Deadly occupations and serial murder

[Henry Flower]

A very good point concerning Nichols. It seems the argument now is, Lechmere murdered on the way to work or whilst visiting relatives, but if that's wrong, no problem, he was obviously the nineteenth century equivalent of a long distance truck driver and therefore murdered victims whilst in the course of his employment.

I think maybe you're being slightly unfair to Fisherman there, John. As I read it (and maybe I was wrong) Christer could be saying that the same psychological conditions prevalent in long-haul truckers might also become prevalent in someone of Lechmere's profession: out late at night, in an unreal world peopled largely by the dregs of society, hauling bloodied sacks of meat around the east end, rather than home with the family. Being nocturnal, wandering the streets at night, it has an effect on the mind, or it can. I used to do it a lot. I found it plays strange tricks on the mind.

I'm thinking... Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver.

Not that I think Lechmere was the killer, or that he was involved in butchery. I think Fish over-egged the pudding somewhat, which is probably why he receives an equal and opposite reaction.

[John G]

[QUOTE=Pierre;424013]

Hi Fisherman,

I think the answer is that people interested in the case understand that you are hypothesizing about an innocent man in the past who can not defend himself.

People here are intelligent. They are interested in many questions concearning the case and they are often frustrated because of the lack of answers.

This does not create a willingness to accept an idea with very little indications for someone having been a serial killer.



I think people do not appreciate it when others earn any money on something which has no value in their eyes. And the problem about the descendants is a serious problem. Yesterday I saw an article where a descendant of Lechmere declared the belief in Lechmere having been a vicious serial killer. I.e. on very little and contradictive data, Fisherman.



So they "had no problems" with being the descendants of Jack the Ripper. Certainly that is a very naive view.



Dear Fisherman, that is not a problem for me. The problems I see is that the case for your carman is not even a weak case. It is no case. But you treat the witness who found Nichols as a serial killer. That is an ethical problem.



You are no liar, Fisherman. But you take the risk of becoming one or being percieved as one due to your belief in the Lechmere idea. You are very certain that Lechmere was Jack the Ripper. Have you ever actually considered that you may be wrong? Not just saying it, but really considered it?



Since there are no historical indications that Lechmere was a serial killer. People are not stupid here. They do know the case and your arguments. And they do not agree with you. That is just a simple well established historical fact by now.

I would be happy for you if you were right. But sorry, your sources are no good sources for the Lechmere idea. They contradict your idea, and you need much more to establish the contradictions as consequences of historical murders, i.e. real murders in the past.



No. But if his cigarette brand was found at every murder site there would have been what I call historical indications. There must also be explanations as to why he left them there. And so on and so forth.



You speak in the present but talk about the past. It would be better for you if you got a little distance to the past. You would see clearer.

Compare a truck driver in 2017 to a carman in 1888.

Many professions in 2017 has very little to do with professions in 1888. Society was very different. People here have also, correctly, pointed out to you the big differences. That is not at all any "reaction" but presentations of well established facts.



What is actually the point of these Woulds? It has nothing to do with Lechmere in 1888.



Lechmere was a man. He had every opportunity to go out at night and drink at any public house and tell his wife he did so. This was a normal behaviour. He was not dependent on killing on his way to work.

Or was he tied to his wife´s apron strings?



OK. So Lechmere suffered from a social fact stopping him from killing at a time preferred by him or he preferred to kill on his way to work. Why? Can you give me the motive explanation? I am willing to listen to you.



It does not make the documentaries more trustworthy.





You think so. And how does that thinking make a dead man a serial killer?



You now discuss parts of society in the past. It has nothing to do with the biography of Lechmere. Not on paper. In the idea only. Sources are lacking.



Nothing about Lechmere in all this.



So Lechmere wanted a cart to pick up prostitutes, put them in a box and kill them?

Listen now: The profession has nothing to do with Lechmere: You have said all the time that he killed on his way to work or on his way to his mother. Why this sudden idea about seeking a specific trade? If he wanted to use it for killing people he had no need to do that. You have said he was on his way to work. He had no cart with him.



Anyone who used a horse and carriage is what is needed for the dismemberment cases.



"The trucker of his age". That is impossible. There were no truckers in 1888.



Sorry.

Pierre

A very good point concerning Nichols. It seems the argument now is, Lechmere murdered on the way to work or whilst visiting relatives, but if that's wrong, no problem, he was obviously the nineteenth century equivalent of a long distance truck driver and therefore murdered victims whilst in the course of his employment.

[Pierre]

[QUOTE=Fisherman;424008]

A few observations.

Henry Flower tells me that there was no animosity at all involved in the posts that arrived initially, but for Simons post.

And still they had Abby Normal react and speak about a knee-jerk reaction...?

I agree to a large degree - the normal outcome of proposing anything at all that may point to guilt on the carmans behalf is a knee-jerk "no!".

However, since I think Henry Flower is a balanced and clever man, I will accept that I may have overreacted to a degree.

Ever since the Lechmere theory was first presented by me and Edward Stow some five years ago, posters have asked why there is such an animosity towards the Lechmere theory. Normally, they are silenced by a flat denial that this is so.

Hi Fisherman,

I think the answer is that people interested in the case understand that you are hypothesizing about an innocent man in the past who can not defend himself.

People here are intelligent. They are interested in many questions concearning the case and they are often frustrated because of the lack of answers.

This does not create a willingness to accept an idea with very little indications for someone having been a serial killer.

One of the first reactions we had was from a very well established poster who accused us of having lined our own pockets with the money of the suffering descendants of victims of the Bethnal Green tube disaster, by having taken a small admission to the lecture we made in St Johns Church back then. It was said to be deeply immoral and it was added that we were being unforgivably cynical for not caring about the Lechmere descendants who would be distraught by our falsities.

I think people do not appreciate it when others earn any money on something which has no value in their eyes. And the problem about the descendants is a serious problem. Yesterday I saw an article where a descendant of Lechmere declared the belief in Lechmere having been a vicious serial killer. I.e. on very little and contradictive data, Fisherman.

Of course, the admission money went into the work of the Stairway to Heaven Foundation, funding a memorial for the tube victims, and of course we had contacted the Lechmeres well ahead of presenting out theory, and we had been told that they had no problems with it.

So they "had no problems" with being the descendants of Jack the Ripper. Certainly that is a very naive view.

This was never asked of us. Instead it was predisposed that we were moneyhungry bastards with no conscience.

Dear Fisherman, that is not a problem for me. The problems I see is that the case for your carman is not even a weak case. It is no case. But you treat the witness who found Nichols as a serial killer. That is an ethical problem.

When the docu was presented, it was implied that the experts of it had been mislead and lied to. Much as it is good to keep a watchful ear towards the ground, one can actually take a less inflammable stance. But this was not done; it was par for the course to claim that the experts must have been lied to.

You are no liar, Fisherman. But you take the risk of becoming one or being percieved as one due to your belief in the Lechmere idea. You are very certain that Lechmere was Jack the Ripper. Have you ever actually considered that you may be wrong? Not just saying it, but really considered it?

Things like these tend to colour my take on the criticism that is directed towards the theory and the unwillingness to take the simplest of matters on board, if they point to the carman.

Since there are no historical indications that Lechmere was a serial killer. People are not stupid here. They do know the case and your arguments. And they do not agree with you. That is just a simple well established historical fact by now.

I would be happy for you if you were right. But sorry, your sources are no good sources for the Lechmere idea. They contradict your idea, and you need much more to establish the contradictions as consequences of historical murders, i.e. real murders in the past.

If it had been found out that a certain brand of cigarette was prone to turn people to sereial killers, and that Kosminski smoked that particular brand, I have little doubt that it would be called a breakthrough and the Kosminskiytes would be congratulated.

No. But if his cigarette brand was found at every murder site there would have been what I call historical indications. There must also be explanations as to why he left them there. And so on and so forth.

When I say that Lechmere has ties to the two occupations that are tied to violent crime, it is rejected, knee-jerk fashion.

You speak in the present but talk about the past. It would be better for you if you got a little distance to the past. You would see clearer.

Compare a truck driver in 2017 to a carman in 1888.

Many professions in 2017 has very little to do with professions in 1888. Society was very different. People here have also, correctly, pointed out to you the big differences. That is not at all any "reaction" but presentations of well established facts.

Gareth says that the equivalent of the 20th and 21st century truckers were the victorian train workers. In a sense, he has a point - they hauled goods for long distances.

But would prostitutes work the trainyards? Would train drivers troll the rails, looking for women? Would they stop and pick up hitchhikers? Would they stop the train and sneak into houses, like Adam Leroy, only to then return to the train and sneak off? Could they take women into the trains and tie them up there, unseen by the ones tending to the steam engine fire?

What is actually the point of these Woulds? It has nothing to do with Lechmere in 1888.

I think not. And these are the points that we should address, since hauling goods long stretches is not interesting if it is not combined with the opportunitites to kill.

Lechmere was a man. He had every opportunity to go out at night and drink at any public house and tell his wife he did so. This was a normal behaviour. He was not dependent on killing on his way to work.

Or was he tied to his wife´s apron strings?

It is another matter that people working on trains are probably a category that is of interest in this matter anyway; they are transient, and they can spread a series of murders in a manner that makes them hard to discern. Other categories of interest will be travelling salesmen and people travelling and doing small works. The key is how these people are alone, they rule their own time, they are exposed to prostitution and hitchhikers (save the train personnel).

So we should take our eye of the term long-haul truckers and instead look at people working in the transportation sector, regardless if the stretch is long or short and regardless of what commodity they transport.

OK. So Lechmere suffered from a social fact stopping him from killing at a time preferred by him or he preferred to kill on his way to work. Why? Can you give me the motive explanation? I am willing to listen to you.

Dusty makes the point (seconded by Steve) that documentaries are notoriously untrustworthy or something such, and that may be correct. I can identify other sources that are much nore untrustworthy, like a number of posters out here.

It does not make the documentaries more trustworthy.

Be that as it may, I am asked if I have checked the information, and yes, I have. The docu was factually based on FBI material from 2009 that can be accessed here:

https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/stories/2009/april/highwayserial_040609

If anything, the numbers are conservative in the docu. There is later material that speaks not of 500 unsolved freeway murders and 200 trucker suspects, but instead of 750 murders and 450 such suspects.

As could be expected, I am asked whether people risk getting desensitized by buying a pork chop. I would not propose to know the exact answer to that question (but I can say that my daughter will not eat meat with bones and sinews visible, since it makes her think of dead animals),

but I think Lechmere was involved in hauling a lot of meat at Pickfords, and that it involved large chunks and parts of animals.

You think so. And how does that thinking make a dead man a serial killer?

And I don´t think you need to handle it to become desensitized - it is the realization of how a living creature can be chopped into parts that lies behind this, as far as I understand, and not only the actual butchering. A far-fetched comparison is how the people in concentration camps in many instances have said that the dead people they rolled around in wheel barrels, stacked upon each other like dried branches of trees, became objects to them instead of real people.

You now discuss parts of society in the past. It has nothing to do with the biography of Lechmere. Not on paper. In the idea only. Sources are lacking.

That is what happens when you are exposed to such matters over a period of time - it looses it´s real context and is objectified. This is also why people in 1940:s movies put a hand to their stomachs and fell gracefully to the ground saying "Aargh" when they were shot. Today, we have scenes where the bellies are cut open, the intestines welling out and blood pouring down the bdies of people who depserately hold on to their innards before they die by having half of their heads blown away by a shotgun, all graphically described.
Desensitation. Objectification. It would never have passed before the 1990s, and it only does so because we have been slowly numbed by increasing amounts of violence in other films.

Nothing about Lechmere in all this.

The docu on trucker killers is also conservative when it comes to identifying what it is that makes truckers serialists. It is speculated about a few things, but nothing is thrown forward as the determining factor. It seems, however, that there IS such a factor, and I would propose that a number of the serialists have actively sought out the trade on account of how they would be able to exploit it for their purposes.

So Lechmere wanted a cart to pick up prostitutes, put them in a box and kill them?

Listen now: The profession has nothing to do with Lechmere: You have said all the time that he killed on his way to work or on his way to his mother. Why this sudden idea about seeking a specific trade? If he wanted to use it for killing people he had no need to do that. You have said he was on his way to work. He had no cart with him.

Travelling the streets and roads alone, being exposed to prostitution, having the option to cage women and then to dump them - to me, that closely resembles the options open to Lechmere in the role of the Ripper/Torso killer.

Anyone who used a horse and carriage is what is needed for the dismemberment cases.

He is tied to the transport business, he was the trucker of his age and he in all probability hauled huge dead parts of animals on an everyday basis.

"The trucker of his age". That is impossible. There were no truckers in 1888.

If that is of no interest to anybody but me and Abby, then so be it.

Sorry.

Pierre

[Henry Flower]

Christer, I just told my wife that someone had called me 'balanced'. She laughed so bitterly she nearly choked on her granola.

Anyway.

It's good to know that the facts in the doc have such a reliable source. All sorts of things float around the media / popular culture, and get repeated by people who haven't checked. For instance, one often hears otherwise well-informed commentators repeating the 'fact' that there is a well established link between serial murders and military service. When the actual facts and figures were studied, researchers found that out of a sample of more than 500 US serialists, only 7% had done any kind of military service, and even that 7% had served only briefly and some of them had never seen armed combat. Or to put it more persuasively (tactics!) 93% of US serialists have had no connection with military service at all.

I'll give you this, Christer, and it's purely a gut reaction, not based on any logical thinking on my part: given the choice between a man who works at a desk in an office 9-5 and then goes home to his family, and a man who spends his nights delivering goods around the East End on a cart, I'd put my money 75% on the carman.

But I'll say it again: I think you're building the roof before you've checked your foundations are sound.

But thanks for posting the material, it is certainly interesting food for thought.



So I have no problem with documentaries produced as entertainment products being questioned closely. And clearly neither would you.

[John G]

A few observations.

Henry Flower tells me that there was no animosity at all involved in the posts that arrived initially, but for Simons post.

And still they had Abby Normal react and speak about a knee-jerk reaction...?

I agree to a large degree - the normal outcome of proposing anything at all that may point to guilt on the carmans behalf is a knee-jerk "no!".

However, since I think Henry Flower is a balanced and clever man, I will accept that I may have overreacted to a degree.

Ever since the Lechmere theory was first presented by me and Edward Stow some five years ago, posters have asked why there is such an animosity towards the Lechmere theory. Normally, they are silenced by a flat denial that this is so.

One of the first reactions we had was from a very well established poster who accused us of having lined our own pockets with the money of the suffering descendants of victims of the Bethnal Green tube disaster, by having taken a small admission to the lecture we made in St Johns Church back then. It was said to be deeply immoral and it was added that we were being unforgivably cynical for not caring about the Lechmere descendants who would be distraught by our falsities.

Of course, the admission money went into the work of the Stairway to Heaven Foundation, funding a memorial for the tube victims, and of course we had contacted the Lechmeres well ahead of presenting out theory, and we had been told that they had no problems with it.

This was never asked of us. Instead it was predisposed that we were moneyhungry bastards with no conscience.

When the docu was presented, it was implied that the experts of it had been mislead and lied to. Much as it is good to keep a watchful ear towards the ground, one can actually take a less inflammable stance. But this was not done; it was par for the course to claim that the experts must have been lied to.

Things like these tend to colour my take on the criticism that is directed towards the theory and the unwillingness to take the simplest of matters on board, if they point to the carman.

If it had been found out that a certain brand of cigarette was prone to turn people thto sereial killers, and that Kosminski smoked that particular brand, I have little doubt that it would be called a breakthrough and the Kosminskiytes would be congratulated.

When I say that Lechmere has ties to the two occupations that are tied to violent crime, it is rejected, knee-jerk fashion.

Gareth says that the equivalent of the 20th and 21st century truckers were the victorian train workers. In a sense, he has a point - they hauled goods for long distances.
But would prostitutes work the trainyards? Would train drivers troll the rails, looking for women? Would they stop and pick up hitchhikers? Would they stop the train and sneak into houses, like Adam Leroy, only to then return to the train and sneak off? Could they take women into the trains and tie them up there, unseen by the ones tending to the steam engine fire?

I think not. And these are the points that we should address, since hauling goods long stretches is not interesting if it is not combined with the opportunitites to kill.

It is another matter that people working on trains are probably a category that is of interest in this matter anyway; they are transient, and they can spread a series of murders in a manner that makes them hard to discern. Other categories of interest will be travelling salesmen and people travelling and doing small works. The key is how these people are alone, they rule their own time, they are exposed to prostitution and hitchhikers (save the train personnel).

So we should take our eye of the term long-haul truckers and instead look at people working in the transportation sector, regardless if the stretch is long or short and regardless of what commodity they transport.

Dusty makes the point (seconded by Steve) that documentaries are notoriously untrustworthy or something such, and that may be correct. I can identify other sources that are much nore untrustworthy, like a number of posters out here.

Be that as it may, I am asked if I have checked the information, and yes, I have. The docu was factually based on FBI material from 2009 that can be accessed here:

https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/stories/2009/april/highwayserial_040609

If anything, the numbers are conservative in the docu. There is later material that speaks not of 500 unsolved freeway murders and 200 trucker suspects, but instead of 750 murders and 450 such suspects.

As could be expected, I am asked whether people risk getting desensitized by buying a pork chop. I would not propose to know the exact answer to that question (but I can say that my daughter will not eat meat with bones and sinews visible, since it makes her think of dead animals), but I think Lechmere was involved in hauling a lot of meat at Pickfords, and that it involved large chunks and parts of animals. And I don´t think you need to handle it to become desensitized - it is the realization of how a living creature can be chopped into parts that lies behind this, as far as I understand, and not only the actual butchering. A far-fetched comparison is how the people in concentration camps in many instances have said that the dead people they rolled around in wheel barrels, stacked upon each other like dried branches of trees, became objects to them instead of real people.
That is what happens when you are exposed to such matters over a period of time - it looses it´s real context and is objectified. This is also why people in 1940:s movies put a hand to their stomachs and fell gracefully to the ground saying "Aargh" when they were shot. Today, we have scenes where the bellies are cut open, the intestines welling out and blood pouring down the bdies of people who depserately hold on to their innards before they die by having half of their heads blown away by a shotgun, all graphically described.
Desensitation. Objectification. It would never have passed before the 1990s, and it only does so because we have been slowly numbed by increasing amounts of violence in other films.

The docu on trucker killers is also conservative when it comes to identifying what it is that makes truckers serialists. It is speculated about a few things, but nothing is thrown forward as the determining factor. It seems, however, that there IS such a factor, and I would propose that a number of the serialists have actively sought out the trade on account of how they would be able to exploit it for their purposes.

Travelling the streets and roads alone, being exposed to prostitution, having the option to cage women and then to dump them - to me, that closely resembles the options open to Lechmere in the role of the Ripper/Torso killer.

He is tied to the transport business, he was the trucker of his age and he in all probability hauled huge dead parts of animals on an everyday basis.

If that is of no interest to anybody but me and Abby, then so be it.

"The trucker of his age?" Driving a horse and cart around Whitechapel is not remotely comparable to driving a lorry on a modern highway/motorway. They are so fundamentally different that you may as well compare an aeroplane to a submarine as modes of transport.


You need to cite authority to demonstrate that merely coming into contact with meat is correlated with an increased possibility of being a serial killer.

In any event, based upon this argument Louis Diemshutz is a better suspect than Lechmere. In fact, considering he discovered one of the C5 victims shortly after she'd been murdered- coupled with the fact he claimed not to have noticed the slit throat, despite striking a match, prodding the body with his whip, and trying to lift it up-I would say he's a better suspect than Lechmere. Which only goes to show that you can construct a circumstantial case against anyone.

[Elamarna]

A few observations.

Henry Flower tells me that there was no animosity at all involved in the posts that arrived initially, but for Simons post.

And still they had Abby Normal react and speak about a knee-jerk reaction...?

I agree to a large degree - the normal outcome of proposing anything at all that may point to guilt on the carmans behalf is a knee-jerk "no!".

However, since I think Henry Flower is a balanced and clever man, I will accept that I may have overreacted to a degree.

Ever since the Lechmere theory was first presented by me and Edward Stow some five years ago, posters have asked why there is such an animosity towards the Lechmere theory. Normally, they are silenced by a flat denial that this is so.

One of the first reactions we had was from a very well established poster who accused us of having lined our own pockets with the money of the suffering descendants of victims of the Bethnal Green tube disaster, by having taken a small admission to the lecture we made in St Johns Church back then. It was said to be deeply immoral and it was added that we were being unforgivably cynical for not caring about the Lechmere descendants who would be distraught by our falsities.

Of course, the admission money went into the work of the Stairway to Heaven Foundation, funding a memorial for the tube victims, and of course we had contacted the Lechmeres well ahead of presenting out theory, and we had been told that they had no problems with it.

This was never asked of us. Instead it was predisposed that we were moneyhungry bastards with no conscience.

When the docu was presented, it was implied that the experts of it had been mislead and lied to. Much as it is good to keep a watchful ear towards the ground, one can actually take a less inflammable stance. But this was not done; it was par for the course to claim that the experts must have been lied to.

Things like these tend to colour my take on the criticism that is directed towards the theory and the unwillingness to take the simplest of matters on board, if they point to the carman.

If it had been found out that a certain brand of cigarette was prone to turn people to sereial killers, and that Kosminski smoked that particular brand, I have little doubt that it would be called a breakthrough and the Kosminskiytes would be congratulated.

When I say that Lechmere has ties to the two occupations that are tied to violent crime, it is rejected, knee-jerk fashion.

Gareth says that the equivalent of the 20th and 21st century truckers were the victorian train workers. In a sense, he has a point - they hauled goods for long distances.
But would prostitutes work the trainyards? Would train drivers troll the rails, looking for women? Would they stop and pick up hitchhikers? Would they stop the train and sneak into houses, like Adam Leroy, only to then return to the train and sneak off? Could they take women into the trains and tie them up there, unseen by the ones tending to the steam engine fire?

I think not. And these are the points that we should address, since hauling goods long stretches is not interesting if it is not combined with the opportunitites to kill.

It is another matter that people working on trains are probably a category that is of interest in this matter anyway; they are transient, and they can spread a series of murders in a manner that makes them hard to discern. Other categories of interest will be travelling salesmen and people travelling and doing small works. The key is how these people are alone, they rule their own time, they are exposed to prostitution and hitchhikers (save the train personnel).

So we should take our eye of the term long-haul truckers and instead look at people working in the transportation sector, regardless if the stretch is long or short and regardless of what commodity they transport.

Dusty makes the point (seconded by Steve) that documentaries are notoriously untrustworthy or something such, and that may be correct. I can identify other sources that are much nore untrustworthy, like a number of posters out here.

Be that as it may, I am asked if I have checked the information, and yes, I have. The docu was factually based on FBI material from 2009 that can be accessed here:

https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/stories/2009/april/highwayserial_040609

If anything, the numbers are conservative in the docu. There is later material that speaks not of 500 unsolved freeway murders and 200 trucker suspects, but instead of 750 murders and 450 such suspects.

As could be expected, I am asked whether people risk getting desensitized by buying a pork chop. I would not propose to know the exact answer to that question (but I can say that my daughter will not eat meat with bones and sinews visible, since it makes her think of dead animals), but I think Lechmere was involved in hauling a lot of meat at Pickfords, and that it involved large chunks and parts of animals. And I don´t think you need to handle it to become desensitized - it is the realization of how a living creature can be chopped into parts that lies behind this, as far as I understand, and not only the actual butchering. A far-fetched comparison is how the people in concentration camps in many instances have said that the dead people they rolled around in wheel barrels, stacked upon each other like dried branches of trees, became objects to them instead of real people.
That is what happens when you are exposed to such matters over a period of time - it looses it´s real context and is objectified. This is also why people in 1940:s movies put a hand to their stomachs and fell gracefully to the ground saying "Aargh" when they were shot. Today, we have scenes where the bellies are cut open, the intestines welling out and blood pouring down the bdies of people who depserately hold on to their innards before they die by having half of their heads blown away by a shotgun, all graphically described.
Desensitation. Objectification. It would never have passed before the 1990s, and it only does so because we have been slowly numbed by increasing amounts of violence in other films.

The docu on trucker killers is also conservative when it comes to identifying what it is that makes truckers serialists. It is speculated about a few things, but nothing is thrown forward as the determining factor. It seems, however, that there IS such a factor, and I would propose that a number of the serialists have actively sought out the trade on account of how they would be able to exploit it for their purposes.

Travelling the streets and roads alone, being exposed to prostitution, having the option to cage women and then to dump them - to me, that closely resembles the options open to Lechmere in the role of the Ripper/Torso killer.

He is tied to the transport business, he was the trucker of his age and he in all probability hauled huge dead parts of animals on an everyday basis.

If that is of no interest to anybody but me and Abby, then so be it.

Your comparison on desensitization is indeed far fetched, and some, not I because I understand the point you are trying to make, may find it offensive.
I say this based on my time as an elected local authority councillor in Barnet, some people take great offence at any mention of the camps, and it really not a dig at you just a general comment.


The actual data looks interesting I think several of us agree on that.
Views have been given on the comparisons, you don't agree , no problem.


Steve

[Fisherman]

A few observations.

Henry Flower tells me that there was no animosity at all involved in the posts that arrived initially, but for Simons post.

And still they had Abby Normal react and speak about a knee-jerk reaction...?

I agree to a large degree - the normal outcome of proposing anything at all that may point to guilt on the carmans behalf is a knee-jerk "no!".

However, since I think Henry Flower is a balanced and clever man, I will accept that I may have overreacted to a degree.

Ever since the Lechmere theory was first presented by me and Edward Stow some five years ago, posters have asked why there is such an animosity towards the Lechmere theory. Normally, they are silenced by a flat denial that this is so.

One of the first reactions we had was from a very well established poster who accused us of having lined our own pockets with the money of the suffering descendants of victims of the Bethnal Green tube disaster, by having taken a small admission to the lecture we made in St Johns Church back then. It was said to be deeply immoral and it was added that we were being unforgivably cynical for not caring about the Lechmere descendants who would be distraught by our falsities.

Of course, the admission money went into the work of the Stairway to Heaven Foundation, funding a memorial for the tube victims, and of course we had contacted the Lechmeres well ahead of presenting out theory, and we had been told that they had no problems with it.

This was never asked of us. Instead it was predisposed that we were moneyhungry bastards with no conscience.

When the docu was presented, it was implied that the experts of it had been mislead and lied to. Much as it is good to keep a watchful ear towards the ground, one can actually take a less inflammable stance. But this was not done; it was par for the course to claim that the experts must have been lied to.

Things like these tend to colour my take on the criticism that is directed towards the theory and the unwillingness to take the simplest of matters on board, if they point to the carman.

If it had been found out that a certain brand of cigarette was prone to turn people to sereial killers, and that Kosminski smoked that particular brand, I have little doubt that it would be called a breakthrough and the Kosminskiytes would be congratulated.

When I say that Lechmere has ties to the two occupations that are tied to violent crime, it is rejected, knee-jerk fashion.

Gareth says that the equivalent of the 20th and 21st century truckers were the victorian train workers. In a sense, he has a point - they hauled goods for long distances.
But would prostitutes work the trainyards? Would train drivers troll the rails, looking for women? Would they stop and pick up hitchhikers? Would they stop the train and sneak into houses, like Adam Leroy, only to then return to the train and sneak off? Could they take women into the trains and tie them up there, unseen by the ones tending to the steam engine fire?

I think not. And these are the points that we should address, since hauling goods long stretches is not interesting if it is not combined with the opportunitites to kill.

It is another matter that people working on trains are probably a category that is of interest in this matter anyway; they are transient, and they can spread a series of murders in a manner that makes them hard to discern. Other categories of interest will be travelling salesmen and people travelling and doing small works. The key is how these people are alone, they rule their own time, they are exposed to prostitution and hitchhikers (save the train personnel).

So we should take our eye of the term long-haul truckers and instead look at people working in the transportation sector, regardless if the stretch is long or short and regardless of what commodity they transport.

Dusty makes the point (seconded by Steve) that documentaries are notoriously untrustworthy or something such, and that may be correct. I can identify other sources that are much nore untrustworthy, like a number of posters out here.

Be that as it may, I am asked if I have checked the information, and yes, I have. The docu was factually based on FBI material from 2009 that can be accessed here:

https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/stories/2009/april/highwayserial_040609

If anything, the numbers are conservative in the docu. There is later material that speaks not of 500 unsolved freeway murders and 200 trucker suspects, but instead of 750 murders and 450 such suspects.

As could be expected, I am asked whether people risk getting desensitized by buying a pork chop. I would not propose to know the exact answer to that question (but I can say that my daughter will not eat meat with bones and sinews visible, since it makes her think of dead animals), but I think Lechmere was involved in hauling a lot of meat at Pickfords, and that it involved large chunks and parts of animals. And I don´t think you need to handle it to become desensitized - it is the realization of how a living creature can be chopped into parts that lies behind this, as far as I understand, and not only the actual butchering. A far-fetched comparison is how the people in concentration camps in many instances have said that the dead people they rolled around in wheel barrels, stacked upon each other like dried branches of trees, became objects to them instead of real people.
That is what happens when you are exposed to such matters over a period of time - it looses it´s real context and is objectified. This is also why people in 1940:s movies put a hand to their stomachs and fell gracefully to the ground saying "Aargh" when they were shot. Today, we have scenes where the bellies are cut open, the intestines welling out and blood pouring down the bdies of people who depserately hold on to their innards before they die by having half of their heads blown away by a shotgun, all graphically described.
Desensitation. Objectification. It would never have passed before the 1990s, and it only does so because we have been slowly numbed by increasing amounts of violence in other films.

The docu on trucker killers is also conservative when it comes to identifying what it is that makes truckers serialists. It is speculated about a few things, but nothing is thrown forward as the determining factor. It seems, however, that there IS such a factor, and I would propose that a number of the serialists have actively sought out the trade on account of how they would be able to exploit it for their purposes.

Travelling the streets and roads alone, being exposed to prostitution, having the option to cage women and then to dump them - to me, that closely resembles the options open to Lechmere in the role of the Ripper/Torso killer.

He is tied to the transport business, he was the trucker of his age and he in all probability hauled huge dead parts of animals on an everyday basis.

If that is of no interest to anybody but me and Abby, then so be it.

[John G]

Morning all,

Having slept on this overnight a few more observations to make.

We have been asked to comment on a documentary which links certain occupations to serial killers, and some observations and views Christer says he has pointed out which may have similarities to Lechmere.
The overall response has been that the information in the Documentary is interesting; but that most fail to see the points Christer points out, has being either similar or significant.

Christer responds by saying :

"I can now honestly say that this was to a degree what I wanted to get out of the thread - a clear indication that in Lechmere´s case, the case facts, the relevant surrounding material, the comparisons it offers with todays world of serial killing, is something that is totally secondary to many posters out here - secondary to the urge to shout NO! whenever the carmans name is mentioned."


The issue of course is that this documentary is a subjective programme made by a production company to sell to Broadcasters. And as such the information it quotes cannot just be accepted at face value, without being checked first.

Which brings as to a very relevant example - The Missing Evidence documentary. This makes some truly remarkable claims and if taken at face value would suggest there are overwhelming established historical facts pointing in only one direction and the case is all but closed. Of course we know those "facts" are not established historical facts at all, but largely speculation and the case is far from closed. However that is only because the information given in the Documentary has been checked and challenged.
Such needs to be done with this information Christer has found and pointed out to us.

However we can also look at the issues Christer points out. Are Truckers the modern equivalent of 19th century Carmen?

Is the act of simply picking up joints of meat likely to desensitized you?

I await the research paper that demonstrates that shopping for meat can lead to desensitization.

Steve

And there lies the problem. As s matter of common sense an eighteenth century horse and cart doesn't remotely resemble a twenty-first century lorry. As a comparison of modes of transport you might just as well compare a cart horse with a SUV.

And, as you note, If simply being in contact with meat results in desensitization, then anyone who isn't a vegetarian must be at a heightened risk of becoming a serial killer.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I'd would suggest that the 21st century equivalent of a 19th century London Carman would be White Van Man.

Maybe CL murderous exploits were down to road rage?

Regards

Herlock

[Elamarna]

Morning all,

Having slept on this overnight a few more observations to make.

We have been asked to comment on a documentary which links certain occupations to serial killers, and some observations and views Christer says he has pointed out which may have similarities to Lechmere.
The overall response has been that the information in the Documentary is interesting; but that most fail to see the points Christer points out, has being either similar or significant.

Christer responds by saying :

"I can now honestly say that this was to a degree what I wanted to get out of the thread - a clear indication that in Lechmere´s case, the case facts, the relevant surrounding material, the comparisons it offers with todays world of serial killing, is something that is totally secondary to many posters out here - secondary to the urge to shout NO! whenever the carmans name is mentioned."


The issue of course is that this documentary is a subjective programme made by a production company to sell to Broadcasters. And as such the information it quotes cannot just be accepted at face value, without being checked first.

Which brings as to a very relevant example - The Missing Evidence documentary. This makes some truly remarkable claims and if taken at face value would suggest there are overwhelming established historical facts pointing in only one direction and the case is all but closed. Of course we know those "facts" are not established historical facts at all, but largely speculation and the case is far from closed. However that is only because the information given in the Documentary has been checked and challenged.
Such needs to be done with this information Christer has found and pointed out to us.

However we can also look at the issues Christer points out. Are Truckers the modern equivalent of 19th century Carmen?

Is the act of simply picking up joints of meat likely to desensitized you?

I await the research paper that demonstrates that shopping for meat can lead to desensitization.

Steve

[miss marple]

The carman 's job was to look after the horses and drive to collect or deliver goods. They did not load the van, that was not their job, they had to wait around for the goods. Then at delivery point the good were removed but not by the carman.
Pickfords was and is also a funiture removing business. Lechmere probably transported a variety of goods but would have had no personal interest in them. His job was to get safely from a to b without too much delay and then get to another job. Delays cost money. Any meat would be wrapped in cloths or sacks. The job was pretty much proscribed.

Miss Marple

[drstrange169]

Not that I think, Deimshitz is the killer, but if you build a case on coincidences and "circumstantial" evidence, Loius and Co, kills the Lechmere case everytime.

Police record, connection to the crime scenes, access to a cart, self employed and therefore free any time to kill, in dispute with police, genuine "blood evidence", questionable timings, known to be violent, potential motive, wife handles meat, etc. etc.

[John G]

Lo and behold - one poster gets it right.

I have not said anything at all about what weight I put on these matters.

I have not said that it strengthens the case against Lechmere.

But that does not stop what Abby calls the normal knee-jerk reaction; I am "desperate", I am making impossible comparisons etcetera.

What I have done is to point out that a carman was the equivalent of todays lorry drivers and long-haul truckers. They are both employed in the goods transporting business.

And I have pointed out that there is an overwhelming possibility that Lechmere handled dead body parts from animals, meaning that he was subjected to a possible desensitation.

And I am saying that he thus seems to have ties to the two only known professions that are tied to violent crime, serial killing included.

That, gentlemen, whether you like it or not, is relevant to the case, and I myself find it of great interest since it seems to put Lechmere professionwise in a category that displays violent crime in at least todays world.

That is all I have said - and look at the reactions!

I can now honestly say that this was to a degree what I wanted to get out of the thread - a clear indication that in Lechmere´s case, the case facts, the relevant surrounding material, the comparisons it offers with todays world of serial killing, is something that is totally secondary to many posters out here - secondary to the urge to shout NO! whenever the carmans name is mentioned.

It is a real rot and it runs unforgivably deep here. Thank you, Abby, for disclosing it. I would not be able to do it myself, it took an outsiders voice to do it.

I certainly find this a fascinating subject and well worth discussing. However, wouldn't William Bury better fit the theory? After all, he also had a job which involved driving a pony and cart. And as he was self employed he could be more flexible. And isn't there evidence he also trained as a butcher?

Or what about Louis Diemshutz? He also drive a pony and cart and discovered a dead body-one of the C5? Not that I think he was JtR, either, but it serves to illustrate how easy it is to make certain connections.

[John G]

Before I go - you identify three parts as crucial to the lorry driver/serialist:
"absence of family, a mobile private space, and the anonymity of huge distances."

We know that many serialists have families.

It seems the Torso killer - who was the same man as the Ripper to my mind - had access to a private space.

The distances the Torso man travelled were quite enough to allow for anonymous dumping with no other clue than that he was a Londoner.

If you have seen the docu, you will have noted that they have another list of factors:

The possibility to dump bodies away from home.
The secluded and soundproof locality offered by the lorry.
The many hours spent alone, offering time to brood on matters.

I never said that Lechmere was the exact copy of a long-haul trucker - I said he was his day´s equivalent; a man working with the transportation of goods by a loading vehicle.

Not did I say that he was a butcher - my contention is that he did not need to be in order to be desensitised by handling dead animal parts. And it seems he did just that. It is not the anatomical knowledge I am after here, since I am fairly certain about where the killer got that.

Yes, I absolutely agree that Torso Man probably fits this theory. In fact, he might well have had access to a boat, which fits in with Steve's assertion that a barge man would be a nineteenth century equivalent of a modern day trucker.

However, as I've noted before, on that basis alone I cannot see that Lechmere was Torso Man, i.e. no evidence he had access to either a boat or a private space.

[drstrange169]

"Documentaries, sadly, are not a good basis for reseach. People in them tend to say whatever they feel might ptheirheier point rather than look unbaisly at a given issue. "

"ptheirheier" = promote their :-(