Lets get Lechmere off the hook!

[Pcdunn]

Well, to begin with, he did not do the same thing four times - he only "helped to report" his crimes one time, for example, so your comparison is lacking.

Myself, I find it hard to believe that Gary Ridgway pulled HIS stunt fifty (50) times and h´got away with it And compared to Pedro Lopez he was a mere newbie - Lopez killed around 300 young girls.

Surely, PCDunn, that MUST be wrong? Surely THAT could never have happened? I mean, if Lechmere could never have killed four times and gotten away with it...?

The best,
Fisherman

I don't have a problem with believing men or women have done terrible deeds as murderers or serial killers, we all know humans are capable of doing awful things to other humans. Why do you use 20th-century killers as your examples, though? They lived in a time and place far removed from Whitechapel of the late 1880s, were able to move about more quickly, etc.

Imagine the serial killers of the 19th century, such as Neil Cream and the American H. H. Holmes. They tended to be con men as well as killers, and Holmes was undoubtedly a sociopath, who had more resources with which to make a safe place in which to carry out his deeds.

Now think of the daily life of the working man in the East End of London, especially one with a large family to support, working six days out of seven, doing physical labor, struggling against poverty and schedules-- is he really likely to work in murders as well? Honestly?

[David Orsam]

Yes, the Times looks like a clincher.
I don´t disagree, as I have spelt out in a couple of posts.

Good, now we are getting somewhere! I think you will actually end up agreeing with me about Mizen too but we shall see. Post to follow very shortly.

[David Orsam]

Let´s add the Echo to the discussion:

"He went down Buck's row, and found Police constable Neal (sic) who was alone with the body of the murdered woman. He fetched Dr. Llewellyn. There was a large quantity of congealed blood on the pavement, near the woman's neck; and when witness lifted up the body the back appeared to be saturated with blood as far as the waist."
(The Echo, 17:th of September)


This seemingly bolsters the take that Thain spoke of the instance when he arrived back from having fetched Llewellyn. It says that at this time (around 4.10), the blood on the pavement was congealed. When Mizen saw the pool, however, it was still in the process of congealing.

It doesn't bolster anything Fisherman because that edited summary in the Echo makes no mention of the blood being washed away and that was the context in which Thain was talking about the blood. The simple fact that the sentence about the blood in the Echo follows the sentence about Dr Llewellyn means nothing in the context of a condensed summary - and you have basically imagined that the report was saying "at this time".

[Fisherman]

He's talking about the time when the blood was washed away. Hence the full extract is:

"The Coroner: You were there when the blood was removed? -- Witness: Yes.

The Coroner: Was there a very large quantity on the flags? -- Witness: There was a large clot near the wall, and blood was running into the gutter."

We see it clearly in the Times report of the same evidence:

"He was present when the spots of blood were washed away. On the spot where the deceased had been lying was a mass of congealed blood. He should say it was about 6 in. in diameter, and had run towards the gutter. It appeared to him to be a large quantity of blood."

Even if you disagree with me about the timing - and I can't see how you can - he clearly said nothing about seeing blood flowing from the victim's wounds.

So that's Thain out of the equation. Now I am going to explain in a separate post why you have misunderstood and/or misinterpreted Mizen's evidence.

Yes, the Times looks like a clincher.
I don´t disagree, as I have spelt out in a couple of posts.
And no, I have not misunderstood Mizen. But I will take a look at what you have to say!

The best,
Fisherman

[David Orsam]

Thains wording may be reflecting the time when he helped to put Nichols on the ambulance.

He's talking about the time when the blood was washed away. Hence the full extract is:

"The Coroner: You were there when the blood was removed? -- Witness: Yes.

The Coroner: Was there a very large quantity on the flags? -- Witness: There was a large clot near the wall, and blood was running into the gutter."

We see it clearly in the Times report of the same evidence:

"He was present when the spots of blood were washed away. On the spot where the deceased had been lying was a mass of congealed blood. He should say it was about 6 in. in diameter, and had run towards the gutter. It appeared to him to be a large quantity of blood."

Even if you disagree with me about the timing - and I can't see how you can - he clearly said nothing about seeing blood flowing from the victim's wounds.

So that's Thain out of the equation. Now I am going to explain in a separate post why you have misunderstood and/or misinterpreted Mizen's evidence.

[Fisherman]

Let´s add the Echo to the discussion:

"He went down Buck's row, and found Police constable Neal (sic) who was alone with the body of the murdered woman. He fetched Dr. Llewellyn. There was a large quantity of congealed blood on the pavement, near the woman's neck; and when witness lifted up the body the back appeared to be saturated with blood as far as the waist."
(The Echo, 17:th of September)


This seemingly bolsters the take that Thain spoke of the instance when he arrived back from having fetched Llewellyn. It says that at this time (around 4.10), the blood on the pavement was congealed. When Mizen saw the pool, however, it was still in the process of congealing.

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Fisherman, can you please provide the evidential basis for this claim in respect of PC Thain?

Morning Advertiser, September 18:

The Coroner: Was there a very large quantity on the flags?
Witness: There was a large clot near the wall, and blood was running into the gutter.

It applies, though, that Thains wording may be reflecting the time when he helped to put Nichols on the ambulance. Especially since he says that there was a large "clot" near the wall - that would be the pool Neil spoke of, reasonably.
It is hard to decide what is right or wrong here, at any rate - a clot will not produce running blood, will it?

So maybe we should not use Thain, but instead only Neil and Mizen - the two corroborate each other, at least.
As for the blood running into the gutter, I think Neil said that this was under development as he saw the body. He said, if I remember correctly, that the blood at this stage was running "towards the gutter". But that needs to be checked if you want the exact wording.

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Trevor Marriott:

With all due respect you are trying to read into something which isn't there as far as this murder is concerned.

I am not reading anything in, other than the very clear possibility that Lechmere killed Nichols.

In a nutshell she had her throat cut by an unknown assailant
The exact time of death has not been established and will never be established 126 years later.

Spot on, Trevor, absolutely spot on. What luck I never said that I CAN establish her exact time of death! As for the "unknown assailant", there is a very clear chance that he was not unknown at all. It´s either Lechmere or somebody else VERY close in time.

You have no direct evidence to take those facts any further you are not a medical expert. Even modern day experts cannot come up with all the answers, so accept it an move on.

Ah - you picked up on my telling you that I am no medical expert - good! What you mean by "direct" evidence, I don´t know. I DO know that what I have against Lechmere is circumstantial evidence. And I DO know that I ave said so for three, four years now, so it´s not exactly any news.

If you feel so strong about this blood flow and oozing go find another forensic expert and see what they have to say and then post the results on here.

They will probably all differ to some little extent. And they will all say that Lechmere is very much in the picture, but it COULD have been somebody else. There is nothing more they CAN say, I suspect.

The best,
Fisherman

[David Orsam]

But we DO know that Mizen said the blood was running and Thain said the exact same thing

Fisherman, can you please provide the evidential basis for this claim in respect of PC Thain?

[Trevor Marriott]

Hmmm, Trevor - I think it is a pity that you did not ask the question I forwarded to you. And exactly why did you ask about HOW she was cut? I really don´t see how that is relevant to the discussion about the blood evidence...?

But let´s look at what you got, anyway! Apparently, your expert did not answer the question you asked only, but instead, for some peculiar reason, he answered a number of other things too.

1. The first example is about a body that had been transported for a long time to an autopsy and that continued to "bleed" nearly 24 hours afterwards.

What do we learn that we did not know before? Nothing, I´m afraid. I have myself pointed out that blood within a body with no injuries to it, will stay fluent for days. It will eventually break down, but for many days, if we open up such a body, blood will flow.

In the case at hand, your expert says nothing about what kind of injuries the victim had sustained. Was there any external damage at all? What kind of vessels had been damaged and to what extent? Was the bleeding the result of moving the body?

There are numerous questions left unanswered here, and there is no way that we can compare to the Nichols murder before we know more. Quite likely, it will remain useless afterwards too.

Plus, of course, why does the pathologist speak of "bleeding" rather than bleeding? Is it blood serum we are being told about?

2. On the whole "how-was-she-cut"-business, I will pass. I find it is unconnected to what we are dealing with here. We know the extent of the damage done to Nichols´ neck, and we know in what exact position she was found, and we really don´t need to know any much more.

3. The last portion of your post is what I find by far the most interesting one:

The lack of documented arterial blood pattern is not surprising as, despite being common in textbooks, arterial spurting is actually quite uncommon ‘in the wild’. Arteries, even large ones, usually go into acute spasm when cut, providing very effective control of bleeding (at least initially). The large arteries in the neck are quite well ‘hidden’ behind muscles and other structures, so they can be missed by even very extensive cuts to the neck. Also, even if cut, the initial ‘spray’ is blocked by the surrounding structures such that blood either remains inside the body or simply gushes / flows / drips out of the external skin hole rather than spurting.

"Arterial spurting is quite uncommon in the wild", your pathologist says, and this would be on account of how arteries usually go into spasm when cut. Unfortunately, I think that your man is perhaps speaking of other arteries than the large neck arteries here, since he moves on to say that these large arteries are hidden and often missed by even very extensive cuts.

So the picture that is painted here is one where the main arteries are left intact, while the other ones are cut to a large extent, but go into spasms, thereby inititally prohibiting too much bleeding. Of course, as the victim dies, the spams will loose their grip and a free flow will follow. In such a case, the blood flow could be sparse to an extent.

But this is not what we have in the Nichols case! In that case, we know perfectly well that BOTH the carotid arteries were cut clean off. And in such a case, arterial spray could well occur, as in the Chapman case, for example, where we have it on the fence by the side of the body.
Your man says that the surrounding structures of the neck could hinder that spray to a smaller or larger extent, and I find that plausible. But it would very much hinge on how much damage was done to the neck, and in Nichols´ case, we know that the neck was cut clean off, but for the spine. So much as the blood could have spurted against the surfaces of the opened up neck rather than out into the street, we would still have a case where the blood would not have been in any way hindered to flow out of the body at maximum speed, if you like.

A kind of comparison can be made with a hose with a diameter of, say, ten inches. If we provide a three-inch cut to that hose, the structure of the hose will nevertheless hold together to a large extent and hinder a maximum outflow.

But if we cut through it all the way down to the ground, only leaving an undamaged three inches, then the structure will fall apart, and there will be a maximum outflow of the hose.

What we need to do is to look at the exact circumstances we KNOW were there in the Nichols case, and not - as I have pointed out frequently - at examples of other cases that we do not know to what extent they are related to the Nichols ditto. Neither are we very much served by generalized observations, other than in a general information respect.

All the best,
Fisherman

With all due respect you are trying to read into something which isn't there as far as this murder is concerned.

In a nutshell she had her throat cut by an unknown assailant
The exact time of death has not been established and will never be established 126 years later.

You have no direct evidence to take those facts any further you are not a medical expert. Even modern day experts cannot come up with all the answers, so accept it an move on.

If you feel so strong about this blood flow and oozing go find another forensic expert and see what they have to say and then post the results on here.

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[Fisherman]

Over the xmas period I asked the following questions of the expert relative to Nicholls murder.

Question

You have the Doctors inquest testimony. Is it possible to determine how the throat wounds were inflicted. i.e was the killer standing behind her, or could she have been on the ground perhaps having been strangled first?

There doesn't appear to be an evidence of arterial spray.

Reply

"I did an autopsy last week, were the body had been transported a great distance to the mortuary and death had occurred almost 24 hours prior to my examination… and yet the injuries continued to ‘bleed’ relatively profusely for quite some time. So much so that we struggled to get a ‘clean’ photograph as the blood flooded back as quickly as we could wipe it away! This is why I have been so cautious about commenting on ‘maximum’ timings and quantities of blood loss.

Anyway, in answer to your question, it is really not possible to say with certainty how the wounds were inflicted in terms of ‘reconstructing’ events from the appearance of wounds. This is something that used to be quite ‘popular’ even up until relatively late on in the 20th century, with pathologists stating confidently that a left-handed dwarf with a limp inflicted the injury from behind using a specific knife, etc. Nowadays it is accepted that there is so much variation that in such cases, apart from a few ‘extreme’ scenarios that can be more-or-less excluded, just about anything is possible.

So in other words, the killer could have been behind the victim (with them both standing), or he (or she!) could have been ‘above’ the victim (kneeling, squatting, crouched, lying, stooping…) whilst she lay on the ground (+/- prior strangling).

Or it could have happened during a highly dynamic struggle, with all manner of grappling, twisting and fortuitous slashing going on. Only persons present at the time really know what went on (and we can’t ask them!), and nobody can be certain about a ‘reconstruction’ now based on photos / medical records. If a number of envisaged scenarios are actually ‘possible’ then nobody can really argue in favour of a particular one any more than another.

The lack of documented arterial blood pattern is not surprising as, despite being common in textbooks, arterial spurting is actually quite uncommon ‘in the wild’. Arteries, even large ones, usually go into acute spasm when cut, providing very effective control of bleeding (at least initially). The large arteries in the neck are quite well ‘hidden’ behind muscles and other structures, so they can be missed by even very extensive cuts to the neck. Also, even if cut, the initial ‘spray’ is blocked by the surrounding structures such that blood either remains inside the body or simply gushes / flows / drips out of the external skin hole rather than spurting.

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

Hmmm, Trevor - I think it is a pity that you did not ask the question I forwarded to you. And exactly why did you ask about HOW she was cut? I really don´t see how that is relevant to the discussion about the blood evidence...?

But let´s look at what you got, anyway! Apparently, your expert did not answer the question you asked only, but instead, for some peculiar reason, he answered a number of other things too.

1. The first example is about a body that had been transported for a long time to an autopsy and that continued to "bleed" nearly 24 hours afterwards.

What do we learn that we did not know before? Nothing, I´m afraid. I have myself pointed out that blood within a body with no injuries to it, will stay fluent for days. It will eventually break down, but for many days, if we open up such a body, blood will flow.

In the case at hand, your expert says nothing about what kind of injuries the victim had sustained. Was there any external damage at all? What kind of vessels had been damaged and to what extent? Was the bleeding the result of moving the body?

There are numerous questions left unanswered here, and there is no way that we can compare to the Nichols murder before we know more. Quite likely, it will remain useless afterwards too.

Plus, of course, why does the pathologist speak of "bleeding" rather than bleeding? Is it blood serum we are being told about?

2. On the whole "how-was-she-cut"-business, I will pass. I find it is unconnected to what we are dealing with here. We know the extent of the damage done to Nichols´ neck, and we know in what exact position she was found, and we really don´t need to know any much more.

3. The last portion of your post is what I find by far the most interesting one:

The lack of documented arterial blood pattern is not surprising as, despite being common in textbooks, arterial spurting is actually quite uncommon ‘in the wild’. Arteries, even large ones, usually go into acute spasm when cut, providing very effective control of bleeding (at least initially). The large arteries in the neck are quite well ‘hidden’ behind muscles and other structures, so they can be missed by even very extensive cuts to the neck. Also, even if cut, the initial ‘spray’ is blocked by the surrounding structures such that blood either remains inside the body or simply gushes / flows / drips out of the external skin hole rather than spurting.

"Arterial spurting is quite uncommon in the wild", your pathologist says, and this would be on account of how arteries usually go into spasm when cut. Unfortunately, I think that your man is perhaps speaking of other arteries than the large neck arteries here, since he moves on to say that these large arteries are hidden and often missed by even very extensive cuts.

So the picture that is painted here is one where the main arteries are left intact, while the other ones are cut to a large extent, but go into spasms, thereby inititally prohibiting too much bleeding. Of course, as the victim dies, the spams will loose their grip and a free flow will follow. In such a case, the blood flow could be sparse to an extent.

But this is not what we have in the Nichols case! In that case, we know perfectly well that BOTH the carotid arteries were cut clean off. And in such a case, arterial spray could well occur, as in the Chapman case, for example, where we have it on the fence by the side of the body.
Your man says that the surrounding structures of the neck could hinder that spray to a smaller or larger extent, and I find that plausible. But it would very much hinge on how much damage was done to the neck, and in Nichols´ case, we know that the neck was cut clean off, but for the spine. So much as the blood could have spurted against the surfaces of the opened up neck rather than out into the street, we would still have a case where the blood would not have been in any way hindered to flow out of the body at maximum speed, if you like.

A kind of comparison can be made with a hose with a diameter of, say, ten inches. If we provide a three-inch cut to that hose, the structure of the hose will nevertheless hold together to a large extent and hinder a maximum outflow.

But if we cut through it all the way down to the ground, only leaving an undamaged three inches, then the structure will fall apart, and there will be a maximum outflow of the hose.

What we need to do is to look at the exact circumstances we KNOW were there in the Nichols case, and not - as I have pointed out frequently - at examples of other cases that we do not know to what extent they are related to the Nichols ditto. Neither are we very much served by generalized observations, other than in a general information respect.

All the best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Ooze: 1.
(of a fluid) slowly trickle or seep out of something.
"blood was oozing from a wound in his scalp"

Not running at all. Crawling maybe.

Yes, that´s what I am speaking of too - a slow passage of blood, as opposed to one with underlying pressure of the heart. Running was what Mizen said, and what Neil said too - at least according to the Morning Advertiser, so running it is. But you can run slow and you can run fast. As for me, once blood is leaving a wound and travelling downwards along the skin, it is running.

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Fish, of course Crossmere could have been the killer. But I doubt it.

Re your linguistic point : yes, language does evolve, and not always for the better. I am not steeped in late Victorian literature, but even if I were, such knowledge would only give an indication of how words were used in literature. There is also everyday conversation to consider. I imagine that dictionary compilers lag behind everyday conversation, and words can gradually change their meanings in a subterranean manner, as it were. Eventually the old use of a word becomes an old-fashioned use, and a new use becomes dominant, and this is finally acknowledged in the dictionaries.

Anyway, if you want to download the following, you can check on the 1888 state of play of the word 'ooze.' I don't know what an RAR file or a Torrent is, but if you know, then be my guest.

http://www.theabsolute.net/dictionar...nary_1888.html

I don´t need to download that file, Robert. When push comes to shove, all we have is Neil saying oozed in some sources and running in at least one other source, plus Mizen saying running and appearing fresh, and Thain spaking about blood running towards the gutter. That´s fine by me. I see no reason at all to get tangled up in any semantic quarrels over it.

The best,
Fisherman

[The Good Michael]

Ooze: 1.
(of a fluid) slowly trickle or seep out of something.
"blood was oozing from a wound in his scalp"

Not running at all. Crawling maybe.

[Trevor Marriott]

I´m still not buying your assertion that you are the only one who is entitled to say how the word "ooze" is correctly or incorrectly used, Robert.

I trade in language, being a journalist. I am very aware that language is a "floating" (or perhaps oozing?) commodity, that changes over time. What we say is misspellings today is tomorrows rule. When we say "but it does not mean that" today, we may have to eat humble pie tomorrow.

Exactly how the word oozed was used in 1888 generally and by Neil specifically, we cannot know. We CAN however, quickly see that we have a woman who bled, and that the PC:s who watched her bleed used different expressions describing it. That should not lead us to think that they all saw different things or that there is somewhere an implication hidden that they were wrong to a smaller or larger extent.

The only credible thing to accept is that Nichols was bleeding as Neil saw her and still bleeding as Mizen saw her. It therefore stands to reason to suggest that if there was any difference in blood flow volume, then it would have entailed Mizen seeing lesser blood flow than Neil saw. And Mizen still chose to word himself that blood was running from the wound in her throat, and that this blood appeared fresh.
Logically, blood was running from the wound in Nichols neck when Neil saw her too, and equally logically, that blood would have appeared fresh then too.

Maybe you will object to this, I don´t know. There can be no logically based objection, so I don´t care much, to be perfectly frank. Blood flowed, and that blood had started to congeal as Mizen looked at it. That puts Lechmere smack, bang alacazam in the middle of things, like it or not.

The blood COULD have flowed longer in Nichols´ case than what is normally the case. There must be room reserved for a killer that had escaped when Lechmere arrived.

The blood COULD have congealed at a slower pace than what is normally the case. There must be room reserved for a killer that had escaped when Lechmere arrived.

But overall, the picture given by the PC:s observing the blood, including how it flowed towards the gutter as Thain saw her, all speaks of a very clear possibility that Lechmere was the killer. If he was NOT, then these parameters are seemingly deviating from the normal behaviour - which they CAN have done, which they MUST NOT have done, and which they more PROBABLY NOT did.

Lechmere is therefore the most probable killer of Polly Nichols, albeit we cannot say that he MUST have been the murderer.

That is what I see here. If you have any other objections to that reasoning other than "not all blood reacts in the same way" or "there may well have been time for another killer", I´d like to hear them. I am no medico myself, and I am sure that many people are better equipped to deduct from the material than I am.

What I am also sure of, however, is that Charles Allen Lechmere simply must be the prime suspect in the Nichols case.

The best,
Fisherman

Over the xmas period I asked the following questions of the expert relative to Nicholls murder.

Question

You have the Doctors inquest testimony. Is it possible to determine how the throat wounds were inflicted. i.e was the killer standing behind her, or could she have been on the ground perhaps having been strangled first?

There doesn't appear to be an evidence of arterial spray.

Reply

"I did an autopsy last week, were the body had been transported a great distance to the mortuary and death had occurred almost 24 hours prior to my examination… and yet the injuries continued to ‘bleed’ relatively profusely for quite some time. So much so that we struggled to get a ‘clean’ photograph as the blood flooded back as quickly as we could wipe it away! This is why I have been so cautious about commenting on ‘maximum’ timings and quantities of blood loss.

Anyway, in answer to your question, it is really not possible to say with certainty how the wounds were inflicted in terms of ‘reconstructing’ events from the appearance of wounds. This is something that used to be quite ‘popular’ even up until relatively late on in the 20th century, with pathologists stating confidently that a left-handed dwarf with a limp inflicted the injury from behind using a specific knife, etc. Nowadays it is accepted that there is so much variation that in such cases, apart from a few ‘extreme’ scenarios that can be more-or-less excluded, just about anything is possible.

So in other words, the killer could have been behind the victim (with them both standing), or he (or she!) could have been ‘above’ the victim (kneeling, squatting, crouched, lying, stooping…) whilst she lay on the ground (+/- prior strangling).

Or it could have happened during a highly dynamic struggle, with all manner of grappling, twisting and fortuitous slashing going on. Only persons present at the time really know what went on (and we can’t ask them!), and nobody can be certain about a ‘reconstruction’ now based on photos / medical records. If a number of envisaged scenarios are actually ‘possible’ then nobody can really argue in favour of a particular one any more than another.

The lack of documented arterial blood pattern is not surprising as, despite being common in textbooks, arterial spurting is actually quite uncommon ‘in the wild’. Arteries, even large ones, usually go into acute spasm when cut, providing very effective control of bleeding (at least initially). The large arteries in the neck are quite well ‘hidden’ behind muscles and other structures, so they can be missed by even very extensive cuts to the neck. Also, even if cut, the initial ‘spray’ is blocked by the surrounding structures such that blood either remains inside the body or simply gushes / flows / drips out of the external skin hole rather than spurting.

www.trevormarriott.co.uk