if he was dragged in as one, i.e. as a result of being spotted by Lews. If he introduced himself as a witness and played the "cooperative" hand, the chances of the police suspecting him of anything more dodgy that seeking publicity or dosh were slim to non-existent.

..and he would have known that.

But straight back we go to discussing Cross!

[Barnaby]

If Cross was the killer, I don't think that he was taken by surprise with Paul. He had sufficient time to hide the mutilations, his knife, and compose himself. So he had plenty of time to run, which to me seems to have been the far safer alternative. In fact, I can't think of a good reason to stay, other than that Cross was a complete psychopath. Take into consideration that Cross would not have known who exactly was approaching. It could have been a PC for all he knew.

[Fleetwood Mac]

Iīd like to start a new thread here about the issue of whether Charles Lechmere would have run away from Buckīs Row when he heard Paul approaching, if he was the killer.
It seems to be one of the ideas some people have a hard time abandoning.

I have recently discussed this matter with FrankO - on the wrong thread altogether - but since it is an interesting discussion, I would like to hear whatever takes there are on this matter.

Here are some of the things I would like to weigh in:

To begin with, Lechmere says that he did not hear Paul until he was forty (or thirty, the sources differ) yards away. Here is how itīs worded in the Daily News:

"...walking to the middle of the road he saw it was the figure of a woman. At the same time he heard a man about forty yards away coming up Buck's row in the direction witness had himself come..."

It is clearly stated that he heard Paul the moment he stepped into the middle of the road to see what the bundle outside Browns Stable Yard was.

Questions:

Paul had turned into Buckīs Row 130 yards away. Why did not Lechmere hear him until he had walked 90-100 yards of that stretch? PC Neil heard his colleague Thain from 130 yards, when the latter passed up at Brady Street.

And why did not Paul hear Lechmere walking a shortish way in front of him?

The implications are that Lechmere was positioned at Browns Stable Yard when Paul turned into the street.

If this is true - would not Lechmere have legged it immediately as he heard Paul?

To ponder:
Nichols had her clothing pulled down over her abdomen, so if Lechmere was the one who did this, then it would have taken some little time, a few seconds or so.
Moreover, if Lechmere was the killer, he would also have stashed the knife on his person - it was not found at a later search - and that too would have taken a little time.
It could also be that he positioned the body in a "calm", stretched-out position, which would also have taken some time.

However, IF he did these things, then he would reasonably have done so because he had already taken the decision to stay put - otherwise, there would have been no immediate need for it. He could just as well have left the body on display, and that would have won him a number of seconds.

My own suggestion is that Lechmere could have been so absorbed by what he was doing that he failed to immediately notice Paul coming into the street, and that the latter had advanced so far down so as to disenable the possibilities to slip away unnoticed for Lechmere. This would have been why he chose to stay and not take the risk of having the alarm sounded.

We must also remember that Lechmere himself said that he would have noticed if anybody moved down by the body as he entered the street. Could it be that he actually heard Paul turning into the street, and simply decided that even with Paul a hundred yards plus away, it would still be more risky to do a runner?

I also think that we must bring the element of possible psychopathy into the picture. I have earlier exemplified with the story about how Jeffrey Dahmer chose to take the risk of fetching a very scared intended victim out of the hands of the police instead of making a run for it. He noticed that his prey had slipped out of his apartment and gone into the street outside, where he had been taken care of by some bystanders who were joined by two policemen. In spite of this, Dahmer went into the street, chatted up the policemen, explained that the young man was his lover who had freaked out, and took the boy back to his apartment where he subsequently killed him.

This is something we may need to ponder before we cast out vote. There are other examples to, where psychopaths embrace danger instead of fleeing it. It sometimes look like they are enjoying the game.

So just how obvious is it that Lechmere would have run off if he was the killer? To me, it is anything but obvious, but I would like your input.

All the best,
Fisherman

Fisherman,

It's an interesting debate to hold, but in terms of Lechmere's candidacy in the modern day it's irrelevant.

Human nature being what it is, and one human being to the next human being seeing things differently, some would have stayed and some would have ran.

When push comes to shove though, Lechmere has done nothing more than being the first to discover a victim and giving one of his two names, and according to some being in the locality. There is nothing in this unless you or someone else comes with something better.

If it helps, in the event I was Lechmere and I was Jack The Ripper I would have stayed and bluffed it out on the basis that running away would have been not far off an admission of guilt.

I think that this sort of debate adds weight to the notion that there is nothing of any substance on Lechmere.

Edited to add: it's the usual 'fight or flight' argument in any given situation. But you also have to weigh up risk and reward. Lechmere, if Jack the Ripper, and I'll give you one zillion to one odds that he was so, would have been taking a much bigger risk to run away; Hutchinson, on the other hand, was taking a much bigger risk to come forward because the chances of him ever being traced, if he was Jack The Ripper, was pretty much no chance and he would have known that.

[Ben]

Ah good, a Cross thread. Thanks, Fisherman - I was feeling rather sorry for Cross, and all other suspects for that matter, who take an immediate backseat whenever Hutchinson gets discussed. Over 13,000 posts in the Hutchinson forum now, so let's see if we can't help Cross catch up a bit. The following is in response to Lechmere's points on the recent Hutchinson (where else?) thread, although it does touch upon the issue of "would he have run".

“However you huff and puff”

Yes, Lechmere, I’ve “huffed” and I’ve “puffed” and I’m afraid, like the big bad wolf, I’ve blown your house in. Not that much energy was required for the expedient, given how obvious it is that if the second person to discover Nichols’ body was investigated as a suspect, it is utterly impossible that the first person to discover the body was not viewed in the same light. I mean actually impossible, just to clarify, not just scarily improbable. It would, at the very least, have occurred to the police that if Paul warranted suspicion, it was possible that he was working in tandem with Cross.

Cross’s real name was unrecorded, but that’s because the discovery that an innocent man was using a legitimate family name for innocent reasons wasn’t likely to warrant inclusion in the official record.

“Is anyone similarly named in later records?”

No, but what’s your point? Are you suggesting that the interest attaching to Pizer and the others was remotely indicative of sloppiness on their part? No. If they were the “prime” suspects at the time, it is because they were the most promising candidates according to the best evidence at the time. The fact that none of them turned out to be the killer is a terrible reason for concluding that either a) the police were incompetent to have invested any interest in them in the first place, and b), that the absence of similar “prime” suspects in the later stages of the investigation means they were being more "thorough" by then. It doesn’t mean either of those things - not remotely. It simply means that none of the later suspects were any good, and didn’t warrant the interest initially invested in Pizer and others. Yes, I realise that “early lines of enquiry are regularly buried”, but that’s only because subsequent investigation led the police on a different path – simple progression, in other words. It most assuredly does not mean that the police were sloppy or careless or wrong or “not as thorough as they were later” for pursing those “early lines of enquiry” in the first place.

“Indeed, there was nothing to stop the police from going back and investigating Lechmere. But we have absolutely no reason to suppose they did. It would actually have been remarkable if they had”

…and we have “absolutely no reason” to suppose that they ever investigated Hutchinson as a suspect, and “it would actually have been remarkable if they had”. Do not apply double standards in so brazen a fashion, please. If you insist that the police had “absolutely no reason” even to consider Cross as a potential suspect, then precisely the same applies to Hutchinson. In fact, it applies more so in the latter case, as there was only Hutchinson’s claim that he was anywhere near the crime scene that night, whereas Cross was unquestionably there. A stronger link to the scene of the crime equals stronger reasons for considering the possibility of involvement – absolutely unquestionably so.

“You now claim that Abberline didn’t really interrogate Hutchinson but just chose that word to impress his superiors”.

No I don’t.

I state the obvious and observe that Abberline was bound to want to convey an impression of thoroughness to his bosses and colleagues, regardless of whether or not he was actually thorough. Let’s face it “I was thorough because I say so” is about as worthless as “I am innocent because I say so”. Whatever the truth of the matter, the fact remains that there is no evidence that the police were any more thorough or meticulous towards the later stage of the investigation.

Yes, more Miller’s Court residents were interviewed than Buck’s Row residents, but that is because the former group was vastly smaller and very easy to contain/detain when we consider that there was only one exit through a long, narrow passage. Preventing the egress of every single inhabitant of Buck’s Row would not have been so easy, to understate matters. Yes, the inquest was rushed, and wasn’t anywhere near as long and as “thorough” as inquests for previous witnesses had been, and haven’t you heard - It happened so quickly that even poor old Hutchinson didn’t get a chance to come forward? He just missed it, in fact! Again, the ****-up with the bloodhounds was an obvious booboo, and far sillier than any of the alleged clumsinesses that had happened before. Yes, the delay in opening the door and ensuing hatchet-job is another – well spotted.

If Cross introduced himself to the police using his stepfather’s name and it was discovered – probably from Cross himself – that he had a perfectly valid and understandable reason for not providing his birth name, there was absolutely no reason for the police to have recorded him under any name other than the one he introduced himself to the police using. Absolutely no need. Why, incidentally, do we not hear of any tip-offs from his work colleagues that the man’s real name was Lechmere and not Cross? Why did nobody say, "I know the man, but he ain't called Cross"...? The obvious answer is that he was known as Cross to his friends and work colleagues too, and that this was name he was known by, perhaps because he felt closer to stepdaddy Cross than he did to real daddy Lechmere? That sort of thing goes on all the time, regardless of whether the individuals concerned put their real birth names on “official” documents. As I’ve already mentioned, Cross had not a hope in hell of concealing his true identity if his family and work colleagues knew him as Lechmere, and as such, it would have been sheer illogical lunacy for a guilty man to use such an easily-exposable “alias”.

Despite this obvious reality, however, you accuse anyone who doesn’t agree with you of being “bonkers”. Wow, so all but three or four people who study this case are “bonkers”. You’re wrong, incidentally, about guilty alias-users typically using a family name. I don’t know where Herman Webster Mudgett plucked “Henry Howard Holmes” from, but I can assure you it wasn’t dear Aunt Doris.

He neither offered a “false” name nor was he “found next to” a freshly slain body, and as for the alleged dispute with a policeman, more or less everyone accepts that Mizen made the error or misconstrued Cross’s meaning, which was almost certainly something along the lines of “you are wanted in Buck’s Row”. Mizen himself evidently accepted his error, which is why he offered no dissenting voice to Cross’s correction at the inquest. The “bluffing it out” excuse only works if he was taken completely by surprise by Robert Paul (extremely unlikely), didn’t incriminate himself unnecessarily by using what you insist was an “alias", and didn’t commit another murder along his known work route less than a week later. In fact, serial killers who bluff it out by involving themselves in the investigation don’t commit their next crime for a considerable period afterwards, if they kill again at all – another reason why Hutchinson works better (and is more popular and more established as a suspect) than Cross.

Just don’t pick these fights again, and we won’t need to have these little chats. I appreciate that you weren’t responsible for bringing Lechmere into that Hutchinson, or for initiating an argument about Hutchinson. But I won’t be tolerating any double standards, and if I see any more insistence from any of the Lechmereans (of ALL people) that Hutchinson “must have” been checked out because the police are thorough and would have seen through a false witnesses, I will call out the nonsense and make unfavourable comparisons accordingly. If that leads to ongoing 200-page stamina wars – and you basically writing out your entire book here, spoiling the “surprise” for your readers - then so be it.

Best regards,
Ben

[Fisherman]

Iīd like to start a new thread here about the issue of whether Charles Lechmere would have run away from Buckīs Row when he heard Paul approaching, if he was the killer.
It seems to be one of the ideas some people have a hard time abandoning.

I have recently discussed this matter with FrankO - on the wrong thread altogether - but since it is an interesting discussion, I would like to hear whatever takes there are on this matter.

Here are some of the things I would like to weigh in:

To begin with, Lechmere says that he did not hear Paul until he was forty (or thirty, the sources differ) yards away. Here is how itīs worded in the Daily News:

"...walking to the middle of the road he saw it was the figure of a woman. At the same time he heard a man about forty yards away coming up Buck's row in the direction witness had himself come..."

It is clearly stated that he heard Paul the moment he stepped into the middle of the road to see what the bundle outside Browns Stable Yard was.

Questions:

Paul had turned into Buckīs Row 130 yards away. Why did not Lechmere hear him until he had walked 90-100 yards of that stretch? PC Neil heard his colleague Thain from 130 yards, when the latter passed up at Brady Street.

And why did not Paul hear Lechmere walking a shortish way in front of him?

The implications are that Lechmere was positioned at Browns Stable Yard when Paul turned into the street.

If this is true - would not Lechmere have legged it immediately as he heard Paul?

To ponder:
Nichols had her clothing pulled down over her abdomen, so if Lechmere was the one who did this, then it would have taken some little time, a few seconds or so.
Moreover, if Lechmere was the killer, he would also have stashed the knife on his person - it was not found at a later search - and that too would have taken a little time.
It could also be that he positioned the body in a "calm", stretched-out position, which would also have taken some time.

However, IF he did these things, then he would reasonably have done so because he had already taken the decision to stay put - otherwise, there would have been no immediate need for it. He could just as well have left the body on display, and that would have won him a number of seconds.

My own suggestion is that Lechmere could have been so absorbed by what he was doing that he failed to immediately notice Paul coming into the street, and that the latter had advanced so far down so as to disenable the possibilities to slip away unnoticed for Lechmere. This would have been why he chose to stay and not take the risk of having the alarm sounded.

We must also remember that Lechmere himself said that he would have noticed if anybody moved down by the body as he entered the street. Could it be that he actually heard Paul turning into the street, and simply decided that even with Paul a hundred yards plus away, it would still be more risky to do a runner?

I also think that we must bring the element of possible psychopathy into the picture. I have earlier exemplified with the story about how Jeffrey Dahmer chose to take the risk of fetching a very scared intended victim out of the hands of the police instead of making a run for it. He noticed that his prey had slipped out of his apartment and gone into the street outside, where he had been taken care of by some bystanders who were joined by two policemen. In spite of this, Dahmer went into the street, chatted up the policemen, explained that the young man was his lover who had freaked out, and took the boy back to his apartment where he subsequently killed him.

This is something we may need to ponder before we cast out vote. There are other examples to, where psychopaths embrace danger instead of fleeing it. It sometimes look like they are enjoying the game.

So just how obvious is it that Lechmere would have run off if he was the killer? To me, it is anything but obvious, but I would like your input.

All the best,
Fisherman