Evidence of innocence

[Darryl Kenyon]

<*boggle*...>

How is it that people completely fail to get this? Even people who have apparently 'followed the case on and off since the centenary'?

Something is going on that is "more than natural", as Hamlet put it.

My explanation of this madness has to proceed in terms of...

Oh, never mind. What's the point?

M.

Pardon ? It wasn't me who suggested Lech killed on his way to work . But other people who said all the victims were killed on routes Lech would use on his way to work, thus that being his sort of alibi [ as I understand it ]. Except the double event wasn't a work day, so no alibi there. Can you say what you mean Mark ? And instead of trying to belittle me how about trying to answer some of the points I raised.
Regards Darryl

[Mark J D]

Pardon ? It wasn't me who suggested Lech killed on his way to work . But other people who said all the victims were killed on routes Lech would use on his way to work, thus that being his sort of alibi [ as I understand it ]. Except the double event wasn't a work day, so no alibi there. Can you say what you mean Mark ? And instead of trying to belittle me how about trying to answer some of the points I raised.
Regards Darryl

Can't help you. Sorry, not sorry.

You know, people on here moan about Christer posting the same stuff over and over again. I tell you, straight: I don't have even *one per cent* of the patience he shows...

M.

[Darryl Kenyon]

Quick question.

When people appeared at inquests in Victorian times. Were they reimbursed for loss of wages by the coroner or whoever if they had incurred any ?
I believe I read somewhere that this is the case but I want to be sure.

Regards Darryl

[MrBarnett]

He gave his work and home addresses, so Charles Lechmere was not trying to hide his identity from the police, his employers, his co-workers, his neighbors, or his family.

He kept his real name out of the press.

[Fiver]

This was the first C5 case, there was no serial killer at that stage. I bet if MN hadn't been first, or Lech had 'found' a later victim, he'd have got a lot more attention than he did.

This is a reasonable point. OTOH, Annie Chapman was killed 5 days after Lechmere testified at the Nichols inquest, so it seems probable that Charles Lechmere would be given a second, closer look at that point.

And the police did do a lot of following leads up. For example, in the Stride case, Israel Schwartz thought that the Broadshouldered Man had called Pipeman "Lipski". The police quickly concluded that it was far more likely that "Lipski" was an antisemitic slur directed at Schwartz. But the police did not take any chances, they searched for everyone named Lipski in the area to see if any of them was the Pipeman.

If the police were willing to spend that much time on the search for Lipski, it seems very unlikely that they would not have gone back to question Lechmere after Chapman's death. Not impossible, of course, but very unlikely. And if they did, they would have found that Lechmere had an alibi - he was at work at the time Chapman was killed. It also would have been easy for the police to check Lechmere's alibi. Every delivery and pickup that he made for Pickford's would have been signed for with a time given. Plus the people who signed for those pickups and deliveries could have been questioned. If Lechmere had faked an alibi, it would have quickly fallen apart.

[Fiver]

He kept his real name out of the press.

That is true, but irrelevant. Charles Lechmere gave his work and home addresses, so he was not trying to hide his identity from the police, his employers, his co-workers, his neighbors, or his family.

[Fiver]

What baffles me is how certain people work from the assumption that the police must have been able to clear Lechmere back in 1888, although we can clearly see how they made very bad mistakes in the investigation.

Feel free to list these "very bad mistakes" that the police made in their investigation of the Ripper cases. They lacked a lot of tools that modern police have, but they weren't refugees from the Pirates of Penzance, either.

What is clear is that if the police investigated Lechmere in relation to the Chapman murder, they would have found he had an alibi. And if Lechmere had faked his alibi, it probably would have quickly fallen apart if investigated.

Either the police did not investigate Lechmere or they investigated and confirmed Lechmere's alibi. Which answer people favor generally depends on whether they believe "innocent until proven guilty" or "guilty until proven innocent".

[Fiver]

If you have seen the documentary, you will know that Andy Griffiths said that before the carman could be exonerated, no other person could be charged with the murder.

This is complete nonsense. Nobody could be charged unless there was forensic and/or eyewitness testimony against them.

This is of course true, because anybody else who was charged with the murder could say "It was not me, it was him!", pointing at Lechmere, and it would be the task of the prosecutor of the suspect to clear away the possibility that Lechmere was the killer.

Anyone who was charged could also say "It was not me, it was him!" by pointing at Alfred Crow, John Reeves, John Richardson, the man that Elizabeth Long saw, Albert Cadosch, the men Israel Schwartz saw, Leon Goldstein, Louis Diemschutz, PC Edward Watkins, and Thomas Bowyer. Charles Lechmere is not the only person to be alone near a victim around the time of their death.

If the defense wanted to point to any of these men as alternate suspects, they would need to provide forensic and/or eyewitness testimony and convince a jury that it was better than the police's evidence. Without that, the police would have no reason to exonerate Charles Lechmere, Alfred Crow, or anyone else.

Which is where the example falls apart. There is no forensic and/or eyewitness testimony against any of the hundreds of Ripper suspects. There is no prosecution case against any of them. There is no defense case for an alternate suspect.

That said, there are suspects with alibis.

Therefore, as long as the police had no other suspect, they needed to exonerate Lechmere who should have been their prime suspect.

Legal matters seem not to be your cup of tea, Harry.

Since you still don't seem to grasp "Innocent until proven guilty", perhaps you shouldn't throw so many stones.

[JeffHamm]

Hi MrBarnett,

Perhaps you can clarify on what basis you doubt that many, if any, people who were unaware of CAL’s address and occupation would have known him by the name of Lechmere. Just a hunch? Based on what? The two occasions in more than a decade that he used another name as opposed to the 100+ times over seven decades that his name was recorded as Charles Lechmere?

I said, those who didn't know his address, work, his first and middle name, and that his step-father was named cross, would be unlikely to know him only as "Lechmere". Those who know him, will recognize him. Those who don't know him wouldn't recognize him by any name, other than perhaps a very small number.

- Jeff

[Fiver]

There is also the fact, mentioned numerous times by now, that what Charles Lechmere represented to the police was a man who came forward and embarrased them by laying down that they had been totally wrong in saying that Neil was the finder of the body, they had been totally wrong in saying that it was not true that two civilians were the real finders and so on. They made quite some fools of themselves, and Lechmereīs coming forward was what cemented this. Lechmere was a painful beacon of light, a hurtful bearer of truth, as far as the police were concerned.

This is complete nonsense. The police had exactly zero reputation invested in being the first to find Nichol's body. And the police testified that the body was first found by civilians.

And the person who came forward and said Nichol's body was found by civilians was Robert Paul, not Charles Lechmere.

"I was obliged to be punctual at my work, so I went on and told the other man I would send the first policeman I saw. I saw one in Church-row, just at the top of Buck's-row, who was going round calling people up, and I told him what I had seen, and I asked him to come..." Robert Paul

The second person who came forward and said Nichol's body was found by civilians was PC Mizen, not Charles Lechmere.

"Police-constable Mizen said that at a quarter to four o'clock on Friday morning he was at the crossing, Hanbury-street, Baker's-row, when a carman who passed in company with another man informed him that he was wanted by a policeman in Buck's-row, where a woman was lying."

Lechmere was the third person to say Nichol's body was found by civilians. He was no "painful beacon of light" or "a hurtful bearer of truth" - he merely confirmed what the police had already admitted to.

The man that did embarrass the police was Robert Paul.

"I was obliged to be punctual at my work, so I went on and told the other man I would send the first policeman I saw. I saw one in Church-row, just at the top of Buck's-row, who was going round calling people up, and I told him what I had seen, and I asked him to come, but he did not say whether he should come or not. He continued calling the people up, which I thought was a great shame, after I had told him the woman was dead.

The woman was so cold that she must have been dead some time, and either she had been lying there, left to die, or she must have been murdered somewhere else and carried there.

If she had been lying there long enough to get so cold as she was when I saw her, it shows that no policeman on the beat had been down there for a long time. If a policeman had been there he must have seen her, for she was plain enough to see. Her bonnet was lying about two feet from her head."

[Mark J D]

This is a reasonable point. OTOH, Annie Chapman was killed 5 days after Lechmere testified at the Nichols inquest, so it seems probable that Charles Lechmere would be given a second, closer look at that point.

No, I'm not reading this guy's stuff again. But having just seen that bit of madness out of the corner of my eye, I'm going to tell people *what really happened*.

No (again), I wasn't there in 1888. But I can still tell you with as much certainty as if I had been...

To use the version in the 'Daily Telegraph'...

"Chas. Andrew [sic] Cross, carman, said he had been in the employment of Messrs. Pickford and Co. for over twenty years."

-- And at *that point* in the proceedings, ladies and gentleman, literally everyone present switched off their mental criminal-detector, and left it off until Charlie-boy was well out of sight. And at no point *ever* did any policeman turn theirs on again in connection with him. Because such a man -- Christian, white, English-born, happy to present himself to the coroner in his work clothes, and *posessed of a checkable 20-year work history* -- was *by definition* incapable of being the killer. (Which, of course, is pretty much how Lechmere is regarded on here nowadays, isn't it? No wonder he used that bit of info so close to the start: he knew *exactly* how mesmeric and paralysing it would be...)

Coming next: the police interview Peter Sutcliffe *nine times* without arresting him -- because that's how much smarter and better-trained coppers had become a mere 90 years later...

M.

[JeffHamm]

I make my own calls about when to feel indignant, you donīt make them for me. And I would still like to know why you suggested that I would sweep things under the carpet. The suggestion is in fact quite exotic, since I have said since 2014 that I have never meet Scobie, much less do I know the contents of the material he was provided with. Since I do not know that, I cannot possibly know if there was something in it that needed to be "swept under the carpet".
Moreover, if I had been aware of any flawed material handed to James Scobie, I would have sounded the alarm bell immediately. I am not the kind of person you took it upon yourself to paint me out as, and therefore I am interested to know what made you throw out that accusation.

Once you have provided an answer to that question, I will provide an answer to yours.

If you provide no answer, that will in itself be enough of an answer to me, as I believe you understand.

I was referring to Trevor's phone call being ignored (swept under the carpet). Rather than address the content of Trevor's conversation, where Trevor indicates that Scobie appears to have withdrawn his conviction that the case was court ready and also that Scobie indicates he did not have some pretty basic information that one would need to have to properly form such an opinion. Trevor implies the first of those, but doesn't state it directly - that would have been something I would have thought you would want clarifyied. But instead of addressing the content of Trevor's phone call, your responses dismiss the entire event (ignore the event is to avoid the information, which is to sweep things under the carpet).

You are doing it again with me. You refuse to present your reasoning under the guise of indignancy, despite the fact that my use of the phrase "sweep under the carpet" is relatively mild compared to the insults and denigrations you met out on a regular basis. In English we have the phrase "can dish it out but can't take it" to describe such situations, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's a Swedish equivalent.

In short, your actions towards Trevor's phone call, and now again to my request for you to outline your reasoning are behaviours that ignore addressing content by diversion, and ignoring the content is to sweep it under the carpet.

I'm not, and haven't, suggested you were the one who presented Scobie with the information during the documentary. You've indicated that many times in the past, and as I've said earlier, I don't think you would engage in falsifying evidence. I may disagree with your interpretation of things (show me 2 people on this forum who don't disagree on interpretations and I'll show you a sock-puppet account! but I do not think you would engage in anything like falsification of evidence. Same with Trevor, I don't agree with his interpretations, but I don't think he would falsify things. So, in case you misunderstood me, I was only referring to how you were avoiding addressing, or even requesting further clarification of, the content of Trevor's conversations with Scobie. Rather, you implied he may be lying about the whole thing by suggesting he cannot prove he even had such a conversation. That is sweeping things under the carpet. You could have simply asked Trevor to provide the details of the conversation, how did he phrase his questions, what information did he provide Scobie that Scobie appeared unaware of? And so forth. Had Trevor refused to provide the details (which, sadly, is what I suspect would happen), then it would be on Trevor's shoulders. But you never ventured along those lines, never risked encouraging the information to come to light, hence the phrase "sweep under the carpet".

So, having now provided you with an answer, you said you would provide an answer to my request to outline your reasoning (the logical steps in your thinking) that get you from "used his step-father's name Cross at the inquest" to "solid evidence of guilt he murdered Nichols".

Note, I'm not looking for a story where one can dress that to form the connection, because we've been doing that already and it's just as easy to dress it in innocent clothes. Just simply a logical presentation of how you get from A) use of Cross to B) killed Polly Nichols.

- Jeff

[Harry D]

Fish
I am no expert but I have followed the case on and off since the centenary. I went the other way . I thought that Lech needed looking into. Then I started having doubts.
Would he have not just scarpered when Paul approached ?
Would he have gone off and found a bobby with, possibly a knife on him and/or blood on his hands ?
If he killed on the way to work, how come the double event happened on a, probably none work day ?
Why did he go further west and away from his home to kill Kate when he, probably had a narrow escape with Liz. Thus increasing the chances of him being caught. Especially since he almost certainly would have had body parts upon him ?
Would he truly kill just over a week later with Annie after a narrow escape in Bucks row, especially since the police knew who he was. Suppose somebody spotted him coming out of the passageway in Hanbury st and gave a good description of him. "Wait a minute that sounds like that guy Cross". Two murders, two crime scenes. I know they didn't, but they could have. Would Lech really take that risk, or would he probably lie low for a little time ?
Again with Annie, how did he know that the police weren't suspicious of him and that they weren't covertly following him ?
Did he really think that no one would suspect him of the crimes, if he kept turning up for work, say twenty mins after another victim is killed ?
And what did he do with the body parts, or the bloody knife at work ?
Did he really kill Annie on his way to work when it is likely that he was already there when she was murdered ?
Did he think that none of his family would suspect him of the murders especially since he had, say just left for work before each killing ?

None of the above is not without a riposte, but to me when you put them altogether, to my mind it doesn't make Lech a very good suspect.

Regards Darryl

You know you can't win, right?

Why didn't Lechmere scarper? Well, the killer was a psychopath, and psychopaths find thrills in mind-games.

How do we know the killer was a psychopath? Because Lechmere was a psychopath.

How we do know Lechmere was a psychopath? Because he didn't scarper.

Same reason he attended the inquest. He was a proto-Hannibal Lecter who loved to flex his ability to hide in plain sight.

And so on...

[MrBarnett]

That is true, but irrelevant. Charles Lechmere gave his work and home addresses, so he was not trying to hide his identity from the police, his employers, his co-workers, his neighbors, or his family.

Irrelevant to what?

Are you suggesting that it could not have possible that someone might have known him as Charles Lechmere without knowing his address, his employment details and his long dead stepfather’s (fairly common) name?

[MrBarnett]

Pardon ? It wasn't me who suggested Lech killed on his way to work . But other people who said all the victims were killed on routes Lech would use on his way to work, thus that being his sort of alibi [ as I understand it ]. Except the double event wasn't a work day, so no alibi there. Can you say what you mean Mark ? And instead of trying to belittle me how about trying to answer some of the points I raised.
Regards Darryl

Darryl, Have you not picked up on the suggestion that Sunday may have been Lechmere’s one day off in the week, so on Saturday evenings he may have visited his old Ma and his daughter who were living near Berner Street?

Gary