The Darkness of Bakers Row

[Fiver]

[COLOR=#1abc9c]My reasoning has been given many times, but here it is again: Charles Lechmere said he left home at around 3.30. Coroner Baxter said that the time at which the body was found could not have been far off 3.45. If the approximated timings were both spot on, then we have an established time gap of eight minutes. But we cannot know if the approximations WERE spot on, and so all we can say is that the timings given seem to involve a time gap of eight minutes. These are unshakable facts.

Again, you refuse to present the full picture. You treat approximations as being precise. You ignore most of the witnesses. You selectively quote Baxter. You claim your speculations are not just facts, but unshakeable facts.

"Mr. Baxter proceeded to point out that the unfortunate woman was last seen alive at half-past two o'clock on Saturday morning, Sept 1, by Mrs. Holland, who knew her well. Deceased was at that time much the worse for drink, and was endeavouring to walk eastward down Whitechapel. What her exact movements were after this it was impossible to say; but in less than an hour and a quarter her dead body was discovered at a spot rather under three-quarters of a mile distant." - 23 September 1888 Daily Telegraph

That's Baxter saying that Nichols was murdered before 3:45am. How much before? We don't know. But clearly Baxter did not think there was a time gap in Lechmere's testimony. Neither did the jury. Neither did the press. Those are unshakeable facts.

"Police-constable John Thail [Thain] stated that the nearest point on his beat to Buck's- row was Brady-street. He passed the end every thirty minutes on the Thursday night, and nothing attracted his attention until 3.45 a.m., when he was signalled by the flash of the lantern of another constable (Neale)." - 18 September 1888 Daily Telegraph

"Police constable John Neil deposed that on Friday morning at a quarter to four o'clock he was going down Buck's row, Whitechapel, from Thomas street to Brady street. Not a soul was about. He was round there about half an hour previously, and met nobody then. the first thing he saw was a figure lying on the footpath." - 3 September 1888 Daily News

"Police constable Mizen said that about a quarter to four o'clock on Friday morning he was at the corner of Hanbury street and Baker's row, when a carman passing by in company with another..." - 4 September 1888 Daily News

All three police officers' times rule out 3:45 as the time that Lechmre found the body, placing that event far enough before 3:45am that Lechmere and Paul had left Bucks Row before PC Neil entered the street. PC Mizen, who was knocking people up, put Lechmere and Cross at Hanbury Street and Bakers Row at 3:45am. Since Mizen was knocking people up, he was likely to have pocket watch. He certainly had a motive for undermining Lechemre and Paul, since both had accused Mizen of dereliction of duty.

But neither Mizen, Neil, nor Thain thought there was an eight minute time gap in Lechemre's testimony. After all, their testimonies showed it could not exist. Those are unshakeable facts.

"I beg to report that about 3.40am 31st Ult. as Charles Cross, "carman" of 22 Doveton Street, Cambridge Road, Bethnal Green was passing through Bucks Row, Whitechapel (on his way to work) he noticed a woman lying on her back in the footway...he stopped to look at the woman when another carman (also on his way to work) named Robert Paul of 30 Foster St., Bethnal Green came up..." - Inspector Abberline's report of 19 Sept 1888

That's an official report by the man in charge of the case. Unlike you, Inspector Abberline looked at all the evidence. He weighed the time estimates of Paul, Lechmere, and the three PCs and concluded that Polly Nichols was killed around 3:40am. Inspector Abberline concluded there was no 8 minute time gap. That's an unshakeable fact.

Inspectors Helson and Spratling were present at the inquest. So was Detective Segeant Enwright of Scotland Yard. Nome of them disagreed with Abberline's time estimate of 3:40am. None of them thought there was an 8 minute time gap. Those are facts.

But you aren't interested in facts unless they can be twisted to fit your theory.

[A P Tomlinson]

That's an official report by the man in charge of the case. Unlike you, Inspector Abberline looked at all the evidence. He weighed the time estimates of Paul, Lechmere, and the three PCs and concluded that Polly Nichols was killed around 3:40am. Inspector Abberline concluded there was no 8 minute time gap. That's an unshakeable fact.

I don't mean to be a you-know-what, but I think you need to re-phrase & clarify that Abberline concluded she was "Found"around 3.40 or a whole new can of worms might open up...

[Fiver]

[COLOR=#1abc9c]As usual, when Lechmeres name is mentioned, an avalanche of posts arrive, all of them written by the same people as always.

You need to work on your reading comprehension.

Posters who regularly post on Lechemre threads have refuted your theory. But posters that only occasionally post on Lechmere threads have also refuted your theory. Even posters with less than a years time on the site or less than one hundred posts have refuted your theories on this thread.

[Fisherman]

This sort of suggests Cross is thinking something along the lines of "He thinks I'm a threat, I'd better show him this body and try and talk my way round it."
It still doesn't address why, if he has literally just finished killing this woman that he goes out of his way to stop a man who is clearly trying to avoid him and draw his attention to it. He has no idea if he has blood on his face, or on his clothes...

If Paul is close enough to touch her, at that point we have to assume that HE is in something like the Documentary pose ascribed to Lechmere and leaning by the body. At that point he is a quicker and easier kill than Polly.

I for one don't discount the suggestion he may be the killer. He is absolutely a person of interest. But I don't think, with the evidence we have, there is anything near a case to put forward, beyond "you can't disprove it".
We see this with the back and forth over the times. Abberline provides (as far as I'm aware) the only timeframe on the Nichols murder that isn't based purely on times "around" the quarters with his "3:40" etc, and of all the coppers and witnesses he's the one I'd most trust over the measuring and keeping of time. So I can't see what suggests he was wrong.

My principal issue is that we seem to need to start from a "He did it, so lets work out how..." and there's just not enough from even the Nichols murder to establish that, even with the selective use of witnesses and times, let alone all the other murders.

I am not working from "he did it, so lets work out how". I am working from how there is a large array of circumstantial evidence that seems to point straight to him. I have never once argued that he is the killer because nobody can disprove it - I consider that a pathetic way to go about it, and I find tat whenever that argument arises, it always do so in combination with very poor suspects. But NOT with Lechmere, so we may need to get real on that score.

My view is that there is a lot of things that make him an extremely good suspect in the Nichols case, that there is not anywhere near enough to make his the killer in any of the other cases, if we isolate them, but that when we instead weigh them together, there is quite enough to convince me that he is either the killer or the person that has racked up more circumstantial evidence without being the killer, than anybody else in criminal history. And you are perfectly welcome to disprove THAT, if you can. Which is an entirely different matter than trying so disprove that Lechmere was the killer. Any examples of people who had heaps of circumstantial evidence pointing in their way, without being guilty and without having been framed, would help us a great deal in clarifying the case.

[Fisherman]

R J Palmer! Lets get to the core immediately and waste no time:

I then wrote:

"The distinction is a little tedious, but what they are saying is that his own account of leaving around that time would place him in Buck's Row 6 or 7 minutes ahead of Robert Paul, whereas Lechmere also states Paul was only about 40 yards behind him. Thus, Lechmere must be lying."

What do you find unfair about this statement?

That nobody representing the Lechmere theory - and that will be me and Edward Stow - has ever said that Lechmere must be lying.If you have heard or read other people who believe the carman is guilty, you are welcome to criticize them, but you don't get to say that any of the ones behind the theory have ever said that the timings mean that Lechmere must be guilty. Inferring such a thing is equal to making us responsible for a statement that none of us would utter, on account of how you, me, Edward Stow and the rest of the ripperological world with few exceptions, know that making that statement would be a falsehood.

That is what I find unfair about your statement.

[A P Tomlinson]

I am not working from "he did it, so lets work out how". I am working from how there is a large array of circumstantial evidence that seems to point straight to him. I have never once argued that he is the killer because nobody can disprove it - I consider that a pathetic way to go about it, and I find tat whenever that argument arises, it always do so in combination with very poor suspects. But NOT with Lechmere, so we may need to get real on that score.

My view is that there is a lot of things that make him an extremely good suspect in the Nichols case, that there is not anywhere near enough to make his the killer in any of the other cases, if we isolate them, but that when we instead weigh them together, there is quite enough to convince me that he is either the killer or the person that has racked up more circumstantial evidence without being the killer, than anybody else in criminal history. And you are perfectly welcome to disprove THAT, if you can. Which is an entirely different matter than trying so disprove that Lechmere was the killer. Any examples of people who had heaps of circumstantial evidence pointing in their way, without being guilty and without having been framed, would help us a great deal in clarifying the case.

I think when it comes to anything other than the Nichols matter, that we are stretching it pretty thin to refer to it as even "circumstancial evidence" since it is largely down to the phrase that is one of my particular bugbears, "He is geographically linked to multiple murders" which is Youtube-Devotee long hand for "He lived in the Whitechapel area".

I struggle to see what separates him as a suspect from any man who lived on Bucks row and was at home at the time the body was found. I'll pre-empt the obvious by saying I simply don't buy that he lied to Mizen or the coroner, either about a police officer or his name. Because when you scratch the sufrace neither makes sense. And I see absolutely neither need nor reason to question Abberline's time scale, beyond making it fit a predetermined conclusion.
And at that point I realise that my argument is becoming circular, back to my previous reasoning.

[Fisherman]

I’ll finish with an example (with a bit of Sweden thrown in just for you)

On Tuesday I agreed to go to IKEA with my brother. I was visiting my mom so he said that he’d pick me up there at around 2.30 (it usually took him around 30 minutes to get from his work to there and he finished work at exactly 2.00)

We both estimated that he’d arrived at fairly close to 2.30 and when I asked my mother she agreed at close to 2.30. So by your thinking 2.30 was the likeliest time (and we had 3 people all estimating the same) We were able to check though because as soon as he arrived he texted his wife to tell her he’d be late picking her up. The text was timed at 2.39. So 9 minutes out. In 2023.

And yet you insist on narrowing down times in 1888!

These times cannot be narrowed down if we use evidence honestly. Cross has no case to answer. The ‘case’ against him is a combination of exaggeration, manipulation and the deliberate misuse of the English language. The efforts to shoehorn this clearly innocent man is a stain on the subject. An embarrassment.

Here we go again, you want to claim things as facts that cannot be claimed as facts. And you keep on banging on about me being a liar, dishonest, misleading and manipulating.
For example, when I argue that the time most representative of "not far off 3.45" is in fact 3.45, you call it manipulation.
How on earth can that be manipulation?
What time would be equally representative of "not far off 3.45" while not being 3.45???
Yes, it may be that another time applies than 3.45, I have pointed this out, but it remains a fact that no other time is as representative of "not far off 3.45" as 3.45. There is no manipulation whatsoever involved, there are the laws of physics only.

If this is the kind of proof you are going to use to take yourself the right to call people you cannot prove wrong, then it does you no favors in terms of veracity. Your accusations, that can be proven wrong - because no other time IS as representative of "not far off 3.45" as 3.45 is, and that has been a fact since time was invented - fall back on yourself.

You then, rather amazingly, try to prove yourself right by sharing a story about a a trip to IKEA. And by telling us that people can get times wrong.
But that is not the point, Herlock. It never was. Nobody contests that this is so - how could we?

The point is that if you and your brother and your mother and all of your relatives and friends all THOUGHT that you were picked up at 2.30, while you were in fact picked up at 2.39, that does not mean that when we interview all of your family and they all say that they think you were picked up at 2.30, people investigating the matter (and no, I don't think that anybody investigated it, I am speaking theoretically) would be likely to go "No, they are probably all wrong, he was probably picked up at 2.39 instead". Instead, what the investigators will do - if they are not provided with the revealing mess the way your sister in law was - is to go "2.30 is the likely time, and we need to work from it being our best guess, not least since multiple people agree about it".

Therefore, if your IKEA trip had been tied to a gruesome murder, where you or any of your kin could have been responsible if you were picked up at 2.30 but NOT if you were picked up at 2.39, there would be an incorrect belief that any of you could be the culprit. In retrospect, we all would know that the timing was nine minutes off, and that you were innocent. But that, and this is the salient matter, would not change the fact that the investigators did the exact right thing, working from the assumption that you could be guilty. Because they based their investigation on the only timings they had been given, and they all pointed to you getting picked up at 2.30.

In the Lechmere case, we do not HAVE that mess from a sister in law, and therefore we cannot establish that the timing "around 3.30" must have been many minutes off. Or that it was correct. It COULD have been many minutes off, but until evidence surfaced that proved that, any investigator would be wise to work from the assumption that 3.30 is the best bid there was. Equally, any investigator would be aware that this timing COULD be off, but it nevertheless has to represent the best bid there is.
Ergo, until it can be proven that the timings in the Lechmere case are wrong, it applies that they suggest that there was a time gap of eight minutes - just as it, until your sister in law got involved, it applied that any working premise would favor the assumption that you were picked up at 2.30 and that you could be guilty of the IKEA murder.

Me, I avoid IKEA - too crowded and you have to walk the full length of each floor every time you put your foot inside that labyrinth.

Again the same request - PROVE that I lie, that I manipulate, that I misrepresent, that I am devious and ill willing before you make the claims that I am. Surely, Herlock, you are able to refute my claims about the timings effectively and conclusively, if you have such a great case. You should note have to resort to allegations of lies, you should be home and dry in ten seconds, should you not?

[Fisherman]

I think when it comes to anything other than the Nichols matter, that we are stretching it pretty thin to refer to it as even "circumstancial evidence" since it is largely down to the phrase that is one of my particular bugbears, "He is geographically linked to multiple murders" which is Youtube-Devotee long hand for "He lived in the Whitechapel area".

He did not live in the Whitechapel area, though - he lived in Bethnal Green. And his route to work took him right through Spitalfields, where four of the murders under discussion took place. And if he used the two - equally time consuming -thoroughfares of Hanbury Street and Old Montague Street, he could well have passed right by three of the sites and quite close to the fourth, regardless of which route of the two he took, he would pass the sites only a few minutes away.
That is another thing than "living in Whitechapel".
It also applies that we are dealing with an eviscerating serial killer, who inflicted damage on his victims that more or less proved that we are only dealing with the one killer (with the obvious exception of the Stride case), and so any case that can be made for anybody in ONE of the murders, more or less clinched that he must be looked upon with great suspicion in the others too.
The links he had to the Stride murder site and the Eddowes ditto does. not weaken the case against Lechmere in any way. He is absolutely unique in this context. So your misgivings seem less guided by any real insights than a general disliking of the carman as a suspect. You are entitled to that, but less so to claim that his living in, herm, Whitechapel, is all there is to go on.

I struggle to see what separates him as a suspect from any man who lived on Bucks row and was at home at the time the body was found. I'll pre-empt the obvious by saying I simply don't buy that he lied to Mizen or the coroner, either about a police officer or his name. Because when you scratch the sufrace neither makes sense. And I see absolutely neither need nor reason to question Abberline's time scale, beyond making it fit a predetermined conclusion.
And at that point I realise that my argument is becoming circular, back to my previous reasoning.

You struggle to see what separates him from anyone living in Bucks Row, and who can be proven to have been at home at the time of the murder?

I will help out - he was observed, all alone, close by the freshly slain Polly Nichols. That is what tells him apart from Walter Purkiss, for example.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Here we go again, you want to cling things as facts that cannot be claimed as facts. And you keep on banging on about me being a liar, dishonest, misleading and manipulating. For example, when I argue that the time most representative of "not far off 3.45" is in fact 3.45, you call it manipulation. How on earth can that be manipulation? What time would be equally representative of "not far off 3.45" while not being 3.45?
Yes, it may be that another time applies than 3.45, I have pointed this out, but it remains a fact that no other time is as representative of "not far off 3.45" as 3.45.

Absolute nonsense. Its no more or less likely than 3.40 or 3.41 or 3.42 or 3.43 or 3.44 because Baxter wasn’t claiming to know. He wasn’t saying “well it must have been very close to 3.45.” All that he was saying was that the body had to have been discovered before Neil, Thain and Mizen got involved. Therefore it happened before 3.45. And it couldn’t have been a great deal before 3.45 because he had a rough estimate of when Cross found the body. So even if he’d left the house at exactly 3.30 and arrived at 3.37 then that’s approximately when the body was found. Or he could have worked from Mizen’s 3.45 and deducted Paul’s 4 minutes giving 3.41. So it occurred not long before 3.45 which is what Baxter was saying. We can say no more than this. If we are viewing the case honestly of course.

If this is the kind of proof you are going to use to take yourself the right to call people you cannot prove wrong, then it does you no favors in terms of veracity. Your accusations, that can be proven wrong - because no other time IS as representative of "not far off 3.45" as 3.45 is, and that has been a fact since time was invented - fall back on yourself.

How can anyone post such drivel? Staggering!!! You really don’t know what you’re talking about.

You then, rather amazingly, try ti prove yourself right by recap ting your trip to IKEA. And by telling us that people can get times wrong. But that is not the point, Herlock. The point is that if you and your brother and your mother and all of your relatives and friends all THOUGHT that you were picked up at 2.30, while you were in fact picked up at 2.39, that does not mean that when we interview all of your family and they all say that they think you were picked up at 2.30, people investigating the matter (and no, I don't think that anybody investigated it, I am speaking theoretically) would be likely to go "No, they are probably all wrong, he was probably picked up at 2.39 instead". Instead, what the investigators will do - if they are not provided with the revealing mess the way your sister in law was - that will and should go "2.30 is the likely time, and we need to work from it being our best guess, not least since multiple people agree about it".

Therefore, if your IKEA trip had been tied to a gruesome murder, where you or any of your kin could have been responsible if you were picked up at 2.30 but NOT if you were picked up at 2.39, there would be an incorrect belief that any of you could be the culprit. In retrospect, we all would know that the timing was nine minutes off, and that you were innocent, but that would not change the fact that the investigators did the right thing, working from the assumption that you could be guilty. Becasue they based their investigation on the only timings they had been given, and they all pointed to you getting picked up at 2.30.

But it couldn’t be used. For f***s sake Christer! Just for once stop wriggling on the hook. I was pointing out how people can not only be wrong in their estimations but they can be surprisingly wrong by a large timespan. Which gives the utter lie to your constant claim of the estimated time being the likeliest to be correct. You are sooooo wrong. And totally deliberately so. It’s a tactic and nothing more bdcause it’s impossible that an educated man can’t grasp this point.

In the Lechmere case, we do not HAVE that mess from a sister in law, and therefore we cannot establish that the timing "around 3.30" must have been many minutes off. It COULD have been many minutes off, but until evidence surfaced that proved that, any investigator would be wise to work from the assumption that 3.30 is the best bid there is. Equally, any investigator would be aware that this timing COUOD be off, but it nevertheless has to represent the best bid there is.
Ergo, until it can be proven that the timings in the Lechmere case are wrong, it applies that they suggest that there was a time gap of eight minutes - just as it, until your sister in law got involved, it applied that any working premise would favor the assumption that you were picked up at 2.30.

Utterly without merit. More manipulation.

Me, I avoid IKEA - too crowded and you have to walk the full length of each floor every time you put your foot inside that labyrinth.

Again the same request - PROVE that I lie, that I manipulate, that I misrepresent, that I am devious and ill willing before you make the claims that I am. Surely, Herlock, you are able to refute my claims about the timings effectively and conclusively, if you have such a great case. You should note have to resort to allegations of lies, you should be home and dry in ten seconds, should you not?

Ive done it over many posts. I even posted a list.

[Herlock Sholmes]

You struggle to see what separates him from anyone living in Bucks Row, and who can be proven to have been at home at the time of the murder?

I will help out - he was observed, all alone, close by the freshly slain Polly Nichols. That is what tells him apart from Walter Purkiss, for example.

As was every single person in the history of crime who find a body. Hardly unique is it. What else is there?

ZILCH

[Fisherman]

You need to work on your reading comprehension.

Since you claim that I "treat approximations as being precise.", it is obviously the other way around. I have stated time and time again now that I ackonowledge that we cannot do that, so it seems your reading comprehension went out the window, Fiver.

Sadly, this is what I find run regularly do: claim things on my behalf that are not true. Things that would paint me out as a complete moron, unacquainted with the case details.

if such a thing happens once, it can be corrected. If it becomes a pattern, it is another thing. And in your case, it has become a pattern.

Now, go back and read up and you will see what I say: The timings cannot be regarded as precise, but since we have no other timings, it applies that they seem to suggest an eight minute gap.

Fair is fair, and you don't find me misrepresenting your views. We are not supposed to, because that risks to give a skewed picture of our opponents. And you don't want to do that, Fiver, do you?

Posters who regularly post on Lechemre threads have refuted your theory. But posters that only occasionally post on Lechmere threads have also refuted your theory. Even posters with less than a years time on the site or less than one hundred posts have refuted your theories on this thread.

Yes, and people who post on other forums refute YOUR ideas and claims, Fiver. As I said before, that kind of popularity contest was never in any way a reliable thing. Luckily, in this case I can ot be refuted, since it is a proven fact that the timings DO suggest a time gap of 8 minutes. So any effort to try and refute that is logical and factual harakiri.

In the future, I would prefer if you made your points and stood by them, without claiming to have lots and lots of followers. I will do the same, and that is the only way to do debate fairly. If you feel you cannot stand up for your points without calling in the fire brigade, that tells a story too. It's your choice.

[Fisherman]

As was every single person in the history of crime who find a body. Hardly unique is it. What else is there?

ZILCH

There is a lot more, and the post was in reply to A P Tomlinsons rather exotic claim that anybody who was at home in Bucks Row during the murder are equally viable as suspects as the man who was found alone close by the body of Polly Nichols when she was still bleeding.

But this has become the same ping-pong that you always have on offer, so I will say no more in the errand.

[Fisherman]

Ive done it over many posts. I even posted a list.

That is the normal approach: "I have already done that".

Surely, it would give you great pleasure to do so again, and reveal me as a liar? So lets see that list, Herlock.

i suspect is consists of cases as "great" as the one I mentioned above, where you call it "manipulation" to say that then closest time there is to "around 3.30" is 3.30.

Come on now, show us that list! Or point me to it! Fair is fair.

[Herlock Sholmes]

The reason that I thought it a waste of time to repost is because I’ve experienced your desperate wriggling on numerous occasions so I know something for certain…whatever your response, it will be nonsense.

• Your omission of the word ‘about’ when discussing a potential gap of time between Cross leaving home and the discovery of the body is clear evidence of editing. You had used ‘about’ in a previous chapter so you cannot claim error but when you were making the claim of a gap it ‘disappeared.’ It was also quite deliberately omitted from the documentary too and the ‘still’ shows that the evidence presented to Scobie also claimed that Lechmere left the house at 3.30 and not about. This led Scobie to assume that there must have been a gap which naturally he would find created an element of suspicion around Cross. Would he have considered there to have been ‘case to answer’ without this. At the very least I’d say that it would have thrown a large doubt. Personally I think that without the ‘gap’ he wouldn’t have said that there was a case to answer. So…editing.
• You have previously and numerously proceeded to narrow down this ‘about.’ When I and others suggested that 3.35 or 3.34 was ‘about 3.30’ you were clearly unhappy with this. You said something to the effect of…if someone estimates 3.30 then 3.30 is the likeliest time. This is clearly nonsense. Even in the modern word estimates can he massively wrong but you couldn’t even bring yourself to accept a conservative plus or minus 5 minutes. I think that you would struggle to find any reasonable person to agree with you on this point. We do not and cannot know what time Cross left the house so your attempt to narrow this time down to 3.30 or 3.31 or 3.32 is plainly an attempted manipulation of the evidence.
• You then, quite bizarrely, try and put a time on the gap between Cross and Paul leaving and Neil arriving. This is another unknown. Neil gave 3.45 as his time but we can’t know how accurate his time was. Did he have a watch? How accurate was it? Was it synchronised to other notes times? How can you know that he didn’t arrive the second that Cross and Paul left the body? It’s an attempt to claim to know, or to be able to judge accurately, an unknown. This is a manipulation of the evidence.
• Then there is the English language issues regarding the blood….oozing and running etc. Both dealt with conclusively by David Orsam. This is manipulation and a misuse of the language.
• Then you try and use the blood evidence to try and make Cross the likeliest suspect when he’s no more likely than a killer who fled just before he arrived. And because we can’t put a name to this man you use a bit of propaganda by naming him the ‘phantom killer’ which implies that he couldn’t have existed which is arrant nonsense. If Paul could ‘in effect’ have interrupted Cross then Cross could have interrupted someone else who was no less likely a suspect than Cross just because we have no name for him. In fact he’s a far better suspect that Cross because this bloke didn’t hang around waiting for Cross to arrive. Exaggeration and manipulation.
• Then we have the suggestion that refusing to flee was perfectly normal behaviour which flies in the face of what we know about killers. We can’t name one that stood around waiting for someone to show up. How many men can we name who found a body in the street who turned out to be the killer? How could any man, with even the meanest levels of intelligence, have not seen that the benefits of fleeing massively and overwhelmingly outweighing the ‘benefits’ of staying? Exaggeration.
• Then, realising that a choice to stick around would have been close to suicidal you take a sidestep and invent the ‘Mizen Scam’ as a means of justifying it. This would have meant Cross, on the spur-of-the-moment and in a handful of seconds coming up with this nonsense, and risking his life on the strength of it. A plan that required him manipulating a man that he’d never met before and had no clue on how he might or might not have behaved. Little is more preposterous in this case than the Mizen Scam. It’s evidence of desperation. More exaggeration.
• Then there’s the attempt to show Cross’s behaviour at the body as somehow strange. It was perfectly normal as has been shown over the last few posts. A manipulation to create an impression.
• Then we have the name issue which is a non-issue. It would only be an issue, in regard to a murder, if it somehow aided his avoiding discovery, He used his stepfathers name, his own Christian names and his own address. He turns up at the inquest with policeman everywhere. When Cross was a child he must have been absolutely useless at hide and seek. Exaggeration.
• Then there’s the geographical desperation. What can I say? I just can’t be bothered wasting words on the silliness. How desperate can anyone be to build a case of you have to resort to quoting where his Aunty Nellie lived?! Exaggeration and invention.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Yes, and people who post on other forums refute YOUR ideas and claims, Fiver. As I said before, that kind of popularity contest was never in any way a reliable thing. Luckily, in this case I can ot be refuted, since it is a proven fact that the timings DO suggest a time gap of 8 minutes. So any effort to try and refute that is logical and factual harakiri.

In the future, I would prefer if you made your points and stood by them, without claiming to have lots and lots of followers. I will do the same, and that is the only way to do debate fairly. If you feel you cannot stand up for your points without calling in the fire brigade, that tells a story too. It's your choice.

And any attempt at proposing that a gap is suggested is simple dishonesty.