All roads lead to Lechmere.

[Abby Normal]

Hi Abby - I'm not sure one way or the other whether there is another situation like Lechmere's, but it would be interesting to find out how behaviours compared if there was. Fisherman speculates that Lechmere killed Nichols and chose to stay to front it out rather than flee when he heard Paul's footsteps approaching. It is a key decision if Lechmere is the killer. It seems counter intuitive to me that a killer would behave that way, but I am not a killer and consider myself mentally stable. Even if Lechmere was not entirely mentally sound, it seems much more likely to me that, if Lechmere was the killer, he would have fled under cover of darkness. His being there and seeking help from Paul fits, in my view, the scenario he describes of discovering the body. Any comparators might help, though of course forensics has developed so much since then the risk calculation would be very different now.

eten
with all due respect. i just did. dahmer. yes most of the time they flee. some times they dont. kemper had heads in his car and pulled over for a cop instead of fleeing. talked his way out of it. theres numerous examples of this type of brazen behavior. ive personally experienced an almost exact act
of a criminal bluffing it out with me over someone he just attacked. kids caught with their hand in the cookie jar will often act like theyre the one whos the innocent witness and blame their brother. its not rocket science, eten, its an age old behavior of a criminal to act like a witness when caught unawares.

[etenguy]

eten
with all due respect. i just did. dahmer. yes most of the time they flee. some times they dont. kemper had heads in his car and pulled over for a cop instead of fleeing. talked his way out of it. theres numerous examples of this type of brazen behavior. ive personally experienced an almost exact act
of a criminal bluffing it out with me over someone he just attacked. kids caught with their hand in the cookie jar will often act like theyre the one whos the innocent witness and blame their brother. its not rocket science, eten, its an age old behavior of a criminal to act like a witness when caught unawares.

Thanks Abby - I did clock Dahmer and now Kemper, and I shall read up about them - though from your brief explanation (including the kid with his hand in the cookie jar) the situation was different in that they could not choose to disappear anonymously as an option so they brazen it out. Dahmer may be different, I'll read around. I'm really looking for an analogous situation where the choice is stay and brazen it out or disappear anonymously. Thanks for the suggestions to start reading around this.

[etenguy]

eten
with all due respect. i just did. dahmer.

Thanks Abby - I think you are referring to Konerak Sinthasomphone. Dahmer certainly behaved brazenly and I find it hard to believe he got away with it. For those who were unaware of the incident, like me until Abby pointed it out, the wikipedia version of events is below. However, Dahmer had more to lose than Lechmere, as the victim was alive and could have told the police once the drugs wore off, so a different and compelling motivation.

Three women, Sandra Smith, Tina Spivey and Nicole Childress, discovered the victim, 14-year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone, after he had managed to escape from Jeffrey Dahmer's apartment, naked, bruised, bleeding from his buttocks area and heavily under the influence of drugs.^[2][3] Childress called 9-1-1;^[4] Balcerzak, Joseph T. Gabrish and Richard Porubcan were dispatched.^[5] Though the Laotian immigrant had been in the country for ten years and spoke English fluently,^[6] in his drugged and brain-injured state, Konerak was unable to communicate his situation to authorities or to the three women.^[7][4] Dahmer found the boy with the police and convinced them that the boy was his 19-year-old lover against the protests of the three women.^[8]

Smith recognized the boy from the neighborhood,^[4] and the three women reiterated their concerns to the officers but were told to "shut the hell up" by the officers, who seemingly believed the incident to be a domestic dispute.^[9] The three officers returned Konerak to Dahmer's apartment.

[Abby Normal]

Thanks Abby - I did clock Dahmer and now Kemper, and I shall read up about them - though from your brief explanation (including the kid with his hand in the cookie jar) the situation was different in that they could not choose to disappear anonymously as an option so they brazen it out. Dahmer may be different, I'll read around. I'm really looking for an analogous situation where the choice is stay and brazen it out or disappear anonymously. Thanks for the suggestions to start reading around this.

hi eten

thanks. should be interesting

[Fiver]

eten
with all due respect. i just did. dahmer. yes most of the time they flee. some times they dont.

For Nichol's killer, fleeing was their best chance to escape.

For Dahmer, fleeing would have guaranteed he was caught.

Whoever killed Polly Nichols had the chance to flee and have nobody know who he was. Nichols was dead or dying. Her throat had been cut so she couldn't tell the police anything. And she did not know who her attacker was or where he lived. Staying was far riskier, it could mean identification and possibly even being searched, which could reveal bloodstains and the bloody murder weapon.

Jeffery Dahmer's victim was pumped full of drugs, but alive. He knew where Dahmer lived. If Dahmer fled, he had no chance of disappearing anonymously. If Dahmer had run, that would guarantee he would be identified and his crimes exposed. Running had no chance of saving Dahmer. His days as a free man were over unless he could talk the police into handing over the victim before they became coherent.

[Abby Normal]

For Nichol's killer, fleeing was their best chance to escape.

For Dahmer, fleeing would have guaranteed he was caught.

Whoever killed Polly Nichols had the chance to flee and have nobody know who he was. Nichols was dead or dying. Her throat had been cut so she couldn't tell the police anything. And she did not know who her attacker was or where he lived. Staying was far riskier, it could mean identification and possibly even being searched, which could reveal bloodstains and the bloody murder weapon.

Jeffery Dahmer's victim was pumped full of drugs, but alive. He knew where Dahmer lived. If Dahmer fled, he had no chance of disappearing anonymously. If Dahmer had run, that would guarantee he would be identified and his crimes exposed. Running had no chance of saving Dahmer. His days as a free man were over unless he could talk the police into handing over the victim before they became coherent.

absolute rubbish. the kid couldnt even talk and had acid poured into his brain through a hole in his skull dahmer drilled. theres probably no way he ever would have recovered let alone to be able to say where dahmer lived. its a moot point besides, because dahmer himself brought the police back to his apartment anyway (one in which there was already a dead body decomposing) in a successful attempt to ruse them that the kid was his lover.

if dahmer had just stayed away from the situation, all that there would be was a kid either dead or in a coma or at the improbable chance that he would fully recover from having acid poured in his brain he probably would not remember where dahmer lived anyway.

no what dahmer did is actually way more brazen, risky and pulled off with absolute calm than what lech did (if guilty). but again the main point is is that serial killers take insane risks just by the nature of their business and sometimes take even insaner risks during the act. like engaging the police, rusing witnesses and the like.

its stupid to rule out a suspect based on what you think they should or shouldnt do.

[Fisherman]

There is something very familiar about this thread. It feels as if I have read it before.

I liked SuperShodans words about how Lechmere is Jack the Ripper and has been handed to us on a silver plate. I find that is absolutely correct. But of course, silver plates can be jumped on, tarred and feathered. And there are people out here who are very able in that department.

And so, the old arguments are rehashed again. He would have run, we are told. As if that was an established truth. It is not.
Neither is it an established truth that he would NOT have run.
These two suggestions can both be true - and that is all it takes for the proposition of Lechmere as the killer to be 100 per cent viable.

It would have been another ballgame if those who claim that he would, must, certainly had to have run could actually prove their point. But they cannot. And so, that point is actually no point at all. It is one of two possible takes on the matter, nothing more. And history has proven that around 90 per cent of serial killers are psychopaths to a smaller or lesser degree. And psychopaths will not panic the way normal people will do, they are very good liars, they like to play games, they feel superior to others and so on - all traits that are perfectly in line with the suggestion that Lechmere fooled Robert Paul and the inquest.

So this "point" is as unvalid a point as it always was, if it is presented as a deciding factor. It is not.

Therefore, can we please stop reiterating it in the guise of a fact? It is fine to say "Personally, I am disinclined to believe that he would have stayed put, but I understand that I may be wrong" and then I will say "I believe that he chose to stay put after having killed Nichols, but I understand that I may be wrong" and we will have made all we can make out of the matter.

If we could then abstain from claiming things like "Trevor found out that Scobie was misinformed", we would be even better off. Evidence, please - and preferably before we make these kinds of outrageous claims!

Charles Lechmere was found with a freshly killed - or perhaps even still only just hanging on to life - victim. He had been alone in her company for a period of time that cannot be established.

That puts him way ahead of any of the so called police suspects of the time - and just about anybody else too for that matter.

He was found with Nichols whilst en route to hos working place. Tabram, Chapman and Kelly also died in the small area he traversed, and it is quite possible that they died at times that were in line with Lechmere being the killer. No other suspect has such a correlation with the victims. Nowhere even close. Furthermore, he had logical links to Stride and Eddowes too. And we cannot start swopping times of death and murder sites in between the Whitechapel and Aldgate/St Georges victims without disrupting the perfect fit - but we don´t need to either. The fit is there.

Apart from this, we have the name change, the disagreement with Mizen, the covered up wounds, Paul not hearing or seeing Lechmere although he most likely should have, the fact that Nichols bled for many a minute after Lechmere left her, the fact that Lechmere should not even have been in Bucks Row at 3.40 - 3.45 if his given times were correct, the correlation between the Goulston Street rag and his home and so on.

Abby Normal says that all suspects are bad, but Lechmere belongs to the least bad group. This is not true. Yes, 99 per cent of the suspects are bad in varying degrees, but Lechmere is not bad in any way. He is a very strong suspect, way ahead of the rest. And that is why we get accusations of foul play when it comes to James Scobie; if, as Scobie said, there is a case good enough to take to court, suggesting that Lechmere was the killer, then of course he can never be a bad suspect. On the contrary, he must be a stellar suspect.

But we can´t have that, can we? No! And so, we are ready to slander before we admit the simple truth that Lechmere is with great certainty the killer of Polly Nichols and most likely also a serial killer.

Of course, the only thing to do when faced with such matters is to demand proof. Which has been done, of course. Several times, and - of course - with nothing produced in return. Does that mean that the slander goes away? Nope. It keeps coming, presumably with a built-in hope of how reiterating it will somehow make it become true.

I say that the ones resorting to such things are the underbelly of ripperology and devoid of any sort of credibility - if one is ready to go to such lengths, then one has burnt one´s ships in the measliest of ways. There are no two ways about it. The underbelly of ripperology, end of. Get out of that bog while you can, that´s my advice.

Argue away, all of you, by all means - the more evident it becomes how there is no argument at all that serves to take Lechmere out of the picture, the better it is - but let´s try not to lower ourselves to depths that do not belong to any decent discussion. I am not saying that those who propose that Scobie was misled have been bribed by old school ripperologists to make this claim, for the simple reason that the idea would be preposterous - until proven. Anybody is welcome to try and prove any sort of allegation, no matter how unlikely it is. But rule A is and remains that we are supposed to have the proof BEFORE we make any allegations along these lines.

Finally, I think that a thread like this has been borne out of frustration. Anybody who looks into Charles Lechmere with an unbiased mind will understand that he is most likely the killer of Polly Nichols. SuperShodan seems to have come from that angle, and he - or she - seem as genuinely surprised as I once was about the knee-jerk resistence out here against the idea. Me, I am no longer surprised, more like bored. What I will say, though, although I generally speaking agree with SuperShodan, is that those who speak for Lechmere also have a responsibility to be true to the facts. For example, when Super Shodan says that Lechmere´s finding Nichols under the circumstances he did means that he is in the killer and that he should have been arrested for it, I think that we must add a little more information:

A/ If what SuperShodan says is correct, then woe those who have the bad luck of stumbling over a freshly killed or still alive murder victim. It is in no way impossible to do so, and it does not in itself ensure guilt in any way. If no other suspect can be found, though, it must and will in any serious investigation make you a person of very large interest and if other matters can be added - and they can in Lechmere´s case - you will become a suspect, and most likely the prime suspect. And that is precisely how it should be.

B/ Lechmere never admitted to Mizen that he himself was the finder of Polly Nichols (I will not say "the finder of the body" because what he said to Mizen did not lead on that he was speaking of a body at all, but instead of a drunken woman) and so there was never any reason for Mizen to arrest him. This all of course builds on the acceptance that Mizen spoke the truth at the inquest. One must always leave learoom that this was not so. He could have misunderstood it (a more complicated take on things), lied about it (an even more complicated take on things) or been misinformed by somebody about it (a much more complicated take on things, but if we are going to speak about Scobie being misinformed, then hey, why not...?). Or he could have been totally correct (the simple take on things).

Bottom line: Let´s not get overenthusiastic about Charles Lechmere. And why? Because we really don´t need to. The evidence as such is already more than enough to point him out as the probable Ripper as it stands.

PS. Just returned from Iceland. I think we should all go there at some stage. It gives you a cool head.

[Fiver]

There is something very familiar about this thread. It feels as if I have read it before.

I liked SuperShodans words about how Lechmere is Jack the Ripper and has been handed to us on a silver plate.

Of course you like what SuperShodan has said - it's a rehash of your theories. But your theory does not hand us Jack the Ripper on a silver plate. Your theory has more holes than a fishing net.

[Fiver]

And history has proven that around 90 per cent of serial killers are psychopaths to a smaller or lesser degree. And psychopaths will not panic the way normal people will do, they are very good liars, they like to play games, they feel superior to others and so on - all traits that are perfectly in line with the suggestion that Lechmere fooled Robert Paul and the inquest.

And yet you have provided no evidence that Charles Lechmere was a psychopath.

"Psychopathy is characterized by diagnostic features such as superficial charm, high intelligence, poor judgment and failure to learn from experience, pathological egocentricity and incapacity for love, lack of remorse or shame, impulsivity, grandiose sense of self-worth, pathological lying, manipulative behavior, poor self-control, promiscuous sexual behavior, juvenile delinquency, and criminal versatility, among others." - Psychiatric Times

[Fiver]

If we could then abstain from claiming things like "Trevor found out that Scobie was misinformed", we would be even better off. Evidence, please - and preferably before we make these kinds of outrageous claims!

It easy to prove that Scobie was badly misinformed.

Jame Scobie appears to have said ""He was found standing over the dead body of Polly Nichols.. Lechmere was alone with her for longer than he admits. Lechmere then lied to the police and gave false details at the inquest. And the Ripper murders started just after he moved into the area. Wearing blood stained overalls his job placed him at four of the killings at the time they occurred."

"He was found standing over the dead body of Polly Nichols" - This statement is provably false. Robert Paul testified Lechmere was "standing in the middle of the road".

"Lechmere was alone with her for longer than he admits." - This statement is based on fudging the times. It starts by using 3:20am, the time Lechmere usually left for work, instead of 3:30am, the time Lechmere testified he left for work. It further fudges the time by assuming a ten minute walk would take 7 minutes or less. It fudges the time a third time by ignoring the time estimates of Lechmere and of all three of the first policemen to arrive in favor of the time estimate of Robert Paul.

It also ignores that the Ripper inflicted far worse mutilations in Catherine Eddowes body in only about 10 minutes. If the Ripper had 18 minutes alone with Polly Nichols he could have inflicted all of the actual mutilations and been 10 minutes walk down the street by the time Robert Paul arrived. An 18 minute time gap contradicts the idea that Lechmere was the Ripper, interrupted in his work.

"Lechmere then lied to the police..." - Lechmere's testimony contradicted PC Mizen's testimony. If that's proof that Lechmere was the Ripper, then it also proves Robert Paul was the Ripper, since he also contradicted PC Mizzen. This whole phrase is based on "guilty until proven innocent". It assumes that Lechmere was lying while completely ignoring the possibilities of Mizen lying or Mizen misunderstanding what Lechmere said.

"...and gave false details at the inquest." - Lechmere gave no provably false details at the Inquest. He did use his stepfather's surname as he had done in 1876 in an accidental death case. It's not unusual for men to use a stepfather's surname. It is unusual for men to use a stepfather's surname part of the time and their father's surname part of the time, but Lechmere had started doing that at over a decade before the first Ripper murder. It does not prove that Lechemere "gave false details at the inquest", let alone that he was the Ripper.

"And the Ripper murders started just after he moved into the area." - this statement is provably false. Charles Lechmere's family moved to the area at least 30 years before the Ripper killings began.

"Wearing blood stained overalls..." - Carmen wore sack aprons. Nobody present at the time noticed bloodstains on Lechmere. Lechmere worked for Pickford's, not a meat packing plant, so a bloodstained apron would have been an occasional on-the-job hazard for those times he carried meat and it was improperly packed.

"...his job placed him at four of the killings at the time they occurred." - this statement is provably false. Lechmere's job placed him at one of the killings around the time that it occurred - Polly Nichols. Martha Tabram was killed near Lechmere's route to work and might have been killed while he was walking to work. Annie Chapman was killed while Lechmere was at work - he has an alibi. Stride, Eddowes, and Kelly were not killed along Lechmere's route to work and they were not killed on work days.

Scobie was clearly fed a mix of false information and opinion masquerading as facts. As the old computer saying goes - GIGO - Garbage In, Garbage Out.

[Fiver]

He was found with Nichols whilst en route to hos working place. Tabram, Chapman and Kelly also died in the small area he traversed, and it is quite possible that they died at times that were in line with Lechmere being the killer. No other suspect has such a correlation with the victims. Nowhere even close. Furthermore, he had logical links to Stride and Eddowes too. And we cannot start swopping times of death and murder sites in between the Whitechapel and Aldgate/St Georges victims without disrupting the perfect fit - but we don´t need to either. The fit is there.

You don't appear to have looked at any other subject, so your claim that "no other suspect has such a correlation with the victims" is meaningless. Unless the routes between the homes, workplaces, and relatives, of every other one of the hundreds of Ripper suspects are analyzed nobody can know that "no other suspect has such a correlation with the victims".

As to the fit - it is not there.

The core of the theory is that Charles Lechmere was killing on the way to work. The facts do not match that theory.

* Stride, Eddowes, and Kelly were not killed on days that Lechmere was working. When half of the killings don't fit the theory, it's time to abandon the theory.
* Stride and Eddowes were killed hours before Lechmere normally got up. That's a horrible time fit.
* Tabram was killed near a route Lechmere might have taken to work. She might have been killed during the time Lechmere was walking to work.
* Chapman was killed long after Lechmere arrived at work. This is confirmed by two eyewitnesses and on earwitness. Lechemere had an alibi.

[Fiver]

Apart from this, we have the name change, the disagreement with Mizen, the covered up wounds, Paul not hearing or seeing Lechmere although he most likely should have, the fact that Nichols bled for many a minute after Lechmere left her, the fact that Lechmere should not even have been in Bucks Row at 3.40 - 3.45 if his given times were correct, the correlation between the Goulston Street rag and his home and so on.

* The name change is odd, but it happened over a decade before the Ripper murders
* Lechmere disagreed with Mizen. Paul also disagreed with Mizen. This does not prove that either Lechmere or Paul was the Ripper.
* Paul testified that he pulled down Polly Nichols clothing to try to cover her. You repeatedly ignoring this fact does not make it go away.
* Paul testified that he saw Lechmere in front of him. You repeatedly ignoring this fact does not make it go away.
* If people bled out as fast as you claim, then the most likely killer of Polly Nichols would be PC Neil.
* If Lechmere's given time was correct, then he should have been in Buck's row around 3:40. This is confirmed by the the times given by PC Neil, PC Mizen, and PC Thane. If the time Robert Paul gave is correct, then Lechmere was in Buck's Row at 3:45, but that time contradicts the other four men. It's the only time that fits your theory and even then, it only gives Lechmere a few minutes alone with Nicols.
* There is no correlation between the Goulston Street apron and Charles Lechmere. It is not on the route between Mitre Square and his home. It is not on the route between Mitre Square and his job. It is not on the route between Mitre Square and his mother's house.

[Fiver]

Anybody who looks into Charles Lechmere with an unbiased mind will understand that he is most likely the killer of Polly Nichols.

Anyone who looks into Charles Lechmere with an unbiased mind will understand that he has an alibi for one of the Ripper killings. No forensic evidence points to Charles Lechmere. No eyewitness evidence puts Lechmere in the vicinity of any Ripper murder except for Nichols. Lechmere had a credible reason for being in Bucks Row at that time. No eyewitness evidence shows Lechmere was anything other than the first person to find Nichols body.

[paul g]

Fisherman
Cross found a victim close possibly close to the time of death.
Thats a good find and worth looking into from that point and fair play you have done your homework and come up with a theory which is better than some theories against alleged suspects.

However.
The supporting evidence is full of holes and big ones.

The surname change isn’t a change at all when you look back at his surname history so not much happening on that front.

He killed on his way to work and all victims were killed on his work route and at times that he was presumed to be on his way to work

No they weren’t that is pretty much taken as fact.

The ones that were killed outside of his work route and on his presumed days off we are asked to believe that he was at his mum’s without one not of evidence not one just asked to presume that.

Now we hear you think and ask us to presume he was a psychopath with nothing to back that up.
also a psychopath that cured himself and went on to live a fairly normal life.

His life timescale reads
Normal
psychopath
normal

The thing is fisherman you deserve praise for bringing in a new suspect and for the research you have done.
But when all is said and done everything in your theory ( apart from found close to time off death ) and even that is open to big leaps of faith.

Putting to side the “ unknown perpetrator “ angle
Cross sits way down the lists of known suspects if he is even a suspect at all.

I read all threads on here and for many a moon and through your book which I have read and everything you have posted you have never and I mean never posted anything that apart from finding body close to time of death that points to cross.

That fact if it is a fact when you strip everything away is the only reason he is being considered.

[JeffHamm]

Hi Abby - I'm not sure one way or the other whether there is another situation like Lechmere's, but it would be interesting to find out how behaviours compared if there was. Fisherman speculates that Lechmere killed Nichols and chose to stay to front it out rather than flee when he heard Paul's footsteps approaching. It is a key decision if Lechmere is the killer. It seems counter intuitive to me that a killer would behave that way, but I am not a killer and consider myself mentally stable. Even if Lechmere was not entirely mentally sound, it seems much more likely to me that, if Lechmere was the killer, he would have fled under cover of darkness. His being there and seeking help from Paul fits, in my view, the scenario he describes of discovering the body. Any comparators might help, though of course forensics has developed so much since then the risk calculation would be very different now.

Hi etenguy,

It's a tricky point to evaluate as in part it will depend upon situational aspects that get debated here.

But, it is certainly not unheard of for serial killers to have been seen fleeing a crime scene. David Berkowitz comes to mind and Ted Bundy was spotted fleeing in Florida from the sorority house. Now, one could argue they were already in the process of fleeing, making the comparison problematic. However, there are a lot of serial killer cases, and there will be examples of someone showing up and the offender flees the scene as a result. I can recall reading of such incidents, but at the moment I can't recall a specific case example, and without the details from a specific case it becomes hard to know how comparable the situation is to what we're dealing with in Buck's Row.

On the other hand, Peter Sutcliff, on one or two occasions, was interrupted with a victim. He was laying on the ground with them (victim was dead already I believe), when he spotted someone walking nearby (but not approaching him). He chose to lay still, as it was dark, and wasn't spotted. So, yes, there are cases where they choose to remain hidden, but is this really a comparable case? In Sutcliff's case, might he have made a different choice if the person he saw was headed towards him (more like what we're dealing with?) We'll never know because that didn't happen.

So, in one sense, there are examples of offenders fleeing when interrupted, even risking being spotted at a distance, and there are examples where offenders have "laid low" while a potential witness passes by. But how similar those situations are to Nichol's murder? Well, exact matches are going to be rare because the more exact the comparison has to be, the fewer examples there will be. If the choice of the example doesn't match what one believes happened in Buck's Row, one could always argue the example is invalid for some reason, and when the example corresponds, one will argue the differences don't matter. Confirmation bias is a wonderful thing.

It would be interesting, though, to start compiling examples of serial murderers who have been at a crime scene when a potential witness shows up, and start looking at the cases where they've chosen to flee and cases where they chose to wait it out and continue hiding. One problem, of course, is that if they hid and it worked, we probably don't know about it. Of course, there may occasionally be some evidence that suggests the offender was still there, we'll mostly be dealing with having to take the offender at their word, as with the Sutcliff example, and they're not exactly known for being all that truthful.

- Jeff