Mister Astrakhan's Moustache

[Simon Wood]

Hi Fisherman,

Small world.

In the late 60s I worked for Special Reporting at the Press Association in Fleet Street.

Regards,

Simon

[Ben]

Thanks for that useful tidbit, Simon.

Not to get too side-tracked, but I've always believed that Mrs. Kennedy was the individual who tried to pass off Sarah Lewis' experiences as her own. Since it was Star reporter who apaprently discovered her antics (without naming her specifically), it would seem that she was in contact with the press. She also gave conflicting accounts. Her Evening News interview on 10th November bears little resemblance to other accounts attributed to her.

All the best,
Ben

[Simon Wood]

Hi Ben,

My apologies.

Err in haste, repent at leisure . . .

Just to set the record straight, I should have said that the Mrs Kennedy story appeared in eleven newspapers and was word-for-word in just nine of them, all of whom reported that outside The Britannia Mrs Kennedy saw 1 man and 2 women [all unidentified]

The exceptions were The Evening News, 10th November, and The Times, 12th November 1888.

The Evening News reported that she saw—

1 man (who had earlier accosted Mrs Kennedy) and the deceased [man recognised, woman identified].

And The Times reported that she saw—

1 woman and 2 men [all unidentified].

Regards,

Simon

[perrymason]

The exceptions were The Evening News, 10th November, and The Times, 12th November 1888.

The Evening News reported that she saw—

1 man (who had earlier accosted Mrs Kennedy) and the deceased [man recognised, woman identified].

And The Times reported that she saw—

1 woman and 2 men [all unidentified].

Regards,

Simon

Hi Simon,

Doesnt that quote I emboldened support the notion that this was in fact Sarah Lewis's story....well at least the core of it?

All the best

[caz]

No, Caz, I never argued that his lies were unnecessary. Hutchinson may well have believed them to be necessary for the purposes of self-preservation…

Hi Ben,

So your argument is that Hutch may well have considered it necessary to give a story to the papers, and specialise in obvious wholesale invention while doing so, in order to reassure the police of his absolute integrity as a witness and stop them from smelling a rat?

Well, as I conceded in my previous post, anything’s possible. But you have yet to show why talking to the press at all was more likely to have been a neck-saving exercise than anything else. Or why telling elaborate lies to the press makes Hutch more likely to be an attention-seeking serial mutilator at the peak of his nocturnal ‘career’, than an attention-seeking fibber without a day job.

…No, I don't think Hutchinson was in pursuit of fame or money. What money could he ever expected to receive from the capture of an "intented" suspect"?

Ah, but to take a leaf out of your own book: “What Hutchinson May Well Have Believed”, he may well have thought the papers would pay for his remarkable tale, and the more detail he could “remember” the better his potential earnings. Eager journalists have never been above making promises they may not be able to keep to hand over hard cash for juicy information.

As for "badly written details", where's this all coming from. There's no evidence that anything was badly written, and the idea that journalistic confusion could suddenly mutate into wholesale invention of American Cloth, white buttons over button boots, and red stone seals dangling from a watch is clearly nonsense. It just seems like you're coming up with any excuse to make it look as though everyone else must be the bad guy before Hutchinson can be accused of dodginess. False witnesses embroider their false accounts all the time, but because you're so paranoid that it might lead to speculation that the false witness in question might also be the killer, you're more prepared to chalk it up to lying journalists or a police conspiracy…

Well you certainly kept your talent for comedy well hidden up until now. That’s just hilarious. I’m ‘paranoid that it might lead to speculation that the false witness in question might also be the killer’? I’d have to be blind, deaf and dumb as well to think that it hadn’t already led to endless amounts of speculation around here that a guilty Hutch publicly lied his way out of trouble and ran rings round everyone - while you are one of the select few who evidently saw straight through him.

It must be uniquely painful to have to spend such a vast amount of time, on hundreds of related and unrelated threads, trying and failing to show paranoid poster after paranoid poster how bloody obvious the solution was all along.

So your feeling is that Jack the Ripper would never act suspiciously? That the more suspicion a suspect is under the less likely he is to be Jack the Ripper?

Or am I missing something?

Hi Mort,

Sorry for the delay in responding.

No, my feeling is that if the ripper did go out of his way to court suspicion, eg by going in for wholesale invention while talking willingly to the papers, he was jolly lucky that the police didn't cotton on to any suspicious behaviour, or if they did, were clearly unable to use it against him.

Call me old-fashioned, but an opinion today, that someone in 1888 was acting very suspiciously right under police, press and public noses, but they just didn't pick up on it at the time, is not good evidence that he was likely to have murdered anyone.

Love,

Caz
X

[Ben]

Hi Caz,

But you have yet to show why talking to the press at all was more likely to have been a neck-saving exercise than anything else.

The fact that he came forward as soon as Lewis' loitering man story became public knowledge with a claim to have loitered outside the crime scene shortly before the murder is already a compelling indication that his appearance at the police station was part of a neck-saving exercise. Any alternative explanation must be dependant on the two events, following one another with such quick and convenient succession, being a random quirk of coincidence.

If his initial bacaon-saving effort - his statement to the police - was hastily contrived on account of the hasty inception of his inventions, it was more than likely to include a few oddities and oversights which, if left "unexplained", could result in some awkward questions. One way of avoiding that outcome would be to go over the story again - in this case, to the press - and this time ensure that those question marks are properly accounted for.

For example, why hadn't he approached the police when he first heard of the murder? This questioned is seemingly unanswered in the police statement, but he irons out that potential chink in his armour when speaking to the press - he "told a policeman about it but did not go to the police station".

Ah, but to take a leaf out of your own book: “What Hutchinson May Well Have Believed”, he may well have thought the papers would pay for his remarkable tale, and the more detail he could “remember” the better his potential earnings.

Possibly, but that could well have been the case whether he was the killer or not. If he was purely interested in money and publicity with no thought of bacon-saving, we're still confronted with that unsettling "coincidence" that he came forward with a "I was there because..." account as soon as it transpired that an independent witness had described someone loitering outside a murder location.

I’m ‘paranoid that it might lead to speculation that the false witness in question might also be the killer’?

What I mean is that you've so entrenched yourself in arguments with me on the subject of Hutchinson that it now appears you're prepared to grasp at any implausible nonsense - such as the police conspiring with the press to invent details in a witness statement that were never there - if it means you can somehow use it against the Hutchinson-as-killer theory.

Call me old-fashioned, but an opinion today, that someone in 1888 was acting very suspiciously right under police, press and public noses, but they just didn't pick up on it at the time, is not good evidence that he was likely to have murdered anyone.

I can think of a better expression than "old-fashioned" for someone who is prepared to accept that an individual who was "acting very suspiciously" is actually likely to be innocent precisely because of their suspicious behaviour. Mort's point is a good one; are you seriously suggesting that Hutchinson's suspect candidacy is lessoned because he was suspicious?

Best regards,
Ben

[caz]

If his initial bacaon-saving effort - his statement to the police - was hastily contrived on account of the hasty inception of his inventions, it was more than likely to include a few oddities and oversights which, if left "unexplained", could result in some awkward questions. One way of avoiding that outcome would be to go over the story again - in this case, to the press - and this time ensure that those question marks are properly accounted for.

Hi Ben,

So carefully crossing all the t’s and dotting all the i’s naturally involved going in for yet more ‘wholesale invention’ (to use your own phrase), but publicly this time, making the story even 'sexier' for his readers than he had just made it for the police? Which quickly resulted, as far as we know, in the police using his publicity-seeking rot to wrap their fish and chips.

If he was purely interested in money and publicity with no thought of bacon-saving, we're still confronted with that unsettling "coincidence" that he came forward with a "I was there because..." account as soon as it transpired that an independent witness had described someone loitering outside a murder location.

Yes, but he really could have been there without murdering anyone, just like umpteen others in the vicinity at various different times that night. It’s not as if we know with any precision what time the killer entered and left that room. Hutch may simply have been hoping to kip down with Mary, but found her not there or with company. So what’s wrong with him taking advantage of having been there at all that night, in order to claim he saw a man actually entering the murder room (whether he saw anyone or not)? He could have come forward to kill two birds with one stone without killing anyone at all: “I was there because… and that makes me your star witness”. There is no hint that he was keeping fingers and toes tightly crossed all the time he was feeding his public more and more elaborate porkies, lest anyone should finally accuse him of taking the p and send for Lewis, Lawende and co and Long to take a long look at him.

Mort's point is a good one; are you seriously suggesting that Hutchinson's suspect candidacy is lessoned because he was suspicious?

But that’s the point, Ben: for whatever reason, his behaviour was very clearly not considered suspicious by a police force under the severest pressure to find the man who was there in Miller’s Court to commit another murder and could kill again at any time. If anyone did suspect Hutch, they disobeyed your rules and failed to record the fact or pass it on to their colleagues to record. They certainly failed to get anything positive on him from previous witnesses - the very thing you claim Hutch’s behaviour was designed to prevent.

It’s a paradox, Ben. You argue that Hutch’s behaviour was designed not to arouse anyone’s suspicions (and you point to the fact that he didn’t become a suspect as an indication that he tried and succeeded), while at the same time you need his actions to be self-evidently as suspicious as all hell.

Since his “cunning plan” to appear as innocent as the day is long was not the spectacular failure it thoroughly deserved to be on that basis, everyone working on the case must have beaten him hands down in the moronic department, and he could have slapped a kidney and a bloody knife on the desk, together with a DVD of himself grinning by each of the bodies, and still not been regarded as a bit dodgy.

Or something else was going on here that they knew about and we don’t.

Love,

Caz
X

[Ben]

Hi Caz,

So carefully crossing all the t’s and dotting all the i’s naturally involved going in for yet more ‘wholesale invention’ (to use your own phrase), but publicly this time, making the story even 'sexier'

I never said anything about a conscious desire to make his account "sexier". I've argued that he was taking additional precautionary measures in the event that any awkward questions or unexplained anomalies arose from his initial statement to the police, and the press was the ideal vehicle to acheive this, especially if if also meant that his invented suspect would enjoy widespread circulation, with the public once again clamouring for the capture of a surly-looking Jewish outsider rather than a local nobody.

Yes, but he really could have been there without murdering anyone, just like umpteen others in the vicinity at various different times that night.

Of course. But someone clearly did, and it wasn't as if the actions and movements of the man seen by Sarah Lewis didn't acquire a certain suspicious resonance in light of the fact that the victim just happened to murdered as little as an hour or so later in the very court that he appeared to be monitering. Before Hutchinson arrived on the scene with his tall tale of a scary man, the loitering individual was the last suspect recorded in association with Kelly's death, and it's surely no coincidence that other serial killer's have resorted to a strategy of loitering surveillance prior to killing indoors (Bundy, Rader, Napper etc).

Whoever he was, he must be regarded as a suspicious individual in the context of Kelly's murder. As soon as it became public knowledge that this suspicious individual had been seen, Hutchinson came forward with not just a claim to have been that individual (in effect), but with an extremely dubious story that supposedly exonerates him, and with an alternative "suspicious" person thrown in for good measure. If he was simply a publicity-seeker who wasn't there, it must be regarded as astonishing that his lie just happened to coincide with the cirumstances of a real person seen at the scene, doubly so when we consider that Hutchinson's publicity-grabbing ploy didn't even include an alibi for where he really was at the time of the murder, i.e. after he left the court.

It would be much less astonishing if Hutchinson was the man in question, realized he'd been seen, and came up with a story that legitimized his loitering presence and deflected suspicion in a false direction.

But that’s the point, Ben: for whatever reason, his behaviour was very clearly not considered suspicious by a police force under the severest pressure to find the man who was there in Miller’s Court to commit another murder and could kill again at any time.

We don't know whether he was suspected or not. If he wasn't suspected, and he was the murderer, then the ploy obviously worked and he was lucky to get away with being ruled out simply as a false witness. If they did suspect him, then no, it certainly doesn't mean that "they disobeyed your rules and failed to record the fact or pass it on to their colleagues to record" since the full "record" is not available to us. Either way, this wouldn't have exonerated him either since there was unlikely to have been any concrete evidence to rule him either in or out.

It’s a paradox, Ben. You argue that Hutch’s behaviour was designed not to arouse anyone’s suspicions while at the same time you need his actions to be self-evidently as suspicious as all hell.

Not really. Yes, his actions were suspicious, but they may not have been considered so to an 1888 police force with no experience of serial killers and their behaviour. Either way, there's no justfiable leap from "Hutchinson was suspicious" to "...that means he's innocent".

Best regards,
Ben

[caz]

Yes, his actions were suspicious, but they may not have been considered so to an 1888 police force with no experience of serial killers and their behaviour.

I hear you, Ben. Now if only you could find a time machine and go back to inform the 1888 police force of their complete failure to note the tell-tale signs of a liar and likely murderer - and then report back to us how they responded.

I don't think you'd like their response but I'm pretty sure I would.

Love,

Caz
X

[Ben]

I think they'd be a little mollified, though, when I remind them that a century's worth of knowledge of serial killers has elapsed since the murders.

[Chava]

The Star reports that Hutchinson's evidence 'has now been discredited'. The Star does seem to have the best contacts in the case, which doesn't surprise me. And I don't know if the journalists on the board would agree, but to me 'discredited' is quite a strong word.

The other thing that interests me is Hutchinson's relationship with the press. He's the only witness that sees a victim actually take the killer home with her. His eye-witness description is complete in every detail. I would expect the press to be all over him like a bad rash, but there's no evidence of this whatsoever. He is covered in the first couple of days after he turns up, but covered at a distance. There are no exclusive interviews or non-exclusive interviews or anything of that nature. I can understand the cops keeping him as much under wraps as they can in a case that's leaking like a sieve. But after a few days (1) he's cut loose and (2) the press don't go near him. Whatever the cops told the press about him had to be extremely convincing. Especially since the police hadn't bought themselves a ton of goodwill with their conduct of the investigation.

I have a strong suspicion that, after a couple of boring and irritating nights spent prancing around Whitechapel in the small hours without so much of a sniff of a reward, no chance of a few pints being bought and the unenticing prospect of doing this every bloody night for the foreseeable future, Hutchinson himself may have owned up to having concocted the whole story. I can't think what else would 'discredit' him so completely and so quickly with the press as well as the police. And I also believe that this embarrassing confession would never have found its way into the files. Not after all those senior coppers went on record as enthusiastically believing him.

[caz]

Hi Chava,

You could well be right. Of course, it would be an upright and very restrained copper who would not have wanted to give this joker hell for causing the force such embarrassment, not to mention wasting their precious time and even more precious resources, chasing a shadow while they could have been chasing the real killer.

Had Jack struck again while they were out following Hutch the Piper and dancing to his tune, he would have been in the clear as a potential ripper suspect, but the police would have been forgiven for making him suffer for it.

What police force, even in 1888, would be considered worthy of the name if they couldn't imagine a single sinister reason why a man might 'concoct' a story about the last man to be seen with a murder victim?

We are not getting the whole story - the more this is debated, the more that seems obvious to me.

Love,

Caz
X

[Ben]

Hi Chava,

It's not impossible that Hutchinson eventually claimed to have invented the whole thing, and was dismissed as a bogus witness and nothing more for that reason. I doubt, though, that he'd have peed on his own bonfire in such a fashion because of his disappointment over not receiving a reward. If the suspect was complete invention, he could never have benefitted financially from the capture of a completely invented suspect.

Best regards,
Ben

[Chava]

What police force, even in 1888, would be considered worthy of the name if they couldn't imagine a single sinister reason why a man might 'concoct' a story about the last man to be seen with a murder victim?

Hi Caz!

The problem is that we don't know what they thought about Hutchinson. He appears like magic, and disappears the same way. And I am convinced he disappears out of the notes because something twigged the police that he was untrustworthy and his 'eye-witness' statement was bs, but also twigged them that he wasn't involved in the Kelly killing. This could be as simple as a copper doing his due diligence and checking Hutch's story and finding out that Hutch wasn't staying at the VH that night, but was seen, say in Romford by credible witnesses. If he's checked and found to have been lying about the VH or whatever, I can't imagine they wouldn't look at him hard for the Kelly murder and by extension the others. That would be the dumbest thing imaginable. It's remotely possible they just kicked him out without checking him out, but I don't think even the Keystone Kops would have done that in such circumstances.

What's really bothering me is that his statement stayed in the files although he was clearly disbelieved quite soon after making it. If I was a novelist, I would be writing a scene where Inspector Plod, who is not a pal of Inspector Abberline, makes sure that the statement remains, along with Abberline's side notes. Just for jolly, as it were.

[Ben]

Hi Chava,

And I am convinced he disappears out of the notes because something twigged the police that he was untrustworthy and his 'eye-witness' statement was bs

Yes, that's more than likely what happened.

...but also twigged them that he wasn't involved in the Kelly killing.

Ah, no, this wasn't very likely to have happened.

A discredited witness is rarely, if ever, tantamount to a discredited suspect, and in Hutchinson's case, it would have been nigh on impossible to rule him out, even if they did suspect him, and we've no evidence that they did. If he wasn't murdering anyone on any of the five murders dates and times, the chances are very strong indeed that he was asleep in the Victoria Home, which was beyond verification or contradiction anyway. Positing the existence of some imaginary "alibi" for some fleeting moment in the ungodly small hours of a particular night, and then claiming it was conveniently lost to history, is obviously fallacious theorizing.

While it's important to acknowledge the possibility that he may have been suspected at some stage, we must exercise very strong caution in avoiding the trap of thinking that he must have been ruled out as a suspect purely on the grounds that he may have been considered one at some stage.

Regards,
Ben