Evidence of innocence

[JeffHamm]

He is not convicted on the various innocent alternative explanations. He is convicted on the circumstantial evidence pointing to guilt. And of course, if any of the alternative innocent explanations are true obstacles to a conviction, he is not convicted.

It is up to anybody to assess it. My assessment says there is not a realistic chance that he was innocent. Yours may differ. Scobies assessment was that there is, based on the accusatory evidence, enough for a modern day trial. Regardless of whatever counterpoints there may or may not be, that is in itself a breakthrough in ripperology.

Sadly, nothing that is being referred to as "circumstantial evidence" is evidence pointing to guilt. Rather, it's a pre-determined guilty story being used to present various guilty alternatives to innocent behaviours. There isn't a snowball's chance of such a case obtaining a guilty conviction beyond the base rate for miscarriages of justice.

While you believe him guilty, there is no evidence of guilt, only creative stories that weave in sinister speculations behind objectively innocent behaviours and events.

Is Cross/Lechmere worth looking into? Of course, anyone who finds a body is always looked into, and either they are cleared of involvement, in which case they are of little interest to the police other than as a witness. And that's exactly what we see in the surviving police summary notes, little interest in him other than he is at the inquest to present his testimony. We see occasional mention of people who were presented as suspects, and how they get eventually lead nowhere and get cleared (i.e. Pizer) because the internal letters that survive to this day reflect their interest in finding the killer, not chatting about how they've cleared various witnesses. That information would have been detailed in notebooks, and reports, that are lost to us; not only for Cross/Lechmere, but for all of the other witnesses who occasionally get placed upon the podium of guilt (i.e. Barnett). The typical approach is to point to the absence of notes on investigating these people, and to then claim that proves they were not checked out. Such a claim is smoke and mirrors, it presumes the police didn't investigate anyone other than the few cleared suspects who we are lucky enough to have documents preserving their names. But those documents are not the investigative documents, they are internal summary notes and communications about the investigations, the details of which are lost to us.

The blood testimony is, as Darryl points out, self contradictory. Moreover, it is not even a validated forensic test. There are no studies on this, nor were there any objective measurements taken at the time. What we have is a made up test, and the opportunistic utilization of common speech by non-medical experts to describe a murder victim in order to dress up a guilty preconception.

His presence at the crime scene is not suspicious, he's where he should be given he's going to work. He has every reason to be walking down Buck's Row at that time. Therefore, his presence at the crime scene is not guilty evidence. It would be if he had no reason to be there, but given it's where he should be, it's not evidence.

His disagreement with Mizen is nothing but clarification of what is nothing more than a misunderstanding between them. It is presented as if PC Mizen could not possibily be the one who is creating the disagreement, because like everything, the preconceived conclusion is used to shape events into a foregone conclusion.

Nothing being presented as guilty evidence is evidence of guilt. The very fact that every one of them has a trivially easy innocent explanation is not "various innocent alternatives", they are demonstrations that to call these things "evidence of guilt" is a misnomer.

In short, there is no "evidence of guilt" for Cross/Lechmere. There is only confirmation bias in the selection of adjectives.

- Jeff

[Mark J D]

It seems the sheds may have been fairly sizeable.

You know, from the Goad map extract Edward Stowe posted this afternoon, it actually looks like the shops were small: there are huge, load-bearing masses behind them -- which is perhaps what we'd expect...

[Fisherman]

Sadly, nothing that is being referred to as "circumstantial evidence" is evidence pointing to guilt. Rather, it's a pre-determined guilty story being used to present various guilty alternatives to innocent behaviours. There isn't a snowball's chance of such a case obtaining a guilty conviction beyond the base rate for miscarriages of justice.

While you believe him guilty, there is no evidence of guilt, only creative stories that weave in sinister speculations behind objectively innocent behaviours and events.

Is Cross/Lechmere worth looking into? Of course, anyone who finds a body is always looked into, and either they are cleared of involvement, in which case they are of little interest to the police other than as a witness. And that's exactly what we see in the surviving police summary notes, little interest in him other than he is at the inquest to present his testimony. We see occasional mention of people who were presented as suspects, and how they get eventually lead nowhere and get cleared (i.e. Pizer) because the internal letters that survive to this day reflect their interest in finding the killer, not chatting about how they've cleared various witnesses. That information would have been detailed in notebooks, and reports, that are lost to us; not only for Cross/Lechmere, but for all of the other witnesses who occasionally get placed upon the podium of guilt (i.e. Barnett). The typical approach is to point to the absence of notes on investigating these people, and to then claim that proves they were not checked out. Such a claim is smoke and mirrors, it presumes the police didn't investigate anyone other than the few cleared suspects who we are lucky enough to have documents preserving their names. But those documents are not the investigative documents, they are internal summary notes and communications about the investigations, the details of which are lost to us.

The blood testimony is, as Darryl points out, self contradictory. Moreover, it is not even a validated forensic test. There are no studies on this, nor were there any objective measurements taken at the time. What we have is a made up test, and the opportunistic utilization of common speech by non-medical experts to describe a murder victim in order to dress up a guilty preconception.

His presence at the crime scene is not suspicious, he's where he should be given he's going to work. He has every reason to be walking down Buck's Row at that time. Therefore, his presence at the crime scene is not guilty evidence. It would be if he had no reason to be there, but given it's where he should be, it's not evidence.

His disagreement with Mizen is nothing but clarification of what is nothing more than a misunderstanding between them. It is presented as if PC Mizen could not possibily be the one who is creating the disagreement, because like everything, the preconceived conclusion is used to shape events into a foregone conclusion.

Nothing being presented as guilty evidence is evidence of guilt. The very fact that every one of them has a trivially easy innocent explanation is not "various innocent alternatives", they are demonstrations that to call these things "evidence of guilt" is a misnomer.

In short, there is no "evidence of guilt" for Cross/Lechmere. There is only confirmation bias in the selection of adjectives.

- Jeff

James Scobie seems to be particularly affected by that confirmation bias. Otherwise, one would have thought that he, with his vast experience of all matters legal, should be able to steer clear of it.

Nice try, Jeff!

[rjpalmer]

Thanks for the response, Christer. From your post #2370:

"Is there any evidence to bolster such a take? Actually, yes. And it appears in the shape of an article in the Daily News on said Monday. In the article, it says:

"Inspector Helson, at an interview yesterday evening, said ... Police constable Neil, 79 J, who found the body, reports the time as 3.45. ...He has been severely questioned as to his "working" of his "beat" on that night...It is not true, says Constable Neil, who is a man of nearly 20 years' service, that he was called to the body by two men. He came upon it as he walked, and, flashing his lanthorn to examine it he was answered by the lights from two other constables at either end of the street."

How is this "evidence"(your word) that Cross didn't come forward or wasn't located until after the Lloyd's interview? What Helson states about Neil is true. That Helson doesn't expand on the identities of the carmen is neither here, nor there. I was hoping you could do better than this, Christer.

"Here, we can see how the idea that two men helping out with the finding is denied by Neil, who says he did the finding himself. So on the evening of the 2nd, clearly Charles Lechmere had not yet surfaced. His story, the one of two men being involved in the finding of the body, is denied."

Neil did find the Polly Nichols independently. Again, this has nothing to do with Cross or Paul not coming forward unless you read that interpretation into it. You are assuming ignorance on the part of Helson; more likely, he is just standing up for the integrity of a man in his division, and is not discussing every aspect of a police inquiry.

"And there is actually more. We know that when Lechmere took the stand in the Working Lads Institution on the Monday, he was formally identified by PC Mizen. Apparently, no such identification had taken place before, and so we have further evidence that Lechmere was very late in coming forward."

Mizen was in H-Divison. If Lechmere came forward, or had been located, it would have been by the officers in charge of the investigation--J-Division, whose station was in Bethnal Green Road. That is the location CAL would have been taken to make a statement. Not overly far from Doveton Street.

Mizen may have had no reason or opportunity to formally identify him until the inquest, being stationed elsewhere. Or are you suggesting the police investigated Lechmere and put him in a line-up for Mizen's identification? Are you sure you want to go there?!!?

"14 days, R J. 3-17 September. And that is no good indicator of when Paul surfaced, because there were no inquest dated in between these dates."

True enough. We can end in agreement. I was dating it 17 days--August 31st, the first day Robert Paul was identified as one of the carmen in Buck's Row (according to Lloyd's), and his eventual appearance at the inquest. If, for some reason you wish to date it from the 2nd session of the inquest, or the day after the Lloyd's article appeared, be my guest, but it doesn't prove one way or the other when the police first got hold of him, so, as you say, I don't think either of us can claim victory on this particular point. My belief is that he went to ground (hence Dew's memory of a failed search), but was eventually yarded out of bed, sometime between the 3rd and the 16th.

[Fiver]

Not playing.

On the contrary, you appear to be trying out for the dodgeball team.

[Fiver]

Hi Fiver,

You'll find the sources in (the second half of) this dissertation by Tom Wescott:

https://www.casebook.org/dissertations/rn-old-wounds.html

All the best,
Frank

Thank you for the link.

The dissertation says we "must occasionally read between the lines of what data is available". The question then is whether the dissertation is reading between the lines or reading things into the record.

Also, communication over the net can be ambiguous. When you said "there is a major wound from sternum to privates", I took that as meaning the wound started at the top of the sternum. From the quotes, it appears both you and the dissertation mean that the wound started just below the sternum, which appears to be correct.

Thank you for the clarification.

[Fiver]

While Maria was living in Tiger Bay with the boy constable she had bigamously married, the executor of her father’s will, the Reverend Archer Clive*, was entertaining Lord Palmerston, the Prime Minister, at Whitfield, which had been Maria’s childhood home.

The Rev. A. C. was one of those in Hereford who would have instantly recognised the unique name of Charles Allen Lechmere.

*Archer Clive was very much alive in 1876 when, it seems, a certain Pickfords carman withheld his unique name in court. He had sadly passed by 1888, but the Lechmere name would have still resonated in Herefordshire.

Why would Charles Allen Lechmere care if anyone in Herefordshire would recognize his name?

[Fiver]

By the way, I was being ironical about the motive; the classical motive for a serial killer is a wish to kill. Not theft. Or jilted love. Or insurance fraud.

The killing IS the motive.

People who study serial killing disagree with you. Killing is not the motive.

"The following categories listed below represent general categories and are not intended to be a complete measure of serial offenders or their motivation:

• Anger is a motivation in which an offender displays rage or hostility towards a certain subgroup of the population or with society as a whole.

• Criminal Enterprise is a motivation in which the offender benefits in status or monetary compensation by committing murder that is drug, gang, or organized crime related.

• Financial gain is a motivation in which the offender benefits monetarily from killing. Examples of these types of crimes are “black widow” killings, robbery homicides, or multiple killings involving insurance or welfare fraud.

• Ideology is a motivation to commit murders in order to further the goals and ideas of a specific individual or group. Examples of these include terrorist groups or an individual(s) who attacks a specific racial, gender, or ethnic group.

• Power/thrill is a motivation in which the offender feels empowered and/or excited when he kills his victims.

• Psychosis is a situation in which the offender is suffering from a severe mental illness and is killing because of that illness. This may include auditory and/or visual hallucinations and paranoid, grandiose, or bizarre delusions.

• Sexually-based is a motivation driven by the sexual needs/desires of the offender. There may or may not be overt sexual contact reflected in the crime scene."

Behavioral Analysis Unit-2
National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime
Critical Incident Response Group
Federal Bureau of Investigation

[harry]

Well I do not seem to have had any response to my last post on patterns ,unless one counts sarcasmn as meanigfull,Pity, as that might have been a fruitfull subject for discussion.One would think a poster who introduced the subject might want to pursue it,to show it's relevance to a case against Cross.but no,not one word.
Is there a pattern of lies.Cross has been accused of lying,and those accusations have been rejected by the majority of posters.As Cross's known involvement in the Ripper murders amount to a mere 10 minutes or so,from when he found the body of Nichols untill leaving Mizen,there cannot be a case of a pattern of lying on his part across all the murders.There is no know involvement of Cross in any of the other crimes. I wait to be corrected.

[Trevor Marriott]

James Scobie seems to be particularly affected by that confirmation bias. Otherwise, one would have thought that he, with his vast experience of all matters legal, should be able to steer clear of it.

Nice try, Jeff!

Before any defintive opinion can be arrived at the person asked to opine must be provided with the full facts otherwise the opinion based on the full facts not being disclosed make any such opinion flawed and unsafe to rely on.

Scobie seems to be you ace in the hole as far as your theory is concerned take his opinion out of the equation and you have nothing, when are you going to accept this?

You keep questioning my integrity regarding my lengthy conversation with him, why would I make it up, my role as an investigator is to prove or disprove the facts and evidence relative to all of these murders, and sadly the passage of time has not always been kind to that task.

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[Darryl Kenyon]

Sadly, nothing that is being referred to as "circumstantial evidence" is evidence pointing to guilt. Rather, it's a pre-determined guilty story being used to present various guilty alternatives to innocent behaviours. There isn't a snowball's chance of such a case obtaining a guilty conviction beyond the base rate for miscarriages of justice.

While you believe him guilty, there is no evidence of guilt, only creative stories that weave in sinister speculations behind objectively innocent behaviours and events.

Is Cross/Lechmere worth looking into? Of course, anyone who finds a body is always looked into, and either they are cleared of involvement, in which case they are of little interest to the police other than as a witness. And that's exactly what we see in the surviving police summary notes, little interest in him other than he is at the inquest to present his testimony. We see occasional mention of people who were presented as suspects, and how they get eventually lead nowhere and get cleared (i.e. Pizer) because the internal letters that survive to this day reflect their interest in finding the killer, not chatting about how they've cleared various witnesses. That information would have been detailed in notebooks, and reports, that are lost to us; not only for Cross/Lechmere, but for all of the other witnesses who occasionally get placed upon the podium of guilt (i.e. Barnett). The typical approach is to point to the absence of notes on investigating these people, and to then claim that proves they were not checked out. Such a claim is smoke and mirrors, it presumes the police didn't investigate anyone other than the few cleared suspects who we are lucky enough to have documents preserving their names. But those documents are not the investigative documents, they are internal summary notes and communications about the investigations, the details of which are lost to us.

The blood testimony is, as Darryl points out, self contradictory. Moreover, it is not even a validated forensic test. There are no studies on this, nor were there any objective measurements taken at the time. What we have is a made up test, and the opportunistic utilization of common speech by non-medical experts to describe a murder victim in order to dress up a guilty preconception.

His presence at the crime scene is not suspicious, he's where he should be given he's going to work. He has every reason to be walking down Buck's Row at that time. Therefore, his presence at the crime scene is not guilty evidence. It would be if he had no reason to be there, but given it's where he should be, it's not evidence.

His disagreement with Mizen is nothing but clarification of what is nothing more than a misunderstanding between them. It is presented as if PC Mizen could not possibily be the one who is creating the disagreement, because like everything, the preconceived conclusion is used to shape events into a foregone conclusion.

Nothing being presented as guilty evidence is evidence of guilt. The very fact that every one of them has a trivially easy innocent explanation is not "various innocent alternatives", they are demonstrations that to call these things "evidence of guilt" is a misnomer.

In short, there is no "evidence of guilt" for Cross/Lechmere. There is only confirmation bias in the selection of adjectives.

- Jeff

As usual Jeff sums it up perfectly

[Fisherman]

Before any defintive opinion can be arrived at the person asked to opine must be provided with the full facts otherwise the opinion based on the full facts not being disclosed make any such opinion flawed and unsafe to rely on.

Nope. An opinion abut the value of the accusatory evidence only can be reached on accusatory evidence only.

Scobie seems to be you ace in the hole as far as your theory is concerned take his opinion out of the equation and you have nothing, when are you going to accept this?

When and if I find reason to do so. Which is likely never.

You keep questioning my integrity regarding my lengthy conversation with him, why would I make it up, my role as an investigator is to prove or disprove the facts and evidence relative to all of these murders, and sadly the passage of time has not always been kind to that task.

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

I keep questioning your conversation with Scobie for the simple reason that you question the material he was given, which you havent seen. The idea is to show you how any material can be thrown down the rabbit hole if we do ripperology like that.

[harry]

Where do you get the idea,fisherman,that in a criminal investigation,an opinion about the value of the accusatory evidence can be reached on accusatory evidence only.Are you implying that an accused person has,in law,no right of reply to such evidence?What law are you quoting.?

[Trevor Marriott]

I keep questioning your conversation with Scobie for the simple reason that you question the material he was given, which you havent seen. The idea is to show you how any material can be thrown down the rabbit hole if we do ripperology like that.

I dont need to see what he was presented with. I relayed to him the full facts as they were known at the time. It was he who indicated that some of those impotrtant facts he had not been presented with and that had he been provided with them his opinon would have not been as it was projected in the program.

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[Fisherman]

Thanks for the response, Christer. From your post #2370:

"Is there any evidence to bolster such a take? Actually, yes. And it appears in the shape of an article in the Daily News on said Monday. In the article, it says:

"Inspector Helson, at an interview yesterday evening, said ... Police constable Neil, 79 J, who found the body, reports the time as 3.45. ...He has been severely questioned as to his "working" of his "beat" on that night...It is not true, says Constable Neil, who is a man of nearly 20 years' service, that he was called to the body by two men. He came upon it as he walked, and, flashing his lanthorn to examine it he was answered by the lights from two other constables at either end of the street."

How is this "evidence"(your word) that Cross didn't come forward or wasn't located until after the Lloyd's interview? What Helson states about Neil is true. That Helson doesn't expand on the identities of the carmen is neither here, nor there. I was hoping you could do better than this, Christer.

If we only look cursory at the material, it may seem as if you are right. Alas, I think you are not, and so you are - again - the disappointing part. Ask yourself, R J, if the police would, half a day before the next day of the inquest, formally deny that Neil was called to the body by two men.
The police do not communicate in that way. If they had had the information about Lechmere and Paul, they would not have communicated at all, they would have waited to day two of the inquest, when the news would break anyway.
If (but it is not a realistic option) that HAD decided to deny that Neil had been called to the site by two men, hours only before the inquest would clarify this anyway, they would of course have divulged WHY they were able to tell that the tory of the two men was wrong.
You need to understand how the police works in these cases to see what happened. You may have failed to do so. In fact, it seem you did just that.
A question for you, R J: Why is it that Neils name was mentioned in combination with the initial stories about the mysterious two men, the ones he denied on the Sunday. If he had not spoken to two men, why is his names specifically targetted, as per the article in the Star - where, incidentally, it was not said that Neil was CALLED to the spot by twom men, but instead ACCOMPANIED to it.
Can you see what happened? Steve and I cleared that up in a recent exchange where Steve started out at your position, more or less, but understood aas he went along that he had missed out on a few details.
Let me know how you look upon this!

"Here, we can see how the idea that two men helping out with the finding is denied by Neil, who says he did the finding himself. So on the evening of the 2nd, clearly Charles Lechmere had not yet surfaced. His story, the one of two men being involved in the finding of the body, is denied."

Neil did find the Polly Nichols independently. Again, this has nothing to do with Cross or Paul not coming forward unless you read that interpretation into it. You are assuming ignorance on the part of Helson; more likely, he is just standing up for the integrity of a man in his division, and is not discussing every aspect of a police inquiry.

If they had the material with which they could refute the claim that Neil had been called to the site by two men, instead knowing thagt it was MIZEN who was the PC clled there by two men, that would shut the press and public up. If their object was to clarify what had happened, then why did they not so so?
It makes no sense whatsoever. Yes, the police can clam up, but in this case they chose NOT TO. They told the press, half a day before the inquest proceedings, that they knew that information doing the rounds was wrong. If they had the material to prove it, they would have done so: "It is not true, said P C Neil, that he was called to the site by two men. Instead it was a colleague of his who was the PC alluded to."
Itīs not rocket science - other than to the ones with an agenda.
Thatīs what you say about me, but look who is doing the twisting!

"And there is actually more. We know that when Lechmere took the stand in the Working Lads Institution on the Monday, he was formally identified by PC Mizen. Apparently, no such identification had taken place before, and so we have further evidence that Lechmere was very late in coming forward."

Mizen was in H-Divison. If Lechmere came forward, or had been located, it would have been by the officers in charge of the investigation--J-Division, whose station was in Bethnal Green Road. That is the location CAL would have been taken to make a statement. Not overly far from Doveton Street.

Mizen may have had no reason or opportunity to formally identify him until the inquest, being stationed elsewhere. Or are you suggesting the police investigated Lechmere and put him in a line-up for Mizen's identification? Are you sure you want to go there?!!?

Very apparently, the police did not investigate Lechmere and put him in a line-up. What they did was to have the carman formally identified at the inquest itself. Meaning that no identification process had taken place before the second day of the inquest. Meaning that Lechmere in all probability only came forward very late. The idea that Mizen could not be bothered or had no opportunity to ID the carman earlier reeks of desperation.

"14 days, R J. 3-17 September. And that is no good indicator of when Paul surfaced, because there were no inquest dated in between these dates."

True enough. We can end in agreement. I was dating it 17 days--August 31st, the first day Robert Paul was identified as one of the carmen in Buck's Row (according to Lloyd's), and his eventual appearance at the inquest. If, for some reason you wish to date it from the 2nd session of the inquest, or the day after the Lloyd's article appeared, be my guest, but it doesn't prove one way or the other when the police first got hold of him, so, as you say, I don't think either of us can claim victory on this particular point. My belief is that he went to ground (hence Dew's memory of a failed search), but was eventually yarded out of bed, sometime between the 3rd and the 16th.

There is no other possibility, is there? Of course Paul was found and investigated between the 3rd and the 17th, so yes, we agree on that point. A for claiming victory, even if you are wisely reluctant to do so, I am not. I am correct on the matter of Lechmereīs late surfacing, the material involved is in no way unclear on the point. Sorry, old bean.
Donīt forget to tell me why Neil was named as the PC called to the spot by two men. And while you are at it, could you offer a guess as to who these two men would have been? There is learoom for you to claim that this too is not proven, but I would advice against such a stance.