Hutchinson's sunday

[IchabodCrane]

Whatever the reasons he came late with his story, I think the main reason he was dismissed by police was not because they were convinced he told a lie for money, but that the police were looking for a sexual pervert. It is interesting that all the suspects mentioned in official police statements are either known violent criminals, lunatics, or homosexuals (which I guess in the Victorian frame of mind didn't make much of a difference).
After the police had checked on GH's past without finding any of the above mentioned behaviour, he was no longer a suspect. It was unthinkable that a seemingly sane man would have committed such atrocities.
With hindsight and over a century of other serial killer cases to compare, George Hutchinson should top the list of suspects on these boards, whether he needed money or not.

[IchabodCrane]

If he wanted to avoid being ultimately ‘drawn in’, he sure picked a funny place to hide.

I believe that since there was another man in Mary Kelly's room, there was no other choice but to wait in front of the entrance to Miller's court for first the man and then possibly Mary Kelly to come out. After all the ripper was a stalker, a predator. Mary Kelly was his most beautiful victim. I think in her case he wanted her, nobody else on that particular night, and singled her out because he knew they were going to be alone in number 13, Miller's Court.

[caz]

[Original quote by Caz]
‘My point was that anyone telling the police a pack of lies in a bid to save their neck would surely not have had the brains to get away with their first murder had they changed any of the cards in that pack when talking to the press’

It depends how much "brains" you're giving the ripper, and I'm sorry, but I really don't understand the comparison here. What's so brainy about the Tabram or Nichols murders?

Hi Ben,

I realise you didn’t understand my comparison because you still talk as if I think the ripper must have been particularly ‘brainy’ to get away with his first murder. The exact opposite is true. My point was that if he had really thought the safest course of action after murdering and mutilating several women was to volunteer one pack of lies to the police and another to the papers, it would have made Jack a very dull ripper indeed - so dull that one would think he lacked even the limited wit required to commit the least ‘brainy’ murder without mishap.

You're arguing that whoever killed Tabram and/or Nichols must have been the type of individual who also liked to avoid giving contradictory reports to police and press, and I find that a bizarre inference.

I wasn’t arguing that, so the ‘bizarre inference’ is all yours. What I’m struggling with is the bizarre notion that this killer, who managed to evade capture time and time again, could have been soft enough in the head to change essential details of his eye witness account (such as the man’s complexion and moustache) if he was depending on it to save his own neck, and particularly if he was under no obligation to talk to the press at all, or did so against the wishes or advice of the police.

You have to address why he would have done that if self-preservation was even partly behind his original decision to come forward. What drove him beyond the need to keep his neck-saving story straight, simple and believable? The thought of fifteen minutes of fame? The hope that he might earn himself a few bob along the way? Pure mischief or bravado? Have you any evidence that character traits as diverse as prudent self-preservation and risk-taking, or fear of persecution and attention-seeking, can combine in a killer's brain to motivate the one act of volunteering bogus information? If not, you would be better off choosing the one motive behind Hutch’s various statements that most appeals to you and stick with it, rather than trying to mix and match opposite motives like a yellow streak with a reckless one, and imagining you can dodge every objection to one by temporarily appealing to another.

All I'm suggesting is that he "tidied up" his initial account when speaking to the press, possibly through fear that he'd left a few grey areas outstanding in the wake of his first appearance at Commercial Street police station.

A few ‘grey areas’ that Hutch feared he had left outstanding and which needed to be “tidied up”? Is this a reference to the mystery of the radically altered complexion and moustache? Surely this is more jestin’ than suggestin’.

I'd bet hetfy amounts that none of the other serialists who came forward particularly relished the prospect of doing so, but went ahead anyway out of a desire for self-preservation.

I'm saying that not all serialists who gave bogus evidence to police did so primarily for the thrill of it, but rather for the purposes of self-preservation.

Hi Ben,

I bet you’re glad you didn’t go ahead and place that hefty bet, considering how quickly you went from betting that no serial killer comes forward for the hell of it to saying virtually the opposite: that not all of them do it primarily for kicks - some feel they have no choice.

Also, you need to be careful about referring to ‘other serialists’ who have come forward. You may have convinced yourself that Hutch belongs in this category, but you have yet to show that he was a ‘serialist’, or that the ripper had either the need or the desire for the kind of attention Hutch attracted to himself.

They're not thought-up tormentors. They were real tormentors, so we cannot possibly comment on how cool and composed he would react in those situations...

But with hindsight we know that Hutch wasn’t really being ‘tormented’ by the police before he came forward. You are putting all this into his head with no evidence that the police would have gone on to torment him had he not come forward; no evidence that they had any reason to torment him; and no evidence that he even imagined they might have a reason. And you can’t use the fact that he wasn’t ultimately tormented to claim that his cunning ‘ploy’ to stop the torment must have worked.

If the killer feared the police, it wouldn't have been an illogical paranoid delusional fantasy, but a prudent recognition of a very real threat.

Yes, but you have absolutely no evidence that killers who recognise the very real threat posed by the police, but still think the most prudent course of action is to volunteer false information to the source of their fear, followed by conflicting false information to the papers, ever succeed in remaining uncaught or unidentified, as the ripper undoubtedly did. He could have had the same rational fear of the police and kept well out of it, in prudent recognition of the very real threat to his neck of gadding about his own killing fields, posing as a celebrity witness, and giving the likes of Long, Schwartz, Pipe Man, Lawende, Levi, Harris, Lewis, or Uncle Tom Cobley and all, a very real chance of recognising him, whether they lived and worked there day in, day out, or just frequented the clubs and markets.

Generally speaking, though, believing that people suffering from this kind of disease would actually prefer interacting with their fears instead of avoiding them, is simply wrong. They detest the imagined sources of their troubles, and what you detest, you normally avoid.

Quite right, Fisherman. I don’t see what difference it makes whether the ripper’s natural fear of having his neck stretched was tinged with an irrational fear of persecution or not. What you don’t generally do, if you have a healthy or unhealthy fear of what someone can threaten you with, is to invite yourself into their lair, tell them a pack of lies, and then swan straight off to the papers to tempt them with a different pack of lies - sticking two fingers up to the very source of your fear.

Love,

Caz
X

[Ben]

Hi Caz,

My point was that if he had really thought the safest course of action after murdering and mutilating several women was to volunteer one pack of lies to the police and another to the papers, it would have made Jack a very dull ripper indeed

It wouldn't have done. It would have made him human, and not endowed of astonishing photographic memory. Think about it; if you've conconcted a pack of lies primarily from the ether on one day, what are the realistic chances of him being capable of regurgitating the entire thing with utter exactitude upon the next re-telling? That makes no sense at all.

It would also make him prudent. If his first lie was hastily concocted, it's perfectly natural that he may have experienced some anxiety over the passing hours and days that certain grey areas could precipitate some awkward questioning if left grey, thus compelling him to tidy up the account a bit...to pre-empt those potentially unsettling "unsatisfactorily explained" bits.

That's the exact opposite of being "dim-witted".

But even if he was just a lousy liar, which I doubt, then it requires a preposterous leap of faith to argue that a killer who tells unconvincing lies couldn't have got away with what the ripper got away with, or that Jack the Ripper, whoever he was, must have been a brilliant liar. Too many of your objections are predicated on an overconfident faith in your own preferred image of "Jack the Ripper", in my humble opinion.

You have to address why he would have done that if self-preservation was even partly behind his original decision to come forward. What drove him beyond the need to keep his neck-saving story straight, simple and believable?

I've told you - to tidy up the grey areas that would have attracted potential suspicion if they were left grey. That's quite a reasonable concept, when you give it some proper thought. If "Mr. Astrakhan represented the generic popular scapegoat at the time - Jewish, well-dressed, outsider etc - don't you think it would have been in the real killer's interest to have as many susceptible members of the public buy into that false dogma by milking it as much as possible? Especially if they were buying into it already.

Could he have contradicted himself in the process. Of course. Big whoop. People do contradict themselves, and it doesn't make them crap eviserators or unable to pull off the "Buck's Row job".

Have you any evidence that character traits as diverse as prudent self-preservation and risk-taking, or fear of persecution and attention-seeking, can combine in a killer's brain to motivate the one act of volunteering bogus information?

Yes, although I've never argued that all of those motivations must have played a part in order for Hutchinson to have come forward. The bullet-point of that particular seminar has always been that serialists come forward for a variety of reasons. That's all that needs to be understood, so asking me to pick one and stick to it doesn't make a fabulous amount of sense. Still not sure where you get the idea that any of the motives I've enumerated somehow "oppose" eachother. They don't. Not remotely. You can be full and bravado, and still go to manipulative efforts to evade capture - easily.

Also, you need to be careful about referring to ‘other serialists’ who have come forward. You may have convinced yourself that Hutch belongs in this category, but you have yet to show that he was a ‘serialist’, or that the ripper had either the need or the desire for the kind of attention Hutch attracted to himself.

Of course I have yet to show it, and short of a miracle, I never will, but the purpose these "other serialists" currently serve is to whallop the insinuation that Hutchinson would not have come forward in that manner if he was a serial killer. There's a difference between making a case for a suspect, and defending a suspect's candidacy against objections that aren't remotely reasonable.

You are putting all this into his head with no evidence that the police would have gone on to torment him had he not come forward; no evidence that they had any reason to torment him; and no evidence that he even imagined they might have a reason.

I'm putting nothing whatsoever into his head, other than uncertainty. The fact that he came forward as soon as Lewis' evidence was made public knowledge constitutes more than reasonable circumstantial evidence that he came forward out of concern that he'd been seen. Reasonable indications as to his mindset can be logically inferred from that.

Yes, but you have absolutely no evidence that killers who recognise the very real threat posed by the police, but still think the most prudent course of action is to volunteer false information to the source of their fear, followed by conflicting false information to the papers, ever succeed in remaining uncaught or unidentified, as the ripper undoubtedly did.

This is fallacious reasoning on two counts. Firstly, you can't bombard a hypothesis with as much criteria as possible, and then claim that a failure to locate an impossible mirror image is tantamount to evidence of the hypothesis being flawed. That's like saying; "unless you can find an example of another serial killer from Rochester, NY, who worked as a quack doctor, wore a huge moustahce, medals, and had a white horse, then all Tumblety theories are null and void. Of course you're not going to encounter mirror-like similarity, and it's silly to expect otherwise.

It's also grossly incorrect to assume that the proactive approaches of the other serial killers I mentioned always resulted in their being captured. Many of them, including Gary Ridgway, were identified as the killer for reasons that had nothing to do with their coming forward.

He could have had the same rational fear of the police and kept well out of it, in prudent recognition of the very real threat to his neck of gadding about his own killing fields, posing as a celebrity witness

Could have done, but given the number of killers who do become witnesses and gad about their own killing fields and appear under false guises, despite the possibility of being recognised from earlier witnesses at earlier crime scenes, this is a good moment to remind ourselves that established precedent scores over personal theorizing as to what would or wouldn't be prudent in a given situation.

What you don’t generally do, if you have a healthy or unhealthy fear of what someone can threaten you with, is to invite yourself into their lair, tell them a pack of lies, and then swan straight off to the papers to tempt them with a different pack of lies - sticking two fingers up to the very source of your fear.

He didn't tell them a different pack of lies. He just tidied up the existing lie to pre-empt awkward questions about the grey areas in his hastily concocted first statement, getting a few things muddled in the meantime as human beings generally do when they're attempting to sustain a lie.

Best regards,
Ben

[Ben]

Agreed 100%, Ichabodcrane, and a very good summation.

Hi again, Caz,

would he really think that giving him a complete change of complexion and moustache would help in this regard and ‘further bolster his story’?

No, Caz, but that presupposes that he changed the complexion and moustache deliberately, as opposed to it being a by-product of both his attempt to sell "Astrakhan man" to all and sundry, and his all-too-human inability to regurgitate a lie with utter, faultless exactitude.

and even his conflicting claims in the papers didn’t ring the right kind of alarm bells to turn him from discredited witness to formal suspect.

We don't know whether they did or not, but I absolutely agree with Ichabodcrane that one needn't automatically follow on from the other.

If he wanted to avoid being ultimately ‘drawn in’, he sure picked a funny place to hide.

Best he could have acheived, though, if he wasn't invisible, but still wanted to moniter the comings and goings of the court. He just had to make do, as he'd done previously at other crime scenes. Finding a location where he couldn't be seen at any point, either before, during or after the commission of the murder, was nigh on impossible.

Best regards again,

Ben

[DVV]

After the police had checked on GH's past without finding any of the above mentioned behaviour, he was no longer a suspect. It was unthinkable that a seemingly sane man would have committed such atrocities.

Hi IchabodCrane,
I will agree with the second sentence, but certainly not with the first.
Nothing indicates that the police checked GH's past.
And had he a past?
Personally I doubt it very much. GH, in my view, was an alias.

Amitiés,
David

[Tresschen]

At first I was compelled too to believe Hutchinson to be the murderer, but the more I read about the whole thing, the more I think it unlikely. I think, that if Hutch was the ripper, he wouldnīt have gone to the press. He wouldnīt have put so much contradicting information in his statements, because if he had invented it, he would have known what he had invented, especially if this was necessary to safe his neck.
I write stories and I have to invent characters for that and I know what they look like. Okay, not always up to the eye-colour, but if I had thought up a story over the weekend I would remember it quite explicitly. I would write it down for me to always remember what it was like, because I would know that this could save my life. I would probably be more vague, if I wasn't so sure anymore what I had told before ala "I thought his Moustache was rather slim, but then again the lightning was so bad and afterwards I thought it too be a be more bushy..."
But Hutch gives clear statements as it seems who seem to contradict each other. I think, if he was the murderer, he wouldnīt have contacted the press at all and he wouldnīt have told such obvious lies.

So if he wasn't the murderer who was he?
Just an attention seeker, putting himself at the crime scene at the possible time of the murder. I canīt believe it. Attention seeker tell lies, but they tell safe lies, lies which couldnīt get themselves hanged.
So there is just the possibility that he was a true witness, but alas, he didnīt tell the truth, this is bloody obvious. So what did he tell?
I have more than one theory about it. He could have been
... one of Mary's admirers, who realized, when Lewis made her statement that he had been seen and ran to the police to tell a good lie why he was there. He could have seen Mr. Astrahkan, but he embellished the story and probably didn't saw much after all. The police found out about this a few days later and his story was discarded. Probably he was even seen by somebody else later that night which convinced the police that it wasnīt him, but because of all the lies, his story was worth nothing.
... afraid of the murderer and then told the police that he saw somebody completely different. Probably he saw a good mate with Kelly that evening and didn`t thought much of it and even waited for his friend, so they could go home or drink a beer together. But when he learned of the murder, he knew what it must have meant. But he couldnīt tell that to the police. So he told nothing. Then he heard about wideawake-man and became paranoid that Lewis probably would recognise him. So he went to the police telling them lies, because he didn`t want to get killed by the ripper or didnīt want his mate to hang or a little bit of both.
... he told the truth, probably not the whole truth, but something close to it, but was wrong about the date. He probably was in love with Kelly and watched her a little. And when Lewis made her statement, he thought: Oh Gosh, wasn't it that other night I was meeting Kelly in the street? ****, I have met her murderer and done nothing. I even forgot I was there that night. He so goes to the police, they hunt astrakhan, but then it is cleared up that he didnīt saw Kelly that night or earlier that night before Blotchy man arrived at the scene. Probably his trip to Romford was a day before he said it was and the police found out and okay, his minute of fame was over, but he wasn't regarded as a suspect, because he hadn`t been there.

Another possibility is that he was an alias, someone who gave a important hint to the police, but after following the hint, there was not much to it anymore. At least it could be possible that they actually found Astrakhan, but he couldn't have committed the other murders and was put aside again. Or the mistaken dates. This could be one thing. How often do I think I did something on monday when it was actually tuesday? And if you don't have work every day is the same, so it is much harder to remember correctly.
And then again there is always the idea of him being an invention of the police. But then again we have to look for a reason for that...

Probably my post would be more fitting in the thread about Hutch's identity, but after reading nearly every thread of Hutchinso here, I haven't yet come to this thread as it is so long and will want to read it in full and with consideration.

And, I am a newbie, so if my theories are total bullshit and all the facts speak against it, I am sorry, but I wasn't yet able to get every little information about everything. These are just my thoughts and my thoughts about how the puzzle Hutchinson could clear up a little as this man is a real puzzle to me.
I can just cite an important philosophist on this matter: I know that I don't know anything.

[Ben]

Hello Tresschen, and welcome!

I think, that if Hutch was the ripper, he wouldnīt have gone to the press. He wouldnīt have put so much contradicting information in his statements

Why not?

If he believed that his initial statement contained several grey areas which, if left unexplained, could precipitate some extremely awkward questions, his press contributions could very well have taken the form of "tidying up" those grey areas before those questions were asked. By approaching the press, he also ensured that press and public would once again be clamouring after the original generic scapegoat; the conspicuous Jewish outsider with a suspicious looking black package. The wider the audience for that myth, the more the objective of deflecting suspicion in a false direction is fulfilled.

Could be have made a few careless contradictions over the man's appearance in the process? Yes, easily, but they were very unlikely to have been deliberate, and would instead have been a natural by-product of a lie being over-burdeneded by too much detail. In that respect, it doesn't quite follow that "if he had invented it, he would have known what he had invented" He'd recall as much as he could, yes, but if you overcomplicate and overfurnish a lie, it is bound to slip up in the re-telling, courtesy of its excess baggage.

If we reject the above reasoning, we get into this rather awkward position of arguing that the more his statements contradicted eachother, the less suspicious he becomes, whereas logically the reverse should follow. For what it's worth, I'd be surprised if you were able to repeat an incredibly detail-rich lie with exactitude from one day to the next. You say you would have written it down for extra security, but stationary may well have been a luxury unavailable to a lodger such as Hutchinson.

On a more basic level, though; I'm not sure where it was ever suggested that Hutchinson must have been an incredibly skilled liar. The fact that a person may have had an especially pressing reason to lie - such as self-preservation - doesn't actually bestow upon that person any extra lying prowess.

... one of Mary's admirers, who realized, when Lewis made her statement that he had been seen and ran to the police to tell a good lie why he was there. He could have seen Mr. Astrahkan, but he embellished the story and probably didn't saw much after all.

Okay, but in this scenario, what would be the real reason for him being there? You say he told a "good lie why he was there", and I'm inclined to agree, but if he told the lie, what really prompted him to loiter fixatedly outside her room in the small hours of a dismal November morning? You can easily "admire" someone without enduring such obviously extreme discomfort, so it may be inferred that this admiration must have been a little beyond the norm.

Probably he was even seen by somebody else later that night which convinced the police that it wasnīt him

I'd have to observe that this is extremely unlikely. If he really did loiter outside Kelly's room when Lewis noticed him at 2:30am, and really did have a concrete alibi for the time of her murder (which was open to serious dispute anyway) why on earth did he bother with the excuse that he was "walking around all night" (the only activity that couldn't be verified or contradicted), rather than avoiding any question of potential suspicion by telling police where he really was around the "Oh murder" time frame?

If you think about it, the possibility of being recongised by Lewis becomes completely irrelevent if he had an alibi. The type of person who had a legimate reason to fear being recognised by Sarah Lewis is logically more likely to be someone who didn't have an alibi for their whereabouts around the (assumed) time of death for Mary Kelly.

The confused date hypothesis does not satisfactorily explain - for me at least - the fact that Hutchinson came forward and admitted to standing and waiting for someone to come out of Miller's Court at 2:30am on the night of the murder, as soon as it became public knowledge that Sarah Lewis had reported someone doing precisely that.

Another possibility is that he was an alias, someone who gave a important hint to the police, but after following the hint, there was not much to it anymore.

You don't "discredit" a witness and then use weaker witness for identity efforts (as they appear to have done with Hutchinson) purely on the grounds that the evidence of your star witness isn't delivering the goods. If nothing was coming of the evidence in the immediate aftermath of the Miller's Court murder, it was essential to persevere with that witness evidence. The indications that the police didn't do any such thing is a strong indication that the "discrediting" process had more to do with a lack of a viable "Mr. Astrakhan" suspect.

And, I am a newbie, so if my theories are total bullshit and all the facts speak against it

No, they weren't bullshit at all, and I hope you don't object too stenuously to my feedback!

All the best,
Ben

[Tresschen]

I understand your idea of the grey areas he didn`t want to leave out, but why not go with it to the police and tell them? The public would be informed sooner or later by them. But to go to the press which can be more interrogative than the police and to show one's face in public, I think this is something I for once would try to avoid in this situation, especially when with doing that I betray the faith the police put in me. After all I would know that the most important thing is that the police believed me.
And the other thing is: If Hutch knew he was a bad liar, he would have tried to keep his lie as easy as possible. If I were to get myself out of jail, I would invent a lie, which would be more believable than Hutchinsons. I would not invent things I most surely couldnīt see at night and I would stick with some little important characteristics and not invent more and more and more...
And although Hutch may not be the best liar, he would have know some of these little things he should think about, but especially these things he got wrong.
So I think he lied without having it all thought through in his mind and this would be something an attention seeker or a real witness who just wants a little extra attention probably would do, but no murderer or at least no murderer who has behaved rather clever before.


I think it not so unlikely to wait outside for somebody, if you have no place to go anyway for the night. Probably MJK even said something like: "If I am done, you can probably sleep in my flat, Hutch!"
If they were as close as Hutch states this could be possible.

And I donīt meant a real alibi. I just think while wandering through the streets later on, he probably greeted a policeman. It was forgotten by him and the policeman didnīt think much of it, but then he probably saw Hutchinson again and Hutch had an alibi. The rest of the night he could have been nowhere in particular, but when he just was seen by someone around the time of the scream "Murder", they would have thought him unlikely to be their man.

[Ben]

I understand your idea of the grey areas he didn`t want to leave out, but why not go with it to the police and tell them?

Probably because it would naturally appear suspicious if he returned to the police station with a few details he oddly neglected to mention in his police statement, especially if they took the form of "You're probably wondering why I didn't contact you earlier. Well...." They'd naturally assume he had simply returned once he'd had time to think up an excuse.

By approaching - or being approached by - the press itself, not only did he create the widest audience possible for his false suspect, he could also blame any embellishments on journalistic invention if ever the police quizzed him over the additions. Bear in mind that Hutchinson had no real way of knowing that the police believed him at that stage. It would have been quite improper for the police to inform the witnesses themselves whether they were believed of not, and of course Hutchinson could not have been privvy to Abberline's police report.

If Hutch knew he was a bad liar, he would have tried to keep his lie as easy as possible. If I were to get myself out of jail, I would invent a lie, which would be more believable than Hutchinsons.

But what if he didn't know he was a bad liar? If he had the arrogance and bravado to believe he was an excellent liar capable of duping the police, it could well have blinded him to the more "prudent" type of fictional account. People don't always have a well-rounded understanding of their own abilities to lie. If Hutchinson had given a more basic description of a less noteworthy individual to the police, he would effectively have eradicated his alleged reason for loitering where he did. As far as the police were concerned, it was Astrakhan's incongruous appearance that piqued Hutchinson's curiosity enough to prompt his 45-minute vigil. Remove that "interest" factor and you remove Hutchinson's police accepted reason for remaining there.

So I think he lied without having it all thought through in his mind and this would be something

He regurgitated the entire description with near exactitude days after his initial statement, with the odd contradiction and embellishment thrown in. It may not be perfect, and he may well have slipped up as a consequence of being overly confident, arrogant, or a bad liar, but he certainly thought it through.

but no murderer or at least no murderer who has behaved rather clever before.

Not really. At least there's nothing about any of the previous murders that tells us that Jack was likely to be an incredibly skilled liar.

I think it not so unlikely to wait outside for somebody, if you have no place to go anyway for the night. Probably MJK even said something like: "If I am done, you can probably sleep in my flat, Hutch!"

If the truth entailed so innocent an explanation, he could easily have said so to the police.

I just think while wandering through the streets later on, he probably greeted a policeman.

I'm afraid that isn't probable at all. If he met a policeman around a disputed time of death, it would have been imperative to mention it. We have to be incredibly careful about positing the existence of convenient people stationed around the district all ready to give him an alibi. This was next to impossible. There's no evidence that he bumped into a policeman, besides which there was uncertainty over the exact time of death. Greeting a policeman - which he almost certainly never did - would not have been an alibi.

All the best,
Ben

[Tresschen]

I think the fact that Cox and Lewis were up at the same hour, too, and just returned home, makes it not so unlikely, that someone saw him on the street. And I think the police was very convinced at the time that the murder happened, when the scream was heard. So for them the knowlegde that he had been at that moment somewhere else, would have been enough.
But I donīt believe this the likeliest possibility. In fact I am very compelled to think Hutchinson the murderer except for two things:
1. The police may have been not as good as todayīs police, but wasnīt dumbfolded either. So if they didnīt believe Hutch's story anymore, why didn't they regard him as a suspect. One can say what he wants, but I still believe that the police checked him and they disregarded him and Mr. Astrakhan as murderers. There must be a reason for it, I think.
2. The way he is lying as I have pointed out before. You can say what you want, but it may be the behaviour of a murderer, but it isnīt the behaviour one would expect from the ripper after all I have heard and read about him before.
3. Hutchinson (whoever of the many Hutchinson he was) lived for many years, but the ripper stopped entirely. I could believe the character we know as Jack the Ripper to stop murdering for a time, but not once and for all.
And all this convinces me that Hutchinson isnīt the ripper, even if it would be nice, if he was.

[Ben]

So for them the knowlegde that he had been at that moment somewhere else, would have been enough.

Ah, but there's no evidence that the police had any such knowledge, and we really can't just conjur up an alibi with no evidence. In all circimspection, he was very unlikely to have had one, or else he would have provided it when commuincating with police, as opposed to coming up with the only activity that couldn't be checked into a a substitute for an alibi - "walking about all night".

So if they didnīt believe Hutch's story anymore, why didn't they regard him as a suspect.

They may have done. We don't know. However, even if they did suspect him, there's no reason to assume that they ruled him out as a result of suspecting him. This is a crucial distinction that I've sought to reinforce ad nauseum. It is quite possibile to suspect someone but lack the evidence to rule them either in or out. It happens all the time, even today when policing in general has advanced over the course of a century. Gary Ridgeway was interviewed as a suspect after coming forward as a witness, but they released him through lack of evidence, not because they ruled him out.

Yes, we can observe that he was discredited as a witness - that much is borne out by the evidence, but no, that doesn't permit us to conclude for one moment that he was also dismissed as a suspect.

but it isnīt the behaviour one would expect from the ripper after all I have heard and read about him before.

You refer to the "way he was lying", but there's really nothing in his previous crimes that would permit us to conclude that he would have lied "differently" if faced with the sort of predicament that Hutchinson may have found himself in.

Hutchinson (whoever of the many Hutchinson he was) lived for many years, but the ripper stopped entirely.

I'm afraid we have no evidence for either assertion. If we don't know his identity, we can't possibly know whether or not he lived for "many years", and I'm strongly obligated to point out that it has never been proven that he stopped entirely after the Kelly murder. The incarceration, incapacitation or death scenario is one of the least problematic objections to Hutchinson's candidacy.

Best regards,
Ben

[Vingle]

Assuming for a moment the GH killed Kelly, his behaviour seems entirely reasonable for attempting to move suspicion from him to someone else, once he'd established he'd been seen, at 2.30am outside Miller's Court.

He doesn't come forward as a witness initially. When he does, he says he knew Kelly, was concerned about her with this chap, whom he goes on to describe in oddly minute detail. It sounds too good to be true.

I do not think it precludes GH from being Fleming based upon why Fleming was put into the institution. If Fleming was paranoid about being stopped rather than caught and that people/things were conspiring to stop him - it might not prevent him from going to the police.

If he weighs up the risks in being stopped and concludes there is a greater chance that he will be stopped if the populace look out for a poor gentile, rather than a rich, jew (particularly if it was the very poorness and gentileness that allowed him to bring the women into his confidence) - then approaching the police would have been the correct option in terms of probability. He more likely thinks his capture almost impossible at this point, he'd escaped at least CE and had ripped a woman to pieces in her own home.

He might look at the removal of opportunity as meaning he would have to take more risks and more likely to be caugfht in the act, more dangerous than going to the police with yet another dodgy story he knows the can't prove but casts doubt on the perpertrator. I believe he willhave heard of the main witness statements from the inquest by the time he goes to the police.

[caz]

Hi Vingle,

A slight problem here is that if the ripper did go to the police to try and put someone else in the frame, because he had now been seen once too often near his crime scenes, then the very act of coming forward must have played a pretty significant part in stopping his ripping habits, at least for the time being, if not forever.

Hi Ben,

If Hutch was ever suspected but couldn't be ruled out, was that not how a man would attain suspect status in this case, with his name retained on file in the hope that some fresh information might turn up to clear him or make him worth another look?

Or was it a case of "Well that's that then, nothing we can do about this one, so we'll have to forget him and move on"?

Love,

Caz
X

[Ben]

Hi Caz,

Good question. My guess is the former, although I'd hazard a tentative guess that a police force who had exhibited an undeniable preference for foreigners and/or lunatics and/or those with possible medical knowledge might not have been all that fussed about a local non-entity type of suspect anyway, after they realised that their suspicions against Hutchinson couldn't be translated into ruling him definitively in or out. This would account for his absence on docuements such as those penned by Macnaghten, for example

But all this based on the strictly hypothetical premise that Hutchinson was ever suspected, which is a whopping big "if".

All the best,
Ben