Originally posted by FrankO
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Innocent Lech could only just hear Paul's footsteps from no farther than 40 yards away, guilty Lech could hear them all the way up the street. My expectation is that both Lech's could hear footsteps as far as the intersection with Brady Street.
So innocent Lech is lying about what he heard; let's focus on guilty Lech. He might have stumbled on the body, examined it, knew the woman to be dead, heard the footsteps entering the street, feared that he would be accused of the crime and attempted a bluff by just going back a minute in time; or, he might have killed Polly Nichols and heard the footsteps entering the street. It doesn't matter, either party would ask himself the question, how far away are those footsteps? Being at first distracted, he could have easily imagined not having heard them at first. The initial part of Buck's row would be an excellent acoustic channel: narrow and aligned with a continuous formation of stone buildings with no alcoves or side streets, and a stone pavement. The intensity of sound waves traveling from the base upwards would not diminish appreciably in comparison to broader streets or open fields. So, there would be a problem in accurately determining distance based on the strength of the signal; and one's tendency would be to imagine the footsteps are closer than they actually are. So Lech would have thought that Paul was closer than he actually was, and decided to bluff it.
There also might be initial confusion on which way the steps were coming. I broached upon it a while ago: ears parallel to the street could not distinguish it easily, sound coming into both ears simultaneously from either direction, and Polly Nichol's body was aligned so that the killer's ears would be roughly parallel if he situated himself between her legs. The body was also aligned in the direction the killer might expect the unexpected traveler.....i doubt that was by chance, but that part doesn't interest us.
Now, you or I can have a bird's eye view of the matter; but what is not important is our ability to estimate perfectly distances and escape times, it is a criminal (or an innocent) making a snap decision - and one he didn't expect to make if he was the murderer (not expecting Paul to arrive at that time). Guilty Lech's decision to stay put would have been made with the idea that he could easily explain why he was there around that time; and since he didn't disembowel his victim (killer or not killer), his hands would have been clean enough - nothing that couldn't be wiped off. These were not exactly IBM executives heading off to work in starched collars.
In my opinion, heading down Woods Buildings is not that big a difference from Winthrop, except with one caveat: how many times do you think Lech passed down that street? Maybe never? In all likelihood running down streets you have never traveled before seems like panic - initially heading towards a PC where you didn't know exactly where he might be, but had expectations that he was somewhere ahead. Maybe, PC Neil cut up Court Street - no one can be exactly certain today.
As for your point that fleeing to the entrance of Winthrop and then the Wood's buildings would have been quicker than arranging the body and stealthily moving towards the middle of the street, i would disagree: one would take much, much longer. Lech would have had maybe 5 - 10 seconds to process everything and make a decision....you would need to take that into account, unless you think he fled madly in any direction at the first hint of an approaching sound.
Do you think the criminal entertained the possibility that the stranger would not notice the body, or having noticed it wouldn't be that alarmed or interested?
In my mind, that wouldn't be likely; to the killer, it would be like a stranger not noticing a building was on fire.
And finally, most options Lech could have chosen probably would have worked out. Flight would have been option #1, but as i have suggested, the unexpected arrival of Paul and not being clear initially on his distance and direction would have compelled Lech to choose option #2.
If i missed one of your other points, notify me.
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