A new critique of the Cross/Lechmere theory from Stewart Evans

[Lechmere]

Scott they definitely walked past 29 Hanbury Street together before they parted at Corbett's Court.

Robert - you think they would have raided and interrogated Paul just because he didn't come forward for the Nichols inquest?

[Scott Nelson]

I wasn't aware Cross and Paul walked together past Chapman's Hanbury Street murder site after speaking to Mizen. I suppose they could have. Is the suggestion then that Paul told Cross that he worked close-by, only about 100 yards away? Or did it emerge later from inquiries that Paul worked close-by and then Cross thought he could murder somebody along the route near Paul's place of work and thereby implicate him?

[Robert]

Because he hadn't come forward?

[Lechmere]

Robert
your quick fire scepticism doesnt seem to have been shared by the police - they raided Paul in the middle of the night and interrogated him.

[Robert]

Lechmere, and you think that Cross was trying to implicate Paul - a man who would have had to return to the scene of the Nichols murder, assuming that he did it? Had he popped off for a tea break?

[Lechmere]

Robert
this may unsettle you but people including serial killers often operate with more than one motivation.

Were the police troubled by the dissimilarities between Chapman's Nichols?
Would lechmere have been?
Had a pattern been established by this stage - many (no names) have missed that Tabram was posed.

[Lechmere]

Not here please!

[Fisherman]

Okay, my friend, we will have to agree to disagree on the name thing. :-)



I can make a good (circumstantial) case for Richardson, and I would liked to have had a go, but here is not the right thread.

You are certainly welcome to give it a try, no matter which thread you prefer to use. It would be interesting!

All the best,
Fisherman

[Robert]

If Cross killed Chapman at that time and at that place to incriminate Paul for the Nichols and Chapman murders - and the suggestion seems to be that that was his motive, rather than acting under some inner compulsion - then one might expect Cross to have been careful to only do to Chapman what he'd done to Nichols (i.e. some comparatively minor mutilation and no organ theft). By increasing the severity of the attack, Cross would have run the risk of creating the impression that the killer of Nichols had been interrupted - perhaps by Paul.....

[Jon Guy]

Okay, my friend, we will have to agree to disagree on the name thing. :-)

.
Iīm afraid you canīt. You cannot place Richardson close to all the murder sites by way of logical reasoning, you cannot produce a logical reason as to why he would have been at the sites at the relevant hours, you cannot point out what seems to be a lie to evade the police like the Mizen scam, you do not have Richardson arriving to the inquest in working clothes, you do not have any record of his family being involved in a trade that teaches butchery skills, you have no record of Richardson having his family staying close to the Saturday night murder sites, you donīt have him giving the police a false name etcetera, etcetera.

What we can do with Richardson is to propose him as Chapmanīs killer, nothing else. Lechmere can on very good grounds be proposed as the killer of all the victims. So no, Richardson does not compare at all in that context.

I can make a good (circumstantial) case for Richardson, and I would liked to have had a go, but here is not the right thread.

[Jon Guy]

Richardson was closely questioned by the police and cleared - he had to produce his knife.
We have no reason for believing Lechmere was similarly questioned and plenty of reasons for believing he was not.

Well, he certainly produced a blunt knife, but not the sharp one he used at the market a few minutes after leaving number 29 to finish his bit of leather trimmimg.

[Lechmere]

I know Mr Evans doesn't want to get drawn into this but his speculation that the police agreed to mask Lechmere's identity holds no water because they didn't mask his address and workplace.
That creates a rival conundrum - if guilty why provide those details while just changing his surname?
Obviously we don't know - the main point I would make is that the mere fact of him using the name Cross out of the blue is very odd.
This was very much a 'Sunday best' event.
He had already called himself Lechmere on censuses, his marriage, the electoral register his children's baptisms and their school records - as recently as June 1888.
Maybe Lechmere was more concerned. about hiding his name than his address.
Maybe he was not expecting to be asked his address.

[Lechmere]

Richardson was closely questioned by the police and cleared - he had to produce his knife.
We have no reason for believing Lechmere was similarly questioned and plenty of reasons for believing he was not.

Scott and Hunter
Paul was found by the police after presumably a slightly demanding search and dragged out of bed at night and interrogated.
He worked about 100 yards from the Chapman crime scene.
We don't know exactly when he was raided but given the timeline I think it is a fair guess
that it was after the Chapman murder and the seriousness with which the police clearly treated him indicates they may have suspected him of this crime.

He and Lechmere had walked off together - coincidentally past the pending Chapman murder scene. Lechmere learnt where Paul worked.
Lechmere would have know that Paul hadn't come forward.
I think all this explains why Chapman was killed where she was killed (not the exact location - the general location) and the timing - very soon after the Nichols murder.

As Fisherman has pointed out, the medical evidence suggested she was killed more or less the same time as Nichols.
However if she died later I can think of a scenario where Lechmere could still have dunnit.

[Fisherman]

Jon Guy:

Good morning Christer

Good morning, Jon!

I don`t think they would have asked either his wife or boss about him. But he would need time off work, and whatever paperwork there would be regarding his inquest appearance it obviously had the name Cross upon it, and he would have shown it to his boss to explain why he needed time of work. So, he must have been known as Cross at work.

"Whatever paperwork", yes - he appeared at the cop shop on Sunday evening, by the appearance of things, and the inquest was the day after that. I see no need at all for him to have been handed any paperwork, Jon. Nor do I think that we must accept that his boss would have demanded to see any paper. A trusted employee is a trusted employee, and it was not as if his boss stood to loose financially or something such from it. He only needed to get himself a sub for the day, and subs came in scores.

These similar situations cannot be the sort of examples that Edward gave.

Itīs authority versus citizen. Iīm sorry if we canīt oblige with Police versus citizen. What we have is what we have - and what we must go by.

Okay, if guilty his easiest option was walk away the minute he noticed Paul approaching (was it seventy yards away down Bucks Row?), or even try the easier scam of telling Paul," oh, look at her over there mate, out of her skull" and walking on.

We cannot possibly judge this with any certainty. It was a hundred yards, and he only said he noticed Paul when he was 30-40 yards off. I think he may well have wanted to suss out how much Paul had seen, and so he needed to take some time with him. He also may have wanted a blood alibi. And teaming up with Paul gave the distinctive advantage of providing a "look-at-us-carmen-going-to-work-together" alibi. The police would be less interested in such a combo than in a lone man.
It boils down to how cool a customer he was, and whether he could think on his feet. I think he could.
After that, itīs all good and well to say "He would have run - case dismissed". Itīs just that reality can be complex at times.

Sorry, I disagree. We can have many names in life. Especially when you have different fathers or custdonians. A flase name would have been if he gave the name Billy Jones or Raymond Luxury-Yacht.

Fine, letīs disagree then. Legally a false name is a name that you are not registered by, the way I see it.

I`m not doubting your observations, only the false name thing, for the reasons given. But saying that, I could pick.. say John Richardson and create an equally damning picture, probably more so. Richardson admitted to carrying a knife and his testimony clashed with the medical opinion. Comparing descriptions, he could also have been Pipeman.

Iīm afraid you canīt. You cannot place Richardson close to all the murder sites by way of logical reasoning, you cannot produce a logical reason as to why he would have been at the sites at the relevant hours, you cannot point out what seems to be a lie to evade the police like the Mizen scam, you do not have Richardson arriving to the inquest in working clothes, you do not have any record of his family being involved in a trade that teaches butchery skills, you have no record of Richardson having his family staying close to the Saturday night murder sites, you donīt have him giving the police a false name etcetera, etcetera.

What we can do with Richardson is to propose him as Chapmanīs killer, nothing else. Lechmere can on very good grounds be proposed as the killer of all the victims. So no, Richardson does not compare at all in that context.

All the best,
Fisherman

[Stewart P Evans]

Confusing

...
Mr Evans speculates that Lechmere may have told the police his true identity and the police agreed to keep it quiet to avoid him being pestered by public identification. Mr Evans will be in a better position than me to know whether the police would do such a thing, but it does not explain why in their internal reports the police also kept his true identity secret.
...

Again I am not indicating that I am joining in this 'debate', but I do wish to address the above point. These 'debates' merely highlight the often confused, confusing and contradictory nature of the contemporary press reports.

Apropos of the police reports I thought I had included in my posts the fact that the surviving police reports are only partial survivals of what must have been extensive material that also included all the original written witness statements taken at the time. What survives are summary reports submitted for information and to update the state of police inquiries.

Ergo we simply do not have the full picture from the police side of things, as is the case with all of these murders. This allows theorists to put their own 'spin' on what has survived.

What must be obvious is the fact that with the first (possibly second) murder of this series we see the name Cross with his (correct) address and (correct) employer given in the police reports. That is a pretty unsafe way to hide your identity from the police merely by changing your surname from Lechmere to Cross.

We simply do not know what was contained in the initial internal police reports which would have been submitted with the original witness statements. Therein may have lain the answer to all our speculation. That is merely what I 'speculated', dare I say it was 'informed' speculation, I was a police officer for nearly 30 years and I have dealt with hundreds of witnesses and taken as many statements. I have also acted as coroner's officer on many occasions.