Lets get Lechmere off the hook!

[Richard Patterson]

Sorry, Richard, but you either make no sense or you misrepresent things rather badly. One small pointer:

"I have only said that the killer needed the ability to cut into corpses."

Guess how many suspects that leaves us with...

All the best,
Fisherman

Sir. One simple question that gets Lechmere off the hook.

Why did Lechmere stop?

All other credible suspects, died soon after, threw themselves into the Thames, were imprisoned, put in mad houses or locked away in monasteries. Your suspect is the only one who simply stopped killing. Wouldn’t this make your suspect the only known serial killer to do so? With odds like this, at many thousands to one, Lechmere must be in fact the least likely and most imperfect suspect.

[Tom_Wescott]

Fish,

I don't quite understand the harping over Scobie. The producers did a good and normal thing, which was get apparently independent people who are experts in their field to give opinions favorable to the premise of the documentary. It's understood by us that these witnesses were provided in paper form the argument for Cross as Ripper. Why wouldn't they be? The idea that they sifted through reams of raw data to independently arrive at the idea of Cross as Ripper is rather laughable but some of your posts seem to try and suggest that.
The fact is that if these same witnesses were provided a written argument favoring Le Grand as Ripper, or Kosminski, maybe even Druitt, they likely would have reached the same conclusions as they did with Cross. All this really means is that your theory is not farfetched or ridiculous, which it isn't. But you can't count these opinions as actual evidence towards the guilt of Cross, only as evidence that you and Ed were able to put together a compelling theory. Be proud of that, but try not to pretend it's more than it is. It was good for the documentary, but has little use here because many if not most of the people posting at Casebook are more informed on the Ripper crimes than are your experts.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[David Orsam]

Another pointer to discredit Mizen then?

More like a pointer to discredit the Times reporter who misheard Mizen's evidence.

[David Orsam]

Wait! There is no case. This is inquest stuff. If there were charges brought up against Cross and Mizen stuck to his statement, then there would be evidence against him. In an inquest, there is no evidence aganst anyone. There are only statements, and these went unpursued.

But wait! Each witness at a coroner's inquiry provided a signed deposition of his or her evidence which had to be given under the sanction of an oath or affirmation. During the examination, the coroner's clerk would carefully write down the evidence of the witness. After the examination of each witness, the coroner would read that written account over to the witness for the witness to sign it and it was also counter signed by the coroner.

[David Orsam]

Fisherman - to make things easier I will reply to all your posts in one go.

Inspector Abberline's report is the most authoritative account of the time of discovery of the body but all this 3:40 or 3:45 business is frankly irrelevant because your 9 minute gap hinges entirely on Lechmere having left his house at exactly 3:30am for which there is precisely no evidence and not even a dodgy newspaper report to support it. All Lechmere said was that he left at "about 3:30am" which might not even have been true but, if it was, as even you have conceded, this could have been 3:35am so that your "major 9 minute gap" is like the dust in the desert. I have consistently made the point that you do not need this 9 minute gap because Lechmere could have left his house at 3:25, 3:20 or anytime. It could have been 3:00am, it could have been 2:00am or 1:00am - he could have been prowling around Whitechapel all night. I'm not against the idea that Cross could have been the killer at all but I am against an argument so bad that it is embarrassing.

[Trevor Marriott]

Fine. Go ahead!

The best,
Fisherman

Thats exactly what I have done, introduced another expert to this.

As you know I hotly dispute the accuracy of the time of death as given by the Doctor. And you know that should that time proved to be wrong then I am afraid your theory is blown out of the water.

I prepared a set of questions which I sent to an independent forensic pathologist I know. I have set out below those question plus the answers that were forthcoming

1. How long does blood keep flowing/seeping from a wound where a victim has had their throat cut, which has resulted in death?

This is one of those ‘piece of string’ questions. Cases where the blood mostly stays internal tend to be ‘stab’ type wounds, but if there has been a wide ‘slash’ then it is far easier for blood to pour out (of a bigger hole). If arteries are cut then there may be some initial spurting of blood under pressure whilst the heart is still beating. In many cases the majority of the blood at the scene may have seeped out of the veins. This can happen under the influence of gravity, and therefore is not dependent on a beating heart (i.e. blood can continue to seep out for quite some time after death). As long as there is still blood in the body it can theoretically still leak out under gravity, so there could be a period of several minutes where blood continues to flow after an injury (including after death… it is not unusual for a body that has been dead for some time to ‘bleed’ from a knife wound when you start moving it).

2. Would any visible blood flow from the neck wound be of any help in determining time of death?

There is nothing about blood flow from a wound that will help estimate the time of death. Dried blood on the skin can give an indication of the position of the body relative to the direction of gravity, but that’s about it.

3. We have a victim who was found dead in the street at 3.45am approx. The victims clothes were pulled up above her waist and she had been subjected to abdominal wounds. The witness pulls her dress down for decency sake. The doctor arrives at around 4.15am. he states that the hands were cold but the lower extremities were warm and estimates that death had occurred within the past 30 mins the same time the witness found the body !

This is very similar to a question I was asked just today in relation to a crown court homicide! Being ‘cold to the touch’ really isn’t helpful as even live people can feel cold to the touch. Body temperature doesn’t start to drop straight away as soon as a person dies, but there is a plateau or ‘lag’ phase that can last a few hours. In other words, somebody could have been dead for a couple of hours but still have an essentially ‘normal’ body temperature, whereas a live person can feel stone cold. In the olden days, doctors used to state a confident and precise ‘time of death’ based on subjective observations, but this was little more than guesswork. Nowadays we recognise that it is subjective and highly variable. In fact, the official guidance from the Forensic Science Regulator is that pathologists shouldn’t even attempt to estimate the post mortem interval! Even with a measured temperature you couldn’t estimate a time since death to within less than a few hours. Suggesting that death happened 30 mins previously based on subjective observations would be laughed out of court these days… but in 1888 people believed just about anything a doctor said.

4. If death had in fact occurred before 3.45am then would the pulling down of the clothes and leaving them down for almost 30 mins cloud the doctors estimate as to time of death. He also failed to notice the abdominal wounds at the crime scene and these were only found when the body was taken to the mortuary.

It is possible that death could have occurred even a few hours before the time of body discovery, and the observations made by the doctor would have been the same. Clothing state can affect the time of death calculations, but in reality it would make very little difference in the scenario you describe. I think the doctor’s estimation of the time of death should be taken with a pinch of salt, and in fact it could have been far earlier. This is not a criticism: back then that was the sort of thing that was said and done. We just know more now, and therefore can’t be so ‘certain’. As an aside, I can see how the doctor might have not looked carefully enough to notice the wounds at the scene. Nowadays we spend a lot more time with bodies at scenes, and have bright lights to help us… and we still find ‘extra’ injuries once we get back to the mortuary and clean off the dirt and blood. If a ‘thorough examination’ was done then it seems bizarre that such significant injuries could be overlooked, but if a ‘cursory look in the dark without invading decency’ were all that was carried out then I think it is understandable

So where does this leave your therory now. If we go back to your experts and in particular Scobie. Now he, as you keep telling us in an experienced defense QC, who would have no doubt been involved in murders throughout his career so I would have expected him to know all about what the pathologist has stated about estimating times of death.

What concerns me about his 45 minute interview is the fact that only 30 seconds was shown. Now when I spoke to him. He went to great lengths to tell me that he raised concerns with Blink, and in as many words pointed out potential flaws in what was being presented to him. Was this one of those flaws he pointed out. and it got edited out. For to have had him say what the pathologist is now telling us as being common knowledge would be so damaging would it not?

As to Griffiths again I would have expected him to be aware of the same issues regarding estimating time of death, with regards to your specific times you rely on.

I can now see why all of your witnesses your have used concur with your theory because you have presented it to them in the form of a jigsaw with all the pieces nicely fitting together.

Your witness timings are all over the shop and far from being accurate as we have seen, and cannot in any event be relied upon as being conclusive and your star witness testimony of the doctor is flawed.

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[drstrange169]

"... Paul claimed that it was exactly 3.45, and that is not information that has a sensationalist value to it, so it would not have been the reporters invention."

Actually that's exactly what it was, a sensationalist statement.

It specifically and provocatively challenged the police version of events. The precise 3:45 timing, taken taken in consideration of the thrust of Paul's condemnation of the police in the rest of the article shouldn't be ignored.

The fact that "Xmere"rites continually cherry pick sections that suit rather than look at all the evidence is, for me, the biggest stumbling block to taking the theory seriously.

[The Good Michael]

Thats exactly what I have done, introduced another expert to this.

As you know I hotly dispute the accuracy of the time of death as given by the Doctor. And you know that should that time proved to be wrong then I am afraid your theory is blown out of the water.

I prepared a set of questions which I sent to an independent forensic pathologist I know. I have set out below those question plus the answers that were forthcoming

1. How long does blood keep flowing/seeping from a wound where a victim has had their throat cut, which has resulted in death?

This is one of those ‘piece of string’ questions. Cases where the blood mostly stays internal tend to be ‘stab’ type wounds, but if there has been a wide ‘slash’ then it is far easier for blood to pour out (of a bigger hole). If arteries are cut then there may be some initial spurting of blood under pressure whilst the heart is still beating. In many cases the majority of the blood at the scene may have seeped out of the veins. This can happen under the influence of gravity, and therefore is not dependent on a beating heart (i.e. blood can continue to seep out for quite some time after death). As long as there is still blood in the body it can theoretically still leak out under gravity, so there could be a period of several minutes where blood continues to flow after an injury (including after death… it is not unusual for a body that has been dead for some time to ‘bleed’ from a knife wound when you start moving it).

2. Would any visible blood flow from the neck wound be of any help in determining time of death?

There is nothing about blood flow from a wound that will help estimate the time of death. Dried blood on the skin can give an indication of the position of the body relative to the direction of gravity, but that’s about it.

3. We have a victim who was found dead in the street at 3.45am approx. The victims clothes were pulled up above her waist and she had been subjected to abdominal wounds. The witness pulls her dress down for decency sake. The doctor arrives at around 4.15am. he states that the hands were cold but the lower extremities were warm and estimates that death had occurred within the past 30 mins the same time the witness found the body !

This is very similar to a question I was asked just today in relation to a crown court homicide! Being ‘cold to the touch’ really isn’t helpful as even live people can feel cold to the touch. Body temperature doesn’t start to drop straight away as soon as a person dies, but there is a plateau or ‘lag’ phase that can last a few hours. In other words, somebody could have been dead for a couple of hours but still have an essentially ‘normal’ body temperature, whereas a live person can feel stone cold. In the olden days, doctors used to state a confident and precise ‘time of death’ based on subjective observations, but this was little more than guesswork. Nowadays we recognise that it is subjective and highly variable. In fact, the official guidance from the Forensic Science Regulator is that pathologists shouldn’t even attempt to estimate the post mortem interval! Even with a measured temperature you couldn’t estimate a time since death to within less than a few hours. Suggesting that death happened 30 mins previously based on subjective observations would be laughed out of court these days… but in 1888 people believed just about anything a doctor said.

4. If death had in fact occurred before 3.45am then would the pulling down of the clothes and leaving them down for almost 30 mins cloud the doctors estimate as to time of death. He also failed to notice the abdominal wounds at the crime scene and these were only found when the body was taken to the mortuary.

It is possible that death could have occurred even a few hours before the time of body discovery, and the observations made by the doctor would have been the same. Clothing state can affect the time of death calculations, but in reality it would make very little difference in the scenario you describe. I think the doctor’s estimation of the time of death should be taken with a pinch of salt, and in fact it could have been far earlier. This is not a criticism: back then that was the sort of thing that was said and done. We just know more now, and therefore can’t be so ‘certain’. As an aside, I can see how the doctor might have not looked carefully enough to notice the wounds at the scene. Nowadays we spend a lot more time with bodies at scenes, and have bright lights to help us… and we still find ‘extra’ injuries once we get back to the mortuary and clean off the dirt and blood. If a ‘thorough examination’ was done then it seems bizarre that such significant injuries could be overlooked, but if a ‘cursory look in the dark without invading decency’ were all that was carried out then I think it is understandable

So where does this leave your therory now. If we go back to your experts and in particular Scobie. Now he, as you keep telling us in an experienced defense QC, who would have no doubt been involved in murders throughout his career so I would have expected him to know all about what the pathologist has stated about estimating times of death.

What concerns me about his 45 minute interview is the fact that only 30 seconds was shown. Now when I spoke to him. He went to great lengths to tell me that he raised concerns with Blink, and in as many words pointed out potential flaws in what was being presented to him. Was this one of those flaws he pointed out. and it got edited out. For to have had him say what the pathologist is now telling us as being common knowledge would be so damaging would it not?

As to Griffiths again I would have expected him to be aware of the same issues regarding estimating time of death, with regards to your specific times you rely on.

I can now see why all of your witnesses your have used concur with your theory because you have presented it to them in the form of a jigsaw with all the pieces nicely fitting together.

Your witness timings are all over the shop and far from being accurate as we have seen, and cannot in any event be relied upon as being conclusive and your star witness testimony of the doctor is flawed.

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

Very informative. This may be used with MJK's case as well, showing us that a few hours later on estimates of death is just as reasonable as anything.

Mike

[The Good Michael]

But wait! Each witness at a coroner's inquiry provided a signed deposition of his or her evidence which had to be given under the sanction of an oath or affirmation. During the examination, the coroner's clerk would carefully write down the evidence of the witness. After the examination of each witness, the coroner would read that written account over to the witness for the witness to sign it and it was also counter signed by the coroner.

I understand this, and this is not evidence against anyone. This is evidence given to determine probable cause of death. It is not evidence against Cross or Mizen unless some case is pursued. Surely you would have to agree.

Mike

[Garry Wroe]

Garry Wroe: Stride did.

I will let you expand on that, establishing exactly when Stride was cut, and following it up by finding us proof that she bled twenty or more minutes afterwards.

Stride’s body was discovered at approximately one o’ clock. The throat wound was still seeping blood upon Dr Blackwell’s arrival at 1:16am. Since Blackwell estimated that death had taken place twenty or thirty minutes earlier, he was effectively confirming the possibility that a victim could bleed out for twenty or thirty minutes. But then there are plenty of documented murder cases which confirm this possibility beyond any semblance of doubt.

Then, when you have established these trifles, we can start discussion the differences in damage inbetween Nichols and Stride.

With respect, Fish, I have no desire to debate a hypothesis which to my mind is the criminological equivalent of Erich von Daniken’s ideas relating to extraterrestrial activity on Planet Earth. I do, however, wish you and yours the very best for the upcoming festive season.

[Chris]

Stride’s body was discovered at approximately one o’ clock. The throat wound was still seeping blood upon Dr Blackwell’s arrival at 1:16am. Since Blackwell estimated that death had taken place twenty or thirty minutes earlier, he was effectively confirming the possibility that a victim could bleed out for twenty or thirty minutes. But then there are plenty of documented murder cases which confirm this possibility beyond any semblance of doubt.

With regard to Stride, most reports of Blackwell's opinion say he thought she had been dead not more than 20 or 30 minutes, or something similar. But of course in any case he would have been able to make only a very rough estimate.

http://forum.casebook.org/showpost.php?p=21678&postcount=192

[Chris]

In the olden days, doctors used to state a confident and precise ‘time of death’ based on subjective observations, but this was little more than guesswork. Nowadays we recognise that it is subjective and highly variable.

Unfortunately too many Ripperologists cling to the Victorian doctors' mistaken over-confidence in their ability to estimate the time of death.

[martin wilson]

Hi all

Trevor has a point about body temperature, as no witnesses came forward saying they had seen Polly between Emily Holland at approx 2.30 am and the time she was found, she could have been walking the streets for at least an hour , possibly longer, so wouldn't her hands have been cold when alive?

[Robert]

I suppose this business about how long a body would have bled, is relevant to Shannon Christopher's argument that MJK was killed in the morning, because if she'd been killed in the night there would not have been a pool under the bed. Mind you, I don't think she could have bled for several hours. The question is, what did Bond mean by 'pool'?

http://www.casebook.org/forum/messages/4922/8640.html

[Trevor Marriott]

I suppose this business about how long a body would have bled, is relevant to Shannon Christopher's argument that MJK was killed in the morning, because if she'd been killed in the night there would not have been a pool under the bed. Mind you, I don't think she could have bled for several hours. The question is, what did Bond mean by 'pool'?

http://www.casebook.org/forum/messages/4922/8640.html

Valid points but lets not get sidetracked from this thread !

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk