Evidence of innocence

[Trevor Marriott]

We should be more interested in linking the killer with the crime,than linking people by geographical accessability..According to the theory of Cross as the killer,he didn't find a body in Bucks Row.He found a victim at a time and place not specified.Same with the other victims.Therefor evidence linking Cross with any of the Whitechapel victims,has to start at a time previous to their death.There is no such evidence.No eye witnesses,and no physical evidence.Of course the answer will be,'But this is a theoretical exercise of what was possible'So far there has been plenty of theoretical exercises of what was possible.Cross is just one of them.

You are correct, and with that as Emily Holland was the last person to see Nicholls alive at 2.30am it would be wrong to dismiss the fact that Nichols was killed between 2.30am and 3.45am and not as Fish would have us believe at approx 3.45am.

There are a number of facts which disprove Fish`s theory which have been discussed many times but one that hasnt to much because again we see researchers to ready to accpet police officers statements all through these murders without question, is to prove that Pc Neil didnt pass by the murder sport at 3.15am as he stated, do that and the TOD is extended to a time bewteen 2.30am-3.45am which I personally believe to be more realistic than Fish trying to tell us that she was killed within a 5 minute window of Lechmere leaving his house to go to work and killing here en route.

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[Fisherman]

A few remarks to your other post, Frank:


Not only that, but they say that he got to the body “in the meantime”, thereby implicitly introducing Neil’s “about 3.45” (which Baxter at no time disputes).

In which universe does saying "in the meantime" come with a binding promise that "the meantime" involved any particular stroke of the clock? What is said is that in the time passing between when Lechmere left the body and when he arrived at Mizens side, Neil arrived at the murder spot. Nowhere does that need to mean or imply or lead on or make it more or less likely that he would have arrived at 3.45. He arrived in the time period when Lechmere was en route to or up at Mizen, end of.
I cannot for the life of me see why you think that the paper would have implicitly concluded that this was 3.45. Such a thing could only apply if there was an overall certainty that Neil DID arrive at 3.45, and since the whole matter we are discussing is who Baxter pointed out as the 3.45 guest outside Browns, it would be a tad ungenerous of you to claim that everybody always thought that Neil was there at 3.45. We now have a paper saying that Nichols was murdered at the latest 3.45, and so that very clearly tells us that this was when LECHMERE, not Neil, was in place. That cannot be contested, I believe.


That’s not the way I read it. The paper is referring to the spot where she was found rather than the finding itself. They might just as well have written: on the spot where she lay.

Why would it be prudent to point out that the spot where she lay was surrounded by silence five or six minutes after she was found by Lechmere? What interest within the readership is satisfied by that information? I cannot see any such interest at all, in my world, the readers would want to know if there were any sounds when Lechmere was there, not when Neil was.

Moving on, they say that when Nichols was killed she didn’t utter a cry, so this is in no way referring to when she was found, either by Lechmere or by Neil, but to when she was being murdered.

That produces a few interesting questions. The first one is that we many posters out here who claim that Nichols could have been murdered twenty minutes or so before Lechmere came upon her, putting the time at 3.20-3.25.
Who was in the street at that time, listening for any sounds from women being killed...?
The second reflection I am making is that any sounds from Nichols - or any lack of such sounds - were a good deal more likely to be linked to the approximate time that Lechmere found her, rather than the time at which Neil arrived.


"What you don’t seem to take into account here is the fact that all the reporters heard Baxter say the very same thing and seeing that “The time at which the body was found cannot have been far from 3.45 a.m., as it is fixed by so many independent data"was carried by at least 5 different newspaper versions and the “In fact, Constable Neil must independently have found the body within a few minutes of the finding of it by the two carmen"was only reported by the Times, it seems plausible that the latter quote was simply the way in which the Times reporter ‘translated’ the first quote."

Of course, without taking into account the DN and Times excerpts, you can say that the bulk of the papers suggested one thing, but can’t say they were correct about what they suggested, simply because we know that the additions in the DN and Times weren’t made up by the reporters of those papers. Taking into account the DN and Times makes the suggestion meaningless.

Of course it does not - unless we demand that your interpretation must be correct, and as shown above, there is no reason to make this assumption. What the Times wrote was that Neil "found" the body within a few minutes of when Lechmere did so. In no shape or form are they suggesting that the time at which Neil got there was 3.45, however, and so the Times snippet fits perfectly well into what we know about the matter - Neil arrived some minutes after Lechmere, and Lechmere had spent that time getting up to Mizen. The snippet carries no other message whatsoever. It says not a iot about any given time.
The Daily News is another matter. it is new to us, and it states that the body was found at 3.15 - 3.45. As has been shown, the fomer time can only refer to Neils first visit, and the second time must represent Lechmeres finding, since that and that only is what establishes the end of the period of time that could have seen Nichols being murdered. Neils arrival at the spot has no bearing on that matter at all.

I think that the only option there is if one wants to make the case that Neil arrived at the murder spot at 3.45 is the one you hint at: to dub the reporters of the Daily News people who made up the whole idea that Nichols was murdered between 3.15 and 3.45 out of thin air. And that is always going to be contested since the suggestion is perfectly in line with what Baxter said: A timeline could be formed, based on many independent data fixing the matter, and the body was found at a remove not far off 3.45.

Anyone can see how that dovetails with the wording in the Daily News, and so dubbing them irresponsible liars may not be an easy thing to get accepted.

As for the Times, there is no need at all to mistrust them. They said nothing at all about Neil arriving at the site at 3.45, they simply said that he arrived in the time period when Lechmere sought out Mizen.

---

[Fisherman]

We should be more interested in linking the killer with the crime,than linking people by geographical accessability..

Who says we are NOT interested in linking Lechmere to the crime? Of course we are. But in what universe does that NOT involve looking at the geography?

I sometimes despair about the insights of pople into how a murder investigation is performed.

[Trevor Marriott]

>>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDZ422tMiWg<<


Certainly better than the dreadful "Missing Evidence" one that had Cross and Paul walking side by side instead of 40 yards apart.

Blink Films who made the documentary have rightly been critisised by me by how they set about making this documentary and the editing methods they used with experts interviews who contributed to the making of the program. What you describe is just another example of how they have misled the public.

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[Fisherman]

An excerpt from how Dusty does his Ripperology:

My wording: I will begin by establishing that after Charles Lechmere had taken the stand on the 3:rd of September and explained to the inquest that he was the finder of the body of Polly Nichols, it was universally accepted that he told the truth. Therefore, as coroner Baxter summed up the inquest a couple of weeks later, nobody would any longer suggest that PC Neil was the true finder. I hope we may agree about that?<<

Dustys reaction: You do seem to love warping the english language. By definition both men found the body. Cross was the first person, we know of, to find Mrs Nichols body. Neil separately found the body later.

What I pointed out here was that although it was initially thought that Neil was the original finder of the body, Lechmere´s appearance at the inquest on the 3rd convinced everybody that Lechmere, not Neil, was the true finder of Polly Nichols.
In Dustys world - and I intend to spend as little time as possible in it - this is an example of how I seem to "love warping the English language".

If anybody has any problems seeing why I am reluctant to engage in discussion with Dusty, this should go a long way to disclose my motivation grounds.

[FrankO]

What he said was that the body could not have been found far off the 3.45 mark. In my world, that means that he regarded 3.45 as the chronological epicenter, but that he allowed for minor deviations from it. And that would entail deviations of both earlier and later times.

Thanksfor putting into such clear terms this time, but we're not going to agree on this, Christer. That's at least one thing we can agree on.

What we then know by now is that the Daily News, having been able to take stock of what Baxter said in his summary, concluded that the earliest time Nichols could have been killed was 3.15. This is a slightly dubious wording since it relies on how Neils timing was exact, and we cannot know that. The correct thing to say is that the earliest time at which Nichols could have been murdered is the time directly after John Neil had passed through Bucks Row on his earlier round. The paper further concluded that the latest time at which Nichols could have been murdered was 3.45. If we were to rephrase that along the same lines as we did with the 3.15 timing, we would need to say that - provided that Charles Lechmere was innocent, which was the working premise of the Daily News - the latest time that Nichols could have been murdered would be the minute preceding Lechmeres arrival at the body.

The DN also knew that Llewellyn had stated that when he first examined Nichols, she could not have been dead for more than half an hour, so why use the 3.15? Why not say 3.30? Or 3.40 when they knew at what time Llewellyn arrived at that conclusion?

[Fisherman]

I have to say that I couldn’t agree more with post #4368.

As long as you realize that Jeff works from the somewhat exotic notion that "we" would somehow "know" that Mizen was approached by Lechmere at 3.45, for example, that is entirely your own choice, Herlock.

Me, I´m a cynical old fart, and so I tend to doubt people working from assumptions as proven facts.

[Fisherman]

Thanksfor putting into such clear terms this time, but we're not going to agree on this, Christer. That's at least one thing we can agree on.

What precisely is it you cannot agree with, Frank?

The DN also knew that Llewellyn had stated that when he first examined Nichols, she could not have been dead for more than half an hour, so why use the 3.15? Why not say 3.30? Or 3.40 when they knew at what time Llewellyn arrived at that conclusion?

You surprise me, Frank. Llewellyns suggestion of the TOD was an estimation, and there would have been widespread knowledge that no such estimation could demand to be taken as definitively certain and accurate to the minute. As you will be aware, Baxters remarks about the suggested TOD in the Chapman case is very instructive about this.
The first arrival of Neil in Bucks Row would be an unquestionable marker for the earliest possible murder time, as it was accepted that Nichols was killed in situ. Ergo, the Daily News went with the exact marker they should go with if they wanted to stay unchallengeable.
Likewise, Lechmeres arrival at the scene is unquestionably the marker at the other end of the time scale. After he arrived, Nichols could NOT have been murdered if Lechmere was not the killer.
Of course, it was seemingly believed that the murder time was close to Lechmeres arrival as such. The fewest, I think, would entertain the idea that Nichols could have been killed at 3.16.

[JeffHamm]

As long as you realize that Jeff works from the somewhat exotic notion that "we" would somehow "know" that Mizen was approached by Lechmere at 3.45, for example, that is entirely your own choice, Herlock.

Me, I´m a cynical old fart, and so I tend to doubt people working from assumptions as proven facts.

Personally, I tend to read the inquest statements:

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. When he arrived there Constable Neil sent him for the ambulance. At that time nobody but Neil was with the body.

We also know that PC Mizen was was engaged in knocking up people (you know, acting like an alarm clock), so he has every reason to be acutely aware of the time (it's also a job requirement for PC's in general).

We also have PC Neil's testimony, where he indicates he had previously seen the men at work at 3:15, or half an hour before he found the body. Again, the testimony places PC Neil's discovery at 3:45 (3:45 is 30 minutes after 3:15 after all).

And we have PC Thain's testimony which corroborates that, because he says that nothing drew his attention until he was signalled by a fellow constable at about 3:45.

So, given our view into the past is through the testimonies, and given the police job requirement involved them keeping track of time, and in particular given PC Mizen was knocking up people (so had even more reason to be aware of the time), yes, I think we should accept that the Police of the day knew better than us what the time was.

But feel free know better than the people who were actually there. But I'm wondering who it is exactly that's treating assumptions as facts here? I'm using the times given in testimony to avoid making assumptions, and none of the times that get estimated conflict with the inexact qualifiers that are also used in testimony (the discovery around 3:41 is indeed not far off 3:45, the doctor leaves home about 3:55 or 4:00ish; and so forth). You are stating times and values that for the most part are found nowhere in the testimonies.

- Jeff

[FrankO]

What precisely is it you cannot agree with, Frank?

And you surprise me, Christer, as I would have thought that it was clear by now what my stance on the subject is. But OK, I cannot agree with your view that "cannot be far from a quarter to four o'clock" must mean that he regarded 3.45 as the chronological epicenter, but that he allowed for minor deviations from it. And that would entail deviations of both earlier and later times. For reasons I've already given a few times, I believe Baxter said the time at which the body was found by Lechmere cannot have been far from a quarter to four a.m. (when Neil came across it).

The first arrival of Neil in Bucks Row would be an unquestionable marker for the earliest possible murder time, as it was accepted that Nichols was killed in situ. Ergo, the Daily News went with the exact marker they should go with if they wanted to stay unchallengeable.
Likewise, Lechmeres arrival at the scene is unquestionably the marker at the other end of the time scale. After he arrived, Nichols could NOT have been murdered if Lechmere was not the killer.

Yes, and, like I said, if you believe that "cannot have been far from 3.45" can also mean 3.41, 3.42 or 3.43, then 3.40 at the other end of the time scale doesn't fit, while 3.45 does and is, thus, a also safe marker.

[SuperShodan]

You are correct, and with that as Emily Holland was the last person to see Nicholls alive at 2.30am it would be wrong to dismiss the fact that Nichols was killed between 2.30am and 3.45am and not as Fish would have us believe at approx 3.45am.

There are a number of facts which disprove Fish`s theory which have been discussed many times but one that hasnt to much because again we see researchers to ready to accpet police officers statements all through these murders without question, is to prove that Pc Neil didnt pass by the murder sport at 3.15am as he stated, do that and the TOD is extended to a time bewteen 2.30am-3.45am which I personally believe to be more realistic than Fish trying to tell us that she was killed within a 5 minute window of Lechmere leaving his house to go to work and killing here en route.

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

In terms of when Nichols was killed we have evidence that to my mind doesn’t support her being killed earlier. Not least PC Neil walking along Bucks Row at 03.15 and seeing nothing.

Firstly, the body wasn’t posed. Tabram, Chapman, Eddowes and Kelly all had their bodies posed. I believe this was the unique Riooer ‘signature’. Nichols body wasn’t posed. So if JTR killed Nichols at an earlier time, and had time to complete his task, why did he not pose the body ? I think the crime suggests that he was disturbed and couldn’t finish. Coroner Baxter certainly thought so.

Secondly, the crime scene itself, which I believe tells us everything we need to know about Bucks Row. I think that Nichols injuries have deliberately been concealed. I think this was done to hide that a crime had taken place. I think this shows that the killer never left Bucks Row.

When Paul examines the body he doesn’t notice anything amiss. PC Neil only notices the neck wound. Even the Dr doesn’t notice the abdominal wounds, which aren’t discovered until Nichols is undressed at the mortuary.

So we have the killer being disturbed, and we have our killer making an attempt to conceal his handiwork. I would say this doesn’t suggest an earlier time of death. Quite the opposite.

Nichols killer was interrupted, and he quickly had to hide his handiwork. She wasn’t lying in Bucks Row for any length of time.

[Trevor Marriott]

Firstly, the body wasn’t posed. Tabram, Chapman, Eddowes and Kelly all had their bodies posed. I believe this was the unique Riooer ‘signature’. Nichols body wasn’t posed. So if JTR killed Nichols at an earlier time, and had time to complete his task, why did he not pose the body ? I think the crime suggests that he was disturbed and couldn’t finish. Coroner Baxter certainly thought so.

There is no evidence that the bodies of any of the victims were posed

Secondly, the crime scene itself, which I believe tells us everything we need to know about Bucks Row. I think that Nichols injuries have deliberately been concealed. I think this was done to hide that a crime had taken place. I think this shows that the killer never left Bucks Row.

But if JTR`s motive was to do no more than kill and mutilate then he acheived that purpose in Bucks Row as he did with other victims if you take away the organs removal from the equation.

So we have the killer being disturbed, and we have our killer making an attempt to conceal his handiwork. I would say this doesn’t suggest an earlier time of death. Quite the opposite.

The killer may have been disturbed but the killer was not Lechmere.

Nichols killer was interrupted, and he quickly had to hide his handiwork. She wasn’t lying in Bucks Row for any length of time.

If Lechmere disturbed the killer, or the killer was distracted and disturbed by any other noise the position and the condition of the body would still be the same.

If the killer was disurbed why woud he need to hide his handiwork, surely he would make good his escape, and this is where the case against Lechmere falls flat. If he was the killer he had ample time to make good his escape. I have never heard so much twaddle as the suggestion that he fronted it out with Paul and before that covered his handiwork up

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[FrankO]

In which universe does saying "in the meantime" come with a binding promise that "the meantime" involved any particular stroke of the clock? What is said is that in the time passing between when Lechmere left the body and when he arrived at Mizens side, Neil arrived at the murder spot. Nowhere does that need to mean or imply or lead on or make it more or less likely that he would have arrived at 3.45. He arrived in the time period when Lechmere was en route to or up at Mizen, end of.

Nope. “In the meantime” in this case refers to Neil’s coming across the body, doesn’t it? It would only mean, as you say, ‘somewhere during the time period when Lechmere was en route to or up at Mizen’ if we wouldn’t know Mizen’s estimated timing. Or if we dismiss it. Since Neil deposed that he came upon the body at around 3.45 and Baxter never disputed that, “in the meantime” refers to Neil’s timing. Or, at least, it works like that in my universe.

I cannot for the life of me see why you think that the paper would have implicitly concluded that this was 3.45. Such a thing could only apply if there was an overall certainty that Neil DID arrive at 3.45, and since the whole matter we are discussing is who Baxter pointed out as the 3.45 guest outside Browns, it would be a tad ungenerous of you to claim that everybody always thought that Neil was there at 3.45. We now have a paper saying that Nichols was murdered at the latest 3.45, and so that very clearly tells us that this was when LECHMERE, not Neil, was in place. That cannot be contested, I believe.

You believe what you will, Christer. What I see is that nowhere, at any point, we can read that Baxter, or anybody else for that matter, doubted Neil’s timing. And since that’s part of what we have and that we have to go by what we have, I see no reason to doubt that Neil’s timing was accepted by Baxter.

Why would it be prudent to point out that the spot where she lay was surrounded by silence five or six minutes after she was found by Lechmere? What interest within the readership is satisfied by that information? I cannot see any such interest at all, in my world, the readers would want to know if there were any sounds when Lechmere was there, not when Neil was.

I don’t know, but this is what the paper is actually saying: that not a cry was uttered when Nichols met her death and that many people were within a short distance, but heard not a sound. Perhaps they wrote it because they found it striking that, apparently, such a brutal murder could be so silent or that, even though many peope were close by, they didn't hear a thing?

Of course it does not - unless we demand that your interpretation must be correct, and as shown above, there is no reason to make this assumption. What the Times wrote was that Neil "found" the body within a few minutes of when Lechmere did so. In no shape or form are they suggesting that the time at which Neil got there was 3.45, however, and so the Times snippet fits perfectly well into what we know about the matter - Neil arrived some minutes after Lechmere, and Lechmere had spent that time getting up to Mizen. The snippet carries no other message whatsoever. It says not a iot about any given time. The Daily News is another matter.

No, the DN is not, really. Both the DN and the Times carried Baxter’s summing up and they both carried the same addition information relative to the other papers. And both their reporters heard Baxter speak the very same words. Since the DN and all the other papers wrote “The time at which the body was found cannot, etc” it is very likely, if not a certainty, that Baxter actually spoke these words, and not the words as they were printed in the Times (“In fact, Constable Neil must independently have found the body within a few minutes of the finding of it by the two carmen). But even though, as you say, the Times says not a iota about any given time, it doesn’t change the fact that Baxter never once disputed or expressed doubt about Neil’s timing and he is clearly speaking of Neil finding the body in the words printed by the Times.

I think that the only option there is if one wants to make the case that Neil arrived at the murder spot at 3.45 is the one you hint at: to dub the reporters of the Daily News people who made up the whole idea that Nichols was murdered between 3.15 and 3.45 out of thin air.

Don't put words into my mouth, Christer. I don’t hint at that at all. “Between 3.15 and 3.45” were quick, rough and good enough estimates.

Anyone can see how that dovetails with the wording in the Daily News, and so dubbing them irresponsible liars may not be an easy thing to get accepted.

I’m glad I didn't and don’t call them irresponsible liars then.

As for the Times, there is no need at all to mistrust them. They said nothing at all about Neil arriving at the site at 3.45, they simply said that he arrived in the time period when Lechmere sought out Mizen.

I don’t mistrust them on the whole, I just - like I've written a few times by now already - doubt that when they wrote that Neil must independently have found the body within a few minutes of the finding of it by the two carmen a few minutes, they were transcribing the words that Baxter had actually uttered, for the reason already given.

[SuperShodan]

If Lechmere disturbed the killer, or the killer was distracted and disturbed by any other noise the position and the condition of the body would still be the same.

If the killer was disurbed why woud he need to hide his handiwork, surely he would make good his escape, and this is where the case against Lechmere falls flat. If he was the killer he had ample time to make good his escape. I have never heard so much twaddle as the suggestion that he fronted it out with Paul and before that covered his handiwork up

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

The killer running away if disturbed seems the obvious option. Reasons for him not doing so have been discussed at length on this thread. Suffice to say we can’t assume a killer, or for that matter any criminal, will run when caught, challenged or seen by witness.

A criminal confronting a witness head on (sizing them up). trying to blag it, trying to appear an innocent passer by, taking a huge risk and just being plain stupid are all completely reasonable.

I don’t see that a killer being caught might not try to blag it. Plenty of killers have done just that.

[John Wheat]

If Lechmere disturbed the killer, or the killer was distracted and disturbed by any other noise the position and the condition of the body would still be the same.

If the killer was disurbed why woud he need to hide his handiwork, surely he would make good his escape, and this is where the case against Lechmere falls flat. If he was the killer he had ample time to make good his escape. I have never heard so much twaddle as the suggestion that he fronted it out with Paul and before that covered his handiwork up

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

I agree Trevor unfortunately some people on this thread seem to be delusional.