Why is the possibility of Lechmere interrupting the ripper so often discarded?

[Abby Normal]

Hi Abby,

OK, so you think the ‘noisy’ period would have taken only 1 or 2 seconds and so, Paul wouldn’t have heard it as the sound was over before he could have really paid any attention to it. Possible, although I don’t believe it would have taken just 2 seconds, let alone 1. If it would have taken just 1 second, he would have had to pull the dress down whilst long jumping at least 3 metres to his position in the middle of the street & putting away his knife.

Myself, I would go more with Christer’s view that, after assessing the situation and deciding to stay put, he first cut her throat (not once but twice - but noiseless, of course), then pulled her dress down to cover the abdominal wounds, then adjusted the neck area to cover the throat wounds (or vice versa), then possibly stretched out the legs and then moved away from the body as silently & quickly as he could and as far away from it as he thought he could. And by the latter I mean that he would not have stepped away from the body in a line at right angles with the footway, but more towards the gateway to Brown & Eagle’s Wool warehouse. In this scenario, where sounds from moving along the body are quite possible, the ‘noisy’ period would have taken a few seconds longer than just the 1-2 and long enough for Paul to have noticed it, certainly if he was already quite close when a guilty Lechmere first heard him.

Unfortunately, we can’t know who of us is closer to the truth, if Lechmere was the killer.

Cheers,
Frank

hi frank
fair enough. full disclosure-Ive never agreed with fishs idea that Pollys throat was cut after the mutilations. we have a clear progression of the victims being strangled (and or possibly punched/blunt force trauma) first to incapacitate, then the throat cut and then mutilations. In my view if Lech was the killer, he was in process of cutting her abdoman, was startled by the sound of Paul approaching, and quickly pulled the skirt down and stood up stepping back away from the victim while putting the knife in his pocket. I may have been hasty with 1-2 seconds. so maybe 2-3 seconds. Then Paul sees him.

One thing I do is envision myself in various shoes of the witness, suspects victims etc at the time. In pauls case imagine you are him. its dark, your wary and suddenly as you enter bucks row you see the figure of man hesitating in the road near what turns out to be the body of a freshly killed women. it rattles you abit so you try to avoid the man but he approaches you as you try to pass, close enough to the point where he makes physical contact with you. Its creepy, scary and to me suspicious.

also, the whole Lech moving toward Paul as he tries to avoid him and tapping his shoulder thing is very odd to me, Its almost as if lech cant let him pass until he ascertains what the man had seen.

[Doctored Whatsit]

although we can never know, i just wonder how likely it would be for a train travelling at that time to be appreciably late, unless there was some routine maintenance. It was a goods train so no stopping to collect passengers, but then there could be delays loading/unloading goods - do we know where the train came from and how many stops it made (i.e., potential to accrue delays here and there)?

The train was the 3. 07 am from New Cross. I don't believe that there was any unloading etc, and all we can say is that the calculation of the time was done within a couple of days of the incident.

[FrankO]

Mark, as far as I am concerned, we are just two people with different opinions. I have no problem with that. I have made it clear on several occasions that I consider Lechmere to be a person of interest, but that the evidence quoted against him is not as strong as others claim.

There was nothing nasty or illogical about my expressed opinions, and I do not consider they deserve comments like "manipulative nonsense", "error", "slyest anti-Lechmerianism", "sneakily", "sinister" and "very distasteful".

Hear hear.

[FrankO]

hi Frank
a fair question. so-lech is over the body cutting away at the midsection. He suddenly hears pauls approach-pulls the skirt down and steps back. literally 1-2 seconds.

Hi Abby,

OK, so you think the ‘noisy’ period would have taken only 1 or 2 seconds and so, Paul wouldn’t have heard it as the sound was over before he could have really paid any attention to it. Possible, although I don’t believe it would have taken just 2 seconds, let alone 1. If it would have taken just 1 second, he would have had to pull the dress down whilst long jumping at least 3 metres to his position in the middle of the street & putting away his knife.

Myself, I would go more with Christer’s view that, after assessing the situation and deciding to stay put, he first cut her throat (not once but twice - but noiseless, of course), then pulled her dress down to cover the abdominal wounds, then adjusted the neck area to cover the throat wounds (or vice versa), then possibly stretched out the legs and then moved away from the body as silently & quickly as he could and as far away from it as he thought he could. And by the latter I mean that he would not have stepped away from the body in a line at right angles with the footway, but more towards the gateway to Brown & Eagle’s Wool warehouse. In this scenario, where sounds from moving along the body are quite possible, the ‘noisy’ period would have taken a few seconds longer than just the 1-2 and long enough for Paul to have noticed it, certainly if he was already quite close when a guilty Lechmere first heard him.

Unfortunately, we can’t know who of us is closer to the truth, if Lechmere was the killer.

Cheers,
Frank

[Aethelwulf]

although we can never know, i just wonder how likely it would be for a train travelling at that time to be appreciably late, unless there was some routine maintenance. It was a goods train so no stopping to collect passengers, but then there could be delays loading/unloading goods - do we know where the train came from and how many stops it made (i.e., potential to accrue delays here and there)?

[JeffHamm]

hi jeff and dr
yes that explanation is very reasonable. but given the inaccurate and varied times if anything is out five minutes and the train is later then it puts lech right smack in the time picture.

however, i dont really get into the nitpicking back in fourth over exact times for the reason you stated and that witnesses can be off on their times.

i would also add that if lech was the killer and killed on his way to work i would think he would probably leave for work/ hunting victims earlier than the times of 3:30 or 3:20 as was reported.

also, when i said that the three thirty time could go either way with lech, one line of thought might be that it puts her murder closer to when lech was about than say ten or fifteen earlier, as many alledge she could have been killed much earlier.

but to me whether shes killed at 3:20, 3:30, 3:40 makes no difference to me any way in lechs guilt or innocence. non synced clocks, witnesses off on their times etc. its a wash.

but yes absolutely i can see that a three thirty murder time can be a check mark against his guilt when viewed in both your explanations light.

Yah, the issue with the times is always something to be considered, so fair enough.

- Jeff

[Abby Normal]

I see you beat me to it! And yes, the approximation of times is also an important point to consider, which I hadn't mentioned.

- Jeff

hi jeff and dr
yes that explanation is very reasonable. but given the inaccurate and varied times if anything is out five minutes and the train is later then it puts lech right smack in the time picture.

however, i dont really get into the nitpicking back in fourth over exact times for the reason you stated and that witnesses can be off on their times.

i would also add that if lech was the killer and killed on his way to work i would think he would probably leave for work/ hunting victims earlier than the times of 3:30 or 3:20 as was reported.

also, when i said that the three thirty time could go either way with lech, one line of thought might be that it puts her murder closer to when lech was about than say ten or fifteen earlier, as many alledge she could have been killed much earlier.

but to me whether shes killed at 3:20, 3:30, 3:40 makes no difference to me any way in lechs guilt or innocence. non synced clocks, witnesses off on their times etc. its a wash.

but yes absolutely i can see that a three thirty murder time can be a check mark against his guilt when viewed in both your explanations light.

[JeffHamm]

I doubt that either Lechmere or Paul had much in the way of meaningful lighting inside their homes when they got up and dressed; but either way it is a pretty certain fact that Lechmere had been out walking for many minutes longer than Paul. So if there was any optical 'adjusting to the dark' still to be done when both men reached the murder site, Lechmere would have had better night vision than Paul, other things being equal. I doubt that Paul was out of his house for even 2 minutes before he reached Lechmere.

M.

Hi Mark,

At an average walking speed I think it works out to just over 2 minutes, but less than 3, so your estimate of something less than 2 minutes is in the right ball park (if Paul walked a bit faster than average it would be closer to 2 minutes, etc).

How well either of them were dark adapted would depend upon the lighting sources along the route, but I understand that there was lighting at the ends of Bucks Row at least, so both would have passed under that. How well lit it was along Bucks Row has been debated as well. But each time either passes under a lamp, it would interfere with their dark adaptation, resetting them for the most part. So, I suspect they're probably pretty similar in terms of their dark adaptation given there appears to have been a lamp at the Brady Street end that they both would have passed by. It would, of course, help if we knew the exact details of the lighting, but there's a lot of information that would help us if we knew it.

- Jeff

[JeffHamm]

Unfortunately, an accurate time, and the railways used GMT, is not always a great help, because Lechmere, Paul, the police officers and the doctor were quoting different time sources, and not necessarily using GMT. The time in Victorian London in 1888 was usually regarded as whatever the nearest clock showed, and individual clock times varied often by up to 10 minutes or more from GMT. But a 3. 30 am murder seems to cast doubt on Lechmere as a suspect, if the other quoted times are reasonably accurate. What was a guilty Lechmere doing still hanging around 10 - 15 minutes after the murder? Of course, a 3.30 am murder explains, if he was truthful, why Lechmere was so insistent that he heard nothing.

For me personally, all references to time in ripperology are approximate. I have the same problems with the events at the time of the Stride murder. So many people guessing the time, and using different time sources to base their estimates on....

I see you beat me to it! And yes, the approximation of times is also an important point to consider, which I hadn't mentioned.

- Jeff

[JeffHamm]

thanks dr.
well that could be a check mark for or against lech depending on how you interpret it. its a wash IMHO.

Hi Abby,

Well, if the sounds HL heard at the time the luggage train passed (3:30), indicate the time Polly was attacked, then if Cross/Lechmere is the attacker, what's he doing for the next 10 or so minutes? Paul doesn't arrive until much later, and the explanation for why Polly's mutilations are less than Capman's and Eddowes' (the other two outside murders where mutilations occur - not counting Kelly as her crime scene is indoors, so too different) is that Paul enters Buck's Row and Cross/Lechmere stops and moves away from the body.

But if Polly was killed at 3:30ish, then what's he doing until Paul arrives? The alternative, is that JtR is not Cross/Lechmere, and the reason for the lesser mutilations is that this is his first mutilation murder. He then leaves shortly after 3:30 after engaging in his desire, and so by the time Cross/Lechmere and Paul arrive, there was nobody for them to see or hear leave the scene, etc.

Personally, I think a murder time of 3:30 works very much against Cross/Lechmere for that reason.

Unfortunately, HL does not appear at the inquest, so we have only the press report of her statement. Under the more formal setting of the inquest, and after having been questioned by the police, we might have ended up with something else from her that would guide us as to how much weight we should place on her testimony. Lacking that, I think we're left with something that weighs against Cross/Lechmere, but must be viewed as sufficiently unreliable (only in the press) that it cannot be considered definitive/strong evidence.

I think I worked in this 3:30 time of the crime into the simulations I had run and it produced a viable scenario, but as I indicate in those simulations, there are other viable scenarios as well so all it shows is that 3:30 is a possible time for the murder to occur and for JtR to leave the scene unnoticed. But that doesn't prove it really happened that way, it's just one of many hypotheses that appears to work based upon what we have to work with.

- Jeff

[Doctored Whatsit]

thanks dr.
well that could be a check mark for or against lech depending on how you interpret it. its a wash IMHO.

Unfortunately, an accurate time, and the railways used GMT, is not always a great help, because Lechmere, Paul, the police officers and the doctor were quoting different time sources, and not necessarily using GMT. The time in Victorian London in 1888 was usually regarded as whatever the nearest clock showed, and individual clock times varied often by up to 10 minutes or more from GMT. But a 3. 30 am murder seems to cast doubt on Lechmere as a suspect, if the other quoted times are reasonably accurate. What was a guilty Lechmere doing still hanging around 10 - 15 minutes after the murder? Of course, a 3.30 am murder explains, if he was truthful, why Lechmere was so insistent that he heard nothing.

For me personally, all references to time in ripperology are approximate. I have the same problems with the events at the time of the Stride murder. So many people guessing the time, and using different time sources to base their estimates on....

[Mark J D]

... so-lech is over the body cutting away at the midsection. He suddenly hears pauls approach-pulls the skirt down and steps back. literally 1-2 seconds. Paul dosnt see it-simple as that...

I doubt that either Lechmere or Paul had much in the way of meaningful lighting inside their homes when they got up and dressed; but either way it is a pretty certain fact that Lechmere had been out walking for many minutes longer than Paul. So if there was any optical 'adjusting to the dark' still to be done when both men reached the murder site, Lechmere would have had better night vision than Paul, other things being equal. I doubt that Paul was out of his house for even 2 minutes before he reached Lechmere.

M.

[Abby Normal]

We have a specific and perfectly plausible time for the incident. The luggage train passed at 3. 30 am.

thanks dr.
well that could be a check mark for or against lech depending on how you interpret it. its a wash IMHO.

[Doctored Whatsit]

because she sure might have heard polly but it does nothing to establish a suspect? unless she gives a specific time?

We have a specific and perfectly plausible time for the incident. The luggage train passed at 3. 30 am.

[Abby Normal]

out of interest why is Harriet Lilley given so little notice, sounds very plausibly like she heard something important?

She said to the press on the afternoon of 6th September 1888 that:

I slept in front of the house, and could hear everything that occured in the street. On that Thursday night I was somehow very restless. Well, I heard something I mentioned to my husband in the morning. It was a painful moan - two or three faint gasps - and then it passed away. It was quite dark at the time, but a luggage went by as I heard the sounds. There was, too, a sound as of whispers underneath the window. I distincly heard voices, but cannot say what was said - it was too faint. I then woke my husband, and said to him, "I don't know what possesses me, but I cannot sleep to-night."

She also added that as soon as she heard of the murder she came to the conclusion that the voices she heard were in some way connected with it and that the cries were very different from those of an ordinary street brawl.^[2]
References

1. ↑ Census reports 1891
2. ↑ The Echo, 6th September 1888

because she sure might have heard polly but it does nothing to establish a suspect? unless she gives a specific time?