Joran Van der Hutchinson?

[Fisherman]

Ben:

"yes, I am suggesting that he was dropped as a reliable witness “on the grounds of a suspicion that he was lying”, and if you think for one moment that there’s anything even vaguely unusual about that, then I'd strongly encourage you to read up on the cases of Matthew Packer and Emmanuel Violenia, both of whom were “dropped as reliable witnesses” despite the fact that nobody was able to prove that they both lied."

But that, Ben, just brings us back to the fact that neither Packer nor Violenia would have made the suspects list. Hutch is and remains another story altogether, and makes for a very bad comparison with the afore mentioned gentlemen. No matter if they were lying through their teeth, the coppers would not feel that they were potential Ripper material.

"IF they dismissed him as a publicity-seeker, as appears likely, they cannot have made the connection between Hutchinson and Mr. Wideawake"

Wait a sec here, Ben - are you saying that they did NOT connect him with Lewis´ loiterer ...? Or is my English letting me down?

"We know the reason. Hutchinson was dropped because, as reported in the Daily Echo of 13th November, the "authorities" no longer trusted his account. "

But Ben, then we need to ask ourselves WHY they did not trust it - and the answer to that question may very well be that someone gave the story away, exactly like Claire suggests. If they were informed by an external source that his story was bogus, then they would be left with a worthless story - which is how the Star heads it´s article on it:

” the Nov 15 Star:

WHITECHAPEL.
Worthless Stories Lead the Police on False Scents" , grouping Packers ravings with Hutch´s ditto.

The best,
Fisherman

[Ben]

Hi all,

Just a quick but importmant ammendment to my post above:

"But if we’re dealing with a police force that continued to believe that Hutchinson was where he said he was but lied about his reasons for being there, then it naturally follows that they’d have grounds for suspicion"

Correction in bold.

All the best,
Ben

[Rubyretro]

Fish -I will leave the pure facts to Ben and Garry (not that I don't know the Facts, but they have been stated and I don't need to restate them -and Ben and Garry are the experts).

Still since you brought up alibis, -ponder this : Hutch was supposed to be in Romford the night of Kelly's murder.

If he hadn't seen Mrs Lewis, and worried about how much info she might have given the Police about him, everybody would simply have assumed that he hadn't even been in London at the time of the killing.

The Police were looking for one killer for the murders -so maybe he had a similar alibi for one/some of the other killings ? Being 'out of town' woulld be a good one.

If you can speculate on the hypothetical existance of alibis and Police checks ( no CTT cameras), then I can speculate too that.. he might have had alibis..but they might not have mean't much (except when weighted into the equation that the police were
looking more for a wild eyed jewish butcher).

[Ben]

“Ben, you are suggesting that Hutchinson was dropped as a reliable witness by a police force embarrassed by their own credulity, simply on the grounds of a suspicion that he was lying?”

No.

I never suggested that the police were “embarrassed by their own credulity” or that they had any reason to be. There’s no dishonour is reassessing a previously held opinion, especially if the initial thumbs-up was passed on a few hours (if that) after Hutchinson first made an appearance. But yes, I am suggesting that he was dropped as a reliable witness “on the grounds of a suspicion that he was lying”, and if you think for one moment that there’s anything even vaguely unusual about that, then I'd strongly encourage you to read up on the cases of Matthew Packer and Emmanuel Violenia, both of whom were “dropped as reliable witnesses” despite the fact that nobody was able to prove that they both lied. The fact is that the police didn’t need proof in order to ditch them – they just arrived at an educated consensus.

“I don't believe for a moment that anyone would say, 'You know, we have this guy who saw the victim with a potential suspect shortly before we believe the victim was murdered. Still. Sounds a bit dodgy, really. Too good to be true, in many ways. Hmm.”

I do wish people wouldn’t do those long invented dialogue things. No, I’ve just finished explaining why I agree, wholeheartedly, that the above does not make for a credible suggestion. If they considered him dodgy but still cast him in the role of Lewis’ loiterer, of course it’s inevitable that he’d end up being suspected. My point was that IF they dismissed him as a publicity-seeker, as appears likely, they cannot have made the connection between Hutchinson and Mr. Wideawake, and quite honestly, anyone still claiming that the police must have been short on brain cells (or some similar exaggerated terminology) to overlook something so obvious need only consider that the connection didn’t seem to have been made until 100 years after the event.

So that’s dealing with the premise that the police dismissed him as a timewaster a la Packer.

But if we’re dealing with a police force that continued to believe that Hutchinson was where he said he was but lied about being there, then it naturally follows that they’d have grounds for suspicion, and in that event, it’s highly doubtful that they were in a position to convert those suspicions into a concrete conclusion: guilty or innocent. It didn’t happen with a vast number of suspects involved with the ripper case, and I don’t know why we’re expecting miracles with Hutchinson. The Green River Killer, Gary Ridgway, was under suspicion for a long time, and for good reason, but it wasn’t until the advent of DNA that it became possible to convert those suspicions into proof.

I don’t understand why we can’t just accept the boring reality that the police had little to go on, and were to a large extent forced to rely on their suspicions only. An acceptance of this obvious proven reality is surely preferable to positing imaginary alibis (events, places and people!) and similar fill-in-the-blanks exercises. There’s really no need, since the simplest explanation, albeit the least interesting, is that whatever the police thought at the time, they were not necessarily in a position to know.

It was the police, incidentally, not Hutchinson who recorded his residence at the Victoria Home, which suggests that this detail, at least, had been verified.

what other possible reason could the police have to drop Hutchinson as a witness if not for evidence he was somewhere else, or a retraction on his part?

We know the reason. Hutchinson was dropped because, as reported in the Daily Echo of 13th November, the "authorities" no longer trusted his account. That's the reason we have in evidence, thus eradicating the need to invent an alternative "reason", and it's exactly what happened with other bogus witnesses.

Hope I helped, even if God couldn't.

All the best,
Ben

[Abby Normal]

So, let me get this straight (God help me). Ben, you are suggesting that Hutchinson was dropped as a reliable witness by a police force embarrassed by their own credulity, simply on the grounds of a suspicion that he was lying? And this suspicion, you argue, occurs because of a naivete about serial killers, because policing was relatively new?

I don't understand that at all. I don't believe for a moment that anyone would say, 'You know, we have this guy who saw the victim with a potential suspect shortly before we believe the victim was murdered. Still. Sounds a bit dodgy, really. Too good to be true, in many ways. Hmm. You know what? Best drop him as a witness. Tell the papers he led us astray.' 'Alright then, guv, I'll give em a yell. I mean, it's only one of the biggest bloody murder cases in the history of London, after all.' It's not plausible.

In any case, formal policing and investigative work may have been in its infancy, but simple human suspicion certainly wasn't. If someone thought Hutchinson was dodgy as a witness, it strikes me that a person of average mind might then consider the reasons for that to be his potential as a suspect. Grief, anyone with a gin-addled brain cell would wonder whether a chap who said he had seen the victim immediately before her death mightn't possibly have something to do with it.

You note, too, his status as a lone (or solitary--sorry, can't scroll across the pages for the precise word) doss house lodger. But we just don't know that. There is only his statement that that was where he was staying--but there is every chance that he was not. I think Fish's scenario is plausible--sure, we don't have evidence, but we don't have evidence about very much at all. I think it's quite possible that Mrs Hutchinson, whether mother or wife, rolled her eyes, clipped silly Hutch round the ear and hightailed it over to the nearest police station to make sure that her idiot son/husband didn't end up in the frame for something she knew he hadn't done, because XYZ people had seen him elsewhere. Sure, no evidence for it. Sure, follow-up questions would have been asked. But given the ra-ra-ra police had given to Hutchinson when he first showed up, burying the whole matter quietly would be very much their tactic, no?

Quite seriously, in the absence of the complete implausibility of Mr. Astrakhan (which is untenable), or another man coming forward as the loiterer (possible, I guess, but unlikely, as you note), what other possible reason could the police have to drop Hutchinson as a witness if not for evidence he was somewhere else, or a retraction on his part?

Hi Claire
what other possible reason could the police have to drop Hutchinson as a witness if not for evidence he was somewhere else, or a retraction on his part?[/QUOTE]

Maybe they did not "drop" him as a witness, maybe he just sort of petered out.

[claire]

So, let me get this straight (God help me). Ben, you are suggesting that Hutchinson was dropped as a reliable witness by a police force embarrassed by their own credulity, simply on the grounds of a suspicion that he was lying? And this suspicion, you argue, occurs because of a naivete about serial killers, because policing was relatively new?

I don't understand that at all. I don't believe for a moment that anyone would say, 'You know, we have this guy who saw the victim with a potential suspect shortly before we believe the victim was murdered. Still. Sounds a bit dodgy, really. Too good to be true, in many ways. Hmm. You know what? Best drop him as a witness. Tell the papers he led us astray.' 'Alright then, guv, I'll give em a yell. I mean, it's only one of the biggest bloody murder cases in the history of London, after all.' It's not plausible.

In any case, formal policing and investigative work may have been in its infancy, but simple human suspicion certainly wasn't. If someone thought Hutchinson was dodgy as a witness, it strikes me that a person of average mind might then consider the reasons for that to be his potential as a suspect. Grief, anyone with a gin-addled brain cell would wonder whether a chap who said he had seen the victim immediately before her death mightn't possibly have something to do with it.

You note, too, his status as a lone (or solitary--sorry, can't scroll across the pages for the precise word) doss house lodger. But we just don't know that. There is only his statement that that was where he was staying--but there is every chance that he was not. I think Fish's scenario is plausible--sure, we don't have evidence, but we don't have evidence about very much at all. I think it's quite possible that Mrs Hutchinson, whether mother or wife, rolled her eyes, clipped silly Hutch round the ear and hightailed it over to the nearest police station to make sure that her idiot son/husband didn't end up in the frame for something she knew he hadn't done, because XYZ people had seen him elsewhere. Sure, no evidence for it. Sure, follow-up questions would have been asked. But given the ra-ra-ra police had given to Hutchinson when he first showed up, burying the whole matter quietly would be very much their tactic, no?

Quite seriously, in the absence of the complete implausibility of Mr. Astrakhan (which is untenable), or another man coming forward as the loiterer (possible, I guess, but unlikely, as you note), what other possible reason could the police have to drop Hutchinson as a witness if not for evidence he was somewhere else, or a retraction on his part?

[Abby Normal]

If he came to the realization that he had been seen by Sarah Lewis and feared that, like Lawende before her, Sarah's inquest testimony had been underplayed as part of a deliberate police strategy, it is possible that he came forward in order to provide an innocent explanation for his having been sighted close to a crime scene at a time critical to a Ripper murder. Accordingly, his story concerning Kelly's affluent pick-up would have been an attempt to misdirect the police investigation, thereby leaving himself in the clear and the police searching for a nonexistent suspect.

Regards.

Garry Wroe.

Bingo.

And this behaviour would be consistant with an earlier attempt to throw off the police, after having been seen by jewish looking witnesses, with the writing of the GSG.

[Fisherman]

Let´s just say that we see things VERY differently, Ben - I think, for example that a "reduced importance" is a wording that tallies extremely well with the press standing with their pants down, as I have stated before: Don´t let on that we have been made fools of, just drop it.

And that, bu the way, is what I am doing now.

The best,
Fisherman

[Ben]

Hi Fish,

“But that would add up to an verdict of: "Aha, you were lying about what you did loitering outside Miller´s Court! Oh well, I guess you were just after the publicity then".”

Oh no, not at all. Had Hutchinson been dismissed as a publicity-seeker, the verdict was more likely to have been “Aha, you were lying about loitering outside Miller’s Court!” in which case, it wouldn’t be at all unfathomable that he was dismissed as a publicity-seeker. Just to avoid confusion, I agree entirely that if – and it must remain a big “if” - the police felt that Hutchinson was the man seen by Lewis AND lied about his reasons being there, they couldn’t possibly have accused him of mere time-wasting, and would almost certainly have treated him with suspicion. If they didn’t connect Hutchinson with Lewis’ loiterer – and strictly speaking, there’s no evidence that they did* – the publicity-seeker was the logical solution for the police to have arrived at simply because they were the group with which they had become most familiar (i.e. as opposed to serial killers using diversionary tactics, for example).

“In such a case, I bet he would have been discarded in just a few words in the press, and never again mentioned by the police, not in any reports and not in any memoirs. Incidentally, this is EXACTLY what happened ...”

But that wasn’t what happened. The “few words in the press” were concerned with the problems the “authorities” had with the content of Hutchinson’s statement, and the fact that a “reduced importance” had been attached to him (and it) accordingly. No mention whatsoever of any proof that he lied arriving in the form of a cast-iron alibi from far-flung Banbury (or wherever), and if something of this nature had been discovered, it was obviously the salient point to mention. They merely suspected he was lying.

On a tangential note, I still consider it very unlikely that Hutchinson would falsely assume the identity of the Lewis' loiterer for reasons mentioned on page 3 of this thread.

All the best,
Ben

*Potentially revealing, in this regard, in Walter Dew's suggestion that Hutchinson got the wrong day!

[Fisherman]

Ben:
"I have no doubt that they did precisely that with all inconsistent and dodgy witnesses, Packer included, but that doesn’t mean Hutchinson was automatically assigned suspect-status as a result of that follow-up. More likely, he was dismissed as a two-a-penny publicity-seeker and given little thought afterwards."

But that would add up to an verdict of: "Aha, you were lying about what you did loitering outside Miller´s Court! Oh well, I guess you were just after the publicity then".
Let´s ponder the fact that Hutchinson was quite unique, Ben. By his own admission, the police could nail him to spot and time of the Kelly killing! And much as there were hundreds of loonies around professing to have taken part in the killings in one way or another, NONE of them made up the same sort of suspect that Hutch did.

"You’re arguing that Hutchinson MUST have been suspected, and that he MUST have been cleared as a result of those suspicions, and that it MUST be because of some alibi that he MUST have found at 3:30am in the form of some other insomniac at the Victoria Home or on the streets during his walkabout."

Hmm, let´s get this straight:

No, I am not saying that he must have been a suspect. That only applies if the police could ascertain that he was not telling he truth. In such a case, then yes, he would most certainly have fallen under suspicion, without a doubt. But if his story was cracked by an external source or by himself, providing an alibi, then he would never even have gotten around to becoming a suspect. In such a case, I bet he would have been discarded in just a few words in the press, and never again mentioned by the police, not in any reports and not in any memoirs. Incidentally, this is EXACTLY what happened ...
Further on, his dire need to find an insomniac at the Victoria home only arises if we are sure that he WAS the loiterer. If he was in Banbury or Cropredy - different story altogether! And such a thing, when corroborated by the accomodating people in Banbury or Cropredy, would of course have resulted in him not falling under suspicion, and thus we would get a picture where neither press or police ... well, you get the drift, Ben!

"My point was that Abberline would have considered the Jack-the-Ripper phenomenon to be quite out-of-the-ordinary, and that consequently, he may have expected the perpetrator to be equally “out-of-the-ordinary” – an expectation that may well have encompassed his appearance."

Like I hinted at in my post to Ruby - Abberline had seen a lot, Ben. He would have known that the days of Géricault belonged to the past.

"Agree to disagree methinks!"

Excellent suggestion, Ben. I have had the audacity to use the two words "Wescott" and "wrong" on an adjacent thread, so I will have my hands full at any rate.

The best,
Fisherman

[Ben]

Hi Fish,

“If the police got wind of Hutch having lied, then they would have been a both bad and naîve police force not to follow up on him.”

“Follow up” – yes, I have no doubt that they did precisely that with all inconsistent and dodgy witnesses, Packer included, but that doesn’t mean Hutchinson was automatically assigned suspect-status as a result of that follow-up. More likely, he was dismissed as a two-a-penny publicity-seeker and given little thought afterwards. You say that neither Packer nor Violenia were ever considered suspects, but there’s no evidence that Hutchinson was either, at least not by the contemporary police. If they dismissed him as a publicity-seeker who wasn’t even there when he claimed to be, they can’t also have subscribed to the view that he was spotted by another witness. If, on the other hand, they did make the connection between Hutchinson and Lewis’ loiterer but still treated his account as suspect, then yes, in this scenario, it’s far more likely that suspicion was later attached to him. Unfortunately, if the latter were true, the police would have struggled to convert those suspicions into a tangible result.

Even then it would be rather unlikely for a “still suspicious” Hutchinson to have found a place in memos written years after the murders, especially given his failure to conform to the type of suspect preferred by the police at the time, i.e. foreigners, “insane” people”, or those with connections to the medical and butchering professions. Certainly, if they suspected Hutchinson in the immediate aftermath of the Kelly murder, they would have used discreet surveillance to monitor his movements, and would not, accordingly, have related their suspicions to the papers.

“No, Hutchinson was in all probability a man that was dropped because the police KNEW that he would not have been Kelly´s killer.”

Incredibly unlikely.

Sorry, I can't agree with this one at all.

That would require positing the existence of all sorts of imaginary evidence that needs to exist in order to that theory to work. You’re arguing that Hutchinson MUST have been suspected, and that he MUST have been cleared as a result of those suspicions; that it MUST have happened as a result of some alibi that he MUST have found at 3:30am in the form of some other insomniac at the Victoria Home or on the streets during his walkabout. It’s all deeply unlikely, and far too dependent on filling in the blanks. The reality of “suspicions” in high profile police investigations, including this one, is that very few of them culminate in the firm establishment of guilt or innocence, that’s why we have so many ripper suspect whose innocence cannot be proved despite their having been “suspected” by the police.

We even learn from the press that a "reduced importance" had been attached to Hutchinson's account not because the police had proof that he was elsewhere, but because certain aspects of his account clearly did not add up in the minds of the "authorities".

“there must have been levels attached to Abberlines judgement of what and who could be expected phenomenons on that street and on that night”

My point was that Abberline would have considered the Jack-the-Ripper phenomenon to be very much out-of-the-ordinary, and that consequently, he may have expected the perpetrator to be equally “out-of-the-ordinary” – an expectation that may well have encompassed his appearance. He wouldn’t have ruled out the appearance of such an individual on the streets as “impossible” under ordinary circumstances, but there’s certainly no evidence that he considered it a common occurrence. This very issue was thrashed out here:

http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?t=4758&page=3

But this we can go on debating forever without reaching anywhere

Yes, that's my fear too, Fish. I feel like I'm in 2006 again. Agree to disagree methinks!

Best regards,
Ben

[Fisherman]

So, the smell and sight of Mary Kelly was what put Hutch in the clear? Abberline was so overcome with emotions that he forgot all he had learnt about police procedure? And all the villains he had put behind bars in the past all corresponded with this insight?

No, Ruby, I do not buy into this for a second. Like I said, the Met was anything but naîve. And though you agree with Garry and Ben, I am not equally sure that they agree with you on this. But let´s ask them!

The best,
Fisherman

[Rubyretro]

Fish -needless to say, I agree with Garry and Ben.

Still, I've said it before but it's worth repeating..you have to use your imagination to put those photos of Mary Kelly's body into 'reality'. Imagine the murder scene in Kelly's room (as witnessed by Abberline) in colour, with the smell of blood and offal beginning to go off...it might be 'speculation' but I don't think it's 'fantasy' to imagine the effect that scene must have had on Abberline, however "streetwise" he was.

I don't think that it's too wild a guess to think that he must have formed an opinion on Mary Kelly's murderer as not possibly being anyone 'normal'.
Yet as the title of this thread demonstrates, murderers like Van der Sleet
(and go and have look at the recorded TV interview of him) can come over as very cool and normal on the surface.

Abberline also took Hutch to see the body, although it seems incredible that a mere acquaintance would be able to identify anybody from what remained of Mary (not so with her ex-lover, Barnett). Maybe this was to check his reaction ? If Abberline did not consider Hutch a suspect, then we must assume that Hutch's reactions to the body appeared perfectly normal.

We don't know exactly WHY Abberline changed his mind about the veracity of Hutch's statement, nor do we know why he didn't consider him a suspect..
but I think that my explanation is as good as your 'concrete alibi'...and BOTH of us are speculating.

[Fisherman]

Ben:

"Firstly, Fish, it doesn't remotely stand to reason that it would have taken a "very naive police force" to have dismissed Hutchinson as a time-waster as opposed to considering him a potential suspect, even if that judgement was made in error. The fact of the matter is that policing in general was in its infancy in 1888, and they had no experience of serial crime. As such, we can hardly blame them if they failed to deduce that the killer approached the police of his own volition to seek an audience with the police. Publicity-seekers, by contrast, are the bane of any high profile police investigation, and with so many of them cropping up in the form of Packer, Violenia and others, it would have been more than understandable if the police had consigned Hutchinson to this category, even if was done so erroneously."

I beg to differ, Ben. If the police got wind of Hutch having lied, then they would have been a both bad and naîve police force not to follow up on him. That is an unescapable conclusion, I´m afraid. My contention, though, is that they were neither.
And when it comes to comparing with Packer and Violenia, let´s not loose out of sight the all-important fact that these two were never any suspects! If one of them had been spotted loitering around one of the murder spots at the crucial time, and given obviously false reasons for it, they would have received another interest altoghether by the Met! I think you will agree with that, Ben.

"Of course, it is entirely possible that Hutchinson did find himself under suspicion, but we needn’t expect any record of this to have survived, and in any event, there is a yawning chasm that needs to be bridged between suspecting someone, and having concrete evidence to rule them out conclusively as suspects. The very worst thing we can do is start positing the existence of imaginary evidence, such as “concrete alibis”. Hutchinson was ostensibly a solitary doss house resident – the chances of him having a concrete alibi at 3:30am are absurdly remote."

If, Ben, Hutch had fallen under suspicion, then he would have done so as the only existing suspect that could be proven to have hovered all over the murder place of a Ripper victim, for no accepted reason at all since he was discarded, and that at a stage when the Whitechapel killings was the high-profile case of the century. He would have been a young man who could not satisfy the police as to why he was around as Kelly was cut to pieces, simple as that.
If he was, do you believe it even remotely possible that the police would have opted for him being just a time-waster and thrown him in the bin? And if he was, is it reasonable to believe that this man would not have made any imprint AT ALL as a suspect in the police reports - let alone in the papers?

No, Hutchinson was in all probability a man that was dropped because the police KNEW that he would not have been Kelly´s killer. And it would seem that it did not take numerous interrogations, closely followed by the press, to find that out, for then we would have had it on line. The sequence as well as the outcome of it speaks very clearly for itself.

"It would have been more than sufficient to attach a severely “reduced importance” (ref 13th November article) to his account, especially given the nature of his press accounts, which included claims that could have been instantly disproved, such as the one involving a policeman he encountered on the Sunday, but who mysteriously neglected to alert his superiors about the Kelly sighting."

But that, Ben, would STILL have left us with a man who had a lot of explaining to do - and who was STILL let off the hook effortlessly, more or less, by the looks of it. Unless, of course, the police made him sweat it out thoroughly - but forgot to mention it in reports and memoirs, paralleling a likewise uninterested press. It does not make for a very credible picture. Not at all, in fact.

"Packer was dismissed not because anyone had procured concrete proof that he was lying, but because the police apparently arrived at the consensus opinion that he was, and I rather suspect that the same thing occurred in Hutchinson’s case"

If somebody says "I saw nobody" and follow it up with "I saw her and the killer", we may not necessarily be dealing with a conscious lie - but we are VERY sure that we are dealing with two uncomparable testimonies from the same source. And it does not alter the fact that Packer was not somebody tho whom a suspicion of being the Whitechapel killer would have attached - and THAT makes for an almighty difference!

"As for the Astrakhan issue, I doubt very much that Abberline’s initial endorsement of the account had anything to do with a prevalence of Astrakhan-types on the streets of Whitechapel."

I think it must have had. To deny it would be to accept that ANY type described by Hutchinson would have been accepted by Abberline; A circus acrobat, a Persian prince, a ghillie from river Dee, a leprechaun ... there must have been levels attached to Abberlines judgement of what and who could be expected phenomenons on that street and on that night. Then again, we do not know if Abberline was taken aback by Hutchs suggestion of Astrakhan. He may have asked about it without it having been recorded, of course. But the gist of the matter is that he did not feel it unreconcilable with the events of the night. And that, of course does not prove that he had ever seen a man like Mr A in Dorset Street, only that he allowed for it being possible. But this we can go on debating forever without reaching anywhere. It is a much more open question than the one about why the police would let a potential Ripper on the loose if they were not sure that he was in the clear.

The best, Ben!
Fisherman

[Ben]

...meaning that we are either dealing with a very naîve police force - or with surfacing evidence that made it obvious to the police as well as to the press that Hutch did not belong to the investigation.

Firstly, Fish, it doesn't remotely stand to reason that it would have taken a "very naive police force" to have dismissed Hutchinson as a time-waster as opposed to considering him a potential suspect, even if that judgement was made in error. The fact of the matter is that policing in general was in its infancy in 1888, and they had no experience of serial crime. As such, we can hardly blame them if they failed to deduce that the killer approached the police of his own volition to seek an audience with the police. Publicity-seekers, by contrast, are the bane of any high profile police investigation, and with so many of them cropping up in the form of Packer, Violenia and others, it would have been more than understandable if the police had consigned Hutchinson to this category, even if was done so erroneously.

Of course, it is entirely possible that Hutchinson did find himself under suspicion, but we needn’t expect any record of this to have survived, and in any event, there is a yawning chasm that needs to be bridged between suspecting someone, and having concrete evidence to rule them out conclusively as suspects. The very worst thing we can do is start positing the existence of imaginary evidence, such as “concrete alibis”. Hutchinson was ostensibly a solitary doss house resident – the chances of him having a concrete alibi at 3:30am are absurdly remote. It’s infinitely more likely that IF he were ever under suspicion, the police would not have been in a position to rule him in or out.

“The better argument would be that he grew suspicious of the differences between police report and press articles, when it came to Hutch´s description - but that would not be enough to dismiss him either”

It would have been more than sufficient to attach a severely “reduced importance” (ref 13th November article) to his account, especially given the nature of his press accounts, which included claims that could have been instantly disproved, such as the one involving a policeman he encountered on the Sunday, but who mysteriously neglected to alert his superiors about the Kelly sighting.

Packer was dismissed not because anyone had procured concrete proof that he was lying, but because the police apparently arrived at the consensus opinion that he was, and I rather suspect that the same thing occurred in Hutchinson’s case (with the exception of the "policeman" incident referred to above, of course).

As for the Astrakhan issue, I doubt very much that Abberline’s initial endorsement of the account had anything to do with a prevalence of Astrakhan-types on the streets of Whitechapel. I think it may owe more to a lack of familiarity with the nature of the crimes and the attendant expectation that such a criminal must be a far cry from the norm - in every sense, including physical.

All the best,
Ben