Charles Lechmere: Prototypical Life of a Serial Killer

[Herlock Sholmes]

A simple answer: He is proven to have been found alone with the victim at one of the murder sites.

It really is that simple. Having been proven to have a violent streak and being capable of murder does not trump that single parameter.

If the two had been hauled in by the police, and if the knowledge of the police did not extend to more than we know today, it applies that Lechmere could be convicted of the crime of killing Nichols, whereas there would not be any case against Bury at all. And even IF there had been a case, built on, say, a confession by Bury, it would still be a question of how he could no be convicted on account of it being impossible to prove his presence at the site. Many people confessed to the crimes of the Ripper, it is a common thing in these kinds of cases.

You may personally think that Bury is a better fit for the killers role, based on how he killed his wife and cut her abdomen open. And if we are to solely go on the parameter of having a record of violent crime, then Bury would win that battle. But no such battle is based on one parameter only. It also needs to be said that there are a number of factors that speak against the idea of Bury being related to the Ripper interns of methodology:

Serial killers with a number of victims they did not know, are very, very unlikely to kill their spouses. Bundy did not kill his girlfriends, Ridgway made his wife feel she lived with the best guy in universe, Armstrong did not kill his wife, Rader did not kill his wife, De Angelo did not kill his wife, Gillis did not kill his girlfriend, Chikatilo did not kill his wife, Peter Kürten did not kill his wife ... For some weird reason, it seems the safest place to be when in close proximity to a serial killer is in his marital bed.

There may be some example of some sort of exception, I don't know - but killing your spouse is not a favorite serial killer pastime. And if you are going to tell me that the lack of examples of serial killers who stay put and bluff it out somehow proves that they won't do that, Herlock, then how about me telling you about how they will not kill their wifes!

Kemper killed his mother. Why should a wife be any different?

George Smith killed 3 wives as did Chapman.

John Christie killed 8 including his wife.


Moreover, there were not the typical Ripper features in his domestic murder. There was a gash to the abdomen, but not the long, confident one we see in the Ripper cases. There was no cut throat. There was no organ retrieval.

What there WAS, was graffito speaking about the Ripper on his lodgings - but my personal take is that he wrote that himself. I believe that he was darkly fascinated by the Ripper deeds, and it seems he spent the time leading up to his domestic murder discussing the Ripper with a friend, or something along those lines. I cannot remember the whole picture.

Anyways, what we have on Bury seems to point away from any true connection to the Ripper. In many ways, the Beadmore case is a better likeness to the real thing, but that killer - again a spouse, a jilted lover - was caught. And was able to admit that a dark fascination with the Ripper was what made him do it.

If Bury had killed Ellen BEFORE the Ripper murders, he would have been much elevated in my view. After? Nah.

And we cat put him at a murder site or anywhere near it, whereas we CAN put Lechmere on one, and we can point to a large array of things that do not look right.

It is not in any ways a tight run, Bury would not be out of the starting blocks as Lechmere crossed the line.

And that - not deceitful propaganda, as you will have it, is the reason that loads of people say that after having looked at the Ripper case for decades, they now feel the solution has been presented.

More crap.

Again you elevate the ‘well he was there’ argument. If that puts him ahead of Bury then you aren’t worth listening to. Take away Cross being present and you are left with absolutely nothing but you’re own manipulations. This is why you, Von Stow and the acolytes are reduced to talking about his mother and other irrelevancies.

The whole case against Cross is a dishonest, reprehensible example of manipulation, exaggeration and the wilful and deliberate twisting of the English language. It stinks. He’s a feeble suspect with nothing going for him. He’s better than Gull is about all that I’ll say. Everything that he did that night speaks of an entirely innocent man. And as for you acolytes who are such delicate flowers that they won’t debate on Casebook the less said the better. They clearly only want to hear from those who worship at the altar.

So….for them I’ll repeat:



In Cutting Point on page 92 he says:

“Most papers speak of Lechmere saying that he left home at 3.30, but the time 3.20 is also mentioned in one paper.”


And yet on post # 138 on here he says:

“We must however accept that since the absolute bulk of the papers spoke of ”around 3.30”, that is by far the likeliest wording to have been given.”


So what has changed between then and now? What newspapers are available to him now that weren’t available then? Or was his abacus missing a few beads so that he couldn’t count properly?

How could this ‘absolute bulk’ not only have escaped his attention at the time that he was researching then writing his book but they were so well hidden that it led him to state the exact opposite?! He apparently had no problem finding and counting the one newspaper that mentioned 3.20 and was keen to mention it though. But this ‘absolute bulk’ apparently and very mysteriously eluded him.

100%, cast-iron, rock solid, take-it-to-the-bank PROOF that you deliberately misled your readers in Cutting Point.

Tell your response to them…..they’ll believe anything.

[Herlock Sholmes]

So he is right at the top of the lists? Like I said?

Good.

He should be on a witness list, not a suspect one.

[Fisherman]

This is a curious statement. Multiple sources have Paul deposing at the inquest that walked through Buck's Row at 3.45 or that he left home shortly before 3.45, which for all intents and purposes means the same thing.

For instance, the PMG of 18 September.

"Multiple sources"?

I have never seen it before, so I am grateful for your posting this snippet.

All the sources I have looked at have said that he claimed to have left home "just before 3.45", while some say that he left home "about a quarter to four o'clock". I know of no other source than the one you posted that leaves out his leaving home when giving the timing. It seems to me that the Gazette muddled what he said - but if you could name the other sources where we have it claimed that he only said that he passed through Bucks Row at 3.45, without mentioning his leaving home in relation to his estimation (it IS an estimation this time), I would be grateful.

Any chance that you could comment on my post 1231 on this thread?

[Fisherman]

More crap.

Again you elevate the ‘well he was there’ argument. If that puts him ahead of Bury then you aren’t worth listening to. Take away Cross being present and you are left with absolutely nothing but you’re own manipulations. This is why you, Von Stow and the acolytes are reduced to talking about his mother and other irrelevancies.

The whole case against Cross is a dishonest, reprehensible example of manipulation, exaggeration and the wilful and deliberate twisting of the English language. It stinks. He’s a feeble suspect with nothing going for him. He’s better than Gull is about all that I’ll say. Everything that he did that night speaks of an entirely innocent man. And as for you acolytes who are such delicate flowers that they won’t debate on Casebook the less said the better. They clearly only want to hear from those who worship at the altar.

So….for them I’ll repeat:



In Cutting Point on page 92 he says:

“Most papers speak of Lechmere saying that he left home at 3.30, but the time 3.20 is also mentioned in one paper.”


And yet on post # 138 on here he says:

“We must however accept that since the absolute bulk of the papers spoke of ”around 3.30”, that is by far the likeliest wording to have been given.”


So what has changed between then and now? What newspapers are available to him now that weren’t available then? Or was his abacus missing a few beads so that he couldn’t count properly?

How could this ‘absolute bulk’ not only have escaped his attention at the time that he was researching then writing his book but they were so well hidden that it led him to state the exact opposite?! He apparently had no problem finding and counting the one newspaper that mentioned 3.20 and was keen to mention it though. But this ‘absolute bulk’ apparently and very mysteriously eluded him.

100%, cast-iron, rock solid, take-it-to-the-bank PROOF that you deliberately misled your readers in Cutting Point.

Tell your response to them…..they’ll believe anything.

Yes, I elevate the "he was there" argument. And guess what? That is the first focus of any police investigation. And it is so for a reason, and that reason is not that they like to deal in crap. If they did, it seems they would be better suited to argue against their own methods out here, than to do police work.

The rest of your post is too puerile to interest me, I'm afraid. But I CAN help out by telling you that "the absolute bulk" of something is also "most of" that same something.

Goodnight for now, Herlock.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Yes, I elevate the "he was there" argument. And guess what? That is the first focus of any police investigation. And it is so for a reason, and that reason is not that they like to deal in crap. If they did, it seems they would be better suited to argue against their own methods out here, than to do police work.

The finder becomes a person of interest until eliminated. Cross became a person of interest. We’ve investigated him and found zero suspicious about him. So we can safely place him in the ‘No way’ category.

The rest of your post is too puerile to interest me, I'm afraid. But I CAN help out by telling you that "the absolute bulk" of something is also "most of" that same something.

Goodnight for now, Herlock.

That last part is rather pathetic I have to say. ‘Absolute bulk’ and ‘most of’ are the same I agree but you used them on two opposing positions.

Can you really believe that this gets you off the hook?

You deliberately made a false claim on your book. There’s no getting away from it.

[FrankO]

I think it's probably true that Patrick S. isn't a Lechmerian. In his opening post of the thread, he said that Lechmere was married when he was 20, stayed married to the same woman until he died 50 years later, and had 11 children with her. The title of the thread appears to be intentionally ironic.

He indeed isn't, Lewis (& Fiver).

PS I see Herlock beat me to it...

[rjpalmer]

"Multiple sources"?

I have never seen it before, so I am grateful for your posting this snippet.

It's also in the Nottingham Evening Post, but no doubt this comes from the Pall Mall Gazette originally.

What I actually wrote is "multiple sources have Paul deposing at the inquest that he walked through Buck's Row at 3.45 or that he left home shortly before 3.45, which for all intents and purposes means the same thing."

Considering Paul proximity to Buck's Row, if he believed that he left home at 'shortly before 3.45' we can be confident that he would also believe that he had passed through Buck's Row at 3.45, which gels with both the PMG version and his earlier statement in Lloyd's.

There's no point in quibbling about it. We are in agreement about what he said. We disagree about how confident we should be about his accuracy.

Any chance that you could comment on my post 1231 on this thread?

Actually, I don't see any crying need to comment further.

I made my position known, and you made your rebuttal over on this thread, which seems a bit off-topic to me.

Simply put, I don't agree with your assessment, and you don't agree with mine, but I'm happy to give you the last word.

In conclusion, I believe Charles Cross gave a reasonably accurate time of departure and there is nothing suspicious in his account. It is impossible to know, but I think he probably left home around 3.32 or 3.33, arriving at the scene of the murder around 3.40 or 3.41, which would coincide with Abberline's analysis, and meshes nicely with the accounts and timings given by Mizen, Thain, and Neill.

I see Robert Paul as off about 5 minutes in his reckoning. What he said cannot be correct unless all the other witnesses (and the most trustworthy contemporary commentator, Inspector Abberline) were all wrong. Considering it’s only a matter of being off by 3 or 4 minutes and we have no idea on what Paul based his statement, it becomes a fool’s errand to obsess over it or to give it undue weight.

Common sense tells us that when there are four other witnesses, and a contemporary commentator (Abberline) whose accounts can all mesh nicely, it is the odd man out who must be considered the untrustworthy source.

Paul may have been simply mistaken or misremembering, but beyond this there are subjective elements that cannot be entirely ignored because human beings are profoundly social creatures. We care about what other people think, and Paul would have been aware that this episode was not a 'good look' for him. He left a woman on the pavement, and it turned out that she had been brutally murdered. As such, his excuse is that he was running late for work would seem more plausible in his own mind and to his own conscience if he stretched the truth and claimed he didn't enter Buck's Row until 15 minutes before 4 o'clock---which, as I already explained--is wildly unlikely considering the accounts of Mizen, Thain, and Neill, and the analysis by Inspector Abberline.

People who do shift work--including police constables--become more and more aware of the time as their shifts are coming to an end. Like, everyone else, they want to go home. And Mizen, who was knocking people up, would have been acutely aware of the time, also. I see no reason to give Paul more weight than Mizen or anyone else.

I'll hold off commenting further until something interesting comes up. This is well-trod ground. The horse has been flogged.

[Lewis C]

A simple answer: He is proven to have been found alone with the victim at one of the murder sites.

It really is that simple. Having been proven to have a violent streak and being capable of murder does not trump that single parameter.

So then do you think that everyone that discovered a victim's body in the case is a better suspect than Bury, or do you think that being seen discovering a body makes someone a suspect much more than if one discovers a body without being seen doing it?

[Fiver]

A whole lot of the people who like Lechmere as a suspect have many, many years in ripperology behind themselves.

Your attempt at the Appeal To Authority Fallacy is noted.

I prefer to judge people's conclusions based on their use of facts and logic.

Or as the old saying goes "A mule that had been on 100 campaigns with Frederick the Great is still a mule."

[Fiver]

If the two had been hauled in by the police, and if the knowledge of the police did not extend to more than we know today, it applies that Lechmere could be convicted of the crime of killing Nichols, whereas there would not be any case against Bury at all.

If you really believed that being found alone with a body was enough to convict, then you'd convict John Reeves for killing Marta Tabram, John Davis for killing Annie Chapman, Louies Diemshutz for killing Elzabeth Stride, PC Watkins for killing Catherine Eddowes, and Thomas Bowyer for the murder of Mary Jane Kelly.

But to you, being alone with the body is only enough to convict if the suspect is Charles Lechmere/

There may be some example of some sort of exception, I don't know - but killing your spouse is not a favorite serial killer pastime.

HH Holmes killed his lovers. So did Severin Klosowski. And that's just off the top of my head from people suspected of being the Ripper.

Another example is Belle Gunness. Other well known examples are Mary Ann Cotton, George Joseph Smith, and John Christie.

[Fiver]

So he is right at the top of the lists? Like I said?

Good.

That's the first tome I've seen someone claim victory after being totally debunked.

Lechmere wasn't at the top of any of those lists. He was near the top, but "near the top" does not mean the same thing as "right at the top".

[Fiver]

Expanding my previous reply to Fisherman's "Mizen scam".

Robert Paul claimed that he spoke to PC Mizen. Ignoring that fact doesn't make it go away.

For your theory to work you have to explain why:
* Robert Paul would lie about speaking to PC Mizen when he hadn't.
* Charles Lechmere would support Paul's lie in his inquest testimony.
* PC Mizen didn't expose the two carmen's lies. After all, they had both claimed he continued knocking up, which made him look bad, so Mizen had a strong reason to undermine their credibility.
* In his summing up, Coroner Baxter, who got to hear all the testimony, not just newspaper summaries, concluded that both Paul and Cross spoke to PC Mizen.

"Cross and Paul reported the circumstances to a constable at the corner of Hanbury-street and Barker's-row, about three hundred yards distant, but in the meantime Police-constable Neil discovered the body." - Coroner Baxter, 30 September 1888 Sunday Dispatch.

The Mizen Scam is nonsense that requires ignoring the facts instead of presenting the whole picture.

[Fiver]

You are calling Robert Pauls 3.45 timing an "estimate" on three occasions in your post. But the 3.45 timing was never given as an estimate at all. It was instead given as an exact timing: "It was exactly a quarter to four when I passed up Buck's-row to my work as a carman for Covent-garden market".

This is the only occasion where we have the 3.45 timing given by Paul, and it is from Lloyds Weekly of the 2nd of September, not from the inquest.

You are wrong. Robert Paul said when he left home at the inquest and he didn't use the word exactly in that testimony. His number was an estimate.

"Robert Paul said he lived at 30 Forster street, Whitechapel. On the Friday he left home just before a quarter to four, and on passing up Buck's row he saw a man in the middle of the road, who drew his attention to the murdered woman." - 18 September 1888 Daily News

"Robert Paul, a carman, said on the morning of the crime he left home just before a quarter to 4. He was passing up Buck's Row and saw a man standing in the middle of the road." - 22 September 1888 East London Advertiser

"Robert Paul, Forster street, Whitechapel, said - I am a carman, and on the morning of the murder I left home just before a quarter to four. As I was passing up Buck's row I saw a man standing in the roadway," - 18 September 1888 Evening Standard

"John Paul, of 30, Foster-street, Whitechapel, said he was a carman. On Friday, August 31st, he left home at about a quarter to four o'clock to go to his work in Spitalfields." - 22 September 1888 Illustrated Police News

"Robert Paul said he lived at 30, Forster-street, Whitechapel. On the Friday, he left home just before a quarter to four...." - 23 September, 1888 Sunday Dispatch

"Robert Paul said he lived at 30, Forster-street, Whitechapel. On the Friday, he left home just before a quarter to four...." - 23 September, 1888 Sunday People

"Robert Paul, a carman, said that he was passing along Buck's-row at a quarter to four on the morning in question...." = 18 September 1888 Pall Mall Gazette

"Robert Paul, Forster-street, Whitechapel. -- I am a carman, and on the morning of the murder I left home just before a quarter to four." - 18 Spetember 1888 Morning Advertiser

"Robert Paul, a carman, said that he was passing along Buck's-row at a quarter to four on the morning in question, when a man stopped him and showed him the body of a woman lying in a gateway." - 18 September 1888 Pall Mall Gazette

"Robert Baul [Paul], a carman, of 30, Foster-street, Whitechapel, stated he went to work at Cobbett's-court, Spitalfields. He left home about a quarter to 4 on the Friday morning and as he was passing up Buck's-row he saw a man standing in the middle of the road." - 18 September 1888 Times

It's clear that Robert Paul was estimating the time. You aren't just ignoring the times given by PCs Thain, Neil, and Mizen. You aren't just ignoring half of what Coroner Baxter said. You aren't just ignoring Inspector Abberline's report. You're ignoring Robert Paul's inquest testimony, where he did not say that 3:45am was "exact".

[Paddy Goose]

Good afternoon Fisherman,

... The people have spoken ...

Right, but not here on Casebook they haven't.

All we get here is you insisting the police didn't bother to inquire if Pickford's had a Charles Cross in their employ. You've been doing this for a decade now. Your theory still has no starting point.

[Mark J D]

All we get here is you insisting the police didn't bother to inquire if Pickford's had a Charles Cross in their employ.

-- The same police who couldn't even be bothered to knock on all the doors in Buck's Row itself. Yeah, they'd certainly be sending someone over to Broad Street to check up on a white, working Englishman. Once they'd finished their checks at Doveton Street, of course.

M.