Evidence of innocence

[Fisherman]

Christer,
Equating members of the site with the Taliban was actually reported as a personal attack. Given what we know of that despicable organization, I understand why such offense was taken, but I chose to let you slide.
Once.
If I see such name calling again you’ll receive an infraction.

Let’s all try to remain civilized.

Thanks

JM

Thanks for the info! I will of course adjust to it, which means that I need to find another way of describing the phenomenon that I´m after. Basically, it´s about how the ordinary situation, where a suspectologist may need to adjust the facts somewhat to squeeze his candidate in, has changed with the arrival of Charles Lechmere. Now it is those who try to nullify him as a suspect who has to do that adjusting. In my view, it is a paradigm shift and a very clear sign of how Charles Lechmere is not the ordinary suspect.

"Fact overstretching" will have to do for now.

[Doctored Whatsit]

Folks, that's what Nichols' mutilations are now being turned into.

Just as, the other day, the killer hadn't covered them up.

We're seeing case details re-written day by day.

No mystery why...

M.

If you read what was written it is "abdominal slashes" as opposed to total disembowelment in the cases which followed.

[Elamarna]

Folks, that's what Nichols' mutilations are now being turned into.

Just as, the other day, the killer hadn't covered them up.

We're seeing case details re-written day by day.

No mystery why...

M.

One of the very few issues Christer and I nearly agree on is the mutilations to Mary Ann Nichols.
She suffered terrible wounds.The killer had completed or nearly completed the wounds to allow disembowlment.
In short, there is a major wound from sternum to privates, and a 2nd major wound from her privates to her left hip.

It seems clear the killer was disturbed and this prevented the full mutilation.
I suggest people read the Chapter on the wounds in Inside Bucks Row.


Steve

[Fisherman]

I suggested that firstly Paul and CAL raised her hands to check pulse/temperature and then later Neil did too. Maybe Paul and/or CAL even tried to rouse her, and moved her slightly. Paul, CAL and Neil were three human beings responding to a quite unexpected event. We don't have crystal clear statements about everything they all did, and so we cannot know. We are both making assumptions on less information than would be ideal.

Yes, more information would be nice, but as I keep saying: What we have is what we go by. And we don´t have any of the participators saying that they raised the arm of Polly Nichols. Instead we have testimony speaking of how Lechmere "took hold" of the hands and felt the face for warmth, none of which includes any mentioning of a raising of the arm. We then have Neil stating that he did not disturb the body, and this would be standard procedure in cases of murder - the body was to be left as untouched as possible. That leaves us with the question of whether or not it is possible to feel for warmth on an arm that is lying on the ground, or if it must be raised off the ground before this can be accomplished. To my surprise, I found that you claim thatg is would be "odd in the extreme" if the arm was not raised, and so I pointed out that it would be just as easy if not easier to put two fingertips against the wrist as it was lying on the ground, palm up. If it was palm down, it would be equally easy to put your fingers under the wrist without ny need to raise the arm at all.

As you say, we cannot be 100 per cent certain either way. But it is you, not me, who has to add in parameters that are not there in the descriptions we have.

[Fisherman]

A typical as expected reply from you. I dont need to prove my claims, the lack of evidence you have to put forward to prove the case aginst Lechmere is more than sufficinet to prove corroboration as to what I have posted.

Actually no.

You clearly have no idea how production companies operate in making such a documentary I have first hand experience. Go back to Blink films and ask them to prove me wrong if thats what you believe.Get them to show you the full interviews of all what those contributers said.

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

I have spent my life as a journalist. It is not as if I am not aware of how documentaries are made. I have good friends who make them.

As I keep saying, my narrative is the exact same as James Scobies. I am not the one claiming that there is another story to tell, you are. Therefore it lies on you to present the evidence for your stance, or to accept that Scobies and my version is likely the correct one.

[Fisherman]

Folks, that's what Nichols' mutilations are now being turned into.

Just as, the other day, the killer hadn't covered them up.

We're seeing case details re-written day by day.

No mystery why...

M.

This is exactly what I am saying. While the classical suspect debate involves a suspect who is in dire need of some little rewriting of the facts, Lechmere has turned the tables around and it is now instead the naysayers who rearrange the facts. It´s fact overstretching, and I am not the one engaging in it.
I am not adding how John Neil must have raised the arm of Polly Nichols.
I am not the one claiming that Lechmere must have been known as Cross at work.
I am not the one saying that Mizen must have misheard Charles Lechmere and so on.
It all comes from the ones who need to rewrite the script to enable for them to try and throw Lechmere out.

It is not going to happen, simple as that. Much less has it already happened, as Trevor Marriott claims. That is just an extreme example of the fact overstretching.

There´s a whole new world to see out there. But it requires a pair of open eyes.

[Mark J D]

If you read what was written it is "abdominal slashes" as opposed to total disembowelment in the cases which followed.

What was written is what I quoted:

"... a couple of abdominal slashes..."

Think of me as someone who cares about your soul more than you do.

M.

[Fisherman]

One of the very few issues Christer and I nearly agree on is the mutilations to Mary Ann Nichols.
She suffered terrible wounds.The killer had completed or nearly completed the wounds to allow disembowlment.
In short, there is a major wound from sternum to privates, and a 2nd major wound from her privates to her left hip.

It seems clear the killer was disturbed and this prevented the full mutilation.
I suggest people read the Chapter on the wounds in Inside Bucks Row.


Steve

Yes, it is entirely true that I normally disagree with you, Steve. That is because I find you are one of the posters out here who has a tendency to, as I put it, overstretch the facts.

If you are up for it, I´d be happy to exemplify?

[rjpalmer]

Has it been established that he was know at Pickfords as Cross?
Cheers, George

Are you and Gary trying to imply that Pickford’s wouldn’t have been aware that one of their own employees had been involved in a fatal accident in 1876 and had used the surname of his stepfather at the inquest? And then, when he pulled this same alleged stunt in 1888, those at Pickford’s wouldn’t have been able to put two and two together, when he was identified in the press as a Pickford’s employee who lived in that part of town? And again used the same surname? Were the managers at Pickford’s idiots?

Have you ever worked for a firm like this? They are gossip mills to the tiniest degree; by noon half the employees in London would have known the PRECISE identity of the employee who had found the woman in Buck’s Row. If the detectives of J Division couldn’t figure it out, I guarantee you the amateur detectives at Pickford’s would have!

And Gary still gives no explanation what harm it would have done if CAL had simply given the name Lechmere when contacted by the police? The situation would have been identical. How would it have helped him to give an alias? As the case of Michael Ostrog shows, among dozens of other examples such as those found in the registry of habitual criminals, a man can be arrested, charged, and sent to prison whether the police know his birth name or not. How would it have helped him?

The “false name” accusation makes no sense whatsoever, and now people are actually aping Christer’s claim that it was a name CAL reserved for cases of violent death.

Surely this is an example of taking a too literal interpretation of the extant record, thus being myopic to the point of ridiculousness. We frequently have to supplement an incomplete historical record with common sense.

[rjpalmer]

For once, it is not the suspectologist that has the weird arguments, it is those who try to deny the value of the theory, setting all sense aside in the process.

That says a lot.

I think this is a myth.

Actually, it is fairly commonplace to see those defending various suspects—be it Kosminski, Druitt, Tumilty, Sadler, Cutbush, etc—to fall back on weak arguments, non sequiturs, misinformation, etc., but, for whatever reason, it is not frowned upon in the same way it is when used by those “prosecuting” a case.

I’d say bad reasoning is pretty much a 50/50 split between those prosecuting and those defending. It’s the former, though, that gets all the notoriety.

[Fisherman]

The “false name” accusation makes no sense whatsoever, and now people are actually aping Christer’s claim that it was a name CAL reserved for cases of violent death.

Can we be a little more careful about our claims, R J? If you take a second look, I think you may see that I have never said that Lechmere reserved the name Cross for cases of violent death. I am saying that he on tow occasions of violent death actually used that name, whereas we have no other examples at all of him using it. And I am pointing to how this is an anomaly. And as with all anomalies, I want to know what lies behind them.
It may be that Lechmere did reserve the name Cross for occasions when he was involved in instances of violent death. That is true.
But saying that I present it as anything but an obvious possibility is not true.

Care. Caution. Respect. Please!

[Fisherman]

I think this is a myth.

And I think that is another example of suggesting unproven things as possible facts.

Actually, it is fairly commonplace to see those defending various suspects—be it Kosminski, Druitt, Tumilty, Sadler, Cutbush, etc—to fall back on weak arguments, non sequiturs, misinformation, etc., but, for whatever reason, it is not frowned upon in the same way it is when used by those “prosecuting” a case.

Yes, that is entirely true - just about all suspects fall back on weak arguments. That is the exact point I am making; a thorough examination of these arguments lead to how they can be pointed out as such, and that is what riperology has done for decades.It has put sense against lacklustre reasoning. But when it comes to Lechmere, the roles have switched.

When I say that it is normally looked upon as a bad thing for a suspect in a criminal case if it is discovered that he or she has not provided his or her real name, the one he or she is registered by - and in our case regularly used in all official walks of life but for the two cases of violent death in which Lechmere was involved (you can see how that works now, I believe?) - I find a lot of people telling me that this is not so, that it is entirely au fait to use aliases without owning up to your registered name.
That is simply not true and if we do not all know it, then we really should.

When I say that a renowned barrister has concluded that the points of accusation against Charles Lechmere would be enough to take him to a modern day trial, I am told that the barrister was probably misled to such a degree by Blink Films that he got it all wrong.

When I say that it is not proven that Robert Paul ever spoke to PC Mizen, it is claimed that it IS proven - since he stated it in a very dubious interview that he was part of, and since a man under suspicion of murder (and who would likely have read said interview) claimed the same thing. Which was incidentally something that would exonerate him to some degree if it was true.

And so on and so on. This is how much of a "myth" my claim is, R J.

I’d say bad reasoning is pretty much a 50/50 split between those prosecuting and those defending. It’s the former, though, that gets all the notoriety.

It never was and never should be about notoriety, R J. It is and always should be about how we treat the facts. And claiming that changing your name in combination with an inquest into a murder is a trivial matter that deserves no questioning - that is not treating the facts correctly.

The one good thing about the kind of charades that are prevalent in the naysayers camp is that they will be revealed for what they are - overstretching the facts.

[rjpalmer]

Fish — we are dealing with the life of a very obscure person. The life of Lechmere is not documented in the way the day to day life of Princess Di or Napoleon was documented.

And when there is only a smattering of information available, historians are very likely to jump to wrongly conclusions.

David Barrat published an example of a delivery driver on the Isle of Wight who used an alternative name in court. Highly suspicious! But guess what? It made no difference whether he used the name Tom, Dick, or Harry—he still had to pay the fine.

And what did research show? The alternative name he used was the surname of his stepfather.

Census records confirmed this, but they also showed that the driver himself was always listed in these “official” documents by his birth name.

His use of his stepfather’s name in court would appear to have been a pointless one-off subterfuge, if it wasn’t for one devastating detail:

Years later, when the man died, his obituary explicitly stated that he was commonly known around town by the name of the man who raised him. His stepfather!

Unfortunately, but understandably, such details are seldom recorded, so, based on the little information we have, we can be lead astray.

I strongly suspect this is what is happening in CAL’s case, and I’m not alone. In 1888 he deposed that he had worked for Pickford’s for over twenty years. Does that not date his employment back to a time when the man who raised him—Thomas Cross—was still alive?

That innocent explanation makes far more sense to me than CAL’s pointless attempt to use an “alias”—which wouldn’t have worked.

[MrBarnett]

RJ,

Perhaps you should provide Christer with the full details of Lord Orsam’s IOW delivery driver.

Presumably it was comparable to the case of CAL. The IOW man’s stepfather was presumably long dead and his birth father had a unusual name that identified a connection to his mother’s background. That sort of thing.

Gary

[JeffHamm]

Hi all,

The idea that Cross/Lechmere was trying to deceive, or hide, his identity is simply at odds with the facts.
1) The name Cross is his stepfathers' name, therefore it is a name that is connected to him directly.
2) He gives his full first and middle name, so no attempt to hide this.
3) He gives his correct address. There is no way for him to know what the police will do once he goes to them to make his statement. There is every reason to believe the police would have spoken to his wife to confirm the details of his statement (the time he left for work). It is beyond reasonable to suggest that they would not do this, and as a result, would no doubt have become aware of the name Lechmere as well. To suggest otherwise is to ignore basic police procedures. We see all sorts of surviving references to the police "verifying someone's account", and to suggest they did not do this for Cross/Lechmere is irrational.
4) He gives his correct workplace.
5) All of these details were unknown until he went to the police. He had not given his name to Paul, and PC Mizen had not taken it either. All that was known is that he was a carman, but not for whom he worked, or where he lived, or even what his first name was. If Cross/Lechmere wished to hide his identity from the police then he would not have gone to give his statement to them, because by doing so he revealed his identity to them - the complete antithesis of concealing it.

We can compare Cross/Lechmere's actions with an example of someone who actually was trying to deceive the police as to their identity, Kate Eddowes. When she was arrested for public drunkeness she:
1) initially refused to give her name ("nothing")
2) when discharged she gave a fake name (Marry Anne Kelly)
3) when discharged she gave a fake address (Dorset Street)

We can see, when someone is trying to deceive the police, they give entirely fake information, not only about their last name, but all parts of their name, and they do not reveal where they live, they give a false address. This is so basic it is bizarre it appears it even has to be stated.

As rj continues to point out, what is recorded in documents, and what the reality was in terms of how someone was known in their day-to-day life, do not always correspond. There is no direct evidence either way which name Cross/Lechmere used in his day-to-day life amongst friends and co-workers, but given the totality of his actions, Cross appears to be one he did use.

In short, when one does not ignore the vast majority of the information we have, the only rational conclusion one can come to is that Cross/Lechmere was not attempting to conceal his identity in any way. It is, therefore, not evidence of him being guilty, and cannot be seen as "one of the pointers" towards his guilt.

Moreover, unless someone can show he was charged with using a false name, given it is unreasonable to conclude the police were actually unaware of the name Lechmere, arguing that he committed a crime or that his use of the name Cross at the inquest was considered a crime, is also unfounded.

- Jeff