Witness statement Dismissed-suspect No. 1?

[Garry Wroe]

Did any of them suggest he must be lying because people wouldn't dare dress that way, in this part of town, at that hour?

That is the issue.

No-one, to the best of my knowledge, Jon, ever stated that Hutchinson must have been lying. Eyebrows were raised in several quarters regarding certain elements of the Astrakhan story. If you are now saying that no-one ever raised doubts with respect to Astrakhan's attire, one journalist certainly thought it strange that such an opulently presented individual could have gone completely unnoticed by everyone other than Hutchinson.

Do I take it you would like to offer up some believable, credible, perhaps even official evidence that the police did discredit him?
Come on Garry, don't be shy.

I'm not shy, Jon. Far from it. But I do draw the line at repeatedly stating the blindingly obvious. Or are you suggesting that Hutchinson was Anderson's stellar mystery Jewish witness?

[Batman]

I don't think anyone doubts that Abberline interrogated Hutchinson. I'm glad to see though that Abberline at least gives some credability to Hutchinson's claim of viewing the body.

The thing is this...

What happened to the witness who got up and close into JtRs face for the remainder of the investigation when it came to 'police lineups' which they had plenty of?

The answer is ... they stopped using him shortly after the murder of MJK and Abberline faded out of the investigation. Abberline went all in with this witness and it went nowhere. Absolutely nowhere at all.

I would like to see any account of this witness being active within the investigation shortly after he was asked to roam the streets to ID JtR.

Swanson didn't use him at a witness. Neither did the city police.

[harry]

Jon,'
I'll rephrase the last part of my post above.Instead of should have been,read,there was.

[harry]

Jon,
You need to be put right on a number of things.The result of Aberlines interrogation was contained in a written record by Badham.The terminology used by Aberline,interrogation', was not inconsistent with the word intervie wed,on that occasion.Hutchinson came willingly to the police station,and would not have been giving evidence under oath,and w ould not be bouned by the same powérs of compulsion,as at an inquest or trial.He could have refused to have signed the record made by Badham.This w ould not have negated the information given at the police station,because he gave it in the presence of both Badham and Aberline who could swear to such.
It is not I who is questioning the conduct of Aberline and Badham,but you,in insisting there should have been an additionl report, which in the good old days would never have been required.

[Wickerman]

By the way, all this talk of Hutchinson's place of residence ('usual' or otherwise) gives me real fits. He told Abberline he was in no regular employment, and he claimed he had just come back from Romford on the Thursday night then walked about until morning, and we don't know what money he had around that time, if any, to pay for a bed whether his 'usual' place was open or closed. He had no fixed abode for the murder night yet his place of residence as at 12th November was recorded on his statement to Badham as the Victoria Home. So Abberline would surely have sought to establish during his interrogation what his sleeping arrangements had been over the past week or so, and to make sure they would be more stable now he was helping with police enquiries.

Love,

Caz
X

Hi Caz.
For what it's worth, a good place for an out of work laborer to be on a weekend is the market, moving crates, general duties.
This is where he must, in my opinion, have got the money for the Vic.

[Wickerman]

Not so, I'm afraid, Jon. Several newspapers were dubious with regard to Hutchinson's Kelly-related claims. Some thought that the delay in his coming forward was strange. Others were sceptical that Hutchinson was seemingly the only person who saw the opulently dressed Astrakhan parading the East End on the night under scrutiny. A few more were openly incredulous with reference to the sheer weight of detail contained within Hutchinson's description of Astrakhan.

Did any of them suggest he must be lying because people wouldn't dare dress that way, in this part of town, at that hour?

That is the issue.

And this is to say nothing about the fact that Hutchinson ultimately became a discredited witness.

Do I take it you would like to offer up some believable, credible, perhaps even official evidence that the police did discredit him?
Come on Garry, don't be shy.

[Wickerman]

Hi Wick
thanks for explaining- I understand that part now.

What I still don't get is how does him staying at somewhere other than the Victoria house the night of the murder in any way "exonerate" him?

Abby.
Directly no, but this problem surfaced after a discussion about the name of the pub being changed in his initial statement to Badham.
I believe Ben suggested this change was another indication he was lying, because he had to be well acquainted with the area due to the fact he lived at the Vic. Home., and presumably had been for some time?

I asked what the basis was for this belief, then I pointed out that he had referred to his "usual place being closed" - therefore the Victoria Home was not his "usual place", at least up until the night of the murder.

[Wickerman]

Otherwise, Abberline would obviously have forwarded that "herewith" along with the statement and the report. He'd have said, "I have his signed statement and the transcript of the interrogation, both of which I forward herewith".

Ben, daily reports were mailed into Central Office every morning. That is all we are talking about here.
An Interrogation is not something to mail around, it will stay with Abberline, he is still working with it, and did so for the next couple of weeks.
It is quite sufficient to make brief mention of his conversation in a daily report, along with the fact he attended the Inquiry, and that all those detained that day have been released. This was a daily report, that is what an Inspector will put in his daily report.

The conjuring up of mythical, patently non-existent "lost reports" is one of my pet hates in this area of study.

Considering most of the official paperwork is lost, perhaps this is not the best interest for you to involve yourself with?

[Wickerman]

Jon,
'Statements made by the witness must be signed by the witness',as you wrote in your last post ,is not true.Certainly they should be asked if they are willing to sign,and probably most do, but statements of interview can be recorded without the knowledge or consent of a person making such statement.In the case of Hutchinson,as Ben has told you,there was a signed statement taken by Badham,and also a statement of interview by Aberline.Taken together,they cover all relevant elements.There was no third report.

Harry.
Before we go any further into your post, would you care to explain what makes you think this?
A policeman can overhear a conversation and record what was said, yes, because there is no convenient way of obtaining a signature, but this is not the case here.
Abberline sat with Hutchinson and it was his duty, as with all serving policemen, to record - in writing - the statement given by a witness under interrogation.

Also, I am not sure by your use of the term 'interview'. In the good old days when we called a spade - a spade, the term Interview was used for witnesses. You Interview a witness, but you Interrogate a suspect.
Abberline said he Interrogated Hutchinson.

Today Interview is used in reference to both witness & suspect, perhaps evidence of political correctness infiltrating the police department.

An unsigned statement by a witness/suspect is of no use legally speaking, anyone could have written it.
Each page of Hutchinson's initial statement had to bare his signature. Every statement by the witnesses in the Coroner's inquests bare the signature of the witness, or mark if the witness is illiterate, it is a requirement.

Why you cannot accept the police would do a proper job and put an interrogation in writing is strange, unless you are one of those who believe the police were just incompetent?

[caz]

Hutchinson made a claim to the papers that he was going to see the body/shown the body. Yet this is suspect... Its suspect that Hutchinson made this claim and as far as I can tell, once again, its faith in Hutchinson that he viewed the body. There appears to be no investigative corroboration in the accounts. Not surprising for someone who never once describes MJK in his post-inquest witness testimony. Not one single quantum of anything that tells us he even knew her. All this information about viewing bodies and seeing MJK only comes from one person - Hutchinson, no one else.

Hi Batman,

Abberline's words: Hutchinson is at present in no regular employment, and he has promised to go with an officer tomorrow morning at 11.30. am. to the Shoreditch mortuary to identify the deceased.

1. He never described MJK, has nobody else to witness his knowing her either.
2. He didn't describe where she lived exactly, only that she went down a passage with the man he saw.
3. He didn't describe seeing Lewis who claims she saw a man standing there.
4. There is an omission of what Hutchinson even looks like. We don't even know if he matches her description.
5. Even though he claimed a face to face encounter with JtR after the hysteria has died down in the coming weeks, he is longer used as a witness at all. Nowhere do we see mention of him by the investigators and instead they use Lawende (city) and quite likely Schwartz too (metro).

The most parsimonous solution is that we have a faux witness. Abberline bought into it for the weeks that followed and then like Hutchinson, Abberline faded away. Swanson stayed the course and had absolutely no use for Hutchinson at all by his investigative team when doing witness identification parades.

Abberline interrogated Hutch and considered him truthful, which in itself shows he must have been actively on the lookout for any anomalies. It was his job to make sure that the woman Hutch claimed to see that night and know as Mary Kelly was in fact the deceased. He would hardly have arranged the identification without first asking Hutch to describe the woman and what she was wearing, so he could satisfy himself that this was basically consistent with the known facts. After all, there was a potential conflict with Mrs Cox's inquest testimony, which put her Blotchy suspect in with Kelly earlier that night.

Presumably Hutch did attend the identification as he promised, but it's at least theoretically possible that it didn't go quite as planned, or even threw into doubt that the woman he had seen a couple of hours after Cox's sighting was actually the murder victim.

What I cannot fathom is why the police would have gone out of their way to inform the press that the reason Hutch's statement now had a much reduced importance attached to it was that they had basically screwed up, and had somehow only just appreciated the serious implications of a witness coming late to the party and not giving his account at the inquest. In fact that explanation has never made any sense to me. How does an important and truthful witness suddenly become much less important or much less credible without any more information than they had to begin with? The police are 'asking' why he didn't come forward earlier? Yeah, right. Like they would be volunteering that to the press, when Abberline should have asked and got the answer during his initial interrogation.

Much more likely that the press reached this nonsensical conclusion, which painted the police in a poor light, due to their frustration at having to guess what was going on. If their enquiries revealed that the police's latest enquiries still included trying to track down Mrs Cox's blotchy-faced suspect, for example, their rather black-and-white mindset might well have assumed that Hutch must have rapidly lost credibility, since his belated account conflicted directly with her timely one.

By the way, all this talk of Hutchinson's place of residence ('usual' or otherwise) gives me real fits. He told Abberline he was in no regular employment, and he claimed he had just come back from Romford on the Thursday night then walked about until morning, and we don't know what money he had around that time, if any, to pay for a bed whether his 'usual' place was open or closed. He had no fixed abode for the murder night yet his place of residence as at 12th November was recorded on his statement to Badham as the Victoria Home. So Abberline would surely have sought to establish during his interrogation what his sleeping arrangements had been over the past week or so, and to make sure they would be more stable now he was helping with police enquiries.

Love,

Caz
X

[Garry Wroe]

Not by those who actually met him, and these are the opinions that matter.
There isn't anything in his statement that requires "heaps of faith" to someone who lived at the time.

Not so, I'm afraid, Jon. Several newspapers were dubious with regard to Hutchinson's Kelly-related claims. Some thought that the delay in his coming forward was strange. Others were sceptical that Hutchinson was seemingly the only person who saw the opulently dressed Astrakhan parading the East End on the night under scrutiny. A few more were openly incredulous with reference to the sheer weight of detail contained within Hutchinson's description of Astrakhan.

And this is to say nothing about the fact that Hutchinson ultimately became a discredited witness.

[Abby Normal]

The issue is, that Hutchinson told the Central News reporter that, " I told one of the lodgers here about it on Monday,.."

The question then arises, where is here?
To date, the location has been certainly promoted by 'some' that "here", was the Victoria Home, due to the fact this address was given by Hutchinson to Badham on the night of the 12th.

If that is the case, then where was his 'usual place'?

In that same interview with the Central News reporter Hutchinson goes on to explain that, " After I left the court I walked about all night, as the place where I usually sleep was closed."

If this interview was being conducted at the Victoria Home, then this is a strange reply, he would naturally say "because this place was closed", but he did not, his reference is clearly to some other location.

Hutchinson makes a clear reference to 'his usual place' being at another location on the night of the murder, and, that this 'usual place' was also closed, but the Victoria Home did not close, so it was not the Victoria Home.
So, where was his 'usual place'?

Hi Wick
thanks for explaining- I understand that part now.

What I still don't get is how does him staying at somewhere other than the Victoria house the night of the murder in any way "exonerate" him?

[harry]

Jon,
'Statements made by the witness must be signed by the witness',as you wrote in your last post ,is not true.Certainly they should be asked if they are willing to sign,and probably most do, but statements of interview can be recorded without the knowledge or consent of a person making such statement.In the case of Hutchinson,as Ben has told you,there was a signed statement taken by Badham,and also a statement of interview by Aberline.Taken together,they cover all relevant elements.There was no third report.

[Ben]

The fact Abberline refers to extra details in his daily report to Central Office indicates more was said between Abberline and Hutchinson.

Exactly, Jon.

Any relevant details that did not appear in the statement but which did emerge from Abberline's "interrogation" of Hutchinson were duly referenced in the missive that accompanied the statement, hence the detail that Hutchinson had known Kelly for three years and occasionally gave her money. By "relevant" I mean information that impacted directly on the question of Hutchinson's credibility. If nothing fitting that description appeared in either the statement or the accompanying report, it didn't exist, or else Abberline was deliberately withholding crucial information from his superiors for some unfathomable reason.

The logical explanation, of course, is that whatever else Hutchinson might have related to Abberline, it was trivial in nature, irrelevant to the question of his story's credibility, and certainly of no "help" to any 2015 theorist wishing to defend his honour.

So another document existed containing the outcome of the interrogation which included details not divulged to Badham. This document has not survived.

No.

That document never existed.

Otherwise, Abberline would obviously have forwarded that "herewith" along with the statement and the report. He'd have said, "I have his signed statement and the transcript of the interrogation, both of which I forward herewith".

The conjuring up of mythical, patently non-existent "lost reports" is one of my pet hates in this area of study.

It was only last year you attempted to rationalize your claim that (in your opinion), when you claim something is proven, it only needs to be proven to 'you' not regarded as proof in the conventional sense.

No, I never said this either.

When I point out that something has been "proven", it's because it has, and it doesn't become any less so just because certain people insist on fruitlessly protesting otherwise. Despite your accusation, however, I have never claimed to be in possession of "proof" that Hutchinson lied. By all means have a hunt through the Hutchinson threads if you think I have.

There are only 14,000 posts to search through.

All the best,
Ben

[Wickerman]

Hi Jon,

Are you suggesting that Abberline recorded "word for word every syllable" of dialogue that was exchanged between himself and Hutchinson?

Hi Ben.
When you absorb what "police must not trust to their memories" implies, then you have your answer.

The fact Abberline refers to extra details in his daily report to Central Office indicates more was said between Abberline and Hutchinson.
Statements made by the witness must be signed by the witness. Clearly Hutchinson does not sign Abberline's daily report, because Abberline's daily report is not a witness statement.
So another document existed containing the outcome of the interrogation which included details not divulged to Badham. This document has not survived.

But before these documents conveniently (for you) "vanished", they would have said precisely what you want them to have said - yes? This is my long-standing objection to the constant appeals to mythical "lost reports". Since they no longer exist - and may not have existed at all - we can make them say anything we want providing they help our arguments.

We do not know what these documents contained, and at no point do I offer the contents. The issue here is that modern theorists cannot claim "Hutchinson never told the police this, etc, etc,....", due to the fact the interrogation document(s) have not survived.
"We" do not know all that was said by Hutchinson to Abberline. That is the point "we" need to remember.

I've personally never made such a claim, and I'm very confident that a trawl through my posts won't produce one either.

Ah, another contrary remark. It was only last year you attempted to rationalize your claim that (in your opinion), when you claim something is proven, it only needs to be proven to 'you' not regarded as proof in the conventional sense.
Now, why would someone chance such an outrageous explanation if this same person had not previously claimed proof did exist?

My dear Ben, you should take the advise of Lord Brampton, and "not trust in your memory".