Lets get Lechmere off the hook!

[Simon Owen]

David , the timings of PC Neil , PC Mizen and Charles Cross all seem to tie up pretty well - it is Robert Paul who seems to be out of sync. This suggests to me that rather than Paul being the most accurate with the time it was he who made an error here. Maybe his alarm clock was wrong ?

[Robert]

I don't go in for all these timings, which seem to me to be rather rough-and-ready. But anyway, Crossmere would have required the time not only to kill and mutilate Nichols, but to pick her up from wherever he picked her up - unless he actually found her in Buck's Row.

[RockySullivan]

David , the timings of PC Neil , PC Mizen and Charles Cross all seem to tie up pretty well - it is Robert Paul who seems to be out of sync. This suggests to me that rather than Paul being the most accurate with the time it was he who made an error here. Maybe his alarm clock was wrong ?

Or maybe he was hiding in the shadows after killing chapman and scurrying to hide once he heard Lechmeres footsteps. Isn't it said Lechmere didn't hear or see paul walking up? Maybe he was hiding much closer to The body and rather than run he took advantage of Lexhmere as an alibi

[Cogidubnus]

I see a weakness in the case against Lechmere in the timing of events, something which is supposed to be a point in favour of him being the murderer.

In the documentary, it is stated that Paul met Lechmere at the scene of the crime at 3:46am. This is based on the fact that Paul gave evidence at the inquest that he left his home in Foster Street at "about quarter to 4". Based on Lechmere leaving his home at 3:30am and taking seven minutes to arrive in Buck's Row, at 3:37am, it is stated in the documentary that: "According to Paul's evidence, Lechmere found the body some 16 minutes after he claimed he left home". Given that Paul is shown entering Buck's Row at 3:45, I don't entirely understand why this then transmutes into 3:46 but I assume the point is that it took him 60 seconds to walk down Buck's Row to reach Lechmere. Consequently it is stated that there is a "9 minute gap" between the time Lechmere should have reached the body (3:37) and Paul's arrival (3:46). This is described as "a major gap in Lechmere's timings".

The entire argument is based on the assumption that Paul, being in a hurry to get to work, would have been keenly aware of the time. However, I would like to suggest that the person who would have been most aware of the exact time that morning was PC Mizen because he was waking people up. I don't suppose anyone who asked to be woken up at 3:45am would have appreciated being woken up any earlier. Mizen said at the inquest that he was approached by the two men at or about "a quarter to four". He then admitted that, having been told about the body in Buck's Row, he "finished knocking up one person". For me, this means that far from Paul arriving in Buck's Row at 3:45, this was actually the time that he and Lechmere spoke to Mizen in Hanbury Street.

While I appreciate that Lechmere only supposedly needs two minutes to murder Nichols according to the documentary, this change in timings rather undermines the whole point about the "major gap". Indeed, if Lechmere left his house at 3:30am, took seven minutes to walk to Buck's Row (3:37am), then it took a further minute for Paul to walk down Buck's Row (3:38am), then, say, three minutes for them to speak and look at the body and decide what to do (3:41am), then three minutes for them to locate a constable and explain what they had seen (3:44am) - then for Mizen to knock up (3:45am) before proceeding to Buck's Row - all the timings are pretty much accounted for and Lechmere had no time to murder Nichols. But even that assumes Lechmere left his house at exactly 3:30am as opposed to, say, 3:33am which most people would call 3:30.

I genuinely admire and respect the originality of this post...notwithstanding my usual cautions regarding LVP timings...

All the best

Dave

[Peter Griffith aka gryff]

Timings 3

I see a weakness in the case against Lechmere in the timing of events, something which is supposed to be a point in favour of him being the murderer.

David, I have questioned the timings twice on the: "Missing Evidence" thread including this :

Documentary says Polly Murdered at 3.30am

And they do say that, but er ... no response

David , the timings of PC Neil , PC Mizen and Charles Cross all seem to tie up pretty well - it is Robert Paul who seems to be out of sync. This suggests to me that rather than Paul being the most accurate with the time it was he who made an error here. Maybe his alarm clock was wrong ?

Exactly Simon ! The timings in the documentary seem to be a mess.

cheers, gryff

[GUT]

Gryff

Don't hold your breathe, the response will probably be "we don't control the producers" like the Cross kneeling beside the body.

[Lechmere]

Gryff
It looks like you have spotted a minor mistake if it said that a policeman passed 25 minutes before the body was found.
Of course GUT is quite right - me and Christer forced the Producers to incorporate this tiny error for our own nefarious reasons. All along we manipulated the Producers via Lechmereian mind control.

On the subject of timings as I said on the other thread the police times tend to be in synch and were probably agreed together - but were usually rounded to the neatest quarter.
The non police timings if taken together provide the time gap.
I posted up a contribution from the series Producer explaining the timings where he pointed out that given these timings there was up to 9 minutes available, but it would have only taken 2 minutes to kill and no one knows where he met Nichils nor actually whether he actually left earlier (eg 3.20)

[Chris]

The day of the Lord Mayors parade was not a holiday in London

See the descriptions from 1890-1895 quoted here:

http://www.victorianlondon.org/entertainment/lordmayorsshow.htm

This has been a considerable holiday, for it is Lord Mayor's Day, and all London gave itself up to the celebration.

On Lord Mayor's Day London gives itself up to holiday-making, and turns out in its thousands to see the time-honoured Show.

THE Lord Mayor's Show is, to those who have any business to transact between Westminster and Tower Hill on the 9th of November, an unmitigated nuisance; and when I am in London on that day, I am scrupulous in keeping the festival precisely as I keep the four Bank Holidays with which the Metropolis is annually afflicted ...

[Simon Owen]

Gryff
It looks like you have spotted a minor mistake if it said that a policeman passed 25 minutes before the body was found.
Of course GUT is quite right - me and Christer forced the Producers to incorporate this tiny error for our own nefarious reasons. All along we manipulated the Producers via Lechmereian mind control.

On the subject of timings as I said on the other thread the police times tend to be in synch and were probably agreed together - but were usually rounded to the neatest quarter.
The non police timings if taken together provide the time gap.
I posted up a contribution from the series Producer explaining the timings where he pointed out that given these timings there was up to 9 minutes available, but it would have only taken 2 minutes to kill and no one knows where he met Nichils nor actually whether he actually left earlier (eg 3.20)

What about Doctor Llewellyn's account though : " I was called to Buck's row about five minutes to four this morning by Police constable Thane, who said a woman had been murdered. I went to the place at once, and found deceased lying on the ground in front of the stable yard door. " Surely this is more in accord with Cross/Neil/Mizen's timing than Pauls ?

[lynn cates]

passage

Hello DJB. Welcome to the boards.

"To access the yard the killer and victim actually had to walk through the house with the risk of being challenged going in or out."

Quite true. However, finding people in the passage was not uncommon. Some slept there.

"My theory is that the killer knew the house and had been there before."

Entirely agree. And I think he had been challenged and ejected before.

"There surely has to be some relationship between the killer and 29 Hanbury street in order for him to be comfortable in that situation?"

Quite. Think he had slept there a few times.

Cheers.
LC

[Lechmere]

Simon most accounts have Llewellyn knocked up at 4.

Those quotes about the Lord Mayor's Parade make my point.
For the millions of ordinary Londonders it was normal working day - not a Bank Holiday. People had to take a day off work to watch it (not an option many hard working people took) unless they were already itinerant.
It caused disruption so they eventually moved it to a Saturday, also so more people could go along.

[Chris]

Those quotes about the Lord Mayor's Parade make my point.

Obviously, they say quite explicitly the opposite of what you claimed.

[Djb]

Hello DJB. Welcome to the boards.

"To access the yard the killer and victim actually had to walk through the house with the risk of being challenged going in or out."

Quite true. However, finding people in the passage was not uncommon. Some slept there.

"My theory is that the killer knew the house and had been there before."

Entirely agree. And I think he had been challenged and ejected before.

"There surely has to be some relationship between the killer and 29 Hanbury street in order for him to be comfortable in that situation?"


Quite. Think he had slept there a few times.

Cheers.
LC

although rooms were let and 25 people lived there, it wasn't somewhere where individual beds were rented out was it?
and the killer didn't take victims into any other doss houses with which he would have been familiar.

[Djb]

Thanks for the welcome btw.

[Trevor Marriott]

Hello DJB. Welcome to the boards.

"To access the yard the killer and victim actually had to walk through the house with the risk of being challenged going in or out."

Quite true. However, finding people in the passage was not uncommon. Some slept there.

"My theory is that the killer knew the house and had been there before."

Entirely agree. And I think he had been challenged and ejected before.

"There surely has to be some relationship between the killer and 29 Hanbury street in order for him to be comfortable in that situation?"

Quite. Think he had slept there a few times.

Cheers.
LC

More likely the opposite, the victim knew the location it was ideal place to tto take a punter.

Can you see someone trying to sleep in the hall with prostitutes and their clients coming and going all through the night? (No pun intended there)