Joran Van der Hutchinson?

[Rubyretro]

[QUOTE]

One reason Hutchinson came forward after Kelly's murder,might be because there was in her case,a stronger association between them than he divulged.He admits giving her money

,

Quite ! Yet another good possible reason for Hutch coming forward after the MJK murder.

I also think it's likely that a previous poster was right, and if Hutch, with his
precarious income DID sometimes give Mary money, then it was unlikely to be from altruistic reasons, and more likely to be because he was a sometime customer.

JtR seems like someone close to his cash to me -carefully taking back the money that he paid the prostitutes (and probably any extra they had on them) and slipping off Annie's rings. So if he WAS Hutch, I don't think that he'd give Mary money for nothing.

Otherwise, I see that the Lewis witness statement is still being thrashed out:
I still don't agree with Garry and Ben that the Police never made the connection, as I think that they'd be far more interested in Wideawake Manif that were the case. I think that they accepted Hutch was the man Lewis saw, accepted that he was there for 'harmless' reasons, realised that he hadtotally embroidered his witness statement but did not think that made him the kiler due to a) the fact that he came forward voluntarily to place himself at Miller's Court b) gut reaction to the man c) testing his reaction to the body c) getting 'character' references from other people -they must have checked him out d) he didn't fit their profile e) they were looking for one killer for all the murders, and maybe they had reason to think that he couldn't have committed the others f) they may have watched him after that, but he never did anything suspicious.

Lewis's statement may be important to us as it cross references Hutch's, and gives ONE reason why he would have come forward, and why the murders then stopped, but whether the Police made a connection between Hutch and Wideawake is not hugely important :
what is important is (IF Hutch was JtR) what HIS reactions might be to Lewis's statement at the inquest, and if there are any believable reasons why he would put himself under the Police and Press 'spotlights' if he were the killer -and I think there are.

Hutch fits the profile of what we now know of Serial Killers, and if we're going to look at suspects close to the case, and not plump for Mr Unknown (my second favourite), in my opinion, he is still the best bet.

It remains a fact that MJK is the last of the C5, so if we ARE going to look for a suspect close to the case (and we know that Serial killers sometimes enjoy involving themselves in their own investigations, so it's perfectly reasonable to do so) and a logical reason why the killings stopped, MJK is a good place to start.

[Garry Wroe]

I think that the chances that the police would have missed the fact that a crucial - arguably the most crucial - witness suddenly DID offer a description, are completely non-existant. Arnold, Abberline, Nairn and Beck were all at the inquest, remember, and to even think that they would have listened to Lewis without noticing what she actually said ...? What were they doing? Playing Sinking ships? Knitting?

I wasn’t aware that Nairn attended the inquest, Fish, but given that Abberline and Beck gave evidence, can we be sure that they sat through the proceedings in their entirety? Although Stewart Evans would undoubtedly provide a more definitive insight in this context, my own feeling is that they would have waited in an ante-room until called to present depositions in the main court. If so, they wouldn’t have even heard Sarah Lewis’s inquest testimony.

Leaving that aside, however, I am puzzled by your seemingly unswerving faith in the infallibility of Abberline and his investigative compeers. Could this be the same Metropolitan Police Force that expunged the Goulston Street message and became embroiled in the Miller’s Court bloodhound farce?

I’m similarly puzzled by your contention that Sarah Lewis was viewed as ‘a crucial - arguably the most crucial – witness’. Whilst you and I may incline to such a view, Abberline most palpably did not, since unlike Lawende she was never sequestered and her inquest evidence was not withheld ‘in the interests of justice’.

As for your insistence that police would have picked up on Sarah’s post-statement description of Wideawake Man, it will be remembered that Hutchinson also embellished his police statement when speaking to the press. Crucially, he even asserted that he had wandered into Miller’s Court at 3:00am and stood directly outside Kelly’s room. This, of course, placed him at a crime scene at a time critical to Kelly’s death. Was he hauled in for further questioning as would most certainly be the case in any competent modern investigation? Did the police notice the implications of this statement and elevate him to the status of prime suspect? Seemingly not. In which case, I’m not in the least surprised that Sarah Lewis’s subsequent revelations regarding Wideawake Man appear to have slipped under the police radar.

Regards.

Garry Wroe.

[Ben]

I somehow knew you couldn’t resist a bit of “mud-wrestling” after all, Fish!

“There is absolutely NO evidence at all telling us that the four police officers, Abberline included, that were present at the inquest into Mary Kelly´s death noticed that one of the key witnesses - and there were VERY few of them, saying very little at that inquest! - actually changed her testimony dramatically”

Glad we agree on this, but for something so “dramatic”, isn’t it somewhat unusual that in all the Hutchinson threads that have passed since my participation on Casebook, the “dramatic” nature of Lewis’ change in testimony has only be noted now, on this thread? The more attention you pay to esoteric areas of interest within a case, the greater the chances of seemingly trivial details being invested with the significance that they may have warranted at the time, but which came to be overlooked on account of the fact that the putative "overlookers" in question were a heavily beleaguered police working on every lead associated with the case.

If the police overlooked the fact that Lewis had changed her testimony to incorporate an incredibly generic description, or at least paid it scant attention, it was because they were unlikely to have had records in front of them, at the inquest, of every police report in order to cross reference them with the inquest versions. If they made a note of every single mild contradiction or embellishment, they would have been swamped. In addition, if the police were focussing more on the immediately “suspicious” character in Lewis’ account – the Bethnal Green Road man – it’s somewhat inevitable that the other man mentioned received less attention. There is no evidence that the connection was never made. No police report addressing what you describe as a “dramatic” change in testimony, and perhaps even more tellingly, nothing from the press either, who were normally so quick to pick up on errant witnesses.

I’ve explained my reasons for suspecting that the police made no connection between the wideawake man and Hutchinson, so has Garry, and unless anyone is up for an exciting and repetitive stamina war, I see no reason for going into them again. The parsimonious assumption, given the total lack of evidence, is that they didn’t, in my view. I will reiterate, though, that I’ve never been insistent on this, and have acknowledged the merits of the alternative explanation that the connection was made, and Hutchinson suspected as a consequence. By the way, you say: “if we listen to the medical men involved”? Which doctors suggested a time of death of 3:30ish? Again we have Garry’s sensible suggestion that if the police were swayed by Bond’s 1.00am-2.00am time of death, they couldn’t realistically have considered the wideawake man “quite probably Jack the Ripper”.

“Such a suggestion - that the police would have followed up on his story in order to be able to confirm or dispell it”

…is entirely reasonable, and I agree that the police would have done precisely that – followed up his story as far as they were able to. What bothers me intensely, though, is the inability of others to accept that more often than not, in investigations such as these, the “following up” process does not usually deliver the goods. They can “check” up as far as they can, but the chances are (and the evidence indicates) that whatever they did or did not suspect or notice, the police were never in a position to secure proof one way of the other with regard to Hutchinson.

You make the accusation that those who refuse to conjure up scenarios, events, or lost reports must belong to the conspiracy to pin the knife on Hutchinson, when all we’re doing, in reality, is highlighting the total lack of evidence for any of these suggested events, and addressing the perfectly plausible and human capacity for oversight, as demonstrated time and again in criminal investigations. If Hutchinson’s candidacy as a possible killer were so easy to dismiss, nobody should have recourse to invented, zero-evidence scenarios.

I would suggest agreeing to disagree would be a sensible course of action, but somehow I don't see anyone willing to embrace such a suggestion. So we'll stick with the old rule; the longest post wins the argument.

Best regards,
Ben

[Fisherman]

Garry Wroe:

"I wasn’t aware that Nairn attended the inquest, Fish"

No? Here you go, Garry:

"Inquest: Mary Jane Kelly
Monday, November 12, 1888
(The Daily Telegraph, Tuesday, November 13, 1888)
Yesterday [12 Nov], at the Shoreditch Town Hall, Dr. Macdonald, M.P., the coroner for the North- Eastern District of Middlesex, opened his inquiry relative to the death of Marie Jeanette Kelly, the woman whose body was discovered on Friday morning, terribly mutilated, in a room on the ground floor of 26, Dorset-street, entrance to which was by a side door in Miller's-court.
Superintendent T. Arnold, H Division; Inspector Abberline, of the Criminal Investigation Department, and Inspector Nairn represented the police. The deputy coroner, Mr. Hodgkinson, was present during the proceedings."

...and we know that Beck was there, speaking at the inquest.

"given that Abberline and Beck gave evidence, can we be sure that they sat through the proceedings in their entirety? ... my own feeling is that they would have waited in an ante-room until called to present depositions in the main court. If so, they wouldn’t have even heard Sarah Lewis’s inquest testimony."

Maybe that is correct, Garry - I am not sure how these proceedings took place. One can, though, note that dr Blackwell, during the inquest into Stride´s death, stated that he could confirm dr Phillips on a matter, so he seemingly had heard the latter speak, pointing to at least these two men being dealt with in pair, instead of one by one.

Any which way, that is not the main point here, is it? The four police officers at the inquest as well as the rest of the Met, of course had a duty to gather all vital information, and since the inquest was printed in the papers all over London, the information simply cannot have been overlooked. It´s a complete non-starter as far as I can see.
And I really do not think that the graffiti and the bloodhounds make for any useful comparison at all - Warren himself ordered the erasure of the graffiti, and you will be very much aware that there is STILL an ongoing discussion whether that was a wise thing to do or not! At any rate, it was a one-man decision, Garry, and we cannot judge the whole Met by one man´s decisions, can we. The bloodhound debacle sorts under the same heading, more or less.

But Sarah Lewis! Now that is another thing altogether! If Sarah Lewis sudden recalling that she had a description to offer of wideawake man was something that was completely overlooked, not by one single copper but by all the scores of men that either took part in the inquest or had access to the inquest files - well, Garry, then we are faced with the perhaps greatest ****-up in British police history: They had a description of a man that could have been the Ripper, and they failed to acknowledge it.

No. No, no, no and no again! Please tell me that you are not being serious, Garry!

"I’m similarly puzzled by your contention that Sarah Lewis was viewed as ‘a crucial - arguably the most crucial – witness’."

If I suggest that they had two witnesses (both of them belonging to the same class of society, for that matter), giving evidence at the inquest, that offered descriptions of men that were observed in the very vicinity of the murder site at a time leading up to the most probable time of death on behalf of Kelly, I think you will find it hard to object, Garry.

If I furthermore press the point that Lewis´man was a couple of hours closer to that time of death than Cox´s man was, I likewise think you will agree.

...but when I say that Lewis thus was a VERY crucial witness, and that the timing of her observation means that it can be argued that she was the perhaps MOST crucial witness, you disagree very much. Fine. I just hope that you are not doing the same kind of mammoth error that you believe the police did, Garry?

"As for you insistence that police would have picked up on Sarah’s post-statement description of Wideawake Man, it will be remembered that Hutchinson also embellished his police statement when speaking to the press."

He did, Garry, we both know that. We differ, however, in how we look upon how the police regards things like these.
In Hutchinsons case, you sense that the police would have been very alert in recognizing that there were deviations in his police report and the press articles, and that these discrepancies would have led the police to discredit him. They picked up on all these details, carefully picking up on each little discrepany, albeit they only appeared in a pair of papers - and they acted promptly on it.

But in Lewis´case, it would seem that they never read the inquest files, once they were on their shelves. None did, actually, from the acting commisioner down to the regular PC on his beat. Not a soul took notice of the fact that a major change was made by a major witness in the inquest into the arguably most investigated murder in British history, attached to the highest-profile series of killings that has ever taken place anywhere. It, ehrm, "slipped under the police radar".

I have asked Ben, and I put the same question to you: How do you look upon it yourself? As a trivial thing?

I´m dumbfounded by the very suggestion. But it goes very much hand in hand with what I said about investing too heavily in Hutch, the disguised killer - it would seem such things make people regard the police as a force that was on it´s toes very much when it came to reading up on each little detail in one case, whereas they acted collectively like a flock of blind-folded sheep in another...? I´m sorry, Garry, but it makes for a much more colourful than useful discussion. It´s really not a suggestion that I could ever even begin to embrace, for obvious reasons.

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Ben!

As you and Garry seem to post simultaneously, both timewise and contentwise, I will ask you to read my post to Garry - it answers a good deal of your questions too.

But I will take up a few elements of your own post:

"isn’t it somewhat unusual that in all the Hutchinson threads that have passed since my participation on Casebook, the “dramatic” nature of Lewis’ change in testimony has only be noted now, on this thread?"

I feel very certain that it has been noted numerous times in the past. It is a very evident thing, and the amount of time you have to spend to pick up on it is a matter of minutes. Read the police report, then read the inquest, and there you are.
Of course, these boards contain immense amounts of material, and if you start to read from A, proceeding to Ö (yes!), you may get lost quickly enough. But many people - not least the Met - will have been aware of the glaring discrepancy. It took me five minutes to see, Ben, and I somehow find it hard to believe that I was the first person in 122 years to read up on Lewis ...

"if the police were focussing more on the immediately “suspicious” character in Lewis’ account – the Bethnal Green Road man – it’s somewhat inevitable that the other man mentioned received less attention"

Outside Miller´s court at 2.30? "Less attention"?? No comments!

"I’ve explained my reasons for suspecting that the police made no connection between the wideawake man and Hutchinson, so has Garry, and unless anyone is up for an exciting and repetitive stamina war, I see no reason for going into them again."

It´s a good thing then, that I have explained why I think that you are both very wrong. And you are correct, after that, no need to elaborate further!

"I will reiterate, though, that I’ve never been insistent on this, and have acknowledged the merits of the alternative explanation that the connection was made..."

That is probably very, very wise of you, Ben, that is all I can say.

"…is entirely reasonable, and I agree that the police would have done precisely that – followed up his story as far as they were able to. What bothers me intensely, though, is the inability of others to accept that more often than not, in investigations such as these, the “following up” process does not usually deliver the goods. They can “check” up as far as they can, but the chances are (and the evidence indicates) that whatever they did or did not suspect or notice, the police were never in a position to secure proof one way of the other with regard to Hutchinson."

As for my suggestion of a check-up of the Romford trip, I think we can agree that normally, a man that walks all the way to Romford has a reason for doing so. And just as normally, people who walk to Romford with a purpose, will be able to prove that they have been there: if the purpose was to have a coffee, then the coffee-shop owner would probably remember you, if it was applying for a day´s labour, then somebody at the labour site will do so, if you see a friend, then let´s hope that friend has not forgotten you three days later.
If this was what happened, and nothing came out of it, it would in itself imply that maybe not everything about Hutchinson was what he said it was. So whichever outcome you get from such an investigation, it will affect the thinking of the police, Ben.

"You make the accusation that those who refuse to conjure up scenarios, events, or lost reports must belong to the conspiracy to pin the knife on Hutchinson, when all we’re doing, in reality, is highlighting the total lack of evidence for any of these suggested events, and addressing the perfectly plausible and human capacity for oversight, as demonstrated time and again in criminal investigations"

I do. And I will stand by it. And the suggestion that the connection Wideawake/Hutch was never made, taken together with the proposition of a total inability to pick up what I picked up in five minutes, an inability that was professed by the whole of the Metropolitan police, men that scrutinized and went over witness testimony time and time again, twisting and turning it to see it from every possible and impossible angle ... well, Ben, that never was a perfectly plausible suggestion. Quite the contrary. In fact, to even make the suggestion is exactly the kind of thing that makes me loose faith in any prolonged discussion of this. All the arguments have been made, including a few that I didn´t think would be made at all. So for the moment, I leave the stage to you and your stamina, Ben. I´m sure I will see reason to comment further on the Hutchinson affair in the future too, though.

The very best,
Fisherman

[Rubyretro]

Warren himself ordered the erasure of the graffiti, and you will be very much aware that there is STILL an ongoing discussion whether that was a wise thing to do or not! At any rate, it was a one-man decision, Garry, and we cannot judge the whole Met by one man´s decisions, can we.

Not strictly true : Superintendant Arnold told Warren about the GSG , and advised him to have it wiped off. Arnold put forward the reasons why that was advisable, and he already had someone ready and waiting to carry out orders.

It was the most sensible thing to do at the time.

Warren went to GS, saw the graffito, and then gave the nod for it to be scrubbed. It was his 'final descision' but not his primary idea.

It was probably not written by JtR anyway.

[Rubyretro]

"…is entirely reasonable, and I agree that the police would have done precisely that – followed up his story as far as they were able to. What bothers me intensely, though, is the inability of others to accept that more often than not, in investigations such as these, the “following up” process does not usually deliver the goods. They can “check” up as far as they can, but the chances are (and the evidence indicates) that whatever they did or did not suspect or notice, the police were never in a position to secure proof one way of the other with regard to Hutchinson."

Totally right !

[QUOTE]

As for my suggestion of a check-up of the Romford trip, I think we can agree that normally, a man that walks all the way to Romford has a reason for doing so. And just as normally, people who walk to Romford with a purpose, will be able to prove that they have been there: if the purpose was to have a coffee, then the coffee-shop owner would probably remember you, if it was applying for a day´s labour, then somebody at the labour site will do so, if you see a friend, then let´s hope that friend has not forgotten you three days later.

I think that Bob Hinton proved all the building work going on in Romford at the time, and that there would be a perfectly feasible reason for Hutch, as a casual labourer , to have gone there.

I have no doubt that the police would have checked out whether Hutch did work in Romford, if he did present himself for potential jobs, and whether he had witnesses for being in lodgings/in the town at all. I'm sure that anything Hutch said, checked out.

Yet the the relatively short distance, with a variety of transport (foot, cart, omnibus, train), and lack of Cameras to concretely pinpoint the man, make me very wary ; it seems potentially easy for someone to to say that they were in one place (and get corroboration), and very quickly be in the other.

A nicely calculated time lapse might give him a few hours to murder and still have an alibi for having been 'out of town' at the time.

[Ben]

Hi Fish,

I’m afraid my observation concerning some of these “dramatic” Sarah Lewis revelations still stands. I’ve been a contributor here since 2005; every fiddly detail pertaining to Hutchinson has been debated and stewed over since then, and yet nobody has ever alluded to Lewis’ “dramatically” divergent accounts. And yes, I still contend that the extant evidence indicates that Lewis wasn’t re-interviewed as a result of her new wideawake description, and that this, in turn, suggests very strongly that that the police either made no note of this alteration (the understandable reasons for which have already provided) or they didn’t consider it significant. Certainly, the addition of “not tall, but stout” doesn’t seem terribly dramatic to me.

Outside Miller´s court at 2.30? "Less attention"??

...Than the other individual described in Lewis’ account, yes. Lewis referred to the man from the Bethnal Green Road a great deal more than she did wideawake, and a Chinese-whispered version of her account was apparently parroted by a “Mrs. Kennedy”, who mentioned the scary man on the Bethnal Green Road, but omitted Mr. Wideawake. This may have been a factor, incidentally, in the ultimate devaluing of Lewis' account along with the class issue outlined by Garry.

“As for my suggestion of a check-up of the Romford trip, I think we can agree that normally, a man that walks all the way to Romford has a reason for doing so. And just as normally, people who walk to Romford with a purpose, will be able to prove that they have been there”

And by the same token, people who lie about going to Romford will not.

Since Hutchinson’s account was subjected to a “very reduced importance” on account of the doubts they had with several aspects of it, it doesn’t seem logical to me that they were able successfully to confirm his presence in Romford, especially if the account was downgraded to “discredited” a couple of days later. A confirmation of the “Romford” angle would result in the account being accorded “increased” importance, surely? Instead, the opposite happened, which must be taken as a sure indicator that no such confirmation occurred.

If I’ve understood your suggestion correctly, we don’t seem to disagree here at all. The police would have sought to do as much “checking up” as they could into Hutchinson’s story, including the Romford detail, but “nothing came out of it”. My sentiments exactly.

I don’t regard the proposed non-recognition of the Lewis-Hutchinson to be anything out of the ordinary for a criminal investigation, the type of which are littered examples of oversights being made, not do I consider it anything other than the parsimonious assumption based on both the existing evidence and the total absence of any indication that such a connection was made. For one reason or another, Lewis was clearly not considered a crucial witness, and it was observed by the Star that the only evidence of any use to the investigation as far as eyewitness sightings were concerned was the Blotchy character described by Mary Cox. The addition of the hugely encompassing “not tall but stout” description is most assuredly not a “major change”.

But you’re right; nobody’s budging on this, and further “Yes they did, no they didn’t” exchanges are obviously futile.

The central observation, as far as I’m concerned, is that the police did not know the truth about the Hutchinson saga, whatever the truth may have been, and whatever doubts or suspicions they may or may not have harboured.

Best regards,
Ben

[Fisherman]

Ruby:

"Warren went to GS, saw the graffito, and then gave the nod for it to be scrubbed. It was his 'final descision' but not his primary idea."

I think you will find, Ruby, that I never suggested that it WAS Warrens primary idea. What I said was that the DECISION was one man´s only, and that was Warren.
Small point, but I prefer correct points to incorrect ones, so ...

The best, Ruby
Fisherman

[Garry Wroe]

Thanks for the information regarding Nairn, Fish. He appears to be one of those case-related protagonists who have fallen through the cracks somewhat. It looks as though I’ll have to do some reading.

In Hutchinsons case, you sense that the police would have been very alert in recognizing that there were deviations in his police report and the press articles, and that these discrepancies would have led the police to discredit him. They picked up on all these details, carefully picking up on each little discrepany, albeit they only appeared in a pair of papers - and they acted promptly on it

No, Fish. Quite the contrary, in fact. Hutchinson’s witness statement had clearly stimulated police suspicion before his newspaper interviews appeared in print. My feeling is that, like Packer and Violenia before him, Hutchinson was quickly viewed as persona non grata and investigators disregarded his subsequent newspaper claims irrespective of the reality that these disclosures placed him directly outside Mary Jane’s room at a time critical to her death. Hence if, as you state, investigators ‘ picked up on all these details, carefully picking up on each little discrepan[c]y’ and ‘acted promptly on it’, Hutchinson should and would have been re-interviewed by police. That he almost certainly wasn’t serves only to highlight a glaring investigative error that raises questions regarding strategy and competence. And if such a situation could have prevailed with Hutchinson, it introduces the possibility that investigators were similarly negligent with respect to Sarah Lewis.

Clearly, Fish, we disagree over the present topic of discussion, and that’s fine as far as I’m concerned. I am, however, somewhat disappointed by your earlier inference that my reluctance to concur with your viewpoint stems from an underlying belief in Hutchinson’s guilt. I might have anticipated such an accusation from certain other posters, but expected a little better from yourself. For the record, my position is eminently straightforward in that I merely follow the evidence. Should you wish to convert me to your way of thinking, therefore, present me with some tangible evidence in support of your argument. It really is that simple.

Regards.

Garry Wroe.

[Fisherman]

There you are, Garry - now I have not only disappointed Ben, but you too!

I will try and be as diplomatic as I can about it. What I sense in the reoccuring discussion on the Hutchinson saga, is that there is no way that rationally thinking people of reasonable intelligence and tolerable levels of being read up on the details involved in the Ripper case could ever come to conclusions that are as far apart as the ones we reach over and over again. Things are simply stretched way too long on a number of issues, and those stretches are regrettably invariably predictable in each and every case.

Whenever there is an ever so small space, allowing for an interpretation being made pointing in the direction of George Hutchinson being a killer in disguise, then that interpretation becomes the one chosen by the Hutchinsonians (if I may). And that is understandable, though sometimes glaringly irrational.

What is less understandable is when the same sort of interpretation is made when no such space is at hand. If, in them cases, it had been suggested that perhaps there was a microscopic chance at hand to make the call, then fine. But my general feeling is that any such chance, real or merely perceived, is always blown way out of proportion, until it holds not only a position as an outside chance - it is in fact presented as the best bid! And much as I am in favour of any man´s right to hold an opinion of his own, I am not in favour of bowing to anybodys right to disrepresent the facts involved.

You say that you had expected more from me, Garry. Then I propose that you put what faith you have in me to good use, and ponder what I and a number of other posters suggest - that maybe the argument that the Hutch followers are overoptimistic about their stance might have something going for it ...

I have, for the moment at least, ended the debate with Ben. It went absolutely nowhere in the end.
I do not mind exchanging further with you should you want to, and I would like to bring up one of the issues you touch on, and try to show you my side of it - which is posed in a 90 degree angle to your perception.

"Hutchinson’s witness statement had clearly stimulated police suspicion before his newspaper interviews appeared in print. My feeling is that, like Packer and Violenia before him, Hutchinson was quickly viewed as persona non grata and investigators disregarded his subsequent newspaper claims irrespective of the reality that these disclosures placed him directly outside Mary Jane’s room at a time critical to her death."

To begin with, we need to scrutinize your claim that the statement had been subjected to suspicion before Hutch´s newspaper interwiews on the 14:th. We know that you´ve got a point - the Echo tells us this the day before: ”From latest inquiries it appears that a very reduced importance seems to be now - in the light of later investigation - attached to a statement made by a person last night that he saw a man with the deceased on the night of the murder.”

So, a very reduced importance is attached to the statement. What does that mean? To you, it would seem that the only meaning that could be read into it, is that the description that Hutch gave of Astrakhan man was not a reliable one - it was too good to be true, and therefore, it was suspected from day one that Hutch had taken the police for a ride. As the interwiews published on the 14:th strengthened that suggestion, Hutch was dismissed and let go.

This is not how I see things, and it is most certainly not the only way the wording in the Echo could be read. Nothing is said about what part or parts of the testimony it was that was getting questioned. Please keep that in mind.

Now, let´s get a bit theoretical, to show what I mean:

Hutch tells the police his story. Thereafter they go down to Romford, to pay a visit to a construction site, where Hutch claimed to have applied for job. They find that the manager denies this. On the other hand, the manager says, there was this fellow, answering to your description, that asked for a job on the day before...?
A journalist from the Echo has a beer with one of the officers in charge of the case, an officer that has been updated and therefore knows that it seems (it is still under investigation, mind you) that Hutchinson is one day off in his judgement. The journalist congratulates the officer on finally having got hold of a witness who can describe a probable Ripper in full detail, but the officer tells him that, no, it actually seems that they cannot put very much faith in the story they had been told any longer. The journalist tries to get details out of the officer, and asks him why he claims this all of a sudden. Well, the officer says, we have investigated things further, and we feel that we ought perhaps not trust the testimony given by Hutch the way we did before. After that, he says that he thinks that it will all be cleared up in the near future, puts his glass down on the table in front of him, and leaves.

The point being, Garry, that YES, the police believed that the testimony must be regarded with scepticism, but NO, that must not at all have owed solely to the description given by Hutch of Astrakhan man. There is every chance that external information, going contrary to what Hutch had said, had surfaced. Such information could - of course - have questioned each and every detail of the testimony, from Hutch being a former groom, over his walk to Romford, and all the way down to his walking the streets through the night of Kellys death. And I think that as we are totally aware that Abberline was of the meaning that Hutch was the real McCoy, and as we have no contradiction in terms on record until the 14:th (although something may well have come up during his PC-accompanied scouting for Astrakhan man), the suggestion that nothing in the testimony would have occurred odd to Abberline - something we have confirmed in writing! - until some EXTERNAL influence swayed him and the police, must be a very good suggestion, totally in line with the evidence.

I think this is an explanation that is totally superior to the suggestion that Abberline changed his mind without having anything else to go on than his gut feeling - for we KNOW full well that his gut feeling told him that Hutchinson had come clear. It is in the evidence material!

One pointer - and a very clear one - points to the Echo article disclosing very informal information having passed between police and press: No other paper had gotten wind of this. Most of them only did so much later, and that means that the OFFICIAL line of the police was not to disclose the details they were working on, implicating that Hutchinson needed to be dropped. So, at best, what could be had was exactly what the Echo printed.

So there you are, this is my perfectly simple suggestion of what happened. It allows for a very reasonable interpretation, and it does not marry itself to the idea that the only thing that could have changed the police´s mind would have been that Abberline suddenly thought "Bugger! I must have been wrong!", after having given the matter much thought before, then resulting in a diametrically different stance!

But the Hutchinsonians strongly believe that this must have been what happened, and they want to make me believe that the interpretation I make, with a quarter of a decade behind me working as a journalist, meaning that I know how papers function and how they phrase themselves, would be a much inferior interpretation, actually more or less proven to be wrong by the phrasing used by the Echo.

And why do the Hutchinsonians hold this belief? Why not admit that there are other possibilities to interprete what teh Echo said, possibilities that are judged far better by an active and expreienced journalist like me? Because, of course, they immediately realize that an acceptance that Hutch was ruled out from the investigation by information that put it beyond doubt that his testimny was wrong, and that simultaneously showed that the error made provided no reason at all to change his status from witness to suspect. The illusion must not be shattered, cost what it may.

The next time you are disappointed in me, Garry, please ponder things like these. The conclusions I have drawn from the discussions that have passed were not in one instance conclusions that I wished to draw. They have become unevitable, though. I genuinely believe that you are blinded to a very large extent.
I would much like you to give the detail discussed on the Echo article some long and hard afterthought, offering all the openmindedness you can find within you. After that, we shall see whether you and me may move along mutually productively in the discussion.

The very best, Garry!
Fisherman

[harry]

Just one observation Fisherman."From latest enquiries",does that mean enquiries made by the police,or enquiries made by the paper?

[Fisherman]

Harry:

"From latest enquiries",does that mean enquiries made by the police,or enquiries made by the paper?"

I would imagine that the enquiry bit was on behalf of the paper, whereas the light shed by "later investigation" was the police´s doing. It makes less sense to - in the same sentence - speak about both enquiries and investigation on behalf of the police, since they would both add up to the same.

The best, Harry!
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

I notice that I messed up the penultimate passage in my post to Garry, misspelling and leaving out things. It should read:

"And why do the Hutchinsonians hold this belief? Why not admit that there are other possibilities to interpret what the Echo said, possibilities that are judged far better by an active and experienced journalist like me? Because, of course, they immediately realize that an acceptance that Hutch was ruled out from the investigation by information that put it beyond doubt that his testimony was wrong, and that simultaneously showed that the error made provided no reason at all to change his status from witness to suspect, would more or less remove Hutchinson from the list of possible, or at least plausible, perpetrators. The illusion must not be shattered, cost what it may."

Sorry about that.

The best,
Fisherman

[Rubyretro]

Fish -first of all, I agree with you about the 'latest enquiries' bit, ruling Hutch out...but the big problem is that we have no way of knowing at all, what those enquiries were...so it's all supposition.

You can make up a scenario of Police enquiries in Romford and I can make up a scenario of the Police finding no other witness at all having seen A Man (a very remarkable 'person') and deciding that Hutch was not in London at the times of some of the other killings and that MJK was killed by the same person as Nichols, Chapman and Eddowes and(at least), that Hutch was not a raving mad Jewish butcher, that he volunteered to put himself under Police suspicion, and ergo he was a harless fantasist but not the Ripper.

We can make up any sort of Police enquiries, and Press enquiries , that we like, but without knowing what they were we cannot just 'accept' them, since we know that there have been very many Police mistakes made in the past.