Was he lying?

[Newbie]

We only know that Paul spoke of it being a dangerous locality and being on one’s guard in combination with spotting a man standing in the middle of the street. Everything beyond that is speculation. If Buck’s Row was so dangerous, both he and Lechmere could easily have chosen the safe(r) Whitechapel Road, but they didn’t. Both chose to walk along Buck’s Row almost on a daily basis.


You make it sound as if it should be surprising that Neil would have heard Thain. My view is different. Neil, having found a woman with her throat severely cut, would be on high alert. And I might add, just as might be expected of someone who’s killing and mutilating a woman out in the open street. Such a person would have every reason to be on high alert.


We have no way of knowing if Lechmere was on his guard or not. You assume that, but he might just as well have been caught up in his own thoughts, routinely going to work, like he did almost every day.


No problem. He was concentrated on getting to work, caught up in his own daily thoughts until his attention was attracted by something lying on the other side of the street. So, his attention shifted and only when he actually realized it was a woman, he became aware of footsteps behind him. Before that, he simply had no reason to be on his guard or listen for any sounds.


I know what your view is and can understand that, with your view, you have no other option but to think it odd that he didn’t hear or see anything of Lechmere ahead of him. Me, on the other hand, thinks that the evidence is such that he might just have become alert when he saw a man standing in the middle of the street.

But why the inconsistency? Why should we expect Paul to see or hear Lechmere walking in front of him, but why shouldn’t he have heard Lechmere move around the body and then move away from it to take up his position in the middle of the street? Are we supposed to assume that Paul was only on high alert until 5 seconds or more before spotting a man in the street ahead of him?


First of all, it’s not a fact or even a given that Lechmere only stops walking after seeing Paul some 40 yards away. There’s even nothing in the evidence to suggest it, really. He says he walked to the middle of the street, then saw it was the figure of a woman and that, at the same time he heard a man come up behind him, whom he then estimated to be 30 or 40 yards away from him. That’s it. He might have stopped walking when he realized it was a woman, he might have stopped when he heard footsteps behind him, he might have stopped when he turned to look back in the direction of Paul.

Furthermore, I’m not sure most would make a quick check. Why do you think this? Anyway, I can easily imagine anyone in that situation thinking precisely NOT to do what you propose in order to avoid the risk of being implicated in anything that might have happened to the woman.

But maybe he did make that quick check and then stepped back to the middle of the road, but just didn’t tell Paul or anybody else to avoid the risk of being implicated, even though he was innocent.


That’s only because you assume that Paul must have been on high alert up to some 5 to 10 seconds before he spotted Lechmere. But that neither a given nor very realistic.

For goodness sake! How is it speculative that someone walking down a tough street is going to be more aware of their surroundings. Or are you arguing that it wasn't a tough street? Lechmere had no street smarts? ... okay!

We of course have Paul's statement about 'few people'; maybe Lechmere was one of the few, maybe he had bad hearing, maybe ....

You think someone moving away from the body surreptiously might take softer footsteps moving away .... no? He's not exactly going to be running to that spot.

As for the red part: He might have stopped walking when he realized it was a woman, he might have stopped when he heard footsteps behind him, he might have stopped when he turned to look back in the direction of Paul.

You say that there is no way of knowing what came first: see, stop, hear?

Here is what Lechmere says on the matter: moving towards the body, hearing & seeing are simultaneous, no mention of stopping:
"As I got up Buck's row I saw something lying on the northside in the gateway to a wool warehouse. It looked to me like a man's tarpaulin, but on going into the center of the road I saw it was the figure of a woman. At the same time I heard a man coming up the street in the same direction as I had done."

But lets check which order makes sense:

A. First stops in middle, then sees that it is a woman's body, then hears Paul's footsteps ..... why stop if you still don't know?
B. First sees that it is a woman, then stops, then hears footsteps ...... you now know that it is a woman and decide to stop?

The idea you are driving out is that he might have seen the woman first, stopped for a split second, and then heard the footsteps ..... which attempts to get around the false notion that his own footsteps were masking the footsteps of the potential predator behind him .... who was traveling faster than him btw.

C. You see that it is a woman, then hear footsteps, then stop to turn around ...... this makes sense, but at the unavoidable cost of throwing out the masking sounds of your own footsteps theory.

D. The simultaneous seeing/hearing and then stopping .... which also makes sense

Toss out the Lechmere's footsteps masking Paul's footsteps theory!

[GBinOz]

I'm wondering if Lechmere could even make out the sex of the figure from the vantage point of the middle of the road.
The body was not contrast against the white of the sidewalk, but the dark of the pavement at the entrance to Brown's stable.

Check out the waxing crescent moon at the end of this month, and see if you can make out a dark figure contrast against a dark pavement at night. If it is a cloudy night ..... all the better. The illumination will be 32% - good luck! I had problem doing this a week ago.

Hi Newbie,

A couple of years ago I made a couple of attempts at a re-enactment of this scenario. If you're interested, I posted the results of the second attempt in post #5395 here:

https://forum.casebook.org/forum/ripper-discussions/suspects/lechmere-cross-charles/762057-evidence-of-innocence/page360#post779536

There were some follow ups in posts #5410 and #5421.

Cheers, George

[Newbie]

There’s no need for any of the above.


Is it physically possible that when Cross entered Bucks Row, Robert Paul might have been around 70 yards behind him?

Yes it is.

Is it possible that one human being might not have heard another human being when they are 70 yards apart (if neither of them were playing a saxophone at the time)?

Yes it is.

Is it possible that one person might make less noise when walking than another person?

Yes it is.

Is it possible for one person to have hearing that isn’t as good as another persons?

Yes it is.

Is it the case that the transcript of an inquest isn’t a verbatim account of what was said?

Yes it is.

Is it possible that Cross might have been undecided as to what to do, causing an unknown time period of hesitation, before he heard Paul?

Yes it is.

Is it true to say that people don’t all act in a uniform, prescribed way when faced with an unusual/stressful situation?

Yes it is.

Do we have a single piece of evidence that precludes another killer who fled the scene just before Cross arrived?

No we don’t.

Did Cross gain even the slightest of advantages from using his stepfather’s name instead of his birth name?

No he didn’t.

Can we assume that Mizen’s version of what was said was correct and that Cross and Paul were wrong (or lied)?

No we can’t.

Is there anything at all in the evidence that suggests that Cross might have been at the scene longer than he claimed?

No there isn’t.

Can we name a serial killer who committed murder in the street on his way to work?

No we can’t.

Can we name a serial killer who stayed with the corpse (rather than fleeing) to chat to a passerby?

No we can’t.

Is there anything about Cross that we know that leaves us suspicious of him as a person?

No there isn’t.

Is it fair to assume that the police questioned him?

Yes it is.

Did they find anything even remotely suspicious about him?

No they didn’t.

Is it likely that Cross would have committed murder whilst he was on duty for Pickford’s?

No it isn’t.

Can we name anyone who found a body in the street who turned out to have been the killer?

No we can’t.

Is there a single thing that so much as causes a raised eyebrows in terms of anything that Cross said or did that morning which might lead anyone to suspect him of being the killer?

NO. NOT A THING

Is the ‘case’ against Cross an embarrassing mish-mash of manipulated evidence, the misuse of the English language, gross exaggeration, opinion stated as fact and rank self-interest?

Yes it certainly is.

I'm surprised at how apathetic you are to the math.

He could have started 70 yards ahead, you say? And then gained 30 - 40 yards on Lechmere (which you conveniently leave out), over the course of Lechmere going 130 yards?

Lechmere would be walking at a a good clip of 3.6 mph.
He didn't notice this guy jogging behind him when he was 60 yards behind?
He didn't notice this guy jogging behind him when he was 50 yards behind?

When did he notice this guy? When he was still walking towards the body, visually focused on this unexpected event, conveniently in the middle of the street.

Do the math for Gods sake! Its a simple problem. Come back to me with an approximate speed that Paul would have to be traveling down Buck's row in this case.

Then go to your nearest gym and plug that number into the old tread mill.

Or you can argue against how I set the problem up.
One or the other! Simple hand waving exercises and getting miffed will not do.

BTW, a lot of the other stuff had nothing to do with the analysis, and the problem I just defined .... so I pretty much ignored it.

[Newbie]

Hi Newbie,

A couple of years ago I made a couple of attempts at a re-enactment of this scenario. If you're interested, I posted the results of the second attempt in post #5395 here:

https://forum.casebook.org/forum/ripper-discussions/suspects/lechmere-cross-charles/762057-evidence-of-innocence/page360#post779536

There were some follow ups in posts #5410 and #5421.

Cheers, George

Thanks GBinOz,

I'll go look at what you put together.

[Newbie]

Moon phases

* Note: 50 % of the moon illuminated provides around 10 % of the brightness of a full moon.


April 3rd 1888: waning gibbous moon: 55.6 % illuminated; 376,000 miles away

• Emma Smith’ murder

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


August 7 1888: waning crescent moon: 0.6 % illuminated; 385,000 miles away

• Martha Tabrum’s murder

August 31 1888: waning crescent moon: 36 % illuminated; 400,000 miles away, 50 % cloud cover

• Polly Nichols’ murder

September 8th 1888: waxing crescent moon: 1.7 % illuminated, 369,000 miles away

• Annie Chapman’s murder

September 30th 1888: waning crescent moon: 34 % illuminated, 392,000 miles away

• Double murder event

November 9th 1888: waxing crescent moon: 36.5 % illuminated, 375,000 miles away

• Mary Kelly’s murder

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

December 20th 1888: waxing gibbous moon: 92 % illuminated, 375,000 miles away

• Rose Myllet murder/accidental hanging

July 7th, 1889: waxing gibbous moon: 64 % illuminated, 373,000 miles away

• Alice Mckenzie murder

BTW, if, as it seems here, that JtR's modus operandi was to choose only nights when the moon was dim,
one might consider including Martha Tabrum as a JtR victim, and exclude the others.

Some here were wondering why he chose certain days ..... as if he might have had free space in his schedule,
or that is when he was in the area.

It seems quite possible that he primarily chose dates based on how dark it was gettin at night.

If someone has verification on the moon phase for each date, please let me know.

[Newbie]

Thanks GBinOz,

I'll go look at what you put together.

I read through your experiment GB.

You conducted it with a moon that was 90 +% illuminated? Maybe I missed something.
The moon was far less bright on the night in question.

It does seem to be unclear as to which path Lech took; but I agree, if he was to make out the body as a female, he'd have to come from directly across the street.

Case A:

Charles A. Cross, a carman, in the employ of Messrs. Pickford and Co., said that on Friday morning he left his home about half-past three. He reached Messrs. Pickford's yard at Broad-street, City, at four o'clock. He crossed Brady-street into Buck's-row. Was there any one with you? - No, I was by myself. As I got to Buck's-row, by the gateway of the wool warehouse, I saw someone lying at the entrance to the gateway. It looked like a dark figure. I walked into the center of the road, and saw that it was a woman.

* the gateway of the wool warehouse being someways down the street.

Case B:

Charles Cross: “I went down Parson street, crossed Brady street, and through Buck's row. I was alone.As I got up Buck's row I saw something lying on the northside in the gateway to a wool warehouse.It looked to me like a man's tarpaulin, but on going into the center of the road I saw it was the figure of a woman. At the same time I heard a man coming up the street in the same direction as I had done, so I waited for him to come up.”

* Northside in the gateway to a wool warehouse basically means across the street: the wool warehouse gateway being the gateway to Brown's stable yard.

BTW, the light on Buck's row seemed to be at the bottom of the street ... so no help in providing better light near the murder scene.

[Geddy2112]

Paul, only needs to go at a rate of 3.4 mph to make it two work on time that day .... if he arrived at the entrance to Buck's row at 3:45 am, which is what he believed the time to be.

See this is the huge problem and why I'm suspicious of Paul. If he had entered Bucks Row at 'exactly' 3:45am two things would have happened...

1) He would have bumped into PC Neil at the murder site.
2) He could not have been at the corner of Hanbury Street with Mizen and Cross.

[drstrange169]

"I'm trying to come up with various possibilities that can explain how Paul missed Lech on Bath street, while walking under the lights of the Albion Brewery ..."

There were no lights shining on Bath St. near Foster. That is just something Christer made up. When challenged about it he became very vague and referenced the fact there were lights at the front of the Brewery facing Whitechapel Road.

Just another of the Lechmere myths, I'm afraid.

[drstrange169]

See this is the huge problem and why I'm suspicious of Paul. If he had entered Bucks Row at 'exactly' 3:45am two things would have happened...
1) He would have bumped into PC Neil at the murder site.
2) He could not have been at the corner of Hanbury Street with Mizen and Cross.

3) P.C. Mizen would have lied under oath.
4) P.C. Neil would have lied under oath.
5) P.C. Thain would have lied under oath.
6) Cross could not have got to work by 4:00.
7) Under oath and after being heavily questioned by police Paul does not repeat the claim of being in entering Buck's at exactly 3:45.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I'm surprised at how apathetic you are to the math.

He could have started 70 yards ahead, you say? And then gained 30 - 40 yards on Lechmere (which you conveniently leave out), over the course of Lechmere going 130 yards?

Lechmere would be walking at a a good clip of 3.6 mph.
He didn't notice this guy jogging behind him when he was 60 yards behind?
He didn't notice this guy jogging behind him when he was 50 yards behind?

When did he notice this guy? When he was still walking towards the body, visually focused on this unexpected event, conveniently in the middle of the street.

Do the math for Gods sake! Its a simple problem. Come back to me with an approximate speed that Paul would have to be traveling down Buck's row in this case.

Then go to your nearest gym and plug that number into the old tread mill.

Or you can argue against how I set the problem up.
One or the other! Simple hand waving exercises and getting miffed will not do.

BTW, a lot of the other stuff had nothing to do with the analysis, and the problem I just defined .... so I pretty much ignored it.

You complain that I ignore the maths but you ignore the other very obvious points that have been made. You can’t know how quickly either Cross or Paul walked. You can’t know how much noise Paul’s footsteps made and you can’t know how good Cross (or Paul’s for that matter) hearing was.

I don’t know how far apart they were anymore than you do but if we estimate 70 yards then all we are left with is Cross getting were the body was and crossing to the middle of the road. Factor in a few seconds of perfectly understandable but unmeasurable hesitation factor in that we don’t know how good Cross’s hearing was then we are left with him estimating 40 yards. (If his estimate was actually nearer to 50 yards [because it was an estimation] then either we only have 20 yards to account for or we have have Cross and Paul 80 yards apart.)

What we are getting is what we always get in any discussion with those followers of the ‘true faith.’ Ignore or obfuscate their way around the big issues then focus on trivia.

Cross as a suspect that doesn’t stand up to any form of proper scrutiny. There really should be no more talk of him. Supporters should concede that they are wrong and that they have deliberately manipulated evidence (and continue to do so) and language to form a case against a clearly innocent man. How has this gone on for so long?

[Herlock Sholmes]

See this is the huge problem and why I'm suspicious of Paul. If he had entered Bucks Row at 'exactly' 3:45am two things would have happened...
1) He would have bumped into PC Neil at the murder site.
2) He could not have been at the corner of Hanbury Street with Mizen and Cross.

3) P.C. Mizen would have lied under oath.
4) P.C. Neil would have lied under oath.
5) P.C. Thain would have lied under oath.
6) Cross could not have got to work by 4:00.
7) Under oath and after being heavily questioned by police Paul does not repeat the claim of being in entering Buck's at exactly 3:45.

Unless there was a conspiracy then Paul’s time was clearly an error Dusty, as most of us know. Typically though we get the majority of times ignored so that Cross supporters can focus on this 3.45 time. It helps in the invention of a ‘gap’ of course.

Three Constable’s quote 3.45. Paul said it took no more than 4 minutes between him meeting Cross and the pair of them finding Mizen. This would taken them back to 3.41. Clearly we can’t assume that all times were to spot on but it still gives us a discovery time of around 3.40.

[Fiver]

Again, it is your word against PC Neil .... he was there, you were not.

Nothing that I said contradicts anything that PC Neil said.

If you are arguing that Lechmere didn't have a very good sense of hearing,
and Paul just didn't bother to mention it .... for some reason,
you have the perfect right to stick to this position .... I guess it fits into the anything is possible category.

That is not what I said.

There are a lot perception variables that we don't have here. We don't know how good Lechmere's hearing was compared to PC Neil's. We don't know how loudly Robert Paul walked compared to PC Thain. Also, PC Neil would have been facing west, making it easier to hear PC Thain in front of him. Paul was behind Lechmere, making Paul harder to hear.

From Peter Whybrow, director of the Semel Institute for Neurosciences and human behavior at the University of California at Los Angeles:

“ The reason we can’t multitask hearing and vision is these two senses share access to a part of the brain, the association cortex, whose job it is to integrate all incoming information. In reality, this ability to shut out sound when we are focusing on a visual task is an asset."

The quote is from reporter Linda Carroll summarizing Nilli Lavie, a coauthor of a 2015 report in the Journal of Neuroscience. The Semel Institute for Neurosciences appears to be led by Helena Hansen.

"Dr. Peter C. Whybrow is the Judson Braun Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA." "Dr. Whybrow is an international authority on depression, manic-depressive disease, and the effects of thyroid hormones on the brain and human behavior." So Dr. Whybrow isn't an a authority on auditory matters, isn't part of the Semel Institute, isn't head of anything, and did not say the quote.

However, you would have more difficulty in explainnig why Lech finally heard the footsteps when he still was not only walking,
but occupied in examining visually the body.

There is a good reason why this would be the most unlikely time for him to actually hear the footsteps.

At the time that Charles Lechmere heard Robert Paul behind him, he had probably slowed or stopped walking and it was just after Lechmere had identified that it was a body.

"On Friday morning he left home about half past three to go to work, and passing through Buck's row he saw on the opposite side something lying against a gateway. In the dark he could not tell at first what it was. It looked like a tarpaulin sheet, but walking to the middle of the road he saw it was the figure of a woman. At the same time he heard a man about forty yards away coming up Buck's row in the direction witness had himself come." - Daily News, 4 September 1888.

At the point that Lechmere identified that it was a woman, his visual perception load dropped significantly, which science tells us is exactly when Lechmere would be most likely to become much better at noticing auditory stimuli.

Then there is the well known phenomenon of auditory masking. where loader sounds mask softer ones. According to the Journal of Neuroscience, "neural responses to ... self-generated sounds are attenuated." That means that self-generated sounds receive less focus, making it easier to detect external sound sources, not that they are completely ignored. But "the responsiveness of auditory cortical neurons to external sounds is reduced not only during vocalizations but during a variety of behaviors, including locomotion". So Lechmere walking would reduce his perception of both his own footsteps and to "external sounds", such as Robert Paul's footsteps. People also tend to subconsciously synchronize their steps, likely to improve detection of other sound sources.

So what happened as Lechmere approached the body. He moved from the pavement to the street, changing the sound pattern of his footsteps, making Robert Paul's footsteps more distinct. He probably slowed his pace, which would also make Paul's footsteps more distinct. Auditory mask would drop - the volume of Paul's footsteps would increase as he got closer while the volume of Lechmere's footsteps would decrease as he slowed and stopped. And as noted, by stopping walking, Lechmere auditory responsiveness would increase.

So the science backs Lechmere in multiple ways.

[Fiver]

BTW, if, as it seems here, that JtR's modus operandi was to choose only nights when the moon was dim,
one might consider including Martha Tabrum as a JtR victim, and exclude the others.

Some here were wondering why he chose certain days ..... as if he might have had free space in his schedule,
or that is when he was in the area.

It seems quite possible that he primarily chose dates based on how dark it was gettin at night.

If someone has verification on the moon phase for each date, please let me know.

There is this, which is similar, but not identical.

I agree that there seems to be a pattern of nights when it was fairly dark out.

[FrankO]

For goodness sake! How is it speculative that someone walking down a tough street is going to be more aware of their surroundings. Or are you arguing that it wasn't a tough street? Lechmere had no street smarts? ... okay!

We of course have Paul's statement about 'few people'; maybe Lechmere was one of the few, maybe he had bad hearing, maybe ....

You think someone moving away from the body surreptiously might take softer footsteps moving away .... no? He's not exactly going to be running to that spot.

As for the red part: He might have stopped walking when he realized it was a woman, he might have stopped when he heard footsteps behind him, he might have stopped when he turned to look back in the direction of Paul.

You say that there is no way of knowing what came first: see, stop, hear?

Here is what Lechmere says on the matter: moving towards the body, hearing & seeing are simultaneous, no mention of stopping:
"As I got up Buck's row I saw something lying on the northside in the gateway to a wool warehouse. It looked to me like a man's tarpaulin, but on going into the center of the road I saw it was the figure of a woman. At the same time I heard a man coming up the street in the same direction as I had done."

But lets check which order makes sense:

A. First stops in middle, then sees that it is a woman's body, then hears Paul's footsteps ..... why stop if you still don't know?
B. First sees that it is a woman, then stops, then hears footsteps ...... you now know that it is a woman and decide to stop?

The idea you are driving out is that he might have seen the woman first, stopped for a split second, and then heard the footsteps ..... which attempts to get around the false notion that his own footsteps were masking the footsteps of the potential predator behind him .... who was traveling faster than him btw.

C. You see that it is a woman, then hear footsteps, then stop to turn around ...... this makes sense, but at the unavoidable cost of throwing out the masking sounds of your own footsteps theory.

D. The simultaneous seeing/hearing and then stopping .... which also makes sense

Toss out the Lechmere's footsteps masking Paul's footsteps theory!

The thing is that I think the part where Lechmere says he saw something lying on the opposite side of the street until he called Paul’s attention to it is actually – potentially – the most ‘suspicious’ part of the whole Lechmere story.

However, the more Lechmerians stress that Paul MUST have heard Lechmere walking in front of him, because, after all, they wore hobnailed shoes back then AND the street was an echoing chamber AND Paul was on high alert all the way down Buck’s Row, the unlikelier it becomes that Paul wouldn’t have heard Lechmere move around the body and then to the middle of the street. That’s the bottom line.

AND, if we’d turn it around and would assume for a moment that Lechmere was guilty, then we would have a man who we’d know would have had every reason to listen for sounds and be on high alert, but we’d have to assume then that he just didn’t hear Paul enter Buck’s Row, even though Paul would still have worn hobnailed shoes, Buck’s Row would have still been an echoing chamber and Lechmere would have had every reason to be on high alert.

If we’d throw in Neil who, according to you, wasn’t listening for sounds, but still heard Thain 130 yards away, it becomes even more of a miracle that Lechmere would NOT have heard Paul until it was too late for comfort.

But, according to you and others, he still DIDN’T hear him until he had covered some stretch down Buck’s Row. Or, of course, you say: oh well, he was a psychopath and upon hearing Paul enter Buck’s Row he decided to play a game, because that’s what they do.

That’s fine, of course, but I just don’t find it convincing – any of it.

And if we’d add, for instance, the fact that Lechmere stated at the inquest that he would have heard anybody walking away from the crime spot, had anybody been there, it becomes even less than convincing. What he stated, obviously, could easily have triggered the coroner or someone from the jury into asking: OK, but why didn't you hear Paul walking behind you, then?

Or the fact that Lechmere would have had no influence on what Paul would exactly say to inquest, police or journalist. He could not have known Paul would not state to any or all of them that he’d heard no one ahead of him during his entire walk down Buck’s Row.

And, of course, what also has to be taken into account is that memory and estimating distances aren’t infallible machines. So, we simply can’t claim that what an innocent Lechmere would have said would have been exactly what or as it happened.

Do you remember every little detail and order about a thing that happened to you two days ago? And, even if you would, would you include every little detail when recounting the event? I don’t think I would.

Also, if it would really have been so odd that Paul and Lechmere didn’t hear one another, then why did nobody back then & there pick up on it? At least Neil and some of the officers present that night would have known the lighting and acoustical conditions of Buck’s Row, wouldn’t they? And the police did have reason to be interested in Lechmere as he, at least, hadn't told Mizen that he & Paul had examined the body. Or are you saying that it wouldn't have interested the police to get that cleared up.

I have no illusions of convincing you into changing your mind, any of it, but it is how I see things and why what you and other Lechmerians have written so far doesn't convince me.

[GBinOz]

I read through your experiment GB.

You conducted it with a moon that was 90 +% illuminated? Maybe I missed something.
The moon was far less bright on the night in question.

Hi Newbie,

I reported the status of the moon on the night I conducted the re-enactment, rather than waiting for a night that more closely represented the stage of the moon on the night of the murder. I had no means of approximating the exact conditions of the night of the murder, so I just did the best I could.

Cheers, George