Was he lying?

[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/rip...360#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]

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.

[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/rip...360#post779536

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

Cheers, George

[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!

[Newbie]

Auditory masking is an antiquated theory?

That will be news to the actual scientists.

Not the same thing fiver.

Here is an example of masking noises ( a vacuum cleaner in this case):
Let us say that for a given individual, the sound of a cat scratching a post in an otherwise quiet environment is first audible at a level of 10 dB SPL. However, in the presence of a masking noise (for example, a vacuum cleaner that is running simultaneously) that same individual cannot detect the sound of the cat scratching unless the level of the scratching sound is at least 26 dB SPL. We would say that the unmasked threshold for that individual for the target sound (i.e., the cat scratching) is 10 dB SPL, while the masked threshold is 26 dB SPL. The amount of masking is simply the difference between these two thresholds: 16 dB.

A vacuum cleaner, a drill hammer, car traffic ..... these are sounds generated external to us.

Our example is a self generated sound: Lechemere's foosteps. There is an evolutionary advantage for the brain to ignore the sound generated from one's footsteps, just likes there is an advantage in ignoring our own smells.

There is active research going on in how the brain goes about ignoring self produced repetitive sounds. That it does it is not open to dispute.

[Newbie]

Robert Paul thought it was dangerous. Charles Lechmere had grown up in Tiger Bay, which Lechmerians love to proclaim was one of the most dangerous parts of the East End.



Period pictures show brick, not stone buildings. Bucks Row was not the echo chamber that some people make it out to be.

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.

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

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.

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.


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."

So, the problem lies well beyond just saying that Lechmere had bad hearing, or that PC Neil had supreme hearing.

[Newbie]

Where are you getting the 11 years?

Robert Paul's marriage record shows that in 1879 he was living at 108 North Street. Sometime between then and 1881, Robert Paul had moved to 30 Foster Street. Which means at the time of the Nichols murder, Paul had been living on Foster Street for 7 to 9 years.

We also don't know when Robert Paul started working at Corbett's Court. It could have predated his move to Foster Street or it could have happened only weeks before the Nichols murder.

I got it from Ed Stowe .... he could be wrong.

I don't communicate with Mr. Stowe.

I'll look it up again.

[Newbie]

Newbie maybe an important factor to place in would be the distance/time taken for Lechmere to get from 22 Doveton St to the bottom of Forster Street. That really should be the place the calculations should start since that is where they are constant for both men, distance wise.

Perhaps Geddy.

But we only know two times .... his typical departure time: which seems to be 3:30 am,
and his 4 am arrival time at work.

The time 3.6 mph is an average .... he can go slower or faster than it during the course of his walk, but typically people maintain a steady rate when walking from one place to another, particularly when it is a daily routine.

We don't know when he typically gets to the bottom of Forster street, and can only estimate it based on the above ... to me, it doesn't even matter when he arrives in terms of an exact hour and minute, because the narrowness of the problem I defined does not require precision in this.

My calculations do begin at the bottom of Forster street btw: Lechmere's average walking speed for the trip being used in the calculations.

[Newbie]

The distance from Robert Paul's home to the Albion Brewery was slightly less than 40 yards, so Lechmere would have already passed that intersection and Paul would have had no chance of seeing him.

The distance from the corner of Forster / Bath street to the corner of Bath / Brady was 55 yards.

The further the distance Lech starts out ahead of Paul, the faster Paul needs to scramble to close the gap to 30 - 40 yards when finally seen by Lech.

[Fiver]

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.

He walked that route from 30 Forster street to Corbett's court for 11 years .... he must of developed a very good sense of what the correct speed should be to get to work on time.

Where are you getting the 11 years?

Robert Paul's marriage record shows that in 1879 he was living at 108 North Street. Sometime between then and 1881, Robert Paul had moved to 30 Foster Street. Which means at the time of the Nichols murder, Paul had been living on Foster Street for 7 to 9 years.

We also don't know when Robert Paul started working at Corbett's Court. It could have predated his move to Foster Street or it could have happened only weeks before the Nichols murder.

[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

[Newbie]

There's a decent chance that Robert Paul would have just kept walking if Charles Lechmere hadn't stopped him.

Yeah, there was a good chance of that.
PC Neil seems to have discovered the body while walking down Buck's row on the same side of the street as the body.
It was pretty dark that night. PC Neil switches from describing seeing a "figure" to "deceased" female in his testimony only when astride the body.

According to websites on historical moon phases, August 31st 1888 was a 'day' with a waning crescent moon,
36 % illuminated and the Moon was a few days from its apogee (farthest distance away).
The moon is low in the south east sky during Summer: maybe rose around midnight that night.
It probably did not appear over the buildings aligning the north side of the street.

https://nineplanets.org/moon/phase/8-31-1888/

https://www.moongiant.com/calendar/august/1888/

I read somewhere that there was 50 % cloud cover: it rained the day before.

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.

[Fiver]

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, but then was only about 40 yards away when Lech finally heard him, turned around, and spotted him.

The distance from Robert Paul's home to the Albion Brewery was slightly less than 40 yards, so Lechmere would have already passed that intersection and Paul would have had no chance of seeing him.

[Newbie]

We do not know. I always find this 'hearing' someone then estimated how far away they are is very inaccurate. It might not have been in those days it might have been something people were adapted to be able to tell more accurately.



There is nothing in the evidence to suggest it was. He was 'behind time' so maybe walking a bit faster, or scared of the street/area so again maybe walking faster but there is no evidence to suggest a jogging speed. If he was jogging or faster would this change Lechmere's perception of the footsteps noise?



Did he? Sorry missed that in the testimonies, can you point that out?



Again did he? 'He walked into the middle of the road, and saw that it was the figure of a woman. He then heard the footsteps of a man going up Buck's-row' He heard the footsteps whilst he was standing still in the middle of the road, Paul confirms this by saying - 'he saw in Buck's-row a man standing in the middle of the road'

Are you doing a Christer here and inventing scenarios to fit a narrative perhaps?

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, but then was only about 40 yards away when Lech finally heard him, turned around, and spotted him.

The most Lechmere friendly version is that Lech finally heard Paul's steps, turned around, and then had to wait 8? seconds for him to finally see Paul about 40 yards away. In this scenario, Paul is not traveling at blistering speeds ... although he's still going about 3.8mph, much faster than he need go. But here, Lech suddenly loses interest in the poor woman's plight and waits 30 seconds for Paul to arrive, while standing a few steps away from the body.

The least Lechmere friendly version is that Lech finally heard Paul's steps, turned around, and then immediately saw Paul about 30 yards away. In the second case, Paul would have to be jogging to make up that ground.


Which one do you prefer? I prefer the 2nd but used the first case to give Lech the benefit of the doubt.

I am using Lechmere's average speed as a guide as to how fast Paul would have to be moving.
Typically, Lech leaves at around 3:30 am; arrives at Pickfords at 4 am: that is 1.8 miles in a 30 minute walk.

So, Lech is walking at a rate of 3.6 mph .... that's a pretty good clip.
If he walked slower, he'd have to leave earlier.

Go to your local fitness center and crank the treading machine up to 4 mph ..... its fast.

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.

He walked that route from 30 Forster street to Corbett's court for 11 years .... he must of developed a very good sense of what the correct speed should be to get to work on time.

[The Baron]

Well said Mr. Filby.

Lechmere had some 12 kids to feed, they added to them sick imaginations that he fulfilled to the letter.

If those who push these funny theories have to work hard like Lechmere, you wouldn't have heard such things.


The Baron