Charles Lechmere: Prototypical Life of a Serial Killer

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

Well, I'm not sure that I've engaged in any shrieking, but point taken!

Apologies for participating in the derailment!

I long ago wrote repeatedly to Stow to say that there was no evidence of guilt in his episodes.

Whereas such behaviour of mine is being misrepresented as obsessiveness on my part, the truth is that I wrote to him after each episode to say that I still could not see any evidence of Lechmere's guilt.

Each time he responded by advising me to keep watching the series.

He never has produced one iota of evidence of Lechmere's guilt, which is hardly surprising since there is none.

[Mark J D]

Apologies for participating in the derailment!

No criticism of you was implied!

M.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

Yeah, I'll concede that there's nothing to indicate psychopathy in Druitt's case, but I do feel that there's something a bit off going on beneath the surface.

I'm not sure how useful it is to categorise the relative intelligence of serial killers based on what we know.

We only have the ones who were caught as a sample.

I think that the vast majority have been caught or identified posthumously.

[Lewis C]

Maybe we would be better off if we avoided the word "alibi" and talked instead about what are realistic possibilities. Suppose in Sickert's case we can't be 100% certain that he was in France during at least one of the JtR murders, but we can be 99.9% certain. Is 99.9% certainty enough for it to be considered an alibi, or does it have to be 100% certainty? I don't know, but 99.9% is enough that Sickert being JtR isn't a realistic possibility.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

Maybe we would be better off if we avoided the word "alibi" and talked instead about what are realistic possibilities. Suppose in Sickert's case we can't be 100% certain that he was in France during at least one of the JtR murders, but we can be 99.9% certain. Is 99.9% certainty enough for it to be considered an alibi, or does it have to be 100% certainty? I don't know, but 99.9% is enough that Sickert being JtR isn't a realistic possibility.

May I point out that Sickert was just under six feet tall.

That is six to seven inches taller than the suspect seen by Schwartz, 4 to 5 inches taller than the suspect seen by Lawende, and nearly six inches taller than the suspect seen by George Hutchinson.

I am now waiting for the usual exasperated comments by my critics that eyewitness estimates of people's heights are notoriously unreliable.

The late Stephen Knight claimed that Hutchinson's suspect really was Walter Sickert, but he failed to explain how the famous artist managed to make himself appear to be almost half a foot shorter than he really was.

[Aethelwulf]

This is supposedly a Lechmere thread, but it seems to be dominated by people shrieking about Druitt, Maybrick and Sickert.

Perhaps I can bring it back on topic by posting the long awaited fourth episode in the House of Lechmere 'Evidence of Guilt' series...

https://youtu.be/tqhckimhD4s

I've had nothing to do with its content; but I do feel obliged to mention that it further reinforces my conviction that, while all serial killers are unique, Lechmere is the uniquest of the lot...

M.

Sorry just can't see it.

[Lewis C]

This is supposedly a Lechmere thread, but it seems to be dominated by people shrieking about Druitt, Maybrick and Sickert.

Perhaps I can bring it back on topic by posting the long awaited fourth episode in the House of Lechmere 'Evidence of Guilt' series...

https://youtu.be/tqhckimhD4s

I've had nothing to do with its content; but I do feel obliged to mention that it further reinforces my conviction that, while all serial killers are unique, Lechmere is the uniquest of the lot...

M.

I watched the video, which is mostly about Lechmere's genealogy. The only real argument I could see for Lechmere's guilt was that since Lechmere's branch of the family was much less financially successful than other branches of the family, he may have been resentful. I don't find that convincing.

In post #410, I asked what was the best reason for suspecting Lechmere apart from the 4 reasons that I gave. If you answer that question, that might help to get us back on topic.

[Herlock Sholmes]

That this isn’t a Druitt thread is of course a fact, so I’ll move my reply to PI’s post to a Druitt thread to leave space for discussion of such an extraordinary suspect. Never in the history of this case has so much effort and manipulation been done to frame a man against whom there’s not a shred of evidence. Lechmere, Mann, Hardiman, Endacott…all ‘well they were around at the time’ suspects and nothing more.

[Dickere]

Yeah, I'll concede that there's nothing to indicate psychopathy in Druitt's case, but I do feel that there's something a bit off going on beneath the surface.

I'm not sure how useful it is to categorise the relative intelligence of serial killers based on what we know.

We only have the ones who were caught as a sample.

Doesn't that suggest that the uncaught ones are likely to be of higher intelligence ? Or just luckier ?

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

What Stow is doing to Lechmere is similar to what Cornwell has done to Sickert.

Stow has so far suggested that Lechmere was responsible for six (if he agrees with Holmgren about Tabram; if not, I suppose he will threaten to sue me) Whitechapel murders, four Torso murders, and the murder of Rose Mylett.

Cornwell has accused Sickert of the Whitechapel murders, the murder of John Gill in Bradford, the murder of Caroline Winter near Newcastle, and the Camden Town murder, which took place two decades after the earlier murders.

She claimed that Sickert had murdered more than twenty people.

Someone here once suggested that Aaron Kosminski had committed other murders.

I would like to see a scintilla of evidence that any of these three people ever killed anyone.

In 1899, soon after his separation from his first wife Ellen Cobden, Sickert settled with a local fisherwoman named Augustine Villain and her family in Neuville, a suburb just beyond Le Pollet. An artist friend of Sickert, Harold Gilman, and his family stayed in Sickert’s house at Neuville, outside Dieppe, from the summer of 1907 and whilst there, he took the opportunity to depict the interior of the house.

https://mydailyartdisplay.uk/2022/08/13/the-allure-of-dieppe-for-the-great-artists/

Sickert appears to have painted a lot in Dieppe in 1907 and is believed to have been in Dieppe in September of that year.

The Camden Town murder took place on 12 September.

When Sickert stayed in Dieppe in September, he was always there at that time of the month.

[Mark J D]

This is supposedly a Lechmere thread, but it seems to be dominated by people shrieking about Druitt, Maybrick and Sickert.

Perhaps I can bring it back on topic by posting the long awaited fourth episode in the House of Lechmere 'Evidence of Guilt' series...

Fifth episode...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrUO4nj9a9Y

As before: I feel obliged to mention that it further reinforces my conviction that, while all serial killers are unique, Lechmere is the uniquest of the lot...

M.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

Fifth episode...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrUO4nj9a9Y

As before: I feel obliged to mention that it further reinforces my conviction that, while all serial killers are unique, Lechmere is the uniquest of the lot...

M.

I have just finished viewing it.

It is like all the other episodes I have viewed.

It is interesting, but is anything but evidence of Lechmere's guilt of anything.

The way in which Stow tries to link Lechmere to terrible crimes is bizarre.

For example, at 9:43 he suggests that an incident in which an escaped tiger attacked a boy must have had a big influence on Lechmere, apparently implying that it was one of the things that caused him to go on to commit murders.

He then says at 15:24 that such incidents must have had some kind of influence on Lechmere's subconscious 'and that is why they are evidence of guilt.'

They obviously are not.

Stow does not produce an iota of evidence against Lechmere.

He repeats his claim that Lechmere's mother was a bigamist - irrelevant but also untrue.

I have been through this with Stow.

There is no evidence that Lechmere's mother was a bigamist.

The fact that he can prove that her first husband, whom she had not divorced, was still alive when she married her second husband, does not mean that she committed bigamy, as Stow alleges.

She did remarry legally by complying with the rules relating to abandoned wives.

I pointed this out to Stow and he accused me of being ignorant.

That is how he behaves when confronted with the fact that he has got something completely wrong.

[Fiver]

If 100% coverage isn't required, then you're probably right. What's makes the scenario seem especially unlikely is that he would have had to come back to England not once, but 3 times. Or maybe I should say at least 3 times. There may have been a time or two that JtR was out looking for a victim and came up empty.

There's also the question of if Sickert was the Ripper, why were the murders happening in London instead of France.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

If 100% coverage isn't required, then you're probably right. What's makes the scenario seem especially unlikely is that he would have had to come back to England not once, but 3 times. Or maybe I should say at least 3 times. There may have been a time or two that JtR was out looking for a victim and came up empty.

You make a good point.

One could also ask how long could Sickert have remained in London looking for a victim, knowing that his relatives in France would be getting suspicious and that if he were recognised in London then his alibi would be blown.

But such questions are not considered; an assumption is made that Sickert can get on a ferry, head for Whitechapel, commit a murder or two, and then get the next ferry back to France.

Similarly, Druitt can get on a train to London, get to Whitechapel, commit a murder, and then wait for the next train to Dorset.

In reality, the murderer must have spent long hours wandering the streets looking for opportunities.

He did not kill on demand.

And one other thing: after committing two murders and leaving the piece of apron in Goulston St, where would Sickert have gone to hide from the police until he could catch his ferry back to France?

He was distinctive, being nearly six feet tall.

[Lewis C]

There's also the question of if Sickert was the Ripper, why were the murders happening in London instead of France.

Or at least some of them in France. But instead, the theory is he kept going back to England to commit all of the murders in a very small area of East London.