Evidence of innocence

[Lewis C]

He does believe Paul when he states 'exactly 3:45am' but does not believe Paul when he states 'clothes were disarranged and I pulled them down.' He does not believe Paul when he says he goes alone to Mizen. He does not believe Mizen with regards the 3:45 am timing, however he does believe Mizen stated he was told he was wanted by a Policeman in Bucks Row... can you see the pattern of Cherry-Picking here? It's as about the worst kind of methodology in trying to pin multiple murders on someone as there can be. Hence I can safely say Griffiths AND Scobie Doo where not given the full account of the events of that night. There is no way in hell a sitting KC (defender by the way, I'd would have gone for a prosecutor for obvious reasons) would even entertain a case that heavily relied on cherry picked 'evidence' and he certainly would NOT use Christer's 'opinion' as 'circumstantial evidence.' What does Scobie say about coincidences? Sorry but coincidences ARE NOT evidence.

Hi Geddy,

It's reasonable to figure that Scobie wasn't given an objective, full account of the facts, because The Missing Evidence itself isn't that. If they were capable of or interested in giving Scobie a full, objective account, that would raise the question of why they didn't do the same in the documentary as a whole.

[Fiver]

Fisherman didn't only focus on Baxter's summing up statement

He reached his conclusions based on a detailed analyse of what Llewellyn, Paul, Baxter and Swanson said.

Fisherman reached his conclusions by accepting, ignoring, or massaging times to fit his theory.
* Fisherman ignores Robert Paul's inquest testimony and uses a pre-inquest statement to the press to falsely claim that Paul gave an exact time.
* Fisherman ignores PC Neil's inquest testimony, because it contradicts his theory.
* Fisherman ignores PC Mizen's inquest testimony, because it contradicts his theory.
* Fisherman ignores PC Thain's's inquest testimony, because it contradicts his theory.
* Fisherman ignores one of the timing statements given by Coroner Baxter in his summation, the one that makes it clear Baxter believed the body was found before 3:45am.
* Fisherman assumes the other timing statement by Baxter is exact.
* Fisherman ignores that Dr Llewellyn's time he was called to Buck's Row doesn't let us reach any conclusion about when Cross found the body.
* Fisherman assumes that Swanson's report giving a 3:45am time was exact.
* Fisherman ignores a report by Swanson and Abberline that gives about 3:40am as the time, because it does not fit his theory.

[Geddy2112]

Fisherman didn't only focus on Baxter's summing up statement
He reached his conclusions based on a detailed analyse of what Llewellyn, Paul, Baxter and Swanson said.

See this is the issue I touch on in the other thread/post. He is cherry-picking information starting from a viewpoint Lechmere is guilty. I've asked him many times how it started for him, of course no answers are forthcoming.

He believes the 'many independent data' from Baxter. However using Christer O' Clock that means he thinks many is 'two' i.e. Paul and Llewellyn. However other people's many is five. Three serving PCs, Cross and Abberline. Which is closer to the definition of many? 2 or 5?
However another example to back up the cherry-picking. He believes Baxter with regards the 'not far from 3:45' but does not believe him when he suggests Llewellyn is wrong about the cutting.
He does believe Paul when he states 'exactly 3:45am' but does not believe Paul when he states 'clothes were disarranged and I pulled them down.' He does not believe Paul when he says he goes alone to Mizen. He does not believe Mizen with regards the 3:45 am timing, however he does believe Mizen stated he was told he was wanted by a Policeman in Bucks Row... can you see the pattern of Cherry-Picking here? It's as about the worst kind of methodology in trying to pin multiple murders on someone as there can be. Hence I can safely say Griffiths AND Scobie Doo where not given the full account of the events of that night. There is no way in hell a sitting KC (defender by the way, I'd would have gone for a prosecutor for obvious reasons) would even entertain a case that heavily relied on cherry picked 'evidence' and he certainly would NOT use Christer's 'opinion' as 'circumstantial evidence.' What does Scobie say about coincidences? Sorry but coincidences ARE NOT evidence.

Whether or not you agree with him, that doesn't make you right and make him wrong in the slightest, no matter how much cheering you receive from the anti-Lechmere camp.

I'm sorry Baron but it bloody well does. 'We' the anti-Lechmere posters use the evidence, common sense and logic to refute cherry-picking, coincidences, opinions and twisted evidence, twisted English language and poor methodology. So sorry it does make 'us' right and him very very wrong. There is absolutely nothing we know today from the official evidence that would get Lechmere into the dock, in fact I doubt it would even meet the threshold of arrest. Questioned yes of course he was there but that is that.
It's about time the blinkers come off sir... and those Lechmere Tinted Glasses...

[Geddy2112]

He also has Cross in Buck's Row at 3:45, the time that Mizen said Cross was talking to him, and the time that Neil said he found the body.

It's worse than that if you look at the missing evidence stills below... spot the mistake...

[A P Tomlinson]

Since PC Mizen was knocking people up (waking up people who did not have alarm clocks), it seems likely to me that he had a pocket watch so the people were woken when they needed to be.

The way I understand it, they would knock people up on a given circuit of their beat. You didn't get to say, "I want a knock at 4.50am" You said "get me up before quarter to five", so they would get that knock on the circuit approaching that time.
Any copper who was doing that would either need a decent awareness of the accuracy and reliability of the public bell clocks or... a watch.

As the famous song goes, "If you want to know the time, ask a carman... errr... coroner... errr...." no that's not right is it...

[Fiver]

He also has Cross in Buck's Row at 3:45, the time that Mizen said Cross was talking to him, and the time that Neil said he found the body.

Since PC Mizen was knocking people up (waking up people who did not have alarm clocks), it seems likely to me that he had a pocket watch so the people were woken when they needed to be.

[JeffHamm]

Fisherman didn't only focus on Baxter's summing up statement

He reached his conclusions based on a detailed analyse of what Llewellyn, Paul, Baxter and Swanson said.

Whether or not you agree with him, that doesn't make you right and make him wrong in the slightest, no matter how much cheering you recieve from the anti-Lechmere camp.




The Baron

There is nothing in what Llewellyn, Paul, Baxter, or Swanson says that requires ignoring the stated times given by PC Mizen and PC Neil. In fact, using information from all of the people involved, nothing needs to be adjusted and the whole scene plays out just as it sounds - that Cross/Lechmere and Paul were simply both on their way to work, and they find the body (with Paul slightly behind Cross/Lechmere of course), and both are gone by the time PC Neil arrives at 3:45. The simulations I put together demonstrate that no fudging of things is required at all. It all fits. Fisherman claiming it doesn't fit as stated is demonstrably wrong (as the simulations show). Now that doesn't mean I have it right (nor have I ever claimed I have it exactly as it happened), but by showing the simulations work when based upon the provided testimony absolutely does mean the claim that the times as given don't work is wrong.

In short, Fisherman's adjusting of the times away from what the police say is unnecessary for any other reason than to make the Cross/Lechmere as JtR hypothesis possible.

- Jeff

[The Baron]

Yes, Fisherman tends to ignore the times stated by PC Mizen and PC Neil, that both indicate the carmen had left the scene before 3:45, and he focuses on Baxter's summing up statement where he says the body was found "not far off 3:45", and he then goes on to say that Baxter means "at 3:45". That is clearly not what Baxter means as the phrase "not far off 3:45" is to say "close to but not actually 3:45". It's easier to understand that phrase if one uses it to describe, for example, throwing darts. If I say "My last dart was not far off the bull's eye", you know I was close to the bull, but didn't actually hit it. Baxter's summing up is just pointing out the carmen had been at the body shortly before 3:45 (but not actually at 3:45). However, to create the "gap" and to make other aspects of the theory work it requires shifting everything such that Cross/Lechmere and Paul are finding the body at 3:45 despite none of the testimony (other than the suspect Llyod's article) indicates that was the case.

- Jeff

P.S. Technically Baxter could also have meant shortly after 3:45 (as that could be said to be not far off 3:45 as well), however that interpretation would only be possible if we look at Baxter's statement in isolation and without consideration of the statements of PC Mizen and PC Neil (which rule out after 3:45).

Fisherman didn't only focus on Baxter's summing up statement

He reached his conclusions based on a detailed analyse of what Llewellyn, Paul, Baxter and Swanson said.

Whether or not you agree with him, that doesn't make you right and make him wrong in the slightest, no matter how much cheering you recieve from the anti-Lechmere camp.




The Baron

[JeffHamm]

He also has Cross in Buck's Row at 3:45, the time that Mizen said Cross was talking to him, and the time that Neil said he found the body.

Yes, Fisherman tends to ignore the times stated by PC Mizen and PC Neil, that both indicate the carmen had left the scene before 3:45, and he focuses on Baxter's summing up statement where he says the body was found "not far off 3:45", and he then goes on to say that Baxter means "at 3:45". That is clearly not what Baxter means as the phrase "not far off 3:45" is to say "close to but not actually 3:45". It's easier to understand that phrase if one uses it to describe, for example, throwing darts. If I say "My last dart was not far off the bull's eye", you know I was close to the bull, but didn't actually hit it. Baxter's summing up is just pointing out the carmen had been at the body shortly before 3:45 (but not actually at 3:45). However, to create the "gap" and to make other aspects of the theory work it requires shifting everything such that Cross/Lechmere and Paul are finding the body at 3:45 despite none of the testimony (other than the suspect Llyod's article) indicates that was the case.

- Jeff

P.S. Technically Baxter could also have meant shortly after 3:45 (as that could be said to be not far off 3:45 as well), however that interpretation would only be possible if we look at Baxter's statement in isolation and without consideration of the statements of PC Mizen and PC Neil (which rule out after 3:45).

[Lewis C]

I did it again...



From the Sydsvenskan, Swedish newspaper article.

Herlock Sholmes I now make that twice in his book, once on the (still) Missing Evidence video, once on the freeze frame documents given to Scobie Doo, numerous times here and on the JtR forums that he, according to him 'forgot' to put the 'about' in.

Astonishing to be honest.

He also has Cross in Buck's Row at 3:45, the time that Mizen said Cross was talking to him, and the time that Neil said he found the body.

[Geddy2112]

Early on the 31:st of August 1888, the carman Robert Paul was on his way to work in Corbett´s Court in London´s East End. He was late; the time was 3.45 as he briskly walked down Buck´s Row after having turned into it from Brady Street. At the intersection between the streets he passed a gas lamp. There were a further couple of lamps along Buck´s Row, but none of them functioned, so the darkness deepened around Paul with every step he took. Having walked a hundred yards or so, and with the light from the gas lamp as a haze in the distance, he suddenly discerned a man standing still in the middle of the street. Robert Paul felt uneasy, and as the other man took a step or two towards him, Paul chose to step down from the pavement to walk round him. Then the other man stretched out his arm, put his hand on Paul´s shoulder and said:
- Come and have a look, there´s a woman lying over here.
At the entrance to Brown´s Stable Yard, a figure was stretched out on its back. The men crossed Buck´s Row to take a look.
The woman lying on the southern side of the narrow street was the 43-year old prostitute Mary Ann ”Polly” Nichols. The man that had stopped Robert Paul was also a carman, 38 years of age, answering to the name Charles Allen Lechmere. And the murder – for it was a murder – was the first in the series attributed to Jack the Ripper.
The Ripper murders were all knife slayings. They were so violent that they made Londoners presuppose that they were dealing with a complete maniac. They would remain unsolved. There were five of them according to traditional opinion, and they were perpetrated over a period of around ten weeks.
When the story about them is told, a number of elements are usually involved: the competent Victorian police, the dark labyrinth of crime-infested streets called the East End and the skill that allowed the killer to avoid the police net.
Those who dig deep enough into the case will discover that one of these elements was not really there. Sadly, that element was the police competence. It is a controversial view, but an inevitable one. The police force had no experience of serial killings, it was led by men who in many instances had peculiar qualifications for police work and it carried out its duties in an era when racism abounded and phrenology – the belief that criminality could be read into people´s differing physiognomies – was an accepted ”science”.
If the investigation had been handled the way investigations are handled today, then Polly Nichols would probably never have come to be regarded as the first Ripper victim. The killings would probably have ended there and then. A modern police force would arguably have concluded that the man Robert Paul found standing by Polly Nichols, was also her probable killer: Charles Allen Lechmere. But let´s return to Buck´s Row and find out what it is that points towards him.
At the inquest after the murder, Lechmere claimed that he had noticed that there was something – his guess was a tarpaulin – lying on the southern side of Buck´s Row. He had then walked out into the street. At that same stage, he heard somebody – Robert Paul – was approaching. But he did not notice Paul until he was some thirty-forty yards away.
And yet we know that a policeman during the same night heard his colleague´s steps from 130 yards away. Reasonably, Lechmere should have already heard Paul when the latter turned into Buck´s Row. The street was resting in silence and the shoes of that time had hard, loud heels.
Likewise, Paul should have heard Lechmere walking in the darkness some thirty, forty yards ahead of him. But he didn´t.
The conclusion is inescapable: Lechmere was in place before he admits to have been. And once he noticed the approaching Paul, he chose to bluff the newcomer instead of running for it, and attracting attention to his person.
They then went over to the woman together to feel her. Her hands were cold, but the face was warm, and as Paul felt her chest he discerned some small movement.
- I believe she is alive, but only just, he said. Let´s prop her up, he suggested. But Lechmere then said that he would not touch her.
The reason for this is easy to see: as long as the woman was lying on the ground, it could not be made out in the darkness that she had had her neck severed down to the spine, and it provided Lechmere with the opportunity to procure an alibi for whatever blood he could have gotten on himself. But the moment they tried to sit her up, what had happened to her would become obvious.
Paul now remembered that he was late. He suggested that he should go and fetch a policeman to send to Buck´s Row. This made Lechmere say that he too was late, and throw forward a proposal that they should seek out that policeman together. If he had the murder weapon stashed on himself – no weapon was found at the spot when it was searched later – one can understand that he did not wish to wait for a policeman. And Paul had seen him and could identify him, so running was no longer any alternative. Lechmere was forced to improvise.
Before they set off, Paul respectfully pulled the woman´s clothes down as best as he could. Before that, they had been pulled up to the hip region, leaving the legs bare. But the clothes had covered her belly completely, and therefore her other wounds had been hidden – she had had the stomach ripped open from the breast bone down to the pelvic region. So somebody had taken the time to conceal this by using her clothes. Only one person stood to gain something by such a thing: a killer that had not been able to flee.
The carmen now left Buck´s Row and walked westwards. A couple of hundred yards from the murder scene, they ran into PC Jonas Mizen, who was in the process of knocking people up by tapping on doors and windows, a practice that was common amongst the police. Mizen would later at the inquest say that only one of the carmen – Lechmere – had spoken to him, and that this carman had told him that he was needed in Buck´s Row, where a woman was lying on the ground and where a fellow PC awaited his arrival.
But wait a second …?
There was no other PC in Buck´s Row, was there?
Exactly.
But if Lechmere was the killer, then he was still carrying his murder weapon on his person. Therefore he would have been anxious not to be searched, and determined to avoid being forced back to the murder site. That would have been why he invented a fictive PC, something that made Mizen accept that the carmen had already been cleared.
That is how easily the probable killer of Polly Nichols got past the police! And actually, there was another PC in place as Mizen arrived in Buck´s Row – PC John Neil had found Nichols on his beat a few minutes after the carmen had left her.
Could Lechmere possibly have known that Neil would be in place as Mizen arrived? Yes, that is an obvious possibility. He had probably picked Nichols up on Whitechapel Road, a known prostitute haunt. At that stage, the couple would reasonably have checked where the beat PC was before they sneaked up to Buck´s Row; prostitution was a crime.
The fact is that John Neil for a couple of days remained the man believed to first have discovered the body. But Robert Paul apparently had gotten word that Nichols had been killed, which was why he went to the press and gave a (probably well-paid) interview. It was published on the Sunday, two days after the murder and the day before the inquest. In the interview, Paul claimed to have found Lechmere standing ”where the body was”.
That was alarming news for Lechmere, and it arguably made him report himself to the police to provide his own version of the story, after which he was summoned to the Monday inquest. If he had avoided going to the police, then they would have had a situation where they knew a man had been standing by Nichols´ body at the approximate time of her death, only to later disappear. And Lechmere knew that both Paul and Mizen could identify him. Therefore he chose to come forward and present himself – but not fully. For he chose to call himself Charles Cross as he witnessed!
As a child, he had for a duration of around a decade had a stepfather called Thomas Cross, but there are no signs that Lechmere used his stepfathers name in any other context than the murder of Nichols. On the contrary; there are around ninety instances when the carman´s name is recorded in different official contexts. Every single name he writes himself Lechmere.
The secret about the name was unrevealed for more than a hundred years – it was not until some years ago that a genealogist made the connection.
The particulars Lechmere gave to the police where otherwise – apart from the name – correct. He stated 22 Doveton Street as his home address and he added that he worked for a Pickfords depot since an approximate twenty years. But when he witnessed before the inquest he added another anomaly to the false name: he did not state his home address before the jury, something witnesses normally do.
He said his name was Charles Cross and that he worked at Pickfords. But hundreds of men worked there, and without any home address he became unidentifiable to those who took part of the inquest proceedings in the papers. Consequently, his neighbours and his family could read about the murder without understanding that it was Lechmere who had found the victim.
But what about the police – surely they must have checked him out?
Not at all – a check in the registers, a visit at his home address or at Pickfords would immediately have disclosed that his name was not Cross. But Lechmere swiftly disappeared from the investigation, suspected of nothing at all. To be sure, a juryman did ask him if he had really told PC Mizen that another policeman was awaiting him in Buck´s Row, but this Lechmere denied. He added that he actually could not have said such a thing since there had not been any PC in Buck´s Row. This Robert Paul could of course confirm, and therefore everything pointed to Mizen having misunderstood things. And deeper than that nobody went – a murder inquest´s aim is merely to establish the cause of death.
Why then did the police fail to check Lechmere out? Well, they decided at an early stage that they were looking for a lunatic, very possibly a foreign such.
After the fourth Ripper killing, that of Catherine Eddowes, the detective Daniel Halse met two men in a street adjacent to the murder spot. His only measure was to establish that the men had legitimate reasons to be there. After that, he let them go. They were probably British, and they probably stated that they lived in the street or nearby, or perhaps that they were on their way to work. Exactly such a statement was also enough, as we have seen, for Charles Lechmere to gain a free passage from the inquest. He was British, he was a family father with eleven children, he was en route to his work. He was everything the Victorian police did not expect the killer to be.
And still, he was alone with a murder victim, a victim that may well still have been alive as Paul thought he discerned a small movement in her chest. When John Neil laid eyes on her, perhaps some three or four minutes afterwards, there was still blood running from her neck. And Mizen claimed the exact same thing, being in place a couple of minutes after Neil. The extensive damage she had suffered ought to have emptied her of blood quickly, it would not have been a matter of many minutes.
To tell the truth, Charles Lechmere should not even have been in Buck´s Row at 3.45 in the morning. For he claimed that he had left his home at 3.30, and to walk from Doveton Street to the murder spot is easily done in six or seven minutes. That means that Charles Lechmere should have left Buck´s Row well behind him long before Robert Paul turned into it. Therefore the time window is in place for Lechmere to have committed the murder.
All in all, a substantial amount of accusations can be raised against Charles Lechmere. But do we have something to check it against, something that can strengthen the case?
Yes we have, actually! We can take a look at the five Ripper killings, and we can add another knife slaying that may have been perpetrated by the same man, three weeks before the Ripper series. After that, we can compare the times and places the murders occurred at with Charles Lechmere´s route to work. When doing so, an amazing pattern emerges.
Lechmere had two roughly comparable thoroughfares from Doveton Street to Pickfords in Broad Street, where today’s Liverpool Street station is situated. They were Hanbury Street and Old Montague Street.
-On the 7:th of August, Martha Tabram was killed at the approximate time when Lechmere went to work. She died in George Yard, only thirty yards or so off Old Montague Street.
-On the 31:st of August Polly Nichols died on Buck´s Row – along Lechmere’s working route.
-On the 8:th of September Annie Chapman was murdered early in the morning on a working day, in the back yard of 29 Hanbury Street.
-On the 9:th of November Mary Kelly met with her killer, early in the morning of a working day, in Miller´s Court, Dorset Street. And Dorset Street offered a short cut to Pickfords along the Hanbury Street route.
There are two murders left to account for, both of them on the 30:th of September, when first Liz Stride and later Catherine Eddowes were killed. Here is a deviation: Stride was killed shortly before one o clock in the morning. That was not a time at which Lechmere was en route to his job. Eddowes died a little less than an hour later, that too being too early to be tied to Lechmere´s working trek.
Nor did these victims die along Lechmere´s working route. Stride met her end on Berner Street, a couple of hundred yards south of the Hanbury Street/Old Montague Street area, and Eddowes fell prey in Mitre Square, that too being situated south of the Lechmere working trek territory.
These cases can, however, be regarded as confirmation of Lechmere´s culpability. For they took place on the night leading up to a Sunday, Lechmere’s day off. And the Stride case took place in the exact territory where Lechmere had grown up and lived for a long stretch of years. Furthermore, Berner Street was a thoroughfare to Cable Street, where Charles Lechmere´s mother and one of his daughters were living!
For a hard-working carman, there was only one real evening off, and that was Saturday evening. What could be more natural than to use that evening to visit your mother and daughter?
The Stride killing was different from the other canonical cases in the sense that her stomach was not ripped open. There is an obvious possibility that Lechmere was disturbed, and frustrated fled Berner Street. After that, he sought out Catherine Eddowes and killed her in Mitre Square – alongside his old working route from James Street to Pickfords! Lechmere lived in James Street until June 1888, when he made the move to Doveton Street. That means that he left his old grounds – and the close proximity to his mother – only weeks before the murders began.
The British police hunted the Ripper up until 1892. After that, scores of armchair detectives have tried to catch the illusive killer. Hundreds of suspects have come and gone, one more fantastic than the other. Lately, a theory that Vincent van Gogh was the killer has seen the light of day.
Many Ripperoligists have made a quid by throwing a speculation in along the rugged road that winds through the gas lit East End streets of the 1880:s. There now being a rationally functioning, everyday, grey suspect is not something all Ripper researchers have wished for.
They can find consolation in the fact that Lechmere actually has a glamorous family history, counting an archbishop and one of Admiral Nelson´s closest men. Lechmere’s branch of the family, however, had the bad luck of being hit by a waster, namely Charles´ grandfather, who threw away his fortune.
So, to top things off, Charles Lechmere had good reason to feel a strong urge for revenge as he wandered the streets of the East End together with prostitutes, pimps and robbers, carrying the insight that he was made up of another material altogether himself than they were.
Did that insight ultimately drive him over the edge?
Charles Allen Lechmere died at the age of 71, on the 23:rd of December 1920, in Bow, London, after having suffered brain haemorrhage two days earlier.

Now at the moment, I'm not going to 'rip' this apart but there are numerous errors in this piece, however I will point out how I consider the structure of the piece rather similar to the other newspaper articles I've linked to above, all the more reason, since Christer would not misquote himself that the other newspapers DID NOT misquote and rather accurately quoted whom they said they did.

[Geddy2112]

When was the article Geddy?

I believe it was December 2012. It's how it started for Christer. https://www.jtrforums.com/forum/pers...678#post243678 (I have a copy of the English translation if required.)

Himself and Stow have been whinging lately about being misquoted in the Daily Telegraph of 2012

Here - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...nal-Green.html

and here - https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/w...veiled-8138328

and here - https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...inologist.html

It's astonishing all these papers and the Missing Evidence seem to make the exact same misquotes. What did Scobie say about coincidences mounting up. I suggest deliberate not misquoting.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I did it again...



From the Sydsvenskan, Swedish newspaper article.

Herlock Sholmes I now make that twice in his book, once on the (still) Missing Evidence video, once on the freeze frame documents given to Scobie Doo, numerous times here and on the JtR forums that he, according to him 'forgot' to put the 'about' in.

Astonishing to be honest.

When was the article Geddy?

[FrankO]

Might Cross have been afraid of being blamed with the woman in a confused state?

I agree, Mike. He may well have wanted to investigate when he realized it was a woman lying on the other side of the street. So, he walked over and then, when hearing footsteps, he thought it wiser to not be found kneeling next to the woman in the state she was in, whatever state that turned out to be.

Cheers,
Frank

[Geddy2112]

I did it again...

To tell the truth, Charles Lechmere should not even have been in Buck´s Row at 3.45 in the morning. For he claimed that he had left his home at 3.30

From the Sydsvenskan, Swedish newspaper article.

Herlock Sholmes I now make that twice in his book, once on the (still) Missing Evidence video, once on the freeze frame documents given to Scobie Doo, numerous times here and on the JtR forums that he, according to him 'forgot' to put the 'about' in.

Astonishing to be honest.