Is Kosminski still the best suspect we have?

[GUT]

In the absence of any information placing Anderson or Swanson at an identification at a seaside home,such information,as Trevor insists,can only be classed as hearsay.The term"he knew he was identified',means exactly what?It could have several meanings'He was sent',with whom,by whom'?By what method?.Take each element of the tale and test it by conventional means of proof,and what do one end up with?,

G'day Harry

Point taken, but by the same token, given that so much material is missing, that same objection applies to almost every issue about pretty much every suspect.

[PaulB]

Hi Paul,

Yes, there is. Agreed.

But SRA omitted it from his collected volume, which makes him unreliable.

Regards,

Simon

No it doesn't. Not at all. If he'd given a different account it would make him unreliable.

[Monty]

Rubbish! Wrong on practicaly every point. All your unsupported opinion.

Seconded,

And the irony of condemning, whilst doing the same, is not lost.

Monty

[TomTomKent]

Meh. My opinion is fairly simple: we know he was under suspicion, we know his name was attached to a suspect taken seriously by good sources. How and why he fell under suspicion is probably lost with any evidence against him.

The mistake that seems to be made too often is a failure to distinguish between being the most viable suspect for the police at the time and the most viable suspect we can offer evidence for now. We can not prove a case against him now, nor can we discount the opinions of the police at the time, simply because of what we do not, or can not know.


Erm, that should be simple, but I am terrible at explaining it.

[PaulB]

To PaulB

If you were talking to me, and I am not sure you, were, then I respectfulyl disagree about warnings about slippery slopes.

The great danger--the real slippery slope--is to treat sources flatly, at face value, or to set up a straw man argument, e.g. this source is either lying or telling us the truth.

Thsi man pious and not a liar, therefore the was a witness identification by a Jew of a Jewish suspect, and the witness declined to testify.

A story that makes no sense as the madman was already safely caged, and so on.

So soem people go oh well we'll never know, never be able to ceconcile the contradictions.

It really is not that enigmatic and sphinx-like.

Not qwhen you measure the sources against other comparable sources. This is not "tinkering" if the bits and pieces do not match!

Then you have to try and explain why.

Anderson's suspect and his witness were central not to his "thinking" but to his memory.

His, eh, demonstrably crumbling memory.

When a person tells a story that makes them look a whole lot better about a crisis for which they received a public and professional bucketing, you have to ask why? Perhaps it is literally true? Perhaps it is not.

In 1908 it also seems central to Anderson's thinking that the Liberals were responsible for putting him, personally, under undue pressure about the Ripper.

Is that reliable? Were the Liberlas in government during 1888?

He also blames a medico for breaking a pipe at a crime scene--a major clue according to him.

Is that what happened? Is that a reliable recollection about the pipes at the Kelly and McKenzie murders seemingly fused together?

In 1896 he apparently told Major Griffiths that the fiend was a lunatic who had been "on the prowl" for a few "weeks" before his reign of [exaggeated] terror was "cut short" by being sectioned.

Is that reliable? Does it match Aaron Kosminski's timeline?

You wrote that the chiefs are about equally reliable and imperfect.

Really? When both [arguably] believed their chief suspects were deceased but only one of them actually was--and only one chief knew who was deceased and who wasn't.

Is that reliable? Personally, I think it is.

Jonathan,
One doesn't treat the sources 'flatly', one obviously tests them as best one can and by such means as are available, but it is not acceptable to change what the source says unless there is a very good reason for doing so. Anderson states that the suspect and the witness were both Jews, it was clearly the suspect's Jewishness that disuaded the witness from giving evidence, and it was the refusal of the witness to testify that seems to have stalled things and given the family time to have the suspect committed. Change that and you change the entire thrut of the story. And this was arguably one of the most high profile cases of Anderson's career and therefore not one of which he is unlikely to have forgotten the big details, so to make it work you have to grab whatever you can to assert that Anderson had a 'crumbling memory', for which there is actually little evidence.

And so it goes on, a tweak here, a tweak there, until you have built a whole edifice of theorising, all because it suits you to change a Jew to a Gentile. That's 'fun history', interesting and occasionally profitable, not not really acceptable.

[Trevor Marriott]

G'day Harry

Point taken, but by the same token, given that so much material is missing, that same objection applies to almost every issue about pretty much every suspect.

But this is the point, we know that a lot of the police records were destroyed clearly some of the ripper records were included in the destruction. However as I stated previous why should it be assumed that important ripper documentation was destroyed. When they may not have anything of importance in the first place to destroy.

The general facts point to that being the case.

As I also stated the facts surrounding this case and the police opinions clearly suggest that they didn't have anything.

It all gets back to how researchers interpret the term suspect and many are interpreting it in the wrong context here.

Having worked in murder incident rooms over many years I have seen first hand the information gathering process and how it is assessed and evaluated.

But of course suspects wont be dropped or eliminated from this simply because that term, which keeps being thrown up "well they must have know something and we don't know what that was" keeps getting thrown up despite the weight of evidence to negate that, and evidence to show that they didn't know anything

Time for a change ?

[harry]

Gut,
You are correct,but while it is known or can be reasonably surmised that evidence once existed which is now unavailable,such seems not the case with Kosminski.We have information of the person,but nothing that directly links him to a murder,or makes him suspect.

[GUT]

Gut,
You are correct,but while it is known or can be reasonably surmised that evidence once existed which is now unavailable,such seems not the case with Kosminski.We have information of the person,but nothing that directly links him to a murder,or makes him suspect.

What about the table cloth and the DNA and Anderson's witness.

But seriously who do we have information about that directly links them to a murder that makes them a suspect rather than a witness. To my knowledge no one whose name is known.

[Fisherman]

Meh. My opinion is fairly simple: we know he was under suspicion, we know his name was attached to a suspect taken seriously by good sources. How and why he fell under suspicion is probably lost with any evidence against him.

The mistake that seems to be made too often is a failure to distinguish between being the most viable suspect for the police at the time and the most viable suspect we can offer evidence for now. We can not prove a case against him now, nor can we discount the opinions of the police at the time, simply because of what we do not, or can not know.


Erm, that should be simple, but I am terrible at explaining it.

No, you are not - it all makes eminent sense. This thread should be called "Is Kosminski still a suspect?", and that question answers itself: Yes.

Whether he is a good, bad, half-arsed, exquisite, ridiculous or top suspect is not something we can establish until we know the full reasons for the suspicions against him.

The best,
Fisherman

[PaulB]

In the absence of any information placing Anderson or Swanson at an identification at a seaside home,such information,as Trevor insists,can only be classed as hearsay.The term"he knew he was identified',means exactly what?It could have several meanings'He was sent',with whom,by whom'?By what method?.Take each element of the tale and test it by conventional means of proof,and what do one end up with?,

Sadly, as one might expect from something Trevor has said, it isn't hearsay. It would be hearsay if somebody else said it about Anderson and Swanson, but Anderson and Swanson are saying it about themselves.

As for the rest, by all means ask questions of what they say, but remember that whatever seems odd to you would have seemed odd to them, but they said that's what happened. They didn't have to prove it.

[Fisherman]

What about the table cloth and the DNA and Anderson's witness.

But seriously who do we have information about that directly links them to a murder that makes them a suspect rather than a witness. To my knowledge no one whose name is known.

Try "Lechmere". He was found alone by a freshly killed victim, and the only source we have for the claim that he was alone with that victim for seconds only is himself.

All police practice tells us that people found alone by murder victims are automatically suspects until such information surfaces so as to clear them.

Didnīt you have a legal degree of some sort?

The best,
Fisherman

[GUT]

No, you are not - it all makes eminent sense. This thread should be called "Is Kosminski still a suspect?", and that question answers itself: Yes.

Whether he is a good, bad, half-arsed, exquisite, ridiculous or top suspect is not something we can establish until we know the full reasons for the suspicions against him.

The best,
Fisherman

G'day Fisherman

Sit down ... I agree totally.

[GUT]

Try "Lechmere". He was found alone by a freshly killed victim, and the only source we have for the claim that he was alone with that victim for seconds only is himself.

All police practice tells us that people found alone by murder victims are automatically suspects until such information surfaces so as to clear them.

Didnīt you have a legal degree of some sort?

The best,
Fisherman

And why do we think that the police didn't clear him? Riddle me that riddler.

[Fisherman]

G'day Fisherman

Sit down ... I agree totally.

Thanks!

After that, I am fine with people reasoning that this must mean that the police cleared him back then, but there are several objections that can be raised against such a thing:

There is - of course - the fact that they seemingly did not delve deep enough into the man to find out his true name.

There is the fact that he was allowed to leave the murder site unsearched.

There is the fact that the police may have been put to sleep by his double appearances with them, seemingly coming forward by his own free will.

... and thereīs of course the objection that this is not a Lechmere thread, so Iīll leave it for now. But I am glad to hear that common sense can still be found out here every once in a while.

The best,
Fisherman

PS. Crossing (!) posts!

[Jonathan H]

You did not deal with any of the specifics I raised, which are one example after another of either a crumbling memory of he was never properly briefed (or was misled).

These have been raised by others, such as the late Phillip Sudgen (full transparency: Sudgen thought Macnaghten a virtually discredited primary source too).

The 'Sailor's Home' theory of suspect confusion--or suspect substitution--between Tom Sadler and Aaron Kosminski (or "Kosminski") isn't mine. It is the theory of Evans and Rumbelow from 2006.

"Unacceptable" is strong language.

That Macnaghten can be shown to know that "Kosminski"was alive whilst Anderson arguably thought he was deceased, and the latter was wrong and the former was correct, is not "tweaking".

It's a fact. It is not my fault nobody noticed it before.

Or is it?

You want to see "unacceptable" revisionism, check this out:

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2014/12/vincent-van-gogh-murder-mystery