Cross The Ripper?

[Lechmere]

Caz
If he didn’t give his address in court – as seems likely – then Charles Lechmere did endeavour to control what the press reported about his involvement.
Rather more though, by calling himself Charles Cross he controlled what the press reported about his involvement.

We are dealing with a situation where we now know that on some 90 occasions this man (or other members of his bloodline on his behalf) refers to his family name as Lechmere when dealing with a very wide range of authorities, but used Cross when reporting to a very senior and serious authority – the police - in the context of a vicious murder investigation when he was spotted standing ‘by’ the body by someone else before having raised the alarm.
All it takes is a little imagination to think of some scenarios where providing a false name in such circumstances could be useful to a guilty man, or alternatively, scenarios where he may initially have given a false name only to subsequently realise that he should provide correct information for other particulars relating to him.
I find it hard to believe that you are unable to engage in that minor level of imaginative thinking given the wide ranging theorising that prevails on this site.
As you should by now know, using the name Cross wasn’t a silly risk as he could bluster off an explanation for using it, if caught out. If he had used ‘Smithers’ then he would have had no explanation for using it if caught out.

[Fisherman]

On a side note, I did a search for people who have done this very thing - given the wrong name but the right adress to the authorities, and it crops up that this is something that is today used because the authorities will sometimes do a reality check about the address; is this a true and existing address? And if it is, they don´t always go through the trouble of checking the name too, which is much more timeconsuming.

Have no idea whether this was in use 124 years ago, though!

The best,
Fisherman

[caz]

But we have to look at the known circumstances in this case and it strikes me that if Cross was the killer, changing just his surname from Lechmere to Cross, leaving the Charles Allen intact, would have made as little sense for the purposes of 'pulling a fast one' as if he had changed just his middle name from Allen to Thomas.

If he was 'caught out' he could 'bluster off' an explanation involving his late stepfather Thomas.

See how silly that sounds? Yet it would be exactly the same level of 'deception', with the same lack of advantage to be had from trying it on.

And once again, we don't know for a fact that he didn't give his address in court, and even if he didn't, it would not prove a thing beyond the fact that nobody asked him to do so. It would certainly not prove that he had anything to hide, or was actively seeking to control what could be reported about him.

You need more to make his behaviour suspicious.

Love,

Caz
X

[Fisherman]

Caz:

"You need more to make his behaviour suspicious."

With respect, no. Not at all. Giving a false name and lying to a PC does the trick admirably - not to mention that there is more ...

The best,
Fisherman

[Monty]

Caz:

"You need more to make his behaviour suspicious."

With respect, no. Not at all. Giving a false name and lying to a PC does the trick admirably - not to mention that there is more ...

The best,
Fisherman

A completely irresponsible post Christer,

And misleading yet again.

Monty

[Fisherman]

It is nothing of the sort, Monty. Where did you get it into your head that there is anything "completely irresponsible" with my post?

Is giving a false name not suspicious? Sorry, but it is.

Oh, you are out on your old track again - "Cross" was not a false name. Sorry, wrong again - it was, and I have very clearly stated why. The man was named Charles Allen Lechmere, end of story.

Is lying to a PC not suspicious? Sorry again, it is. And if we may believe the evidence given by Mizen, this is exactly what he did. The apparent fact that Mizen never even took the names, is a useful pointer that this was what happened.

So excuse me, but in my view, YOU are the one being irresponsible, Monty. You take great trouble to try and point me out as ignorant, uneducated, unfit to research, irrelevant and misleading, and that´s a sad thing. I´m sure you have some sort of motive for doing so, since you have made this a personal crusade for some reason. But to tell the truth, I really don´t care what it is.

If you are very much nagged, Monty, then get used to it.

The best,
Fisherman

PS. Yes - I used the f-word again ...

[Monty]

It is nothing of the sort, Monty. Where did you get it into your head that there is anything "completely irresponsible" with my post?

Is giving a false name not suspicious? Sorry, but it is.

Oh, you are out on your old track again - "Cross" was not a false name. Sorry, wrong again - it was, and I have very clearly stated why. The man was named Charles Allen Lechmere, end of story.

Is lying to a PC not suspicious? Sorry again, it is. And if we may believe the evidence given by Mizen, this is exactly what he did. The apparent fact that Mizen never even took the names, is a useful pointer that this was what happened.

So excuse me, but in my view, YOU are the one being irresponsible, Monty. You take great trouble to try and point me out as ignorant, uneducated, unfit to research, irrelevant and misleading, and that´s a sad thing. I´m sure you have some sort of motive for doing so, since you have made this a personal crusade for some reason. But to tell the truth, I really don´t care what it is.

If you are very much nagged, Monty, then get used to it.

The best,
Fisherman

PS. Yes - I used the f-word again ...

OK Christer, lets clear this up.

Firstly I have never accused you of being ignorant, uneducated, unfit to research. You have interpreted that all on your ownsome. The martyred woe is me approach may wash with others, not me.

Secondly, no, its not a personal crusade. I provide a counter against your allegations and will not tolerate the half truths you propose as fact. We have an onus of responsibility to the case and its facts. You have stated time and time again that Cross used a false name and lied. Im afraid that simply has not been proven as you are not party to the exact reason as to why Cross stated Cross, and if it was or was not known to the authorities.

So rather than be honest with the reader you blatently mislead them with such statements as 'he lied'.

The 'apparent fact'? Either it is fact or it is not. Apparent does not come into it.

Thirdly, if you cannot take the flack do not dish it out. You wanna push a suspect then be prepared to deal with all the counter arguments that come with it. All this hogwash about a 'personal crusade' is merely distraction from the fact that you have no real base of arguement other than conjecture, and rely on twisting of recorded events as your evidence.

And fouthly I dont care that you dont care. You keep spewing out the misleading comments, I'll still be here to provide the balanced counter. Call me old fashioned but Id like damning evidence before I convict a man, you seemingly do not care.

Im very use to it, sadly. Antics such as yours are rife on Casebook.


Monty

[Fisherman]

Monty:

"Firstly I have never accused you of being ignorant, uneducated, unfit to research."

You could have fooled me - last time over I had to tell you that I have fourteen years´experience as a professional researcher, since you took great care to point out that I failed in this discipline. But maybe I´m overreacting, Monty.

"Secondly, no, its not a personal crusade. I provide a counter against your allegations and will not tolerate the half truths you propose as fact. We have an onus of responsibility to the case and its facts. You have stated time and time again that Cross used a false name and lied. Im afraid that simply has not been proven as you are not party to the exact reason as to why Cross stated Cross, and if it was or was not known to the authorities. "

"Cross" did not use a false name - Lechmere did. You may call yourself any bloody thing you feel like, and you may pick any bloody name from any relative that you take a liking to, just as you may use a name you once had - if you ever had another name. But that won´t change that your REAL name is Neil Bell, will it?
Is there any way that you could use ANOTHER name that is NOT false per se?

And, Monty, we know that around ninety (90) examples of his signature has been dug up - and not one of them says Cross, other than the one that his stepfather would have used on his behalf when he was very young. The rest all unanimously say Lechmere. Each and every one of them, all signed in authority contacts. Speaking to the police is entertaining an authority contact - but when he did so in the Nichol´s matter, he called himself Cross. And factually, that was a false name, no matter what the surrounding circumstances were.

I have not said that it is proven that he did not call himself Cross colloquially - he MAY have, even if the chance is a very slim one, given what he called his wife and kids; Lechmere. But even if he DID call himself Cross colloquially, it STILL applies that this was not his correct name. It was one of all the other billions of names existing on Mother Earth that have one thing in common - they are false names if Charles Allen Lechmere uses them to give his true identity.

I have stated this before on numerous occasions. If you find it a hard pill to swallow, then I´m sorry. I find it a hard pill to swallow that you paint me out as "irresponsible" for stating a fact. And in the end, all you need to do is to realize that this is how I look upon the name swap and why I do it - and then you work from that. It is no stranger than that.

"The 'apparent fact'? Either it is fact or it is not. Apparent does not come into it. "

Aha. A fact cannot be apparent. Great stuff, Monty.

"Thirdly, if you cannot take the flack do not dish it out."

Who says I can´t, Monty? You. And you are wrong on most counts in this. In my humble opinion.

"You wanna push a suspect then be prepared to deal with all the counter arguments that come with it. "

Can you see me NOT doing that?

"I'll still be here to provide the balanced counter. "

Please do. It would make a change.

The best,
Fisherman

[lynn cates]

false name

Hello Christer, Neil. I know better than to mention this, and I think I have said it before, but . . .

My dissertation professor is called "Ignacio." When he signs my cheque for his yard work, it is invariably, "Ignazio."

I asked him why. His reply was simple. "I was born in Rome and baptized Ignazio. When I was a boy, we moved to Argentina. Everyone calls me Ignacio (Spanish); legal documents, however, require my birth name (Italian)."

So, is he using a false name?

Cheers.
LC

[Fisherman]

Just to further clarify my stance, Monty, let´s look at the exact wording of your criticism:

"Im afraid that simply has not been proven as you are not party to the exact reason as to why Cross stated Cross, and if it was or was not known to the authorities. "

No, I am not party to the exact reason why Cross called himself Cross.

But how does that potentially make the name his true name?

No, I don´t know for certain whether the authorities had any previous experience of calling him Cross.

But how does that potentially make the name his true name?

The discussion that Caz and I were having was one where she claimed that there was not enough in the case to make him look suspicious. But using a name that is not your true name DOES make you look suspicious - especially if we cannot find any corroboration at all that he ever DID use the name Cross, whereas we DO have the ninety Lechmere signatures.

Now, please note very carefully that I am NOT saying that he could not have had a REASON for calling himself Cross that was totally innocent. That is nothing I touch on at all, but IF I had, I would say that an innocent reason COULD have been at play.
But making the call that suspicion must cling to giving a name that is not your true name, should be totally uncontroversial. Once the suspicion is there, we do all we can to dig up as much surrounding evidence - statistics, signatures, historically relevant comparisons, you name it - that can confirm that the suspicion was called for - or that it was uncalled for. But until the material surfaces that tells us the truth, the suspicion must be there.

Have I got it correct that you are an ex-copper yourself, Monty? If so, how did you go around things when/if you found out that a name that had been presented to you as a truthful one, in fact was not the name that was in the registers but a very different one? Did you check it out, since you thought that it was suspicious, or did you just leave the matter, satisfying yourself that you had gotten a name to use, a "known-by" name, as it were?

Of course, you would not hold a preconceived notion that the person giving you the wrong name MUST be a sinister customer - but surely you would go to the bottom of things, would you not?

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Lynn:

"My dissertation professor is called "Ignacio." When he signs my cheque for his yard work, it is invariably, "Ignazio."
I asked him why. His reply was simple. "I was born in Rome and baptized Ignazio. When I was a boy, we moved to Argentina. Everyone calls me Ignacio (Spanish); legal documents, however, require my birth name (Italian)."
So, is he using a false name?"

If he had had a stepfather called Beckinridge, Lynn - would he be giving a false name calling himself that?

Besides, if he was baptized Ignazio and called and signed himself Ignazio, I fail to see the problem.

The best,
Fisherman

[lynn cates]

not quite

Hello Christer. Thanks.

Correction--he calls himself Ignacio. That is NOT his legal name. So, is it false?

Cheers.
LC

[Fisherman]

Lynn:

"Correction--he calls himself Ignacio. That is NOT his legal name. So, is it false?"

Is it comparable? I think not. No police would have been misled by such a thing, would they? If somebody had said "Lynn Caites did it", then I fail to see that the police would come looking for anybody else than you, Lynn.

To give the exact answer to your question, yes Ignacio would technically be a false name (like I say, we only have the one correct name) - but it would not bring on much suspicion if he had been our Bethnal Green carman, would it?

You did not answer MY question: would Beckinridge be a false name if his stepfather, dead since nineteen years, had had that name?

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Have a look - they even recognize this on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZPB1VPTVhg

The best,
Fisherman

[Sally]

Fisherman

It doesn't matter how many times you state your opinion as fact. Yet again, Repetition is not Corroboration. I realise that you don't understand that, so to put it simply; no amount of repetition on your part will bolster your theory, or change into anything other than your utterly conjectural opinion.

However you have misled the public, it'll be a lot harder here I'm afraid.

If you seek to convince, find some evidence.