Lechmere The Psychopath

[Fisherman]

I assume Llewellyn did not think stabs to the omentum were fatal.

Steve

There! Finally! One faint glimmer of sense in all of that posting.

We may forget the rest, including the very, very odd question "Do you accept Spratlings report?"

Where DO you get such things from?

Anyway - we have now arrived at the groundbreaking point where you admit that Llewellyn would not have regarded a cut to the omentum as being fatal. Well, well done!

So! What happens? Well, what happens is that we need something ELSE than the omentum, something that caused LLewellyn to say that serious damage was done to the abdomen, serious enough to even ensure a quick death.

If it was not the omentum cutting Llewellyn was thinking of, if he was versed enough in the medical science to understand that such wounds are easily enough healed and that they will never kill swiftly, then what on earth was it Llewellyn had seen?

That is the way forward in the discussion, and it should have been began upon many days ago. But better late than never!

So, if you please...?

[Observer]

Yes Observer I agree.

However Llewellyn was not aware of the views of Lechmere or Paul at that stage was he?

Steve

Well, as I've pointed out before, here we have a problem. Paul testified that he had helped pull down Polly Nichols clothes which were disarranged. However, PC Neil stated that Polly Nichols clothes were disarranged when he entered the scene. The only thing I can think of which addresses this anomaly, is that Paul didn't do a good enough job in re-arranging the clothes. Back to the point though. If Paul reasoned that Nichols had been violated, due to the disarranged clothing, I think it's a safe bet that Llewellyn would have came to the same conclusion.

[Elamarna]

Hi Thanx for reply

Sorry to pick you out, but you are the easiest to remember due to the number of posts and you´re "playing" with Fisherman......

I just wanted to know what the Anti group would bring up as suspects, maybe i was expecting someone like D'Onston......

...to topic
Could some one explain to me what a cut from the sternum to the pubes would have as a consequence if it was
a.) most superficial but with a few deeper areas (beyond abdominal wall)
b) deep but not opening the abdominl cavity
c.) opening the abdominal cavity completely

another one:
Can be assume that the cuts done to Nichols are not regular but unregular cuts that differ in depth along their "route" or was the guy so skilled with the knife that he managed to produce cuts with consistant depth?
Is is really probable that such irregular cuts (if they were...) could exactly perforating the aorta?
and last
Where did the blood go?

Hi Mark.

Try to answer you best I can.

Firstly there is no organised Anti Lechmere group.

I think you will find the number of suspects amongst those who do not accept Lechmere is very wide.

I think the answer to your 3 questions about the cut are best answered by poster Kjab3112, who is a medic himself.

Hopefully he will see your questions and reply.

Consistent depth, is in my view unlikely, this is supported to a degree by the fact the omentum had several cuts, maybe as a result of inconsistent depth of cut.

As for could it damage the aorta, it's open to debate, but there is no evidence to suggest it was . Of course one needs to look at where the cuts are, what would lay between the wound entrance and the aorta needs to also be taken into account.

Steve

[Mark Adam]

Steve

Thanx for reply
My idea was, that IF they hurt/cut/perforated the aorta, the blood would have been in the abdominal cavity, so no guess at "blood gone into the tissue" would be needed, on the other side if the aorta had been cut would the pressure not be responsible for more blood on the outside of the body?
Given that there is a wound that is deep enough...

[Elamarna]

There! Finally! One faint glimmer of sense in all of that posting.

We may forget the rest, including the very, very odd question "Do you accept Spratlings report?"

Where DO you get such things from?

Anyway - we have now arrived at the groundbreaking point where you admit that Llewellyn would not have regarded a cut to the omentum as being fatal. Well, well done!

So! What happens? Well, what happens is that we need something ELSE than the omentum, something that caused LLewellyn to say that serious damage was done to the abdomen, serious enough to even ensure a quick death.

If it was not the omentum cutting Llewellyn was thinking of, if he was versed enough in the medical science to understand that such wounds are easily enough healed and that they will never kill swiftly, then what on earth was it Llewellyn had seen?

That is the way forward in the discussion, and it should have been began upon many days ago. But better late than never!

So, if you please...?

How very wrong of you. It not ground breaking I have never suggested otherwise on the issue of the omentum.

The omentum being cut has nothing to do with the view of Llewellyn on vital areas. We can both agree on that.

Mentioning it allows for a known depth of cut to be established.

And as such it suggests no vital vessels or organs were hit.



This attempt to suggest i have been saying that this was a vital area is not backed by anything I have posted. To say so is highly disingenuous!

Just for the record:

The cutting of the omentum is the only recorded data we have of the depth of any of the abdomenial cuts.

It was never suggested it was anything other than this, if you believe it was quote away.

My view is that Llewellyn came up with the abdominalwounds as fatal because he struggled to account for blood loss, and of course he had the same problem with the abdominal wounds.

My view was and remains that Llewellyn's conclusion is wrong.

You may not like it Fisherman, but there it is.


Steve

[Fisherman]

Elamarna: How very wrong of you. It not ground breaking I have never suggested otherwise on the issue of the omentum.

You have repeatedly laid down that there is absolutely nothing that tells us that the cuts in the abdomen went any further. You have stated that a cut only damaging the omentum and going no further, could well be described as a very deep wound.
I know what you have posted, since I have waded through it with a rising sense of incredulity.

The omentum being cut has nothing to do with the view of Llewellyn on vital areas. We can both agree on that.

Then we can also degree that the cuts went deeper than the omentum, which is what I have suggested all the time, but which has been totally rejected. By you.

Can we also agree that the cuts that went further than the omentum did cause damage to "vital parts" of the abdominal cavity, meaning either organs or vessels?

Mentioning it allows for a known depth of cut to be established.

Hmmm? What?

And as such it suggests no vital vessels or organs were hit.

Ehhh .. was that why Llewellyn said that all the vital parts had been hit?

I am having all sorts of trouble with this. You are genuinely confusing. Or genuinely confused. Or both.

This attempt to suggest i have been saying that this was a vital area is not backed by anything I have posted. To say so is highly disingenuous!

You cannot write like that, Steve - WHAT area are you talking about? You seem to leave out half of the thought process as it is transferred into writing.

Just for the record:

The cutting of the omentum is the only recorded data we have of the depth of any of the abdomenial cuts.

There is nothing at all telling us that ONLY the omentum depth was reached. It is in all probability only a manner to say that the abdominal cavity was opened up, which it was. The depth was described as "very deep" and you have yourself claimed that there were shallow cuts - that seem to have gone into the omentum only.

It was never suggested it was anything other than this, if you believe it was quote away.

"All the vital parts were hit"

"Very deep"


My view is that Llewellyn came up with the abdominalwounds as fatal because he struggled to account for blood loss, and of course he had the same problem with the abdominal wounds.

But you yourself admit that he must have known that cutting the omentum is not fatal in any universe. Therefore he would have been lying as he said that the abdominal wounds were enough to kill, if the cuts only damaged the omentum.
Is that what you are saying?

My view was and remains that Llewellyn's conclusion is wrong.

Someone is VERY wrong here, I will give you that. All that remains to clarify is whether it is the professional man who made the post mortem who missed out and either goofed up totally or decided to lie - or the modern day commentator who thinks he knows better.

You may not like it Fisherman, but there it is.

I absolutely detest it as I find it a severe example of utter arrogance coupled to using the absense of evidence as evidence of absense. And the absense of sense is equally appaling.
But you are welcome to hang that trophy on your livingroom wall for everybody to marvel at.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi All!

I'm quite new here on the site and and the board, but do have a strong interest in JTR abut due to the fact that i have to care for my youngest son (sufferes from ASD), i do not have the time to dig into this topic as deep as i would.....

I do not have a favorite suspect but i do have found out that some of you do (...nd that som pretend to do but are to childish to reveal who...... ) and that this is a source of permanent lets call it disagreement.........

After following some of the threads i stumbled over the Lechmere threads and there is a little remark from my side.

First i must admit that i do not know the case or the sources as well as some of you obviously do, but..........why are the Anti Lechmereians so damned arrogant?

From what i get out of the discussions none of you can prove anything like if Lechmere was using the name Cross in private or in work, you simply can´t, but still the Anti Lechmere fraction is sating things like:
"CLEARLY he used Cross in his daily life............."
"It is OBVIOUS that he was nothing more that a nce family father......"
"it quite CLEAR that Mizen covered his failing...." and so on, but while you are allowed to do that, you burn the Lechmerians at the stake when they do quite the same...(to be honest the Lechmere grup seems more calm and open to criticism than the other group..... )
Example:
"We do know that he used Lechmere with authorities and not Cross as a name..."
"He was standing in the street near a murdered woman...."
..and the response from the Anti group is like:

"Define how many inches are meant by the term "near", and please provide the evidence and if you have got none, you are not allowed to have this opinion......" or at least this is the impression one gets reading all the 124 pages of this thread and there are many more threads like these.....

....and every now and then we do get the mental outpouring from some pseudo scientist, about how his way is the only way and that ONLY he can interpret historic sources correctly and how sound his line of evidence against his suspect is and bla bla bla...... some of his nitpickings are the source of immense laughter at our historic institute.....but he can not tell who it is or what his evidence is.....so boy please deliver or be quiet!!
Sorry for this not very nice and optimistic first post but i had to get rid of this otherwise i would have burst....

Now for the question I do have:
Why is the Lechmre theory so absurd and why are all other "better"?...
And who the hell do you favour Elarmana? I really would like to know that, that it is NOT Lechmere i can deduce from your posts, but who is yours?

greetings
Mark (please forgive the typos, but i have to have one eye on my son.....)

Hello Mark

I don't have a preferred suspect. I also don't believe that Cross/Lechmere was Jack the Ripper. I respect Fisherman and the research that he has done but, even so, I would say that my stance as an 'arrogant anti-Lechmerian,' is even more certain than Steve's (Elamarna). Mine is based on my own experience of being interested in the case for 30 years. This leads me to form opinions. I'd like to think that I'm not arrogant enough to say that I'm never wrong.
A word about Steve (and, believe me, he doesn't need me to defend him.) I believe that Steve pretty much bends over backwards to be reasonable on here. I've never felt him to be biased even though he favours not guilty over guilty with regard to CL.
As for myself, I'm not a medical person, I have other reasons for doubting. Fish will obviously disagree ( and we have disagreed on here) but these are some of my reasons nonetheless:

1. I don't believe that a serial murderer, who was never caught, would allow himself a paltry 30-40 minutes to; leave home, find a prostitute up for business, find a spot, do the deed, check himself for blood and possibly clean himself up and then walk all the way to work from whatever spot that he ended up at.

2. I think it unlikely in the extreme that Jack the Ripper would committ a horrible murder 'on the way to work'.

3. Given the obvious choice, when he heard Paul's footsteps around 40 yards away, of either walking or running away to certain freedom or staying our 'supposed' killer stood in the middle of the street and waited for the person(who, for all he knew, could have been a Constable) to arrive. He then called him over to see the body knowing full well that they would have to involve a Constable and knowing full well that he had a blood stained knife on his person. To me, this is totally unbelievable.

4. There is zero evidence that the so-called Mizen Scam occurred. Even if, and it's only an if, CL and Paul did lie this can be easily explained; they both said that they were late. No man at that time could afford to risk his job. A white lie allowed them both to get to work. After all, they both turned up at the Inquest.
Also, the 'Scam' could have been avoided all together if CL had suggested that they 'split up' to double their chances of finding a Constable. Simple.

5) The name issue means very little. The Lechmere's were initially quite a well-to-do family. Maybe he wanted to keep the family name out of it at the inquest? But the killer fact is this: he gained absolutely no advantage from using the name Cross instead of Lechmere because, at that same inquest, he gave his correct address.. No subterfuge, no secrecy, no hiding.

6) Although not a conclusive disproof CL had a long and apparently stable life. His wife and children were provided for and there is absolutely no evidence that he went on killing.

These are some of the reasons why I feel that CL is an unlikely Ripper. John Richardson and Louis Diemschutz both found bodies yet they are not generally considered killers. So why Cross? Well I think that its all down to Robert Paul actually. It has led people to feel that CL was 'caught in the act' when he wasn't. He could have easily escaped. Easily. But he didn't.

Of course we can't categorically disprove him but nothing about CL says killer to me. In my (arrogant or otherwise) opinion.

Regards
Herlock

[Jon Guy]

My view was and remains that Llewellyn's conclusion is wrong.

Dr Bond agrees with you, Steve, and Coroner Baxter said as much during the summing up of the inquest.

[Herlock Sholmes]

On the medical evidence debate. Does anyone know if Nick Warren has given an opinion on this? I'm sure that we would all agree that it would be enlightening to get the opinions of a surgeon. Maybe someone should drop him an email?

Regards
Herlock

[Henry Flower]

John Richardson and Louis Diemschutz both found bodies yet they are not generally considered killers. So why Cross? Well I think that its all down to Robert Paul actually. It has led people to feel that CL was 'caught in the act' when he wasn't. He could have easily escaped. Easily. But he didn't.

Interesting. Suppose Paul hadn't turned onto Bucks Row when he did. It's quite possible to imagine Lechmere doing precisely what he did: looking at the woman, not touching her, going to find a constable, and saying to that constable exactly what he said to Mizen, (because he wanted to be on his way and not be late for work, risking the sack) then turning up and giving his testimony to the Inquest, and none of us, perhaps, would find any of that suspicious.

Herlock is right: without Paul entering the scene I doubt that Lechmere ever gets considered, rightly or wrongly, anything other than a witness.

[Fisherman]

Dr Bond agrees with you, Steve, and Coroner Baxter said as much during the summing up of the inquest.

Baxter said that Bond agreed with Steve during his summing up...?

Wow.

Obviously the good coroner was way before his time.

So, Jon, as I said, the need arises to choose between a medico who never saw the body coupled with a coroner with no medical training whatsoever, and a trained medico who saw the body and did the autopsy.

Tough one, that...

[Fisherman]

Interesting. Suppose Paul hadn't turned onto Bucks Row when he did. It's quite possible to imagine Lechmere doing precisely what he did: looking at the woman, not touching her, going to find a constable, and saying to that constable exactly what he said to Mizen, (because he wanted to be on his way and not be late for work, risking the sack) then turning up and giving his testimony to the Inquest, and none of us, perhaps, would find any of that suspicious.

Herlock is right: without Paul entering the scene I doubt that Lechmere ever gets considered, rightly or wrongly, anything other than a witness.

Does that read like you think Lechmere told Mizen that there was another PC in place in Bucks Row, Henry?

[Herlock Sholmes]

Interesting. Suppose Paul hadn't turned onto Bucks Row when he did. It's quite possible to imagine Lechmere doing precisely what he did: looking at the woman, not touching her, going to find a constable, and saying to that constable exactly what he said to Mizen, (because he wanted to be on his way and not be late for work, risking the sack) then turning up and giving his testimony to the Inquest, and none of us, perhaps, would find any of that suspicious.

Herlock is right: without Paul entering the scene I doubt that Lechmere ever gets considered, rightly or wrongly, anything other than a witness.

Thanks Henry.

I was wondering the other day while I was 'away' what would have happened if, just as John Richardson discovered the body of Annie Chapman, someone had come into the passageway and saw him standing above a mutilated corpse? What if the 'other guy' had panicked and run for a Constable? Richardson would have been instantly 'in the frame.'

It's interesting to note that neither the police or Paul had any suspicions about a man who was, even for a short time, alone with the body. We can't just assume that the Victorian Police were utterly incompetent just because they didn't have today's knowledge or technology. As the murders progressed and the pressure on the police intensified why did no one, when reviewing the case for missed clues, ever say: 'hold on, we had that Lechmere bloke who we know was alone with the murdered Nichols. We have his address let's call him in and question him again.' You really don't need to be Morse to consider that option. Yet no one did. Why not? Because they were confident of his innocence.

Regards
Herlock

[Sam Flynn]

My idea was, that IF they hurt/cut/perforated the aorta, the blood would have been in the abdominal cavity, so no guess at "blood gone into the tissue" would be needed

A very cogent observation, Mark. Bravo.

[Fisherman]

Herlock Sholmes:

I was wondering the other day while I was 'away' what would have happened if, just as John Richardson discovered the body of Annie Chapman, someone had come into the passageway and saw him standing above a mutilated corpse? What if the 'other guy' had panicked and run for a Constable? Richardson would have been instantly 'in the frame.'

And indeed he should have been so - going in that implication only.

But once it was established that the body was cold, he would immediately be let free, unless there was something else to implicate him.

That is how these things work: If you are found alone, standing over the body of a murder victim, you need to be cleared.

It's interesting to note that neither the police or Paul had any suspicions about a man who was, even for a short time, alone with the body.

Well, all we can say is that we know nothing of any such suspicion. It is not impossible that Paul suspected Lechmere, but was afraid of him and did not want to risk anything. Did you think of that? We actually do not know what Paul thought of Lechmere at all.
As for the police, it seems obvious that they entertained no suspicion - but to my mind, that will owe to some degree to how Lechmere sought out the police not once, but twice. Plus at the time, criminal anthropology played a large role in how criminals were looked upon, and Lechmere did not fit that scheme at all.

We can't just assume that the Victorian Police were utterly incompetent just because they didn't have today's knowledge or technology.

Can we instead assume that they were utterly competent, Herlock? Is that somehow a given thing? If so, why dod the coroner have to reprimand them for not speaking to all the people in Bucks Row?
I think they were a bit lazy in the Nichols case, and I think they were hampered by lacking technical equipment and the prevailing criminal anthropology ideas. Otherwise, I think they equalled todays force - some good, some bad, some success, some mistakes, some brilliance, some real bad debacles.

As the murders progressed and the pressure on the police intensified why did no one, when reviewing the case for missed clues, ever say: 'hold on, we had that Lechmere bloke who we know was alone with the murdered Nichols. We have his address let's call him in and question him again.' You really don't need to be Morse to consider that option. Yet no one did. Why not? Because they were confident of his innocence.

Why did not generations of ripperologists see the potential guilt for a hundred years? Why not ask that question?
Because they were confident that he was innocent? Or because he had hidden his tracks?

Two.

Two sides of the coin.

Two angles to look from.

It always comes down to that.