Framing Charles

[MrBarnett]

I believe that its likely many people could be found that might have taken routes to or from work late at night, or just out and about in the area, perhaps being homeless... that passed one or more murder sites on their respective given nights. Lots of men working at night in warehousing, at the docks, slaughterhouses...etc. One seen over a victim just after the attack might well be due to the act being on the sidewalk on an open ended street and as such just a pass through for foot traffic.

I dont think its a real surprise that the next murder is committed well off the street.

Do you believe Polly’s killer was interrupted?

[Abby Normal]

Do you believe Polly’s killer was interrupted?

hahahahaha!!! oh god here we go

[MrBarnett]

hahahahaha!!! oh god here we go

I think he was, that’s why he pulled down her skirt...

;-)

[rjpalmer]

Do you believe Polly’s killer was interrupted?

I think the question I'd ask in response to Michael Richards's comment is whether you or anyone else accepts Professor Larsson's claim that, based on the geographical locations of the crimes, it is 5,000,000 to 1 that the killer is anyone other than Charles Lechmere?

I have said that if Lechmere was the killer (and he was, actually), then he would likely be prone to lying. And in fact, although he SAID he left home at 3.20, devious bastards who do these kinds of things may SAY one thing but do another, and so he may have left at 3.00. Or 2.47. Or 3.02. Or any other time he chose to in order to allow for him to find somebody to kill and cut up before proceeding to his work, and then - surprise, surprise - he lied about it at the inquest.

Naughty, I know, but there you are.

I think this has been flogged enough that it requires no further comment, but the thinking here is that Lechmere crept out of his house 45 minutes early in order to find a prostitute, and, succeeding--probably in the Whitechapel Road, as this was their usual plod--he brought her back to his own route to work, and then was unfortunate enough to be caught murdering her at the exact moment he would have been there anyway, had he simply been walking to work at his usual time.

A remarkable example of a 'reverse alibi.'

[rjpalmer]

The Pinchin plums are interesting; I can see where someone might want to make something of this, particularly if they accept Matthew Packer's story.

[Simon Wood]

Coroner Wynne Baxter, 22nd September 1888—

" . . . in the case of Nichols, the wretch was disturbed before he had accomplished his object, and having failed in the open street he tries again, within a week of his failure, in a more secluded place.”

The theory worked once, and would soon work again.

[drstrange169]

A few things worth noting after reading what the posts here.

In 1891 Pickfords carmen fought for better working conditions. They claimed they had to work 18 hour shifts with no overtime and no holiday pay. So, yes, it is reasonable to assume Cross would be tired on his day off if he had one that night.

I've been told, but, haven't conformed it yet, that Pickfords didn't allow driver to do regular routes because of the possibility of organised stealing.

If he drank in the pubs around Berner St. with mates, they would know he moved to Doveton St and they would know of a Cross connection, so there would be a high chance people would comment on the fact that he was present at another murder site.

[drstrange169]

>>It was a double anomaly. He deviated from his normal practice when dealing with the authorities. <<

Since bigamy was a crime punishable by imprisonment, it' sharply surprising he stuck with name Cross when dealing with police as opposed to Lechmere when dealing with red tape. Plus, of course, the fact that he was probably known as Cross at Pickfords and Pickfords was relevant in both "court" cases.


>>And he deviated from the norm of witnesses revealing both names. <<

Since the list of dual names we know about were generally derived from the fact that the dual names were relevant to the case at hand it is hardly surprising that both the names would be mentioned.

To date nobody has supplied statistics to the number of people that didn't use their "paper" name when swearing in, it cannot be described as an anomaly. We don't know what "normal" was.

[Fisherman]

For the sake of brevity, let me just say that I reject the Pinchin Street case as being part of the 'Ripper' series for the same reasons that Commissioner James Monro outlined in his 7 page report to the Home Office, dated September 11, 1889. I'm confident you have read it.

The only thing I would add to Monro's arguments is that the victim's head being removed shortly before the body was dumped is highly suggestive of a domestic killing, where knowing the victim's identity will lead to the murderer. It is a common feature of such cases.

The victim's hands were well manicured and showed no sign of physical labor; in fact, it was suggested she was spent a lot of time writing with a pen--so we aren't likely to be looking at a drunken street woman from Spitalfields, despite that fact that some here wish to label her a prostitute.

I notice in your above statement that many of the features you attribute to the alleged torso 'series' do not actually apply to the Pinchin Street case. I realize you are using 'shorthand,' but it is rather deceptive to lump the various torso cases together as one 'series,' and then pick and choose various attributes from individual case to make a cumulative argument that they conform to the Ripper's alleged motivations. No organs were removed from the Pinchin Street victim; no sexual mutilations occurred (except accidently from the incision); nor was her throat cut (according to medical opinion); nor--do I believe--were any rings missing. (A newspaper report makes this claim, but Hebbert specifically states the victim had not worn a wedding band).

The main pitfall of the pseudo-science of 'signature,' is that human behavior is complex, and behaviors that appear similar--or even identical--can, in fact, spring from entirely different motivations. Thanks to hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution, we are experts at seeing subtle patterns. We are so good, in fact, that we see patterns even where they do not exist.

Welcome to the wonderful world of crime detection.

Thank you, R J. Although I have been in that world for some four decades by now.

You are opposed to "lumping cases together", but I think that this has already been taken care of by Dr Hebbert, who was very certain that the four 1887-89 torsos were all cut up by the same man. And he would have been better suited to make that call than you, or for that matter I am. The cutting used was in every respect the exact same, was what Hebbert said, and so we may safely rely on how this particular matter is once and for all settled. When we MUST lump together and have clear evidence that we should do so, we lump together. Or, if we want to use another, less tainted term, we accept that we need to treat the four victims as a group with a common killer.

After this, we have the many similarities that I listed i between the two series. You now want to ascribe them to how the two killers you imagine would have done the same extremely rare things - but for differing reasons!

The torso killer decided that he wanted to cut away Jackson´s abdomional wall because X.

And the Ripper decided he wanted to cut away the abdominal walls from Kelly and Chapman because Y.

If we were speaking of less rare inclusions, the idea would work better. But once we have extremely rare inclusions, the crime solving manual urges us to take note of what we see instead of trying to explain it away.

The same goes for cutting from ribs to pubes.

The same goes for taking out uteri.

The same goes for taking out hearts.

Not to note these things and not to accept that we have a common killer would demand that we had insurmountable obstcles in the shape of dissimilarities to deal with. But we don´t. All there is, is the matter of dismemberment, and that is no problem at all. There is even reason to think that the torso victims were cut up in a bolthole that could in some way be linked to the killer, and that would mean that we have a situation where the killer HAD TO dispose of the bodies. And if that was not workable with whole bodies, he had to cut them up. Problem solved.

That was never a requirement for the Ripper.

So you loose out on the argument. There was in all probability just the one killer and that is proven by the many odd similarities inbetween the series. End of, regardless of what Monro thought. It is not as if these men were well versed in serial killings. On the contrary, they had no experience or understanding of the underlying mechanisms at all.

Oh, and it is not the state of the nails of a victim that governs if she belongs to a limited tally of victims or not - it is the damage done. Sutcliffe killed prostitutes, right? And he killed non-prostitutes.

And guess how we know that? Why do we not reason that Barbara Leach cannot possiby have been a victim of his, since she was a student with no connection whatsoever to prostitution?
Any ideas?
Could it perhaps be because she was whacked over the head with a hammer and subsequently stabbed with a screwdriver?

Once again, the damage done and the similarities involved are the giveaway. The blemish-free reeputation is not. And this applies here although anyone could have owned a hammer and a screwdriver. Ergo, the damage done to Leach involved nothing at all as rare and odd as the taking away of the abdominal wall, the cutting from ribs to pubes and the removal of inner organs.

Sutcliffe is quite a rare offender as such. But in comnparison with the Ripper/Torso killer, he is eons away in terms of rarity. Eons!!

The sooner we admit how this affects our case, the better. Not that I think that it will ever happen for some...

[Fisherman]

I think the question I'd ask in response to Michael Richards's comment is whether you or anyone else accepts Professor Larsson's claim that, based on the geographical locations of the crimes, it is 5,000,000 to 1 that the killer is anyone other than Charles Lechmere?




I think this has been flogged enough that it requires no further comment, but the thinking here is that Lechmere crept out of his house 45 minutes early in order to find a prostitute, and, succeeding--probably in the Whitechapel Road, as this was their usual plod--he brought her back to his own route to work, and then was unfortunate enough to be caught murdering her at the exact moment he would have been there anyway, had he simply been walking to work at his usual time.

A remarkable example of a 'reverse alibi.'

The thing is, though, that we don´t know where he found his victims. There is no certainty at all that he picked Nichols up in Whitechapel Road. That is just a suggestion you are making so as to try and make it sound weird that she was later found dead along Lechmere´s path.

The facts are that Whitechapel Road was a place where prostitutes paraded. But it was not the only place where they did so. Furthermore, the sex on offer was not consumed in Whitechapel Road; instead the prostitutes and their punters would commonly use small, dark side streets and alleys, like for example Bucks Row. And once they were done, the prostitutes were not teleported back to Whitechapel Road in a split second. They instead found themselves in these small streets and alleys. What if a working man came along at such a stage, offering them a chance to earn a little more money?

You warned me in your last post not to lump things together. But lumping the prostitution business together as if all the deals were done in Whitechapel Road is no problem for you?

Flexibility. Gotta love it.

[Fisherman]

I think this opinion is on very unsteady ground, Gary.

Here’s what Donald Swanson wrote: “the dismemberment [ie., of the legs] had taken place at an earlier period than the head for the raw flesh had from continued exposure dried on the surface which presented a blackened appearance in consequence.”

We see confirmation for this in the notes of Dr. Hebbert: "the cut surfaces at the hips were black and dry, but the surface at the neck moist and red."

In other words, the legs were removed some days before the head was removed. By all appearances, the woman was murdered or even killed accidently (one suggestion was blows to the head) and her legs were then removed, probably to aid concealment. It wasn’t until days later, and only shortly before the body was dumped, that the head was removed…almost certainly to thwart any attempt at identification, as we see in domestic 'torso' cases.

How do you square this with street throat slashing cases akin to the 'Ripper'?

So you think that since the neck was severed late in the process, the throat cannot have been cut earlier...?

Here´s what Phillips said:

THE CORONER. - Is there anything to show where the loss of blood occurred?
PHILLIPS. - Not in the remains; but the supposition that presents itself to my mind is that there was a former incision of the neck, which had disappeared with the subsequent separation of the head.

The 1873 torso victim was bled out completely. There was not a drop of blood in her vessels, so she had been hung up and bled off by the killer. This tells us that he wanted to clear the blood away before he cut. There were signs of muscle contraction showing that the ensuing dismemberment followed very quickly.

Conclusion: He wants to cut up. But he does not want it to be a messy business.

The Ripper victims had their throts slashed. That is in line with the quickest possible bleeding off.

The Pinchin Street woman was likely killed by means of having her throat cut. She was then left dead with that cut, up until it was time to despatch her. At that stage, the killer removed the head, possibly - but it is not a given - in order to make an ID harder. It is in line with all the other torso victims, save the Tottenham torso.

[Fisherman]

A few things worth noting after reading what the posts here.

In 1891 Pickfords carmen fought for better working conditions. They claimed they had to work 18 hour shifts with no overtime and no holiday pay. So, yes, it is reasonable to assume Cross would be tired on his day off if he had one that night.

I've been told, but, haven't conformed it yet, that Pickfords didn't allow driver to do regular routes because of the possibility of organised stealing.

If he drank in the pubs around Berner St. with mates, they would know he moved to Doveton St and they would know of a Cross connection, so there would be a high chance people would comment on the fact that he was present at another murder site.

Can we please drop the argument that he may have been to tired to kill? I find it silly in the extreme.

If he drank with mates in St Georges on a regular basis and had done so on the weekends since he moved to Doveton Street, how many of those mates would couple it to him being a likely killer?

And just how do we know that these mates were aware about the name Cross?

[Fisherman]

>>It was a double anomaly. He deviated from his normal practice when dealing with the authorities. <<

Since bigamy was a crime punishable by imprisonment, it' sharply surprising he stuck with name Cross when dealing with police as opposed to Lechmere when dealing with red tape. Plus, of course, the fact that he was probably known as Cross at Pickfords and Pickfords was relevant in both "court" cases.

That is your take on things. Mine is another. None of us can prove our takes, but we DO have an anomaly involved when he used "Cross" in combination with violent death.


>>And he deviated from the norm of witnesses revealing both names. <<

Since the list of dual names we know about were generally derived from the fact that the dual names were relevant to the case at hand it is hardly surprising that both the names would be mentioned.

To date nobody has supplied statistics to the number of people that didn't use their "paper" name when swearing in, it cannot be described as an anomaly. We don't know what "normal" was.

It is an anomaly because we know that he otherwise used "Lechmere" in authority contacts. An anomaly is easiest described as an exception to a rule. To speculate about how innocent people gave names by which they were not registered at inquests has to remain speculation only. My guess is that when we have it on record that these things occurred, it will be in combination with when various criminals were revealed for having tried to keep their true identities from the police. I fail to see that there will be articles where an innocent Mr X calling himself Mr Y has been exposed for this kind of thing.

[MrBarnett]

A few things worth noting after reading what the posts here.

In 1891 Pickfords carmen fought for better working conditions. They claimed they had to work 18 hour shifts with no overtime and no holiday pay. So, yes, it is reasonable to assume Cross would be tired on his day off if he had one that night.

I've been told, but, haven't conformed it yet, that Pickfords didn't allow driver to do regular routes because of the possibility of organised stealing.

If he drank in the pubs around Berner St. with mates, they would know he moved to Doveton St and they would know of a Cross connection, so there would be a high chance people would comment on the fact that he was present at another murder site.

That’s interesting, Dusty. I can find reports of a meeting where men from the London Parcels Delivery Company, Carter Patterson and Pickfords considered the possibility of strike action if their various demands weren’t met. One of those demands was a reduction of working hours from 14-18 hours per day to 12. The meeting took place on a Saturday night and broke up at ‘a very late hour’.

Your second point is also interesting. When you have it confirmed, it’ll be something to consider.

The final point is a good one. Of course, the fact that he had had a stepfather named Cross twenty years previously might not have been known by his ex-neighbours in St Georges. When his kids were registered at school in 1888 the name Lechmere was used. Their teachers and schoolfriends would presumably have known them by that name. That’s quite significant, I feel. Forget censuses and electoral registers - no one would read those. The name your children’s school friends know them by will be the name the school friends’ parents, siblings etc know them by.

[MrBarnett]

>>It was a double anomaly. He deviated from his normal practice when dealing with the authorities. <<

Since bigamy was a crime punishable by imprisonment, it' sharply surprising he stuck with name Cross when dealing with police as opposed to Lechmere when dealing with red tape. Plus, of course, the fact that he was probably known as Cross at Pickfords and Pickfords was relevant in both "court" cases.


>>And he deviated from the norm of witnesses revealing both names. <<

Since the list of dual names we know about were generally derived from the fact that the dual names were relevant to the case at hand it is hardly surprising that both the names would be mentioned.

To date nobody has supplied statistics to the number of people that didn't use their "paper" name when swearing in, it cannot be described as an anomaly. We don't know what "normal" was.

The name Cross on its own presented no risk. Only in conjunction with the unusual name of Lechmere and reference to a stepfather might it have alerted those who knew John Lechmere was still alive to the bigamy.

I have seen numerous examples of witnesses divulging two names because they seemed to think it was the correct thing to do. There was even a case where a woman was convicted of perjury by making a number of misleading statements in court. The one the judge focused on was that she presented herself under the surname of the man she lived with (but wasn’t married to) rather than her ‘real’ name. The concept of a ‘real/proper/legal’ name was firmly fixed in the Victorian psyche - I’d say it is today - whatever the technical legal position was/is.