Lets get Lechmere off the hook!

[Fisherman]

If we assess Cross as the killer when did that intent enter his mind.Did he wake from sleep with that intent,or did it suddenly spring to mind on meeting Nicholls.Did he spend a sleepless night planning to kill a victim on his way to work.?What was the reason.Think along those lines and then like me you will see how ridiculous the notion is that Cross w as the killer of Nicholls.

With respect, Harry, this is quite odd. Reasoning like this, nobody would ever kill.

Did Peter Sutcliffe wake up with murder on his mind? Or did it leap to mind later in the day? Did he spend sleeppess nights planning to kill?

No, never. Think like that and he is exonerated! I will become obvious that the mere suggestion that he ever killed is completely ridiculous.

Or not.

How did you arrive at this conclusion, Harry?

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Pcdunn:

JtR seems to have been profiled as a "disorganized killer", yet to accept Lechmere as calm enough to bluff his way through questioning by the police, (possibly with the weapon concealed about his person)-- we have to see him as a sociopath, and an incredibly cool one at that. That doesn't fit in with a "disorganized" killer at all.

Different people make different assessments of him. There are traits that can be interpreted both ways. Let´s just say that disorganized killers are very prone to leave clues behind themselves, to be noisy and sloppy, to have no plan for how to escape undetected etcetera.
The two things that may be interpreted as disorganized are
A/ The eviscerations - many eviscerators are disorganized. But Arthur Shawcross, for example, was highly organized, as was Chikatilo and a heap of other guys who were into eviscerations.
B/ Killing out in the open street may seem disorganized. But arriving at the scene and leaving it unnoticed does not.

This is a working man, who had been at the same company for 20 years, a family man whose wife and children never suspected him of anything anti-social. He doesn't seem to ever have done anything eccentric, let alone insane or violent. He lives to an advanced age, sometimes unusual in that era, and attesting to his native strength and good health. He walked the same streets as JTR, but so did a great many other men.

Gary Ridgway? John Eric Armstrong? Robert Hansen? Peter Kürten? Family men, who held down their jobs for many years. I can´t remember the name, but there was one serialist who buried a victim under his and his wife´s bedroom window.

It is not nice when we cannot see throught these men. It is unnerving. But there you are. In fact, what makes many of them hard to catch is that they are seemingly very normal and not intimidating at all.

And I´m afraid we can´t say that Lechmere never did anything eccentric. We do not have his actions and his demeanor on record. He could have been extremely eccentric.
Or he could have seemed totally normal - as so many serialists do.

It is true some "family men" have been sociopaths and serial killers and have hidden it from their loved ones, but they usually get found out, sooner or later. There is usually some slip made.

There are hundreds of unsolved serial killer cases, PcDunn. Do you ever think about HOW they stay unsolved? I would propose that in most of these cases, the killer was not ever suspected because he or she seemed totally normal. That would have been a key factor in these people not having been caught.
There will also be numerous cases where the police never had a clue that a number of murders were interconnected, and therefore failed to notice that they were dealing with a serialist.
The ones you look at are the ones that actually WERE caught.

It seems to be pure conjecture about Mr. Lechmere's mental state and his actions, as far as the other murders are concerned.

His logical working treks, his decades in St Georges, his mothers address and the correlations in method within the murders are not conjecture.

Yes, we could say he killed Polly, and referring to her body as "a man's tarpaulin" in all of his inquest testimony is an indication of his callousness toward his victim. But, just as easily, we could say he was an innocent passerby who paused to look at something unusual on his route to work.

... and who gave the wrong name to the police, and who had logical working treks that took him past the murder sites, and who seems to have misled Mizen, and who was not seen or heard by Robert Paul, and ...

Mr. Paul said he saw Lechmere in the middle of the road, and that he was wary about this, due to his fear of robbers (given the time and place, very understandable). Lechmere may have decided to attract Paul's attention to the dying or dead woman and play the role of an innocent witness -- or he may have been an innocent witness.

Yep, that is pretty much it - other alternatives are hard to find.

I don't think we have enough evidence, other than the two names, and both seem to be attached to him. I doubt many people in Whitechapel gave their right name to the police, but Lechmere did give his correct address. Couldn't that be a simple slip of the tongue?
Of course, we still lack any information on who killed Polly, if Lechmere did not. Maybe the fellow escaped through the stables, for all we or anyone else knows.

The door was locked, PcDunn, so no, he did not disappear through the stables. And none of the PC:s around the site said anything about having seen somebody to attract attention at the time, nor did any of the watchmen.

Plus Polly was still bleeding a good many minutes after Lechmere left her.

So there´s your killer for you. Why won´t you accept him?

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Hello Pcdunn,

Xmere mistook the body for a tarpaulin until he saw what it actually was, he wasn't being callous.

"It looked like a tarpaulin sheet, but walking to the middle of the road he saw it was the figure of a woman."

Daily News

Actually, I think he lied about it, to impress upon the jury that he was innocent. I don´t think he mistook the body for anything, having killed Nichols himself.

The best,
Fisherman

[harry]

Fisherman,
Peter Sutcliffe was obsessed with murder.As was the Ripper.The intent to kill would have been constantly on their mind.Intent to kill in such cases is an essential element in a murder conviction.Now are you saying there was no intent to kill Nicholls.That perhaps it was an accidental death,or such like.Manslaughter perhaps?Intent is self descriptive,or is it that you do not understand the word,or it's implication?
If in doubt,ask a policeman.Trevor perhaps.

[Fisherman]

Fisherman,
Peter Sutcliffe was obsessed with murder.As was the Ripper.The intent to kill would have been constantly on their mind.Intent to kill in such cases is an essential element in a murder conviction.Now are you saying there was no intent to kill Nicholls.That perhaps it was an accidental death,or such like.Manslaughter perhaps?Intent is self descriptive,or is it that you do not understand the word,or it's implication?
If in doubt,ask a policeman.Trevor perhaps.

I think it is very resonable to conclude that there was a wish to kill on behalf of the person that put an end to the life of Polly Nichols.

What I fail to see, however, is why it would be ridiculous to suggest that Charles Lechmere could have been the killer, they way you do. You write:

"Now to intent.Surely that is clear.There was an intent to kill Nicholls.If we assess Cross as the killer when did that intent enter his mind.Did he wake from sleep with that intent,or did it suddenly spring to mind on meeting Nicholls.Did he spend a sleepless night planning to kill a victim on his way to work.?What was the reason.Think along those lines and then like me you will see how ridiculous the notion is that Cross w as the killer of Nicholls."

You apparently think that Lechmere could not possibly have had the intention to kill, and I have no idea where you have got that from. As far as I can tell he is just as likely as anybody else to have had the intent to kill, and therefore I find your post odd in the extreme.

The best,
Fisherman

[Pcdunn]

Hello Pcdunn,

Xmere mistook the body for a tarpaulin until he saw what it actually was, he wasn't being callous.

"It looked like a tarpaulin sheet, but walking to the middle of the road he saw it was the figure of a woman."

Daily News

Yes, I agree, it was his explanation of what got his attention that morning.

I was saying the statement could be interpreted one way if we want to see him as innocent, and very much another way if we want him to be guilty. That goes for just about everything else connected with the Nichols case, in my opinion.

[martin wilson]

Hi all

I went off Henry Tomkin's inquest evidence regarding the number of prostitutes on the Whitechapel road. We will never know the exact time Cross left for work that morning, but it seems reasonable to speculate that if he set out to kill, then that would be a logical place to find a victim.
Michael Connor speculated he was delivering to Spitalfields market on the day of Anne Chapman's murder, the timings don't exonerate Cross, the market opened at 5 a.m and it's again a 4 minute walk to Hanbury street from the market, and 3 or 4 minutes from Bucks row back to the Whitechapel road.
All the best.

[Rosella]

If Lechmere wasn't the killer (and I don't believe he was) weren't there alleyways to the south of the murder site, leading into Winthrop St past Woods Buildings and then safety, ie Whitechapel High St?
Admittedly no-one heard the sound of retreating hobnail boots on the cobbles but then no-one was listening for them either.

[Fisherman]

If Lechmere wasn't the killer (and I don't believe he was) weren't there alleyways to the south of the murder site, leading into Winthrop St past Woods Buildings and then safety, ie Whitechapel High St?
Admittedly no-one heard the sound of retreating hobnail boots on the cobbles but then no-one was listening for them either.

There will always be the possibility that a killer could have escaped. This is part of the exchange between Neil and the coroner on the first dya of the inquest:

The Coroner: Whitechapel-road is busy in the early morning, I believe. Could anybody have escaped that way?

Witness: Oh yes, sir. I saw a number of women in the main road going home. At that time any one could have got away.

So Neil did not exclude the possibility that the killer had gotten away. He did however also say that he had not heard anything at all that morning and that there was not a soul about in Buck´s Row. And if there had been the sound of footsteps, I think it is reasonable to argue that they would have been picked up on by either Neil or any of his colleagues - or the night watchmen. And for the killer to escape via Woods buildings, you would first have to go into Winthrop Street, where Patrick Mulshaw was.

Anyhow, it cannot be excluded that flight was possible, since there were also other possibilities, like Queen Anne Street.

My own take on things is that we may perhaps not need to believe in the phantom killer invented by the press back in 1888 when we know that the man who found Nichols was alone with her for an unestablished amount of time, when we know that he did not give his real name to the police, when we know that PC Mizen disagreed with him over what he had said, when we know that what Mizen claimed he had said would be a perfectly shaped lie to take him past the police, and when we know that Nichols was still bleeding as Mizen saw her. Plus a few more things, like his correlation with the other murder spots, the pulled down dress etcetera.

He could be innocent - but it sure looks the other way around.

The best,
Fisherman

[Trevor Marriott]

There will always be the possibility that a killer could have escaped. This is part of the exchange between Neil and the coroner on the first dya of the inquest:

The Coroner: Whitechapel-road is busy in the early morning, I believe. Could anybody have escaped that way?

Witness: Oh yes, sir. I saw a number of women in the main road going home. At that time any one could have got away.

So Neil did not exclude the possibility that the killer had gotten away. He did however also say that he had not heard anything at all that morning and that there was not a soul about in Buck´s Row. And if there had been the sound of footsteps, I think it is reasonable to argue that they would have been picked up on by either Neil or any of his colleagues - or the night watchmen. And for the killer to escape via Woods buildings, you would first have to go into Winthrop Street, where Patrick Mulshaw was.

Anyhow, it cannot be excluded that flight was possible, since there were also other possibilities, like Queen Anne Street.

My own take on things is that we may perhaps not need to believe in the phantom killer invented by the press back in 1888 when we know that the man who found Nichols was alone with her for an unestablished amount of time, when we know that he did not give his real name to the police, when we know that PC Mizen disagreed with him over what he had said, when we know that what Mizen claimed he had said would be a perfectly shaped lie to take him past the police, and when we know that Nichols was still bleeding as Mizen saw her. Plus a few more things, like his correlation with the other murder spots, the pulled down dress etcetera.

He could be innocent - but it sure looks the other way around.

The best,
Fisherman

I have been going back and analyzing the evidence you seek to rely on in your attempt to prove Cross killed Nicholls. As I understand what you suggest is that he had up to 13 minutes in which to meet Nicholls and kill her Based on leaving home at approx 3.20am and arriving in Bucks Row at 3.27am and Paul coming along at about 3.40am

Most of your case is built around timings for as has been suggested if any of the timings are out then it shatters your case because for him to have been the killer your timings have to be almost exact with very little room for maneuverability.

Now based on that, he would either have had to meet NIcholls in Bucks Row or somewhere else on his route to work if the latter then that would have used up more valuable time in getting to Bucks Row because you only allow him 7 minutes from house to Bucks Row.

I have posted this before but I think it is so important and something you clearly have no thought out and allowed for when going public with your theory.

Lets look at the witness timings again.

Pc Neil
first pass in Bucks Row should have been 3.15am approx
second pass should have been 3.27approx (12 minute round beat)
third pass 3.39am approx which is when he finds body.

Monty kindly informed us that the beats were 30 minute beats so the 12 minute beat could be a mistake. If that is the case then the murder could have taken place between 3.15am and 3.27am, some 12 minutes before Cross got there. This is reliant on Pc Neils movements and time being correct. If they were not, and he was not in Bucks Row at 3.15am then her murder could have occurred some time before that and long before Cross finds the body. Pc Neil then says he found the body at 3.39am

Now according to the evidence, by 3.39am Cross and Paul had already found the body and gone off to find a policeman, deduct 3-4 minutes for that so that brings the time down to 3.35am approx when Cross and Paul left the scene. Now take of the time allowed for Cross to be seen standing in the road as Paul approached, and time they spent with the body and that takes it down even more.

No time for Cross to kill Nichols

Lets look at other factors which weaken your theory

1. The exact time of death cannot be firmly established
(on this aspect you rely on Dr Llewellyn stating death had occurred at
about 3.45am) As we now know this was guesswork

2. The time of death cannot be established through looking at a wound.

3. The time of death cannot be established through blood loss

4. The witness timings are all over the place and are un-reliable,

I have purposely ignored the smokescreen about walking to work through the murder locations and visiting relatives in the murder locations thats not even worth considering in the grand scheme of things

I have also ignored the giving of a false name I think that has been explored and evem Scobie says it is insignificant

Taking all of these facts together do you reall still think you now have a case which proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Cross killed Nicholls?

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[Trevor Marriott]

Yes, I read that at the time and have taken it into consideration. But (1) that does not answer the question of what is the maximum amount of time that such oozing is physically possible bearing in mind the nature of blood, the amount of blood in a human body, and the laws of physics (2) it is not clear if the 'piece of string' reference is a mention to the various different scenarios that your expert has referred to (such as clamping v non clamping etc.) so that while certain time ranges can (?) be stated for certain scenarios, the expert was saying that one time does not fit all and (3) despite the 'piece of string' reference, your expert nevertheless did provide us with a time for which blood can flow, of twenty minutes, and I am hoping he can clarify what he meant by that - whether that is the maximum or whether it can go on for (much) longer - and whether the caveats he also mentioned would tend to reduce the time that such flow is possible.

As promised I said I would go back to the expert and ask one question which I did i also took the opportunity of providing him with a copy of Dr Llewlenys inquest testimony he is his full reply to both

I hope we can all now put this issue to bed even Fish ?

Q. You stated that a body could continue to bleed for up to 20 minutes after death. Is that the max time or could it be dependent on other factors?

A. I don’t think it would be appropriate or reliable to state a ‘max’ time for an individual case.

I think that, though it might seem unlikely for a significant quantity of blood to be flowing out of a body several minutes after death, it would certainly be possible for blood still to be dripping / oozing out of a body 20 mins later. This is likely to be minimal (almost negligible) in nature, as the majority of the blood that was able to come out would have done so much sooner. If a witness discovered a body that was still bleeding relatively profusely then the injuries are likely to have been inflicted more recently than 20 mins previously… but if the 20 min period is critical in ruling out / in certain suspects then I wouldn’t dismiss the possibility of some continued blood loss at this time, as I think it would be possible. (I base this on my own observations of seeing blood leak out of bodies when I have been present at murder scenes some hours after death. This is why I am open to many things being ‘possible’, even though I can’t state categorically what ‘would’ or ‘would not’ have happened in an individual case.)

As for the extract from the inquest testimony:

There is actually very little detail of use in this text. Rather than actually naming the anatomical structures injured, there are repeated mentions of ‘tissues’ being severed. This is vague, and does not allow inferences to be drawn with confidence. There is a description of the ‘large vessels’ on both sides of the neck being cut. If this is true then there is certainly scope for profuse haemorrhage from the neck, as well as ongoing leakage of blood from the neck after death. However, I have dealt with cases where ‘vessels in the neck’ have been ‘cut’… where actually only minor vessels and other structures have been cut and, on closer inspection, the truly ‘large’ vessels have been spared.

Much of the description is vague and potentially ambiguous. Repeated use of ‘about’ implies estimations rather than measurements of wounds, and the assumption that a long-bladed knife must have been used is not valid: a short or medium(!) blade could have been used to inflict such injuries. (I’m not saying that I think a particular blade was or was not used, I’m just saying it is not possible to be certain from the description and ‘measurements’ in this case. As with much of what went on ‘back in the day’, learned medical men would assert things without backup and this would be taken as fact without challenge.

By way of example, it is not possible to say that all injuries were caused by the same instrument, comment on the blade’s sharpness or suggest that the injuries were caused with ‘great violence’. This is just somebody giving their opinion as though it were fact, and giving it in such a way that it is virtually meaningless. Saying that the wounds were made ‘downwards’ means nothing without a frame of reference.

Stating that the wounds were made ‘from left to right’ is not as clear as it might at first seem, and of course cannot be relied upon. The witness states that the injuries ‘might have been done by a left-handed person’. But equally, they could have been done by a right-handed person. Or a one-handed person!

I could go on, but I don’t want to sound overly harsh when the witness was just doing what was the norm back then. What is important to realize is that much of the myth and legend that has become ‘fact’ over the decades might be based upon testimony such as this… and therefore is open to question. All that can be taken with ‘certainty’(!) from that paragraph is that there were apparent sharp force wounds to the neck and abdomen. Many other things seem to have been ‘assumed’. The weapon was ‘probably’ a knife, but there is no guarantee of this (and the size / shape / sharpness / etc. cannot be guessed from the description of the wounds). There could have been more than one weapon. The assailant could have been right or left handed… Death might have been caused by blood loss from the wounds… but could also have arisen from a different mechanism (such as a cardiac air embolus or a tension pneumothorax). Some (or all) of the injuries could have been inflicted after death. Has the possibility of self-inflicted injury been satisfactorily excluded, or just dismissed? Etc.

Much of what is ‘known’ appears to be little more than subjective opinion / assumption / guesswork. Even if we can accept all of the ‘objective’ record as fact, there is so little of this available now that it becomes difficult to draw any firm conclusions this far down the line.

I’m not trying to be negative or contrary, I’m just trying to be realistic about what I can honestly say based upon what I can trust as genuine. As that remains scanty, there is very little I can say with confidence about these cases. However, as just about anything that can be imagined is probably possible, most things can probably be argued one way or the other!

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[Pcdunn]

Not converted just yet...

Pcdunn:

JtR seems to have been profiled as a "disorganized killer", yet to accept Lechmere as calm enough to bluff his way through questioning by the police, (possibly with the weapon concealed about his person)-- we have to see him as a sociopath, and an incredibly cool one at that. That doesn't fit in with a "disorganized" killer at all.

Different people make different assessments of him. There are traits that can be interpreted both ways. Let´s just say that disorganized killers are very prone to leave clues behind themselves, to be noisy and sloppy, to have no plan for how to escape undetected etcetera.
The two things that may be interpreted as disorganized are
A/ The eviscerations - many eviscerators are disorganized. But Arthur Shawcross, for example, was highly organized, as was Chikatilo and a heap of other guys who were into eviscerations.
B/ Killing out in the open street may seem disorganized. But arriving at the scene and leaving it unnoticed does not.

This is a working man, who had been at the same company for 20 years, a family man whose wife and children never suspected him of anything anti-social. He doesn't seem to ever have done anything eccentric, let alone insane or violent. He lives to an advanced age, sometimes unusual in that era, and attesting to his native strength and good health. He walked the same streets as JTR, but so did a great many other men.

Gary Ridgway? John Eric Armstrong? Robert Hansen? Peter Kürten? Family men, who held down their jobs for many years. I can´t remember the name, but there was one serialist who buried a victim under his and his wife´s bedroom window.

It is not nice when we cannot see throught these men. It is unnerving. But there you are. In fact, what makes many of them hard to catch is that they are seemingly very normal and not intimidating at all.

And I´m afraid we can´t say that Lechmere never did anything eccentric. We do not have his actions and his demeanor on record. He could have been extremely eccentric.
Or he could have seemed totally normal - as so many serialists do.

It is true some "family men" have been sociopaths and serial killers and have hidden it from their loved ones, but they usually get found out, sooner or later. There is usually some slip made.

There are hundreds of unsolved serial killer cases, PcDunn. Do you ever think about HOW they stay unsolved? I would propose that in most of these cases, the killer was not ever suspected because he or she seemed totally normal. That would have been a key factor in these people not having been caught.
There will also be numerous cases where the police never had a clue that a number of murders were interconnected, and therefore failed to notice that they were dealing with a serialist.
The ones you look at are the ones that actually WERE caught.

It seems to be pure conjecture about Mr. Lechmere's mental state and his actions, as far as the other murders are concerned.

His logical working treks, his decades in St Georges, his mothers address and the correlations in method within the murders are not conjecture.

Yes, we could say he killed Polly, and referring to her body as "a man's tarpaulin" in all of his inquest testimony is an indication of his callousness toward his victim. But, just as easily, we could say he was an innocent passerby who paused to look at something unusual on his route to work.

... and who gave the wrong name to the police, and who had logical working treks that took him past the murder sites, and who seems to have misled Mizen, and who was not seen or heard by Robert Paul, and ...

Mr. Paul said he saw Lechmere in the middle of the road, and that he was wary about this, due to his fear of robbers (given the time and place, very understandable). Lechmere may have decided to attract Paul's attention to the dying or dead woman and play the role of an innocent witness -- or he may have been an innocent witness.

Yep, that is pretty much it - other alternatives are hard to find.

I don't think we have enough evidence, other than the two names, and both seem to be attached to him. I doubt many people in Whitechapel gave their right name to the police, but Lechmere did give his correct address. Couldn't that be a simple slip of the tongue?
Of course, we still lack any information on who killed Polly, if Lechmere did not. Maybe the fellow escaped through the stables, for all we or anyone else knows.

The door was locked, PcDunn, so no, he did not disappear through the stables. And none of the PC:s around the site said anything about having seen somebody to attract attention at the time, nor did any of the watchmen.

Plus Polly was still bleeding a good many minutes after Lechmere left her.

So there´s your killer for you. Why won´t you accept him?

The best,
Fisherman

Thank you for taking the time to respond, Fisherman. I think you have worked out quite the theory, based on the handful of facts in the written testimony that we do have about Lechmere, aka Cross. But... Much of the rest of it is conjecture.

Why on earth did the supposed killer touch Paul on the shoulder shortly after slashing Polly's throat? How did he avoid getting blood on his hand or anywhere else? Did he have bloody gloves as well a knife concealed on his person in his pockets?
Where is the proof of his employment at Pickford? The name he worked under while there? His routes and schedules? An example of his handwriting to compare against any of the hundreds of letters from "Jack the Ripper"?

I could offer a theory against Paul as the killer, conjecture get that he lied about being late for work, he had killed Polly, was leaving by a different route and had circled around to get behind Cross/Lechmere (or maybe stood still in the shadows till Cross/Lechmere had passed, then stepped out behind him), that he cleverly gave the subtle impression during his testimony that the man in the street was somehow a menacing character, and so on and so forth... But this is my imagination at work. I'd be asked, quite rightly, to provide evidence, and my case would suffer for lacking it.

Pat D.

[Robert]

Hi Pat

Actually some of that Paul stuff has already been thought of by Ed - not that Ed thinks Paul was the killer, but that Crossmere tried to frame Paul for the Hanbury St murder and by extension for the Nichols murder, i.e. Crossmere hoped that the police would think that Paul circled round etc.

[Robert]

Thanks for that, Trevor.

[RockySullivan]

Lechmere lied about his name and that a copper was on the scene but he never changed his story. Richardson changed his story twice, first he doesn't go into the yard, then he's sitting on the steps in the spot where if chapman was there she'd be at his feet (according to his own testimony ),he cuts the leather from his boot, then he's sitting at the steps but he changes his story again and he can't the cut leather. He places himself at the murder scene with a knife & the would be body at his feet, he admits there with a knife out on the steps, which he would only do if he was actually there with a knife and worried someone saw him. He's a million times more suspicious than Lechmere, and his story doesn't jive. He's far more likely to be a killer than a cross since he himself admits he's got a knife out and he's not cutting his boot! Not to mention he has the means to wash up.....Whose more suspicious the man who finds a body or the man who admits he's sitting with a knife out where a body should be?