Evidence of innocence

[Herlock Sholmes]

Herlock Sholmes:

"But absolutely nothing comes close to convicting Lechmere though Fish."

This is a common misunderstanding, and an easy enough mistake to make. Brace yourselves, because there is a long post in the pipeline. At the end of it, I will with great certainly not have swayed everybody into accepting Lechmere as the probable killer, but I WILL have made my case as best as I can, and I am fine with that.

The controversy out here has lately been about the timing issues. It is said that since Charles Lechmere likely said he left home at AROUND 3.30 (we donīt know as such that he said exactly this, but is seems reasonable that he did so), then there can be nothing nefarious about how 3.30 as such does not dovetail with him being at the murder spot at 3.45. Using the word "around" is what would absolve him.
The suggestion made out here is that there is no establishable value at all in his words and the matter should be inadmissible as evidence, if I understand correctly.

What I would like do to elucidate my standing point is to present a purely theoretical case. It goes like this:

In the East End of London, close to Tower Bridge, a woman by the name of Judy Jones is found strangled. From analyzing the cell-phone signals, we know that a Mr X, with no criminal record at all and known by his friends and neighbours as a decent enough chap, has actually been in the vicinity of the murder site at the relevant time. What can be said is that a signal has been picked up that puts him around 150 yards from the site at the approximate time of the murder.
Now, Tower Bridge is a very popular tourist landmark, and there can be little doubt that hundreds and thousands of other people would ALSO have been in the vicinity of the murder site at the relevant time.

Question: Can we use the material we have on Mr X to put him on trial for the murder of Judy Jones?
Answer: Of course not. It would be ridiculous.

New development: Three days later, another woman, Tara Knowles, is found strangled behind a shop in Bond Street. And lo and behold, among the hundreds and thousands of people we can put on the place at the relevant time using cell phone information, is Mr X. Again, we can see that he has been in place around 150 yards from the site. Together with hundreds and thousands of other people.

Now, this goes on. A hundred more women are killed. And every time, Mr X can be out in place at the relevant time, around 150 yards or so from the spot.

Suddenly, what was a totally innocent matter has grown into something that would have Mr X arrested and accused. Although he cannot be put on the exact spot at the exact time at any of the murders, and although there is no other evidence, the mere matter of fitting all the murders is an overwhelming indication that the killer has been identified.

And how many other men who worked in that area would have been within walking distance of such close together murder sites? Lechmere is simply 1 among 1000’s but the importance of this is inflated because he found a body.

So we have 2 parts….

1. Lechmere was within walking distance of the murder sites along with an untold number of other men.

2. Lechmere discovered the body of Nichols and so was placed on the spot.

Neither, in themselves, are suspicious facts. Loads of men were in the vicinity and people discover bodies every day. It’s only if you assume point 2. to have been suspicious can you then assign significance to point 1.

Id find it more suspicious if Lechmere had had no reason to have been in the area but he had.

[Doctored Whatsit]

One of those two senior officers, the much more senior officer in fact, also said that Lechmere found the body at 3.45 in that October report. And we DO trust what he said, do we not?
It is not proven by a country mile that Lechmere and Paul were together as Mizen was spoken to. You entertain the idea that Lechmere would never have dared to lie in case Paul would refute him. But you have no problem accepting that Mizen would have lied about how one person only approached him? As if Paul could not have refuted that too - if it was false?

And a cherry-picking we go, hey-ho, hey-ho...

But Paul did refute that only one person approached Mizen! At the inquest he said "they mey a policeman ... and told him what they had seen". In the newspaper article he said that he told Mizen that Nichols was dead. After Paul was interviewed by the police, Swanson and Abberline reported that the two men spoke to Mizen.

Christer, it is really so very simple. The police, after interviewing Lechmere and Paul, must have accepted that their stories corroborated each other, otherwise they would not have accepted them. Fact. If there was doubt, such as Paul not being close enough to hear what was said, and therefore not saying to Mizen that he thought Nichols was dead, then Lechmere would have been lying. The police were satisfied with the facts. When Swanson and Abberline refer to Paul and Lechmere as "they", that is plural, and can only mean they were together. The English is clear. No cherry-picking, here, and no sarcasm as a substitute for hard facts.

You have the mysterious idea that when the coroner ignored Mizen's allegation, this was not "equal to refuting it". In his summing up, the coroner stated "the carmen reported the circumstances to a constable...". Given the choice of accepting either Lechmere and Paul's account or Mizen's, he chose the former, and expressed no reservations or doubts which one would expect if he didn't totally believe them. He had a choice and he decided to accept the Paul/Lechmere version and not even mention Mizen's allegation. He could have accepted either version, or indicated that there was a dispute, but no, he chose to totally ignore Mizen's account. He rejected it as not even worth mentioning.

Nowhere did I say that "Lechmere would never have dared to lie in case Paul would refute him".

I don't think that the 3. 45 am timing of the finding of the body is particularly important. It was originally reported as 3. 45 am when it was found by PC Neil, and doesn't seem to have been changed. Precise timing did not exist frankly in 1888. Clocks around the East End showed different times, were not synchronized in any way, and times were calculated or estimated on a best guess basis. If anyone does not understand this, then they should read the first few entries in the "A question of time" thread. The police understood this, which is why they didn't see time anomolies which might not have existed.

[Herlock Sholmes]

What is 'the walk' for purposes of this experiment? Can you link us to the relevant source?

Thanks.

M.

It’s in Steve Blomer’s book Inside Bucks Row.

[Mark J D]

It’s in Steve Blomer’s book Inside Bucks Row.

Perhaps someone who has it will explain what happened to the usual shouts of 'But there's a Sainsbury's in the way!'; 'But we don't know what his route was!'; and 'But how do you know that's the specific entrance he went to?'

You know: all the things that suddenly start to matter when a Lechmerian talks about 'the walk'.

M.

[Trevor Marriott]

This is something that is no revelation, Trevor. It has been posted before, and nobody has challenged that the human body is sometimes unpredictable. Certainly, there are cases where people with massive damage have bled for a long time.

But what I am after is how long physicians would expect a body with the kind of damage Nichols had, placed in the kind of position that she was, to bleed. When Mizen looked at the body, around nine minutes or so after Lechmere left her, the blood was still running from the neck. And what Jason Payne James and Arne Thiblin said was that anything beyond three to five minutes would not be impossible per se (which is what Biggs says), but it would be less likely. And of course, nine minutes is a lot more than five minutes and every added minute would be less expected than the one preceding it.

I am not as much looking for "It COULD happen" as for "It WOULD happen" if you take my meaning. They are very different beasts.

There is no definitive answere to that question

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[SuperShodan]

So to accommodate Paul we have to dismiss Neil and Mizen. It’s very, very clear that Lechmere discovered the body very close to 3.40. This has been proven beyond all reasonable doubt by now.

Actually the Coroner himself, Swanson no less (who likely went through everything with a fine tooth comb) and the only witness on the scene at the time, Robert Paul, have the time the body is found to be close to 03.45. This is time they have chosen. Not 03.40. If the time the body was found was near 03.40 then this was the time they would go with. They didn’t.
And I imagine a coroner and the lead detective would be as precise as possible about such matters.

So in order for the body to be found at 03.40 a point blank refusal to face the facts has to take place.

[Mark J D]

... in order for the body to be found at 03.40 a point blank refusal to face the facts has to take place.

What I particularly value in this discussion is the treatment of those two printed sources that mention an 03:20 start. "Wrongly", declared someone on here, as if he actually had direct access to what would have been 'rightly'. What? 03:20? Rubbish. Wrong. Meaningless. An error. Ignore it.

And I sat smiling at the way so many people on here would have been turning somersaults of joy had those two sources actually said '03:40'...

M.

[Abby Normal]

Actually the Coroner himself, Swanson no less (who likely went through everything with a fine tooth comb) and the only witness on the scene at the time, Robert Paul, have the time the body is found to be close to 03.45. This is time they have chosen. Not 03.40. If the time the body was found was near 03.40 then this was the time they would go with. They didn’t.

So in order for the body to be found at 03.40 a point blank refusal to face the facts has to take place.

agree. or simply going with everything that points to an earlier time, and ignoring everything that points to a later time. but really what difference does it make? how long would it take him to kill her? a couple of minutes at most. hes there long enough for paul to see him next to her body before he tries to raise any kind of alarm, so clearly he could be her killer.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Perhaps someone who has it will explain what happened to the usual shouts of 'But there's a Sainsbury's in the way!'; 'But we don't know what his route was!'; and 'But how do you know that's the specific entrance he went to?'

You know: all the things that suddenly start to matter when a Lechmerian talks about 'the walk'.

M.

It’s the fact that there are unknowns that make it impossible to claim any sinister gap of course. To create this ‘gap’ things that can’t be known exactly have to be stated as definites. Amongst all the unknowns the one thing that we can say for absolute certain is that a ‘gap’ can’t be assumed. It’s a myth that keeps persisting though.

[Fisherman]

So to accommodate Paul we have to dismiss Neil and Mizen. It’s very, very clear that Lechmere discovered the body very close to 3.40. This has been proven beyond all reasonable doubt by now.

Repeating a misconception never made it true, Herlock. The indications are to the exact contrary from what you think in my world - although it makes me unreasonable in your eyes.

[FrankO]

And I sat smiling at the way so many people on here would have been turning somersaults of joy had those two sources actually said '03:40'....

But they didn't.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Actually the Coroner himself, Swanson no less (who likely went through everything with a fine tooth comb) and the only witness on the scene at the time, Robert Paul, have the time the body is found to be close to 03.45. This is time they have chosen. Not 03.40. If the time the body was found was near 03.40 then this was the time they would go with. They didn’t.
And I imagine a coroner and the lead detective would be as precise as possible about such matters.

So in order for the body to be found at 03.40 a point blank refusal to face the facts has to take place.

This just isn’t the case. You keep assuming that we can imply things that we can’t. The Coroner said some time before 3.45. He doesn’t say a minute before or 2 minutes before. He just said that the murder occurred before 3.45. Did he pluck 3.45 out of thin air? No. Neil said that he arrived at 3.45. Thain used 3.45. Mizen said 3.45. It becomes glaringly obvious that Baxter was simply saying that the murder occurred before Neil arrived at the body.

Why do you thing that Baxter would feel himself so omniscient that he could claim 3.45 overruling the 3 police officers? It makes no sense.

Jeff has just gone through the timings with scrupulous objectivity. What is being done in opposition to this is that some are claiming that the English language is somehow there’s to do with as they will. The word ‘about’ means ‘around’ ‘approximately’ ‘an estimation’ and nothing more that that. We cannot and should not claim that ‘about 3.30’ must have meant 3.30 or that it must have meant 3.31 or that it must at a push have meant 3.32. This is manipulation pure and simple. It is entirely possible and entirely reasonable to suggest that it was easily possible for Lechmere to have left at 3.45. But even if we go with 3.33 it still gets him to Bucks Row at around 3.40.

I really think that this point just has to be conceded for the sake of honest debate.

x - the time that Lechmere left his house is an unknown (an estimation giving us a range + or -)

y - the time that the body was found is an unknown (an estimation is nothing more than before 3.45 - before Neil arrived)

z - the alleged gap.

No one can claim to know either x or y with exactness.

Therefore y cannot be claimed without adding ‘ifs’ to both times.

Genuinely, I just can’t see how anyone could dispute this. It’s not even an opinion or an interpretation it’s a bald statement of facts.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Repeating a misconception never made it true, Herlock. The indications are to the exact contrary from what you think in my world - although it makes me unreasonable in your eyes.

So the 3 Constables were all wrong and Baxter had some kind of second sight which enabled him to dismiss them with confidence to say that the body must have been discovered at 3.45? It doesn’t add up Fish. Not even close to adding up. Lechmere discovering the body closer to 3.40 certainly does though.

[SuperShodan]

agree. or simply going with everything that points to an earlier time, and ignoring everything that points to a later time. but really what difference does it make? how long would it take him to kill her? a couple of minutes at most. hes there long enough for paul to see him next to her body before he tries to raise any kind of alarm, so clearly he could be her killer.

Agreed. My hypothesis is that killing Nichols and starting the mutilations would have taken about a minute at the most.

I further believe that Paul interrupted him. In my opinion it was a blitz attack and would have all happened very quickly. So the time window Lechmere needs is a small one. If Lechmere is alone in Bucks Row a couple of minutes then that’s time enough for me.

However, there is one or two other issues that could effect the time. Was Nichols in situ when she was killed, did Lechmere meet her at another point in Bucks Row and they walked together to the darkest spot, were they walking in opposite directions and she propositioned him, did he meet her past the board school and walk back ?

Theres lots we don’t know, but I do believe that when Lechmere attacked it was all over and done with in a minute or two.

[Herlock Sholmes]

What I particularly value in this discussion is the treatment of those two printed sources that mention an 03:20 start. "Wrongly", declared someone on here, as if he actually had direct access to what would have been 'rightly'. What? 03:20? Rubbish. Wrong. Meaningless. An error. Ignore it.

And I sat smiling at the way so many people on here would have been turning somersaults of joy had those two sources actually said '03:40'...

M.

Why is it that you only appear to be critical of those that don’t think that Lechmere was guilty and yet you ignore those attempting to skew times to fit theories?

We go with the majority who said ‘about 3.30.’ Unless you believe that those Reporters added ‘about’ for no reason or just imagined that they’d heard the word? Neither of those are reasonable but it certainly is reasonable to suggest that the 6 that said ‘3.00’ might simply have missed the word or transcribed their notes incorrectly. This has to be far more likely. Even Fish appears now to accept ‘about 3.30.’

If he’d left at 3.20 then why was he still there when Paul arrived? Why, when he’d had time to think about this before the Inquest, would Lechmere have stupidly landed himself with a huge unexplained gap?

Theories have to stand up to criticism. To facts.