Why Cross Was Almost Certainly Innocent

[rjpalmer]

Hi RJ,

I don't think "circular argument" is quite the right word for it. It might be said that if one listed Cross' finding the body as one reason to suspect him and his living in the area is another reason, it would be almost like counting the same reason twice, or at least counting two related facts as separate reasons. I agree that his discovering the body would have been more suspicious if he hadn't lived in the area.

I was largely thinking of the following excerpt from Cutting Point (p. 106):

"'Charles Lechmere could have worked anywhere in London, north, south, west or east of Doveton Street. Instead, his working place was positioned in the only miniscule area that is geographically in perfect line with him having been the killer of the four Whitechapel victims, right between where the Old Montague Street and the Hanbury Street trail ends up."

This sounds impressive at first blush, but how can anyone, thinking it over carefully, deny that it is actually a mirror reflecting itself?

[Nor am I the only one who sees this circularity because David Barrat refers to this same passage in his book review of Holmgren's theory].

It was the circumstance of Lechmere living in Doveton Street and commuting through a red-light district to Broad Street that led to him discovering the body in the first place.

This circumstance is then turned around and used to 'prove' Lechmere's guilt through what is apparently meant to be an odds-defying geographical argument.

It strikes me as a rather low blow, and certainly others must see it, too.

Here's a thought experiment.

There were 11 victims in the Whitechapel Murder files. Eleven.

The bodies of half or slightly over half of these victims were discovered by policemen.

Nichols* (for the second time); Eddowes; Mylett; McKenzie; the Pinchin Street torso; Coles.

Over half were discovered by the same profession, and there are dozens if not hundreds of professions.

What are the odds?

What if half of them had been discovered by circus performers or by female chimney sweeps, wouldn't this require explaining?

Does this strange circumstance point to police involvement in the crimes?

Probably not. Considering that the victims were killed (or dumped) in the street in the middle of the night, who else is likely to find the body other than the constables who were forced to walk lonely beats around these scantily populated streets?

This is obvious enough. Now apply the same reasoning to Charles Cross.

Who else was likely to find Polly Nichols in a darkened backstreet other than a worker whose commute forced him to walk those streets at 3.30 in the morning?

And there is also this. The murders (discounting Mylett) were committed in a small area of roughly a square mile. Any normal citizen finding a body would likely have geographical connections to other parts of that same square mile.

It's true that Lechmere does have some of these 'connections.'

But recall that Alfred Crow from George Yard once lived closer to Dutfield's Yard than Lechmere or his mother ever did. The Winthrop Street watchman Patrick Mulshaw--unlike Lechmere--still lived in St. George in the East at the time of the Stride murder and had a son living in Batty Street (or at least did in 1887, perhaps later, too); PC John Neil had in-laws in SGE; etc.

Abby Normal can point to Maria Lechmere living down in St. George in the East, and it's true that this isn't quite circular--but is this really a jaw dropping fact or is it only a minor coincidence of geography, applicable to many?

Drew Gray used a similar technique to implicate James Hardiman, pointing out that his mother lived at No. 29 Hanbury Street--the murder site itself---(and Hardiman himself had lived in Hanbury Street in 1881).

Drew further pointed out that Hardiman's job as a horse flesh salesman and cat's meat man would have made him familiar with Winthrop Street.

Which it very probably did.

But it's a slippery slope.

[JeffHamm]

I was largely thinking of the following excerpt from Cutting Point (p. 106):

"'Charles Lechmere could have worked anywhere in London, north, south, west or east of Doveton Street. Instead, his working place was positioned in the only miniscule area that is geographically in perfect line with him having been the killer of the four Whitechapel victims, right between where the Old Montague Street and the Hanbury Street trail ends up."

This sounds impressive at first blush, but how can anyone, thinking it over carefully, deny that it is actually a mirror reflecting itself?

[Nor am I the only one who sees this circularity because David Barrat refers to this same passage in his book review of Holmgren's theory].

It was the circumstance of Lechmere living in Doveton Street and commuting through a red-light district to Broad Street that led to him discovering the body in the first place.

This circumstance is then turned around and used to 'prove' Lechmere's guilt through what is apparently meant to be an odds-defying geographical argument.

It strikes me as a rather low blow, and certainly others must see it, too.

Here's a thought experiment.

There were 11 victims in the Whitechapel Murder files. Eleven.

The bodies of half or slightly over half of these victims were discovered by policemen.

Nichols* (for the second time); Eddowes; Mylett; McKenzie; the Pinchin Street torso; Coles.

Over half were discovered by the same profession, and there are dozens if not hundreds of professions.

What are the odds?

What if half of them had been discovered by circus performers or by female chimney sweeps, wouldn't this require explaining?

Does this strange circumstance point to police involvement in the crimes?

Probably not. Considering that the victims were killed (or dumped) in the street in the middle of the night, who else is likely to find the body other than the constables who were forced to walk lonely beats around these scantily populated streets?

This is obvious enough. Now apply the same reasoning to Charles Cross.

Who else was likely to find Polly Nichols in a darkened backstreet other than a worker whose commute forced him to walk those streets at 3.30 in the morning?

And there is also this. The murders (discounting Mylett) were committed in a small area of roughly a square mile. Any normal citizen finding a body would likely have geographical connections to other parts of that same square mile.

It's true that Lechmere does have some of these 'connections.'

But recall that Alfred Crow from George Yard once lived closer to Dutfield's Yard than Lechmere or his mother ever did. The Winthrop Street watchman Patrick Mulshaw--unlike Lechmere--still lived in St. George in the East at the time of the Stride murder and had a son living in Batty Street (or at least did in 1887, perhaps later, too); PC John Neil had in-laws in SGE; etc.

Abby Normal can point to Maria Lechmere living down in St. George in the East, and it's true that this isn't quite circular--but is this really a jaw dropping fact or is it only a minor coincidence of geography, applicable to many?

Drew Gray used a similar technique to implicate James Hardiman, pointing out that his mother lived at No. 29 Hanbury Street--the murder site itself---(and Hardiman himself had lived in Hanbury Street in 1881).

Drew further pointed out that Hardiman's job as a horse flesh salesman and cat's meat man would have made him familiar with Winthrop Street.

Which it very probably did.

But it's a slippery slope.

Great post rj. Confirmation bias is one of the difficulties that apply so very often when one starts to focus on any particular individual as a suspect, one sees how to link various bits of information about the suspect to the crimes, and becomes blind to how those very same bits of information can be viewed innocently. As you point out, an innocent person who finds a body will still have a reason to be in that location, because they have to be in that location to find the body. So having a reason to be in a particular location is not evidence of guilt. But if you start with the theory the person is guilty and find that they had a reason to be in that location then their reason for being there will, through confirmation bias, light up as if it is evidence supporting the theory because we will ignore the fact the evidence is also entirely consistent with the more probable interpretation of innocence (the probability someone is not JtR is clearly far far higher than the probability they are).

This problem applies to all sorts of things, not just body finding, but it's a good example. To raise interest in a suspect, one needs to show something that is hard to explain if they are innocent, something that is unlikely to arise unless guilty. The JtR murders are unsolved because none of the information we have does that for any of the named suspects. While the police at the time would have had information that is lost to us, and at times they've hinted at such things, we cannot evaluate their hints without knowing upon what information their opinions were based.

It is quite probable that they, like modern theorists, were over-interpreting what they had, resulting in the wide range of police theories that have survived to this day. We see similar tendencies in other unsolved series, where police of the time each had their particular suspicions about various individuals. Maybe one of them is right, maybe not, but as there's no way for us to know without having access to the information they had we should not fall into the trap of "choosing" one for there lies the path to confirmation bias and blindness.

- Jeff

[Lewis C]

I was largely thinking of the following excerpt from Cutting Point (p. 106):

"'Charles Lechmere could have worked anywhere in London, north, south, west or east of Doveton Street. Instead, his working place was positioned in the only miniscule area that is geographically in perfect line with him having been the killer of the four Whitechapel victims, right between where the Old Montague Street and the Hanbury Street trail ends up."

This sounds impressive at first blush, but how can anyone, thinking it over carefully, deny that it is actually a mirror reflecting itself?

[Nor am I the only one who sees this circularity because David Barrat refers to this same passage in his book review of Holmgren's theory].

It was the circumstance of Lechmere living in Doveton Street and commuting through a red-light district to Broad Street that led to him discovering the body in the first place.

This circumstance is then turned around and used to 'prove' Lechmere's guilt through what is apparently meant to be an odds-defying geographical argument.

It strikes me as a rather low blow, and certainly others must see it, too.

Here's a thought experiment.

There were 11 victims in the Whitechapel Murder files. Eleven.

The bodies of half or slightly over half of these victims were discovered by policemen.

Nichols* (for the second time); Eddowes; Mylett; McKenzie; the Pinchin Street torso; Coles.

Over half were discovered by the same profession, and there are dozens if not hundreds of professions.

What are the odds?

What if half of them had been discovered by circus performers or by female chimney sweeps, wouldn't this require explaining?

Does this strange circumstance point to police involvement in the crimes?

Probably not. Considering that the victims were killed (or dumped) in the street in the middle of the night, who else is likely to find the body other than the constables who were forced to walk lonely beats around these scantily populated streets?

This is obvious enough. Now apply the same reasoning to Charles Cross.

Who else was likely to find Polly Nichols in a darkened backstreet other than a worker whose commute forced him to walk those streets at 3.30 in the morning?

And there is also this. The murders (discounting Mylett) were committed in a small area of roughly a square mile. Any normal citizen finding a body would likely have geographical connections to other parts of that same square mile.

It's true that Lechmere does have some of these 'connections.'

But recall that Alfred Crow from George Yard once lived closer to Dutfield's Yard than Lechmere or his mother ever did. The Winthrop Street watchman Patrick Mulshaw--unlike Lechmere--still lived in St. George in the East at the time of the Stride murder and had a son living in Batty Street (or at least did in 1887, perhaps later, too); PC John Neil had in-laws in SGE; etc.

Abby Normal can point to Maria Lechmere living down in St. George in the East, and it's true that this isn't quite circular--but is this really a jaw dropping fact or is it only a minor coincidence of geography, applicable to many?

Drew Gray used a similar technique to implicate James Hardiman, pointing out that his mother lived at No. 29 Hanbury Street--the murder site itself---(and Hardiman himself had lived in Hanbury Street in 1881).

Drew further pointed out that Hardiman's job as a horse flesh salesman and cat's meat man would have made him familiar with Winthrop Street.

Which it very probably did.

But it's a slippery slope.

Good points, and I agree. Also, I find the sentence that you bolded to be confusing. He refers to the 4 victims as if there were only 4. I guess maybe he's referring to Tabram, Nichols, Chapman, and Kelly, because Stride and Eddowes certainly weren't in line with his path to work. He and Stow have acknowledged this last part, which is why it was necessary to speculate that he may have visited his mother the night that those 2 died. But even for the other 4, Chapman was killed a good deal further north than Tabram, which makes it hard for me to see how both could have been in perfect line to his working place.

[Fiver]

Good points, and I agree. Also, I find the sentence that you bolded to be confusing. He refers to the 4 victims as if there were only 4. I guess maybe he's referring to Tabram, Nichols, Chapman, and Kelly, because Stride and Eddowes certainly weren't in line with his path to work. He and Stow have acknowledged this last part, which is why it was necessary to speculate that he may have visited his mother the night that those 2 died. But even for the other 4, Chapman was killed a good deal further north than Tabram, which makes it hard for me to see how both could have been in perfect line to his working place.

By "a perfect line" they mean within 5 or 6 blocks of any one of a dozen or more hypothetical routes that Lechmere could have, but we have no evidence that he did, take to work.

[Lewis C]

By "a perfect line" they mean within 5 or 6 blocks of any one of a dozen or more hypothetical routes that Lechmere could have, but we have no evidence that he did, take to work.

Thank you, Fiver. If that's what they mean, then I would think that they area that one could live in that might result in someone walking within 5 or 6 blocks of each of the murders wouldn't be all that small.

[drstrange169]

What makes a good suspect, is how much their guilt fits in with the known facts. With Lechmere, and with most, if not all other suspects, their guilt relies, not on the known evidence as it is, but re-interpreting it.

How many times have we read, times, facts, the English language, police files and goodness knows what re-interpreted on this board, on facebook groups, books, Youtube videos and in TV shows to imply guilt that is not actually there.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Charles clearly wasn't very bright. Having killed Polly, he should have told the police and coroner that he left home "at about three-forty", to avoid any suspicion.

[Mark J D]

I'm a retired Corrections Officer and have interacted with many killers, and especially the ones with more than one body to their credit always have exhibited an almost indefinable affect that will be very obvious if you have seen it before. You just *know* these people are off/dangerous.

Yes. The almost indefinable but very obvious affect that means you just *know*. This is why serial killers are so incredibly easy to catch.

M.

[Holmes' Idiot Brother]

Yes. The almost indefinable but very obvious affect that means you just *know*. This is why serial killers are so incredibly easy to catch.

M.

If you've spent any appreciable time around them, you definitely get a vibe off of them. Not sure if your last sentence was sarcastic, but they are most definitely not easy to catch.

[Mark J D]

If you've spent any appreciable time around them, you definitely get a vibe off of them.

Riiight. In a situation where you know who they are, and they know you know who they are, 'you definitely get a vibe'.

Methodologically worthless.

M.

[Holmes' Idiot Brother]

Riiight. In a situation where you know who they are, and they know you know who they are, 'you definitely get a vibe'.

Methodologically worthless.

M.

Ever heard of the serial killer, Charles Cullen? AKA The Angel of Death? He was a nurse who killed dozens - possibly hundreds - of patients in various hospitals in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. My late mother was a nurse's aide and worked with him at Easton Hospital while he murdered several patients there. Long before Cullen's crimes were uncovered, my mother complained that she found him "creepy and off," and hated working with him. I knew Cullen to nod to, but never had any real conversations with him. However, my mother did. When he was caught and everything was out in the open, my mother exclaimed, "I knew it! I hated working with that guy from Day One! He frightened me. I knew there was something seriously wrong with him." Now, my mother certainly had no practical work experience with criminals like I had, yet she just knew. Methodologically worthless? Perhaps. But certainly not worthless from a personal survival standpoint: listen to your instincts. Did the Ripper conceal his madness? Probably. Perhaps his family or close associates may have suspected something was "off" about him but couldn't put their finger on it. Perhaps had they not been drunk, his victims might have suspected something was amiss. But alcohol and desperation tends to blind....

[Geddy2112]

Great OP, thank you.

Just to move this on a touch...and it 'keep it here.' Was there or is there ANY evidence whatsoever to link Lechmere to Berner St, Mitre Square or the Millers Court Murders?

[John Wheat]

Great OP, thank you.

Just to move this on a touch...and it 'keep it here.' Was there or is there ANY evidence whatsoever to link Lechmere to Berner St, Mitre Square or the Millers Court Murders?

Hi Geddy2112

No.

Cheers John

[Geddy2112]

No.

Cheers John

Hi, that is what I thought. I've been asking Edward Stow et al about this for months and got no answer, all I get is found a body, give a different name (the later point being as ironic as it gets..) Thank you sir...

[John Wheat]

Hi, that is what I thought. I've been asking Edward Stow et al about this for months and got no answer, all I get is found a body, give a different name (the later point being as ironic as it gets..) Thank you sir...

Hi

Yes all Lechmere did is find a body. The rest of the case against Lechmere is just bluster.

Cheers John