Evidence of innocence

[Herlock Sholmes]

A man discovers a body. The spot that he finds her is one that he passes 6 days a week at the same time so he has an entirely legitimate reason for being there. Seconds later he finds her another man appears and they go for a Constable together.

We have no way of showing that he’d been with the body longer than he’d said that he had, apart from “well he could have been.”

The man (Paul) and the Constable both see nothing suspicious in the man’s appearance or in his behaviour.

We don’t know if the Police checked his alibi but it has to be a strong possibility.

He makes no attempt to flee the scene and he attends then Inquest so there’s no attempt to hide away.

He goes on to work at the same company for years and lives what, in appearance at least, appears to be a reasonable life with a family.

….

I know that some do but I have to say that I see absolutely nothing suspicious about anything that Lechmere did or said. So shouldn’t we ask…

How many people over the years who have found a body in the street have turned out actually to have been the killer?

How many serial killers have murdered a victim on his way to work and 20 minutes or so before he was due to arrive on a spot that he passed 6 days a week at the same time?

How many serial killers after a murder stand and wait for someone to arrive when they had ample opportunity to flee?

…..

Should we resort to stuff like manipulating times (leaving the house and the time that Paul and Lechmere met up) just to create a suspicious ‘gap’ out of very thin air. Take away the ‘sinister gap’ and we categorically can and we are left clutching thin air. There just is no case against Lechmere. I’m not saying that he couldn’t have killed her because we can’t prove that he didn’t, but there’s nothing that makes me suspect him.

[FrankO]

How many minutes would it take Paul to reach the body from which someone had just legged it and start shouting ‘murder!’?

Of course, this would all depend on where Paul was when Lechmere first heard him.

If he’d first heard Paul when he was, say, 50 metres away and if Paul walked at a fairly brisk pace of 6 km per hour, then he would have had 30 seconds before Paul would have arrived and then, I’d say, some 5 to 10 additional at least seconds for Paul to walk over to the body, examine it and raise an alarm. If he heard Paul enter Buck’s Row from Brady Street, he would have had 70 seconds before he’d arrive and then some extra 5 to 10 seconds to walk over to the body, etc.. The slower Paul actually walked, the longer the period you’re asking about.

If we look at the first scenario (which I don’t really even think plausible because of the "arranging of the body" and then silently and without being seen moving away from it and the time that would have taken), then Lechmere would still have some 35 to 40 seconds to get away. In the second scenario he would have had 75 to 80 seconds to get away.

If Lechmere would run away at a speed of 14.4 km per hour, then he would cover 140 to 160 metres in the first scenario and 300 to 320 metres in the second. Of course, that would be less if he would run slower than 14.4 kph or slow down or even stop at intervals to look and listen or not attract attention.

[Mark J D]

As theories go, this is on a par with the 'FM' letters on Kelly's wall and body in terms of utter ridiculousness. 97 m away is hardly incriminating!

I suspect the significance of Hanbury Street is that having been disturbed by Lechmere, the real killer realised a location like Buck's Row wasn't ideal and sought a more secluded location.

People can sneer all they like; but the question has to be how much closer than '97m away' could the killer have found both a soliciting woman and an off-pavement location before the police forgot all about gobby irritant Robert Paul and his place of work? Would a still closer site have pointed more clearly to Paul than one a block and a half away?

M.

[MrBarnett]

hey gary
yes i did. its one of the reasons i started to accept tje possibility of lech doing so.

what was yours?

It wasn’t a murder.

My daughter’s neighbour spotted a suspicious looking man at the back of her house peering through her window. The house was empty at the time because it was being renovated. The neighbour called out to him and asked if he could be of any assistance. At that point the man could have legged it and been a distant blur before the neighbour had got close to him, but instead he chose to engage the neighbour and tell him a **** and bull story about being a builder who had left some tools in the house. It wasn’t until the neighbour went inside to call my daughter that the man legged it.

Clearly his thought process was that if he’d run off immediately the neighbour would have seen which way he’d gone and been able to give chase and/or alert other people. And by the time the neighbour returned to confront the man he was nowhere to be seen.

That’s it in a nutshell.

[SuperShodan]

I don’t see that Lechmere standing and facing an approaching witness is an issue. There are lots of reasons why this is his best play and why running is poor choice.

It’s worth mentioning that he likely had seconds to decide and didn’t have time to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of his decision.

There appears to be a scenario whereby people think Lechmere has time and distance to decide. I don’t think he has. I think he was caught completely unawares.

Who knows, perhaps he was facing the nearby Board School direction, and had his back to the Brady Street entrance. Anyone coming from round the board school would clearly be the bigger threat.

I think it’s simply just a case of he becomes aware of Paul far too late.

It’s also worth mentioning that for Lechmere to be innocently walking ahead of Paul, still involves Paul not being aware of a man walking 40 - 50 m in front of him for a good minutes walk up Bucks Row. I consider this impossible.

The more I think of it, the more I think running off is the worst thing he could do. Running away as Paul approaches guarantees that 30 seconds later there is a man hunt on.

[MrBarnett]

A man discovers a body. The spot that he finds her is one that he passes 6 days a week at the same time so he has an entirely legitimate reason for being there. Seconds later he finds her another man appears and they go for a Constable together.

We have no way of showing that he’d been with the body longer than he’d said that he had, apart from “well he could have been.”

The man (Paul) and the Constable both see nothing suspicious in the man’s appearance or in his behaviour.

We don’t know if the Police checked his alibi but it has to be a strong possibility.

He makes no attempt to flee the scene and he attends then Inquest so there’s no attempt to hide away.

He goes on to work at the same company for years and lives what, in appearance at least, appears to be a reasonable life with a family.

….

I know that some do but I have to say that I see absolutely nothing suspicious about anything that Lechmere did or said. So shouldn’t we ask…

How many people over the years who have found a body in the street have turned out actually to have been the killer?

How many serial killers have murdered a victim on his way to work and 20 minutes or so before he was due to arrive on a spot that he passed 6 days a week at the same time?

How many serial killers after a murder stand and wait for someone to arrive when they had ample opportunity to flee?

…..

Should we resort to stuff like manipulating times (leaving the house and the time that Paul and Lechmere met up) just to create a suspicious ‘gap’ out of very thin air. Take away the ‘sinister gap’ and we categorically can and we are left clutching thin air. There just is no case against Lechmere. I’m not saying that he couldn’t have killed her because we can’t prove that he didn’t, but there’s nothing that makes me suspect him.

Hi Mike,

You could have started your post, ‘A man was found standing near a recently killed body …’ and then gone on to tell us how the murders in Whitechapel and Spitalfields began almost as soon as he changed his work route to take him through Whitechapel and Spitalfields. Or pointed out that we only have his version of how long he was at the murder site, and that in any case the murder and injuries would only have taken a few minutes, so he had no ‘alibi’ for the Nichols murder.

The same story can be told in different ways.

I’d be interested to know how you know who his employers were after 1888. If we can look at the meagre evidence of two later censuses and draw conclusions about his character, why can’t we go back to his upbringing and draw conclusions about what his feelings towards prostitutes might have been.


Gary

[Abby Normal]

It wasn’t a murder.

My daughter’s neighbour spotted a suspicious looking man at the back of her house peering through her window. The house was empty at the time because it was being renovated. The neighbour called out to him and asked if he could be of any assistance. At that point the man could have legged it and been a distant blur before the neighbour had got close to him, but instead he chose to engage the neighbour and tell him a **** and bull story about being a builder who had left some tools in the house. It wasn’t until the neighbour went inside to call my daughter that the man legged it.

Clearly his thought process was that if he’d run off immediately the neighbour would have seen which way he’d gone and been able to give chase and/or alert other people. And by the time the neighbour returned to confront the man he was nowhere to be seen.

That’s it in a nutshell.

thanks gary
yes it does appear from our own personal examples people when caught almost red handed will try to stay and bluff it out.

[MrBarnett]

I don’t see that Lechmere standing and facing an approaching witness is an issue. There are lots of reasons why this is his best play and why running is poor choice.

It’s worth mentioning that he likely had seconds to decide and didn’t have time to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of his decision.

There appears to be a scenario whereby people think Lechmere has time and distance to decide. I don’t think he has. I think he was caught completely unawares.

Who knows, perhaps he was facing the nearby Board School direction, and had his back to the Brady Street entrance. Anyone coming from round the board school would clearly be the bigger threat.

I think it’s simply just a case of he becomes aware of Paul far too late.

It’s also worth mentioning that for Lechmere to be innocently walking ahead of Paul, still involves Paul not being aware of a man walking 40 - 50 m in front of him for a good minutes walk up Bucks Row. I consider this impossible.

The more I think of it, the more I think running off is the worst thing he could do. Running away as Paul approaches guarantees that 30 seconds later there is a man hunt on.

When an normal/innocent person is presented with a threat the fight/flight/freeze (whatever other Fs there are) are instinctively based on self-preservation. But when the threat is to someone who is already in a disturbed mental state do the same rules apply?

[MrBarnett]

thanks gary
yes it does appear from our own personal examples people when caught almost red handed will try to stay and bluff it out.

Yes, they will on occasion. And in Lechmere’s case who knows whether his initial reaction wasn’t to attack Paul, either to silence him or punish him for the interruption. I doubt a serial killer on mid-carve is the most rational of people.

So, no, there’s nothing implausible about a killer not legging it as soon as he becomes aware that someone is approaching.

Let’s not forget that Lechmere did not just call out ‘Hey, mate, come and have a look at this woman!’ He got up close and personal with Paul and in doing so was able to gauge Paul’s reaction to events.

[rjpalmer]

My daughter’s neighbour spotted a suspicious looking man at the back of her house peering through her window.

To each his own, Gary, but let me just tell you why I don't find these anecdotes particularly compelling.

If I found Lechmere at the back of my house, I too, would be suspicious. Anyone would be.

But Lechmere wasn't at the back of my house. Or at the back of anyone's house.

Lechmere was on a public street and at a time when his route to work left him with an entirely legitimate and plausible reason for being there.

That's the obvious difference, so, to me, such comparisons are apples & oranges.

Nearly every one of the murders in the MEPO files was committed in a public place where the odds of the victim being almost immediately found was almost guaranteed. Either by a beat constable or an ordinary citizen. Poor Emma Smith managed to hobble off without anyone noticing, but Kelly withstanding, every victim from Martha to Frances was discovered almost immediately, even if it was just Alfred Crow stepping over the body on his way to bed on not bothering to check her out.

Lechmere at least made an effort, and for his trouble he is being accused of being the most notorious murderer in British history. No wonder people avoid the police.

I sometimes get the weird feeling that the Lechmere accusers aren't willing to differentiate between a man finding a body in some dark, wooded place where he had no reason to be, and a man who came across a body in a public street at a time /place where he had every reason to be.

That's the fly in the ointment of this particular theory, as far as I am concerned.

If it wasn't for the 'alternative name,' Lechmere wouldn't have been on anyone's radar.

[MrBarnett]

To each his own, Gary, but let me just tell you why I don't find these anecdotes particularly compelling.

If I found Lechmere at the back of my house, I too, would be suspicious. Anyone would be.

But Lechmere wasn't at the back of my house. Or at the back of anyone's house.

Lechmere was on a public street and at a time when his route to work left him with an entirely legitimate and plausible reason for being there.

That's the obvious difference, so, to me, such comparisons are apples & oranges.

Nearly every one of the murders in the MEPO files was committed in a public place where the odds of the victim being almost immediately found was almost guaranteed. Either by a beat constable or an ordinary citizen. Poor Emma Smith managed to hobble off without anyone noticing, but Kelly withstanding, every victim from Martha to Frances was discovered almost immediately, even if it was just Alfred Crow stepping over the body on his way to bed on not bothering to check her out.

Lechmere at least made an effort, and for his trouble he is being accused of being the most notorious murderer in British history. No wonder people avoid the police.

I sometimes get the weird feeling that the Lechmere accusers aren't willing to differentiate between a man finding a body in some dark, wooded place where he had no reason to be, and a man who came across a body in a public street at a time /place where he had every reason to be.

That's the fly in the ointment of this particular theory, as far as I am concerned.

If it wasn't for the 'alternative name,' Lechmere wouldn't have been on anyone's radar.

The point of my anecdote was simply to refute the suggestion that a person caught in the commission of a crime (or almost so in my daughter’s case) will invariably immediately leg it. Not so. Some will try to engage/flannel or attack their finder. That’s it. End of.

Your weird feelings are just that - weird - certainly if you are including me as one of those Lechmere accusers who can’t see the difference between the dark wooded place and a spot on Lechmere’s work route. :-)

[MrBarnett]

I’m a complete sceptic when it comes to any diagramatic geo-profiling, but Abby’s triangle works like a dream for Lech. In 1888, the Pinchin Street arch isn’t in it. In 1889 it is. In 1889, Swallow Gardens isn’t in it. In 1891 it is (I think). All due to his Old Ma’s itchy feet. By 1901 she’d moved again, to Old Gravel Lane where she was in the corn chandling business - same as that of her one and only husband’s family, the husband she’d not seen hide nor hair of since 1851.

[Abby Normal]

The point of my anecdote was simply to refute the suggestion that a person caught in the commission of a crime (or almost so in my daughter’s case) will invariably immediately leg it. Not so. Some will try to engage/flannel or attack their finder. That’s it. End of.

Your weird feelings are just that - weird - certainly if you are including me as one of those Lechmere accusers who can’t see the difference between the dark wooded place and a spot on Lechmere’s work route. :-)

Hi Gary
Contrary to rjs assertion, my example happened on a public street, or public parking lot, but theres no difference. It was a very public spot, the perp had every reason to be there (getting his car, cutting through etc) and he could have just started walking away or run when I appeared. he was right next to a downed man who he had just knocked out and was in the process of robbing. he chose to stay and bluff it out. he got away scott free.

[FrankO]

It’s worth mentioning that he likely had seconds to decide and didn’t have time to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of his decision.

What’s also worth mentioning, Bob, is that his decision to stay put and Paul seeing him standing in the middle of the street were separated by a period of time. In other words, it wasn’t that he heard Paul and – woosh – was then immediately standing in the middle of the street, right in time for Paul to make him out in the dark.

He heard him, listened, assessed where he came from etc, decided to stay, covered the wounds to the throat & abdomen, put away his knife while he moved to the middle of the street and waited for Paul to see him.

I think it’s simply just a case of he becomes aware of Paul far too late.

The issue I have with such a view is that we know for a fact Neil was able to hear Thain at the end of the street, some 120 metres away. The killer would have every reason to listen for sounds while he was working on Nichols. Every next step Paul would take would sound a little louder than the former, so for your scenario to work you have to assume that Lechmere didn’t hear any of Paul’s 100 or so first footsteps in Buck’s Row.

That’s a bit odd, to say the least, seeing that you do think Paul and Lechmere MUST have heard one another in case Lechmere was just an innocent man on his way to work. In other words, in the one case where they don’t particularly have reason to listen for sounds, you think they MUST have heard each other and in the other, where Lechmere would have had every reason to listen, he didn’t until the sound of Paul’s footsteps had gotten too close for comfort.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi Mike,

You could have started your post, ‘A man was found standing near a recently killed body …’ and then gone on to tell us how the murders in Whitechapel and Spitalfields began almost as soon as he changed his work route to take him through Whitechapel and Spitalfields. Or pointed out that we only have his version of how long he was at the murder site, and that in any case the murder and injuries would only have taken a few minutes, so he had no ‘alibi’ for the Nichols murder.

The same story can be told in different ways.

I’d be interested to know how you know who his employers were after 1888. If we can look at the meagre evidence of two later censuses and draw conclusions about his character, why can’t we go back to his upbringing and draw conclusions about what his feelings towards prostitutes might have been.


Gary

Hi Gary,

Id never dispute the many unknowns but what I’m always concerned with is that it appears that some are taking the standpoint - if x occurred at y time then we can deduce z but if we can have a ‘sinister’ and an ‘innocent’ explanation for any specific event then we need much more to veer toward the sinister.

Did Lechmere change his work route Gary? I’m not aware of any reason for suggesting this.

There are too many ‘if’s’ required for me Gary. I know that it sounds unlikely but what ‘if’ Paul was the psychopath for example? There has to have been a chance that on the odd day he’d heard Lechmere going to work along the same route as him so how can we disprove that Paul didn’t kill her then went around to the top of Bucks Row and waited in a doorway until Lechmere passed. He gives it a minute then follows. And the ‘psychopath’ gets the thrill of being at the scene of his own handiwork. And for all that we know some of the locations might have had some significance to him. (Not that I place much store in the locations)

Am I proposing this? Not really but it’s not much less convincing imo. I genuinely can’t get any feeling of suspicion about Lechmere. I guess that there are always going to be some that do and some that don’t though.