Cross Theory II

[Patrick S]

Patrick
In the Nichols killing certainly, there was no evidence of spray.
I don’t accept your assertions that the culprit, whoever he was, would have been covered in blood.

I'm not asserting it. It's simply more reasonable to assume that the killer would get blood on his person than that he would not. Just as it's reasonable to assume if I spend an evening making pizzas I'm going to get sauce on my shirt.

The example I gave of a family man was indeed explicitly intended to illustrate that if someone like Charles Lechmere was a potential psychopathic serial killer then his opportunities to fulfil his intentions would be restricted and would determine a kill pattern such as occurred. This does not of course prove that it was him – but what we know of his lifestyle fits the pattern well.

What do we know of him and his lifestyle that leads us to believe he may have been Jack the Ripper? Was he ultimately confined to an institution? Was he hanged for murder a few years later? Did he hate women? Was he dealt a bad hand from a prostitute? What do you know that we may not?

For any potential culprit to get off the ground this first base must be covered, in my opinion.

Looking at it neutrally – if any of us truly can – I don’t think we can say that it was more likely that the killer was married or unmarried. Based on what we know of this case, I don’t think that an opinion can sensibly be formed one way or another.

Of course it can. We can base suppositions and opinion on established patterns, historical examples, statistics, trends, etc. For instance, if you tell me that you have an NBA player standing behind door number one, I'm going to make guess that this person is a male, African-American, and over, say, 6'2", Now you might open the door and show me a white, 6' point guard, but I stand a pretty good chance of being right if I base my conclusion on probabilities, facts, statistics, etc.

Serial killers come in all shapes and size. In my opinion this sequence shows signs of someone who controls when he acts. Not of someone who gets totally overcome by atavistic passions. Such killers tend to be more careless and easily caught.

Clearly this is someone who is controlled by passions, urges, compulsion, etc. However, this does not necessarily mean he's careless or out of control. JtR falls into the category of an organized killer. Thus, the attacks, while still precipitated by psychotic compulsion are planned to some extent and somewhat more carefully executed.

The difference between turning up to work in what was probably a near deserted and dirty workplace as one of the first starters, and walking into a hotel with someone on the desk is, I would have thought obvious.

It's not obvious. If he's not a butcher and Pickford's was not a slaughterhouse. He was a cart driver. Blood on his person is going to stand out. If a UPS driver showed up at work with blood on his clothes, it would likely be noted and remembered.

If Charles Lechmere killed Chapman while at work, then I would presume that he would not park his cart in the immediate vicinity. If it was ten minute walk away, that would be quite sufficient distance for no one in the area to know him as the Pickfords driver.

More proof against him, I think. We can't have it both ways. We can't say that the East End was a dangerous, crime-ridden place and then argue that you can park a cart and leave it untended while the driver meanders off to murder prostitutes, time permitting. Unless we are to assume that an unwitting coworker was minding the cart while Cross was off being Jack the Ripper. This strains credulity even further, in my opinion.

This is a good debate and I'm enjoying it!

[Patrick S]

Hi Lechy,

I don't want to speak for Patrick here, but surely the point is not that the killer was covered in blood (although it has to remain a possibility, at least with some of these attacks), but that unless he had prior experience (prior to Nichols, that is) of cutting a throat and mutilating an abdomen in such a way as to avoid getting any blood on him at all, he could hardly have been confident, in the darkness of Buck's Row, and on his onward journey to his place of work, that he had not accidentally got splashed with some of the sticky red stuff, particularly in places where it would have been impossible for him to check without stripping off all his outer clothing and inspecting all the otherwise hard-to-reach bits. For example, if there had been blood on the back of his sleeves, trousers or jacket, he wouldn't have been able to see it for himself, but anyone he met with afterwards might have done.

Would it have been a risk worth taking, and would it have paid off? Clearly yes, if Lechmere did kill on the way to work, taking his knife on each occasion and any innards he had collected, and did manage to avoid all the blood, or nobody noticed any on him. But that would then suggest a highly reckless individual who perhaps felt he could get away with anything, in which case why would he have put himself through the whole carefully choreographed charade with Paul, then PC Mizen, then at the inquest, when he could simply have done a runner and denied everything if stopped along the way. Remember, in either scenario he presumably believed himself free of any incriminating blood stains, so from his point of view who could then have put him at the scene if he hadn't put himself there?

Love,

Caz
X

Exactly! Thanks for helping me to be more clear!

[caz]

Hi Patrick,

Glad to oblige, although I thought you were more than clear yourself.

Lechmere has personal - nay, practically family reasons for suspecting Lechmere, so that is bound to make him see ways round every counter-argument - ways which must seem perfectly reasonable to him, while appearing doubtful in the extreme to anyone able to view things 100% objectively.

That doesn't explain Fisherman's limpet-like attachment to the Cross theory, but then what could?

Love,

Caz
X

[Ginger]

The Old Bailey records are full of cases where goods have been stolen from carts whilst the driver nipped inside a building, sometimes the actual cart was stolen, sometimes the horse was taken.
I doubt very much he could leave his cart unattended.

"The Hooligan Nights" (Clarence Rook, Grant Richards, London, 1899), contains an account, possibly fictional, although certainly inspired by real life, of a criminal who used a confederate to lure an unaccompanied carter into a public house, whereupon the villain drove the wagon away. Instead of trying to fence something so large and valuable, he instead drove to the carting company (their address was painted upon the side) and presented himself as having found the horse and cart wandering loose in the street. He collected thereby a substantial reward.

The same book recounts as well a story of thieves stealing from the unguarded back of a wagon while it was in motion. So, people did leave horses and carts unsupervised, and did send out wagons with only a driver, although both were somewhat risky practices, and all the more so, one imagines, in the East End. I've no documentation of it, but I'd strongly suspect that large, established businesses like Pickford's who trade on their good reputation would be careful about such things.

[Ginger]

The difference between turning up to work in what was probably a near deserted and dirty workplace as one of the first starters, and walking into a hotel with someone on the desk is, I would have thought obvious.

Large stables are generally kept quite clean. To do otherwise when you have large numbers of horses packed tightly together and living (as Victorian workhorses would have been) a stressful lifestyle is to invite disease to take root.

[Lechmere]

Jon
I don’t think anyone has characterised Lechmere - if he was the culprit - as being a criminal genius. Whoever was the culprit must have had a degree of cunning.
If it was Lechmere then I would suggest he would have been a psychopath. Such people tend to be capable of acting calmly and ostensibly normally in stressful situations. They tend to be plausible and ready liars.
None of this would make him – or someone like him – a criminal genius.
Also, no one has suggested that Lechmere would have left his cart unattended.

Ginger
I will post some pictures of Pickfords wagons when I can find where I have put them.
They would have had a variety of types and we have no way of knowing what type Lechmere drove nor whether his type would have needed a ‘drivers mate’.
Juggernauts, lorries and vans regularly get robbed today. I suspect it was a problem since the dawn of wheeled transport. The employment of an extra person to guard against theft is again a perennial problem. The cost of employing such people set off against occasional theft.
Nowadays many stores don’t employ security as they accept a degree of theft as the lesser cost. This sort of calculation has always been made.

When I described the Goods Depot as dirty, I did it as a comparison to an office, for example.

[Lechmere]

Caz
Should the killer – Lechmere or whoever – have been worried about having blood on him?
Logically he should have.
Do serial killers – even cunning ones – always act rationally? No they don’t.
Did Lechmere, or whoever else may have been responsible, have had any opportunity to practice and so understand how to avoid getting blood on him while slashing away?
Possibly via Tabram, Millwood and Wilson?

If he did have some of that red sticky stuff on his clothing would it necessarily have been noticeable?
The streets were dark. Colours don’t show up well in the dark.
If his clothes were dark, then it is unlikely the blood would be noticeable unless he was drenched in the stuff.
I doubt that a carman would be wearing a bright white starched shirt.
Similarly his workplace was a stable and a warehouse – not an office.

The problem of walking away from any of the crime scenes with blood showing about his person was a common one for whoever was the culprit. It was a problem faced and surmounted – seemingly.
In Lechmere’s case he had a place to go, somewhere that plausibly he would have been able to clean himself up. He did not work in a well-lit office – he worked in a working depot and his time of arrival at work was early – almost certainly before many other people had turned up.

Theoretically and purely hypothetically, the best option would be for the killer to live in the centre of the crime zone in his own private accommodation, where he could come and go unobserved and be undisturbed. I know of no proposed culprit who fits this bill and in the real world serial killers do not tend to actually operate in that manner. All sorts of different people in a wide variety of personal circumstances have these barbarous urges that they fulfil – they are rare obviously – but do not tend to act with such premeditation as to be able to order their lives in such a perfect fashion for the commission of their crimes.

But, what's this? You have also returned to the ‘should I go or should I stay’ question. Otherwise known as ‘fight or flight’.
If you are unable to comprehend that a certain type of person feels more comfortable and confident in instinctively turning to face a situation rather than running off in panic (this is not a trait that is specifically tied to serial killers), then it is pointless discussing the matter.
But as I have endless patience (well almost) I will try once more.
If Lechmere decided that Paul was too close for him to flee – because he couldn’t be sure how much Paul had noticed, because he couldn’t be sure that when Paul happened upon the body that he wouldn’t cry out, and he couldn’t be sure that this cry would echo out just as he was passing an inconvenient beat copper - neutralising this threat by insinuating Paul into the ‘discovery’ of the body would be his best option.
I would suggest that if he bumped into a policeman in an uncontrolled manner, his main worry wouldn’t be blood on his clothing, which would probably have been almost invisible in the prevailing lighting. His worry would be the danger of being searched and having his knife discovered.

The blood stains thing is a bit of a red herring - for whoever did it.

Talking of red herrings, you accuse Fisherman of being a limpet?

[Lechmere]

Patrick
As I said, at that time of day, a bit of blood on his clothing would not be a major problem.
In Lechmere’s case he had the probable opportunity to clean up properly at his workplace before he went out in broad day light.

The aspect of Lechmere’s lifestyle that fits the pattern for these murders is that the only opportunity he would have had to kill (given the obvious proviso that he did them) was at precisely the times these killings took place.
That goes for pretty much all of the murders, not just the canonical ones.
I wasn’t suggesting that what we know of his lifestyle, specifically his lifestyle, would lead us to believe that he was Jack the Ripper. That is a different area of discussion.

You seem to provide some pointers to characteristics that you seem regard as plausible indicators of guilt:

Was he ultimately confined to an institution? Was he hanged for murder a few years later? Did he hate women? Was he dealt a bad hand from a prostitute?

I think it is extremely unlikely that whoever did it was conveniently confined in an institution, or was hung or locked up for some other crime – still less that he committed suicide in remorse - at precisely the right moment for the sequence to end.
These neat fits rarely happen in the real world.

Nor do it think that it is necessary, or particularly likely, for the killer to have been a well know (or even a secret) woman hater or to have had a down on prostitutes. Prostitutes are usually killed due to their availability rather than because the culprit has a specific ‘down’ on them.
The list you provided owes much to Victorian thinking.

If you wish to eliminate a potential suspect in a case such as this because he was married and didn’t live alone, and do it on the basis of the type of statistical analysis you gave as an example (average basket ball players) then you would have fitted in well with the Yorkshire Ripper Murder Squad.

But you seem to be in agreement with me in describing the psychological type of the killer at least!

And as I have already said, Lechmere got to work at 4.00 am in the stables in a Goods Station. It was not a UPS depot illuminated with arc lights.
A little blood on dark clothing would not have shown up – and there where mess rooms and such like where he could have more closely inspected his clothes and cleaned up before emerging into the light of day.

Again, again, I have never suggested that Lechmere would have left his cart unattended.
The only victim who may possibly have been killed while he was at work was Chapman.
If this was the case then I believe he took an extra risk because he wanted to find a victim quite quickly and in a generally specific location. Quite unlike the other killings.
That would explain why Chapman was killed slightly later in the morning than the others.
I believe there is evidence that some blood spray was found on the fence. Indicating perhaps that the killer deliberately turned the body and cut in a direction that made it less likely that blood would get on him.
We do not know whether Lechmere had a boy ‘driver’s mate’ or would have used cart minders. The nature of his job meant that he would very often be stuck waiting – for hours sometimes – for his cart to be unloaded. Often he may have stayed with his load himself.
However in extremis, if he felt it necessary, as I think he may have done in the case of Chapman, he could have either used a cart minder or left his boy and taken that extra risk.

Alternatively the doctor may have been right and Chapman may have been killed pretty much at the same hour as Nichols.
We know how much reliance can be placed on eye witness testimony. So I tend to go with the earlier hour for Chapman’s death.
However, I accept the possibility that Chapman could have been killed later in the morning and for that reason I introduce the possibility that Lechmere could have still been responsible for the crime even though he would have been ‘at work’ at the time, due to the nature of his work.

Incidentally, the picture of the East End as a den of poverty and crime was in many ways born of the Ripper murders. I keep reporting that Booth’s 1889 survey divided London into 134 districts, each of roughly 30,000 inhabitants. The district that included Dorset Street, the Victoria Home and Middlesex Street was placed 54th in terms of poverty. Mid table in other words.
The worst areas for poverty and crime were on the South Bank, followed by a couple of north London districts. No murders happened in the worst districts in the East End (eg the western part of Bethnal Green – that included the ‘Old Nichol’, which may interest those who have a hankering for that quarter).

[Ben]

Could he have taken refuge in a common lodging house?
The police certainty thought this was a likely possibility as they devoted a lot of their time ‘checking out’ these establishments after each crime, although it seems that as the series progressed, this opinion lessened as it would be next to impossible for a blood splattered killer – with body-part trophies – to enter such an establishment unnoticed.

Wrong, Lechmere.

And you contradict yourself.

You assert, on the one hand, that the killer would not have been stained with blood, but then do a complete U-turn with regard to Jack using a lodging house by saying he'd be a "blood-spattered" killer. This is a major inconsistency in your reasoning. If the killer entered a lodging house, he would not have been blood-spattered, and nor would he have been frisked for organs upon entry, so you can dispense with those two objections immediately. Some such establishments even provided private cubicles, enabling the killer to gaze at his "trophies" were he so inclined.

By contrast, killing on the way to work is not something that any serial killer can be shown to have done, chiefly because of the obstacle presented by the lack of an obvious "safe house" after arriving at work. I'm unconvinced by your claim that he could have just dumped them at a location at work which you insist wasn't regularly visited. This may have been true at 4.00, but what of afterwards? All those hours, and nobody ventures into the loo or the stables for a nasty surprise?

Lechmere's early work start renders him an irrefutably poor candidate for Chapman, who, in all probability, was murdered at 5:30am.

All the best,
Ben

[Lechmere]

Ben
The best form of defence is attack – eh?
The trouble is you have quoted me very selectively in trying to accuse me of hypocrisy.

Patrick had reopened this thread (post 156) by contending that Lechmere (to paraphrase) would have had to go to work probably covered in blood. This made it seem to him to be unlikely that Lechmere could be the culprit.
You heartily concurred with him.

I answered these criticisms in my post 161, which you selectively quoted me from.
My main point was that I do not believe that it is necessarily the case that the culprit – whoever he was – was covered in blood.

I then made the point that if he was covered in blood, as had been proposed, then the culprit would have problems wherever he went.
I included the common lodging house bit for the benefit of those who think that the culprit may have stayed in such an establishment. I would suggest that a blood splattered murderer would have been spotted by the deputy when he checked in.
I then listed various other options which would be just as perilous for a blood splattered murderer – more perilous than turning up in a dusty, dark and quiet Good Depot that had facilities in which he could clean himself up.

The only inconsistency in reasoning is yours.
You think a blood splattered culprit could slip into a Common Lodging House and secret body parts. There was no privacy in a Common Lodging House. While some had facilities to keep possessions, it would not have been anything like a secure private safe deposit box.
Yet you think that a similar blood splattered culprit would be compromised in a dusty, dark and quiet Good Depot that had facilities in which he could clean himself up. A place where after having worked there for 20 years he would likely know all manner of secluded nooks and crannies among the stables and stores where things could be left safely.

I don’t know why you introduce the prospect of anyone being frisked for body parts.
Perhaps you think the culprit (let’s call him Mr H) after spending a night walking the streets after committing his crime, eventually gains entry to his lodging house and says to the deputy – can you look after this for me mate and the deputy duly gives him a receipt, wondering what the squiggy thing is wrapped in the parcel. Or you think that he took the body parts into his flimsily partitioned cabin which he had to vacate first thing in the morning?

[Ben]

The best form of defence is attack – eh?

I wouldn't know, Lechmere. I rather assumed you were the expert there, considering the regularity with which you are called upon to defend your views.

I would not have posted at all had you not made more inaccurate comments about common lodging houses. Just leave that bit out next time, and we shouldn't have further problems.

Just for the record, I'm not interested in promoting or discussing any suspect other the one this thread relates to. I would only point out that the vast majority of men living in the neighbourhood of the murders would have lived in some form of shared accommodation with strangers. Complete privacy was a rare commodity indeed, and if people were in the business of concealment for whatever reason, their most prudent course of action was to become the needle in the haystack and hide in pain sight. Obviously, the larger establishments that catered for larger numbers facilitated this better than the Hanbury Street set-up, which consisted of several families using the same front door, and carried the greater risk of everyone monitoring everyone else's business.

I have no idea why you think the killer would have been required to hand over a package containing his innards to the night deputy. All he needed to do was keep the wrapped (or not?) organs in his pocket and proceed either to the kitchens, if open (for some good ol' east end cannibalism), or head upstairs to a private cabin, as Jack London did.

No problem at all.

In contrast, killing and eviserating on the way to work (as no other known serial killer has ever done) entailed the necessity of stashing the organs at work, and convince you don't here. It would have meant leaving the sticky, whiffy things there during his whole work day, and hoping nobody ventured into these supposedly private and untrodden areas. I'm not seeing too much evidence for these convenient "nooks and crannies" that you seem to be insisting were there either.

[Patrick S]

Patrick
As I said, at that time of day, a bit of blood on his clothing would not be a major problem.

We'll agree to disagree here. In order to accept Cross as a suspect we must do one of two things. We either accept that reporting to work with a "a bit of blood on his clothing" would not raise any alarms among coworkers, in spite of the fact that a murder had been committed and Cross had discovered it. In his statement he said that he did not touch the body. Thus, he should not have had blood on him. No one observed blood on him. Its reasonable to assume, then, that he had no blood on him, OR we accept that Cross killed Nichols, mutilated her, and didn't get a drop of blood on his person. Both seem pretty implausible to me.

In Lechmere’s case he had the probable opportunity to clean up properly at his workplace before he went out in broad day light.

The aspect of Lechmere’s lifestyle that fits the pattern for these murders is that the only opportunity he would have had to kill (given the obvious proviso that he did them) was at precisely the times these killings took place.
That goes for pretty much all of the murders, not just the canonical ones.
I wasn’t suggesting that what we know of his lifestyle, specifically his lifestyle, would lead us to believe that he was Jack the Ripper. That is a different area of discussion.



You seem to provide some pointers to characteristics that you seem regard as plausible indicators of guilt:

Was he ultimately confined to an institution? Was he hanged for murder a few years later? Did he hate women? Was he dealt a bad hand from a prostitute?

I think it is extremely unlikely that whoever did it was conveniently confined in an institution, or was hung or locked up for some other crime – still less that he committed suicide in remorse - at precisely the right moment for the sequence to end.
These neat fits rarely happen in the real world.

Let's talk about the real world. In the real world serial killers are USUALLY not well adjusted working men with stable 20 years employment histories, wives, kids. In the real world, hopefully, we have some REASON for suspecting an individual for a string of brutal murders, clearly the work of a psychopath, other than the fact that he walked to work through the area and found a body. What else do you know about him? Being committed or arrested are facile examples. What do you know of him, his character, his life that cause you to think he he was JtR? You haven't answered that. Is it your contention that he lived a law abiding life, got a job, got married, had kids, took a few months to kill and dissect prostitutes, then went back to his quiet, simple, working man's life? And you think THIS is what happens in the real world?


Nor do it think that it is necessary, or particularly likely, for the killer to have been a well know (or even a secret) woman hater or to have had a down on prostitutes. Prostitutes are usually killed due to their availability rather than because the culprit has a specific ‘down’ on them.
The list you provided owes much to Victorian thinking.

False. See above. It's clear you are wedded to the idea that Cross was JtR. No amount of argument will put you off that idea.

If you wish to eliminate a potential suspect in a case such as this because he was married and didn’t live alone, and do it on the basis of the type of statistical analysis you gave as an example (average basket ball players) then you would have fitted in well with the Yorkshire Ripper Murder Squad.

Let's look for ANY reason to include Cross! You have this. He discovered the body (someone had to). He walked to work through the area. He and hundreds of others. WHAT ELSE HAVE YOU GOT!? Bullet your reasons to suspect him for dummies like me. Help me understand.

But you seem to be in agreement with me in describing the psychological type of the killer at least!

And as I have already said, Lechmere got to work at 4.00 am in the stables in a Goods Station. It was not a UPS depot illuminated with arc lights.
A little blood on dark clothing would not have shown up – and there where mess rooms and such like where he could have more closely inspected his clothes and cleaned up before emerging into the light of day.


Again, again, I have never suggested that Lechmere would have left his cart unattended.
The only victim who may possibly have been killed while he was at work was Chapman.
If this was the case then I believe he took an extra risk because he wanted to find a victim quite quickly and in a generally specific location. Quite unlike the other killings.
That would explain why Chapman was killed slightly later in the morning than the others.

Based on what? Why? Just because it fits the facts of what happened?

I believe there is evidence that some blood spray was found on the fence. Indicating perhaps that the killer deliberately turned the body and cut in a direction that made it less likely that blood would get on him.

You said there was no spray when dead (or nearly dead bodies) have their throats cut. You changed your mind?

We do not know whether Lechmere had a boy ‘driver’s mate’ or would have used cart minders. The nature of his job meant that he would very often be stuck waiting – for hours sometimes – for his cart to be unloaded. Often he may have stayed with his load himself.
However in extremis, if he felt it necessary, as I think he may have done in the case of Chapman, he could have either used a cart minder or left his boy and taken that extra risk.

Again, based on what?

Alternatively the doctor may have been right and Chapman may have been killed pretty much at the same hour as Nichols.
We know how much reliance can be placed on eye witness testimony. So I tend to go with the earlier hour for Chapman’s death.\

Because it fits your suspect.

However, I accept the possibility that Chapman could have been killed later in the morning and for that reason I introduce the possibility that Lechmere could have still been responsible for the crime even though he would have been ‘at work’ at the time, due to the nature of his work.

Based on what you know of his movements? His route? What WAS his route? Did he have a regular route?

Incidentally, the picture of the East End as a den of poverty and crime was in many ways born of the Ripper murders. I keep reporting that Booth’s 1889 survey divided London into 134 districts, each of roughly 30,000 inhabitants. The district that included Dorset Street, the Victoria Home and Middlesex Street was placed 54th in terms of poverty. Mid table in other words.

Yet it was normal for people who lived there to sashay around town with blood on them? It would not have stood out until he found opportunity to clean up. We are going down the rabbit hole again.

The worst areas for poverty and crime were on the South Bank, followed by a couple of north London districts. No murders happened in the worst districts in the East End (eg the western part of Bethnal Green – that included the ‘Old Nichol’, which may interest those who have a hankering for that quarter).

I do want to thank you. I once suspected Cross. This thread has helped me see reason. I know think he was totally innocent.

[Lechmere]

Patrick

If I thought that Lechmere ‘reported to work’ in a manner where he would have been in clear view of his workmates, then I would agree that a sensible serial killer would think twice about killing on his way to work, in case he was unsuccessful in avoiding getting conspicuous amounts of blood on his person.

The first difficulty in taking this as an absolute is that although I would tend to guess that this killer was relatively clever, or cunning, and within certain bounds careful, serial killers tend to act with an overriding degree of compulsion. Not that I would imagine that he would kill without control. However serial killer, even very intelligent ones, often do things which leave you wondering – because they have inner compulsions which a normal person cannot readily comprehend.
Furthermore, as I think I tried to establish, if the killer was a local man, who had a family and who's work meant that he had to be on the streets in the early hours of the morning, the logistics of his life would mean that the only time he would be able to kill would be at the times these killings took place (most of them anyway).
Such a man would have to kill at that time and hope he would not get noticed when he ‘reported to work’. Or he could just remain frustrated.

However, I think it is far more likely that when Lechmere arrived at the Broad Street Depot in the early hours of the morning, it would have still been dark and relatively quiet, and that this provided all the cover he needed. It allowed him to check himself over and clean himself up prior to the light coming up and the full workforce arriving.

So I don’t accept your premise that if he had blood on his clothing when he turned up at Broad Street that this necessarily would have been noticed by anyone.
I suspect that the killer – whoever he was – was actually very careful not to get conspicuous amounts of blood on his person.

In the Nichols case, did Lechmere say that he did not touch the body?

This account of his inquest testimony was published in the Times, but the other reports do not tell this aspect significantly differently:

They both crossed over to the body, and witness took hold of the woman's hands, which were cold and limp. Witness said, "I believe she is dead." He touched her face, which felt warm. The other man, placing his hand on her heart, said "I think she is breathing, but very little if she is." Witness suggested that they should give her a prop, but his companion refused to touch her.

So Lechmere said he took hold of the victims hand and also touched her face. In the instance of this murder, any blood he had on him accordingly had a ready excuse.
Lechmere’s refusal to touch the body was only in respect of Paul’s suggestion that they prop her up. I would suggest he did not want to prop her up as the neck wound, and the victim’s mortality, would have become obvious.

If you want to talk about the real world, in the real world there have been serial killers who have been married and had children. In the real world there have been serial killers with steady jobs.
We have no idea whether or not Charles Lechmere was well adjusted.

However in the real world most serial killers psychopathy is undiagnosed prior to their capture.
The ‘suspects’ who can tolerably be estimated to have been subject to psychopathic tendencies invariably have no history of this type of attack or cannot be reliably placed in the East End.

From the dry records we know that Charles Lechmere was from a broken home.
His grandfather, Chares Fox Lechmere, was the younger son of a wealthy member of the Herefordshire gentry. However his line of the family rapidly spiralled down the social scale and migrated to the East End, while their cousins lived in comfort in Fownhope Court (which was quite unlike Miller’s Court).
His father, John Allen Lechmere deserted his young family when Charles was a baby and started a new life in Northamptonshire.
Charles Lechmere had no male authority figure in his life until he was 9 years old, when his mother remarried, bigamously, a policeman who was only fourteen years older than himself. This was Thomas Cross, who was 9 years younger than his wife, Charles Lechmere’s mother.
Charles Lechmere’s only sibling, his older sister Emily, died of TB in July 1869. In December of the same year, Thomas Cross the twice over imposed authority figure (step father and policeman) also died.
In his later life Charles Lechmere exhibited an anal attention to detail and evidence of a controlling personality. That is why we have over 100 plus records of his life.

Charles Lechmere’s first child, also Charles Allen Lechmere, was born in March 1872. He seems to have been sickly and died in 1875. The unsolved murder of Harriet Buswell took place in Great Coram Street nine months after this birth.

Another of Charles Lechmere’s daughters was born in March 1888 a couple of weeks before the attack on Ada Wilson. This daughter also seems to have been sickly and died in October 1890.

Charles Lechmere’s second step father, Joseph Forsdike died in December 1889, exactly three months after the discovery of the Pinchin Street Torso, in a railway arch a few minutes lugging distance away from where he lived at 147 Cable Street.

So while Charles Lechmere may have been a well-adjusted citizen, there is enough material there to suggest potential psychological undercurrents.
And no, I don’t think he took a couple of months out of his law abiding life to kill and dissect prostitutes. There were unsolved deaths before and after the so-called C5.

You say it is false that:
‘it is necessary, or particularly likely, for the killer to have been a well know (or even a secret) woman hater or to have had a down on prostitutes. Prostitutes are usually killed due to their availability rather than because the culprit has a specific ‘down’ on them.’
We shall have to disagree.

But then you say:

Let's look for ANY reason to include Cross! You have this. He discovered the body (someone had to). He walked to work through the area. He and hundreds of others. WHAT ELSE HAVE YOU GOT!? Bullet your reasons to suspect him for dummies like me. Help me understand.

Although you have regularly claim (ha! A bit unconvincingly) that you ‘once suspected Cross’, you seem unaware of the points against him…

• Given the usual caveats about Victorian timings he had the time to carry out the attack.
• The culprit seems to have been disturbed (the abdominal wounds were covered - unlike other Whitechapel Murders).
• Paul spotted Lechmere very close to the body before Lechmere had raised the alarm.
• There was a strange meeting between the two – with Paul thinking he was about to be mugged.
• There was the unusual touching of the body – unlike other Whitechapel Murders.
• They failed to alert any local householders and abandoned the body which they claimed they thought was unconscious.
• There was disagreement between PC Mizen and Lechmere over what was said in their conversation. Mizen claimed Lechmere said he was wanted by a policeman.
• Lechmere claimed he was late for work yet didn’t take the quickest route to work. When he left Mizen he went with Paul and avoided a route past the Tabram murder scene.
• Lechmere did not present himself to give a formal interview almost certainly until the Sunday, after the appearance of Paul’s newspaper story which put him next to the body.
• Lechmere gave his name as Charles Cross – rather than the name he gave in every other instance that we know of in his well recorded life when he had any dealings with authority.
• Lechmere turned up to the inquest in his work clothes – giving a humble appearance and possibly indicating that he did not tell his wife where he was going (the Lechmere family were ignorant of their great great grandfather’s involvement in the Ripper case until recently).
• He seems to have avoided giving his address in open court at the inquest.
• He can be geographically linked to every one of the Whitechapel murder crime scenes and several other unsolved deaths, and also to the site of the Goulston Street Graffiti or apron drop.

I think that’s enough to be going on with.

It was said that a 5.30 time of death for Chapman definitely counted Charles Lechmere out.
I pointed out that there is no reason to suggest that he could not have carried out this murder if it did happened at around 5.30 am. That’s all. No one knows where he drove his cart – so to claim that he couldn’t have done it at that time is clearly ridiculous.
Equally he could have done it with an earlier timing – based on the doctor’s estimate.
As a matter of course I don’t put much faith in any of the eye witnesses – or ear witnesses in the case of Cadosch. That also goes for Schwartz and Lawende.

PS I said there was no evidence that there was any blood spray in the Nichols case, but was in the Chapman case. However in the Chapman case it seems that an effort was made to ensure the spray went against the fence and away from the culprit.

[Jon Guy]

However, I think it is far more likely that when Lechmere arrived at the Broad Street Depot in the early hours of the morning, it would have still been dark and relatively quiet, and that this provided all the cover he needed. It allowed him to check himself over and clean himself up prior to the light coming up and the full workforce arriving.

Ed

Having recently perused the the Old Bailey cases which contains details on the Pickfords company, it does appear that there was a degree of security, such as clerks and watchmen who would watch employees carefully to ensure they weren`t lifting goods off the premises etc etc.
I certainly get the impression that Pickfords wasn`t the ghost ship you suggest it was at that time of the morning. In fact, there would have been a whole shift starting at the same time as Cross, all using the same facilities at the same time.

[Lechmere]

Jon
It isn’t a fact that a whole shift started at 4.00 am. All we know is that Charles Lechmere said he had to be in work at 4.00 am on that particular day. We testified that he saw no one else from when he left home to when he arrived at work – apart from Paul and Mizen.
Yes, the Old Bailey Transcripts make interesting reading. They illustrate that there were quiet places someone could go in Broad Street and that shifts started at different times.
Obviously the goods at the station were kept secure although there seems to have been a major theft issue.
Some of the Pickford's vans had boys but crimes were committed virtually in front of these boys.
The North West Railway Company employed policemen who were looking for people taking stuff out of the station (rather than in), although the police office there seems to have opened after 5.15 am.
The Pickford's depot within the station was distinct from the rest of the station anyway.
Which cases in particular were you referring to?