Evidence of innocence

[ohrocky]

The point of my anecdote was simply to refute the suggestion that a person caught in the commission of a crime (or almost so in my daughter’s case) will invariably immediately leg it. Not so. Some will try to engage/flannel or attack their finder. That’s it. End of.

Your weird feelings are just that - weird - certainly if you are including me as one of those Lechmere accusers who can’t see the difference between the dark wooded place and a spot on Lechmere’s work route. :-)

I'm just catching up so apologies if this has already been covered.

I can't help but feel you are not comparing two similar scenarios here. The person peeking into your daughter's empty house had not committed a crime. Certainly, if he was wearing gloves and carrying a screwdriver and a crowbar he would have been arrested for "going equipped" under the Theft Act 1968. But you don't suggest that he was so he had not committed any crime whatsoever. (I have been known to peek inside a property I know is empty out of sheer curiosity).

So no crime had been committed and so the person in your daughter's property scenario really did have absolutely nothing to fear. I can't reconcile his behaviour with that of a man who has committed a cold blooded murder a mere few minutes before. If C/L committed the murder his life was at stake if he stood his ground and tried to talk his way out of it.

I would suggest that you need to find examples of murderers who have killed just minutes previously who have stood with their freshly killed victim until a passer-by arrived and then they both go off together to find a policeman. Then we would be comparing apples with apples. I can't find such a case but that doesn't mean there has never been one of course.

[Abby Normal]

I'm just catching up so apologies if this has already been covered.

I can't help but feel you are not comparing two similar scenarios here. The person peeking into your daughter's empty house had not committed a crime. Certainly, if he was wearing gloves and carrying a screwdriver and a crowbar he would have been arrested for "going equipped" under the Theft Act 1968. But you don't suggest that he was so he had not committed any crime whatsoever. (I have been known to peek inside a property I know is empty out of sheer curiosity).

So no crime had been committed and so the person in your daughter's property scenario really did have absolutely nothing to fear. I can't reconcile his behaviour with that of a man who has committed a cold blooded murder a mere few minutes before. If C/L committed the murder his life was at stake if he stood his ground and tried to talk his way out of it.

I would suggest that you need to find examples of murderers who have killed just minutes previously who have stood with their freshly killed victim until a passer-by arrived and then they both go off together to find a policeman. Then we would be comparing apples with apples. I can't find such a case but that doesn't mean there has never been one of course.

if I may.

your scenario is too specific. your trying to compare two apples that are EXACTly alike. aint happening. all you need to do is find examples of criminals who didnt immediately flee, and tried to ruse witnesses/police when there were clearly other options. Ive had a personal similar situation happen to me, Dahmer has a famous example and even the ripper case has a suspect that also did just that-Bury. Bury walked right into the police to try to ruse his crime away. Lech(if guilty) did the same thing.

and besides all Gary was doing was giving a personal example of someone who when caught doing something wrong may try to bluff it out, instead of just legging it or something else.

and BTW I find your "legal" hand waving away that what the creep did in Garys story wasnt doing anything illegal or wrong totally bizarre. whats up with that?
tresspassing, stalking, peeping tom? all illegal, or at the very least wrong.

[Aethelwulf]

if I may.

your scenario is too specific. your trying to compare two apples that are EXACTly alike. aint happening. all you need to do is find examples of criminals who didnt immediately flee, and tried to ruse witnesses/police when there were clearly other options. Ive had a personal similar situation happen to me, Dahmer has a famous example and even the ripper case has a suspect that also did just that-Bury. Bury walked right into the police to try to ruse his crime away. Lech(if guilty) did the same thing.

and besides all Gary was doing was giving a personal example of someone who when caught doing something wrong may try to bluff it out, instead of just legging it or something else.

and BTW I find your "legal" hand waving away that what the creep did in Garys story wasnt doing anything illegal or wrong totally bizarre. whats up with that?
tresspassing, stalking, peeping tom? all illegal, or at the very least wrong.

I have to disagree. As there is simply no evidence of wrong doing on Lech's part I think a close parallel would be useful. The Bury example doesn't work - he did the crime, mulled it over and went to the police after 6 days I think it was. With lech we're talking about being caught in the act on the open streets with blood on his hands, knife in pocket and taking someone over to look at the body. Sorry but no one is convincing me that is what the killer would have done. So lech is a psychopath and that is what he would have done - where is the evidence? There is none. If you look at someone killing out in the open like sutcliffe he was disturbed on several occasions and fled. What he did when he was caught (hiding his tools) seems like a likely course of action. What is proposed for Lech isn't.

I spent a lot time reading about lech, as for a while, before I read up in more detail about all the suspects, I thought he probably was the ripper (based the docu, which is highly misleading in places). Having looked into the case in more detail I have one basic rule for suspects: are they more likely/a more viable suspect than Bury? I will happily acknowledge when that isn't the case, but for lech, it's a no.

[Abby Normal]

I have to disagree. As there is simply no evidence of wrong doing on Lech's part I think a close parallel would be useful. The Bury example doesn't work - he did the crime, mulled it over and went to the police after 6 days I think it was. With lech we're talking about being caught in the act on the open streets with blood on his hands, knife in pocket and taking someone over to look at the body. Sorry but no one is convincing me that is what the killer would have done. So lech is a psychopath and that is what he would have done - where is the evidence? There is none. If you look at someone killing out in the open like sutcliffe he was disturbed on several occasions and fled. What he did when he was caught (hiding his tools) seems like a likely course of action. What is proposed for Lech isn't.

I spent a lot time reading about lech, as for a while, before I read up in more detail about all the suspects, I thought he probably was the ripper (based the docu, which is highly misleading in places). Having looked into the case in more detail I have one basic rule for suspects: are they more likely/a more viable suspect than Bury? I will happily acknowledge when that isn't the case, but for lech, it's a no.

if you dismiss lech for trying to bluff it out and walking right into the teeth of police-then you have to for Bury too. and if you think about it burys action is even more inexplicable, brazen/foolish and un ripper like. lech (if guilty)was caught near red handed, whereas Bury had time to think about it-he could have got rid of her body and or fled.

anyway, I actually rank Bury slightly ahead of lech as a suspect-so Im not going to argue to hard with you about this! lol

[MrBarnett]

if I may.

your scenario is too specific. your trying to compare two apples that are EXACTly alike. aint happening. all you need to do is find examples of criminals who didnt immediately flee, and tried to ruse witnesses/police when there were clearly other options. Ive had a personal similar situation happen to me, Dahmer has a famous example and even the ripper case has a suspect that also did just that-Bury. Bury walked right into the police to try to ruse his crime away. Lech(if guilty) did the same thing.

and besides all Gary was doing was giving a personal example of someone who when caught doing something wrong may try to bluff it out, instead of just legging it or something else.

and BTW I find your "legal" hand waving away that what the creep did in Garys story wasnt doing anything illegal or wrong totally bizarre. whats up with that?
tresspassing, stalking, peeping tom? all illegal, or at the very least wrong.

I suspect the man in my story was on the look out for builders tools to steal. That was certainly the view of our builders the next day.

[Abby Normal]

I suspect the man in my story was on the look out for builders tools to steal. That was certainly the view of our builders the next day.

yeah that too, at the very least hes trespassing-and thats def illegal. i was a little befuddled that rocky saying he wasnt comminting a crime

[Aethelwulf]

if you dismiss lech for trying to bluff it out and walking right into the teeth of police-then you have to for Bury too. and if you think about it burys action is even more inexplicable, brazen/foolish and un ripper like. lech (if guilty)was caught near red handed, whereas Bury had time to think about it-he could have got rid of her body and or fled.

anyway, I actually rank Bury slightly ahead of lech as a suspect-so Im not going to argue to hard with you about this! lol

Ha, you won't be surprised to know I still disagree. There is a world of difference between the Lech theory - being caught in the act/red-handed and waiting for a passerby some way off and then inviting them to look at the woman you've just bumped off and then taking a walk to find the nearest PC - and what Bury did. We have heard that Lech the psycho took his opportunity to play a little game and try to control the situation in Bucks Row (no real evidence of this of course) - is that not exactly what Bury did? And let's not forget very nearly worked.

In the quiet early morning the ripper would undoubtedly have heard Lech's approach and been off, if indeed it did happen that way, it might have been before lech was even on the scene.

[Hair Bear]

Hi rj,



Yes, that's definitely worth pointing out. The "window of opportunity" idea for his guilt or innocence that I've been comparing between are, of course, the innocent version (where he doesn't have a window of opportunity) while in the guilty version he does and he encounters Polly who is already in Bukck's Row. If she was on Whitechapel, though, then he has to first go there, then return to the crime scene with her, and that to and fro journey requires a few minutes. I've put a couple possible locations just to illustrate, and as we can see, if he locates her on Whitechapel, the journey from the crime scene to WC is going to be between 546 to 900 feet one way, for a round trip of between 1092 and 1800 ft. At 3.2 mph (and I accept that I could be accused of having a very drunk Polly motoring along like she's fresh as a daisy here) that requires between 3m 52s and 6m 23s, plus any negotiation time. For any scenerio where Polly is not at the crime scene already, such journey times have to be added to the required window of opportunity time. Given the examination I presented earlier shows that even at the fastest walking speed along the shortest path, with Polly at the crime scene (every condition that favours the guilty possibility), the testifimony is consistent with the innocent, or truthful, explanation. Differences in the timing are in the ranges we would expect simply due to the unreliability of the type of data we have (couple with, of course, the recreated timings themselves are just estimates too, so like any analysis, they too have margins of error one must consider). So given the testimony is consistent with Cross/Lechmere simply finding Polly at the crime scene without any "window of opportunity", there is clearly no room for any guilty scenerio that requires even longer windows of opportunity. Rather, the analysis is consistent with Cross/Lechmere arrving at the crime scene while Polly is already there, and without a window of opportunity to kill her, that would suggest she's already dead.





- Jeff

Apologies if someone has already spoken about this. Why would the Ripper take Nichols from the main road to Bucks Row? It might have been quieter than normal that night, but surely you would take her down the smaller Winthrope and then right again down the secluded Wood's Buildings (not that I'm speaking from experience, cough). The only alternatives I can think of to that are if she was walking back to the main road after having business elsewhere and the Ripper came across her, or the Ripper took her there because for whatever reason he/she thought he/she could gain access to that large gate, but when he saw he couldn't and realised the street was empty, killed her on the spot.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I’m sorry for interrupting with an irrelevance but I have to say that ‘Hair Bear’ goes onto my list of best names.

[JeffHamm]

Apologies if someone has already spoken about this. Why would the Ripper take Nichols from the main road to Bucks Row? It might have been quieter than normal that night, but surely you would take her down the smaller Winthrope and then right again down the secluded Wood's Buildings (not that I'm speaking from experience, cough). The only alternatives I can think of to that are if she was walking back to the main road after having business elsewhere and the Ripper came across her, or the Ripper took her there because for whatever reason he/she thought he/she could gain access to that large gate, but when he saw he couldn't and realised the street was empty, killed her on the spot.

My guess would be that it was because there were the horse slaughterers working on Winthrop, while Buck's Row was empty of activity.

- Jeff

[Dickere]

I’m sorry for interrupting with an irrelevance but I have to say that ‘Hair Bear’ goes onto my list of best names.

One of a bunch you might say.

[Herlock Sholmes]

One of a bunch you might say.

[Hair Bear]

I’m sorry for interrupting with an irrelevance but I have to say that ‘Hair Bear’ goes onto my list of best names.

Extremely relevant! ;-)

[Hair Bear]

My guess would be that it was because there were the horse slaughterers working on Winthrop, while Buck's Row was empty of activity.

- Jeff

Fair comment, cheers

[Fanatic]

I do have an issue with Lechmere as a serious suspect.

He gave evidence at the PAN inquest and would therefore have been seen by all members of the investigating team.

If his description had matched that given by any of the witnesses he would of been identified.

Not to mention the huge risk of being spotted a second time by the body of a victim.

If PAN had been the last victim there may have been a case for lechmere. But since the attacks continued and he wasn’t even a suspect we cannot assume the police were THAT incompetent.

Any contradictory thoughts would be greatly appreciated.