Charles Lechmere: Prototypical Life of a Serial Killer

[Elamarna]

How are you determining average time to bleed out?

The first thing is we mistakenly continue to talk of bleed out, which can give the wrong impression.
Bleeding under pressure, that is with the heart beating will continue until the remaing total blood volume id between 40-50%, it's not pricise, but best to use the higher end to get a longest time.

The average human is said to have just under 5 litres of blood, women slightly less( although in pregnancy female blood volume increases significantly)

So the heart will start to fail when the total blood loss is between approximately 2 litres and 2.5 litres.
We can't use the flow from one victim to compare to another victim. There are too many variables, the most important probably being the actual wounds.

The difference between the two attacks, McKenzie and Nichols, is very important here.
Nichols has all the blood vessels in the neck, carotid arteries and Jugular veins completely severeved. The jugulars will cease to have a supply in seconds.

The carotids will each lose approx 370 ml per a minutes. That's 740 ml a minute in total. There is a slight drop in rate as the bleeding continues.

From this we can see that just from blood loss from the neck wounds, the heart is likely to fail between 3 minutes and 4 minutes .

Steve

[The Rookie Detective]

On the ‘oozing’ question.

What about the murder of Lydia Green (5th February 1887) discovered by David Orsam? She was undoubtedly killed at around 7.15 (time confirmed in five ways) and when Dr. Davies examined the body at 7.45 he said: “In examination I found a depressed wound on the forehead over the left eye, from which blood was oozing, and there was a quantity of dried blood around the wound.”

This wasn’t just a non-medically trained Constable using the word ‘oozing,’ this was from a Doctor who said that the body was ‘oozing blood’ a full 30 minutes after death!

An excellent point Herlock

The only thing I would add is that blood oozing from a major vein in the neck would release quicker than the wound you specify regarding Lydia Green.

A person who has all their major arteries and veins savagely severed in the neck and without any form of compression to induce coagulation, would not take as long to bleed out.

I would class McKenzie's 20 plus minutes as an exception rather than the rule.

But you're absolutely right that in theory,, blood CAN AND DOES ooze for a relatively long time after death as in the case of Lydia Green.

[Fiver]

Yes, we are aware of Lech's testimony: why do you treat it as the gospel truth Herlock?

You are repeating a common error - assuming that people who disagree with your favored suspect have not analyzed the evidence. To accuse Herlock of that is to show that you either have not read or have not understood his posts.

1) Everything that Lechmere said before the moment he was spotted by Robert Paul is uncorroberated. This is not unique to Lechmere. Everything Robert Paul said before the moment Charles Lechmere heard him is uncorroberated. Everything PC Neil said before the moment he hailed PC Thain is uncorroberated. The same applies to the first witnesses of other Ripper murders.

Lechmere could have lied about that part. So could Robert Paul or PC Neil. There's no evidence any of the three were lying. Even if it could be proved, people lie for plenty of reasons beside being a serial killer.

2) Robert Paul saw Charles Lechmere standing in the middle of the road. If Lechmere was the Ripper, he would have had to move from a kneeling position, facing west, on the pavement on the south side of the street; to a standing position, facing east, in the middle of the road. He would have had to do that without being seen or heard by Robert Paul.

Robert Paul was on the alert - he knew people had been mugged on Bucks Row. It's extremely unlikely that Lechmere could have moved from the body to the middle of the street without being seen or heard by Robert Paul.

Ripper-Lechmere not know if Robert Paul had seen or heard him move. He would have to watch Paul's reactions. Paul was clearly frightened of Lechmere and trying to avoid him. Any guilty man smarter than a cobblestone would conclude that Paul had seen through his attempted ruse and either attacked Paul or fled.

3) Lechmere's actions from the moment he was seen by Paul until the moment that they parted company near Spitalfields Market were corroberated by Robert Paul. Lechmere stopped Paul. They examined the body. Lechmere refused to prop up the body. They stayed together while looking for a constable. They told PC Mizen that here was a woman who might be dead in Bucks Row. They walked together down Hanbury Street nearly to Spitalfield's Market.

Every one of those actions makes sense if Lechemre was innocent. Every one of them was a stupid, unnecessary chance if he was guilty.

4) Robert Paul talked to the press. The police had to track him down and drug him out of bed in the middle of the night to question him. Lechmere voluntarily contacted the police, even though neither Robert Paul nor PC Mizen knew his name or where he lived. That would be another unnecessary risk for a guilty man.

[Fiver]

Hi Fiver,


There is a sort of "hmmmm" moment with Goldstein as described by Mrs. Mortimer. Particularly as she says he walked down the street quickly, glances at the club, and continues on. Makes one wonder what made him glance? Did some movement in the ally catch his eye, but it was too dark to see? It teases at the idea that just maybe something like that happens, and the movement is JtR with Stride on the ground. If JtR noticed Goldstein as well, that itself could be the fabelled interruption event that results in JtR leaving Stride dead, but not mutilated.

Clearly, that's entirely speculation, but does it work? Well, the timing for Goldstein's passing is similar to the time of the Schwartz event, which could then be used to tie a few things up into a nice package. One problem, though, is that Mrs. Mortimer doesn't see the Schwartz event, and presumably in this idea Goldstein comes along very shortly after Schwartz has fled, and JtR has now got Stride into the ally somehow. That does, however, leave a short space of time to work with, allowing for Mrs. Mortimer to come out just after Schwartz flees, so she misses all of that, but she does come out after JtR and Stride are in the ally and in time to see Goldstein walk by - and perhaps that even explains why she even remembers him at all, because she sees him when she first goes outside but then sees nobody after that. And there's the rub. If she's seen nobody after Goldstein, clearly JtR hasn't left the scene as a result, and we have that last piece of the puzzle that just won't fit, which probably is telling me I've put the pieces together wrong after all (hardly a surprise).

Sigh. So there we have it. Another great story bites the dust as it ends up twisting itself into such a knot it eats it's own tail.

It was fun while it lasted.

- Jeff

A big problem is we have two Fanny Mortimer accounts. (IIRC, from the same edition of the same newspaper.) Those accounts contradict each other in many ways, including which direction Leon Goldstein was walking and whether he walked past Dutfield's Yard or whether he entered the street from Dutfield's Yard. If the latter account is correct, Goldstein could have just walked past Stride's body and kept going. Which could be callousness, fear of being accused, or just not noticing her body in the darkness.

[Fiver]

I would like to refer you to your review of Cutting Point in Ripperologist, where you called me "dodgy" for not mentioning many enough times the fact that the material could be interpreted as Paul having spoken to PC Mizen. Of course, I DID mention it - twice. But that was not enough for you, you called it dodgy that I did not mention it many more times.

That was an example of one of the flaws of your work.

"The book discusses the murder of Mary Ann Nichols in Bucks Row at length, of course, but one has to navigate carefully between fact and speculation. Holmgren begins by saying that Robert Paul is very important, but he pretty much cherry-picks the details as given in a report in Lloyds’ Weekly News. Some of it is pure imagination, such as his claim that Robert Paul was a hundred yards or more from Lechmere when he first became aware of him. He may have been, but I don’t know any source in which Lechmere says how far Paul was away from him when he first became aware of his presence. Christer is also a bit dodgy when it comes to the weight attached to some information.'"Ripperologist #189

[Fiver]

Neil cannot have arrived three minutes only after the carmen examined the body of Polly Nichols. We need to weigh in how the carmen had a long stretch to walk up to the Baker Street junction and how they must have been out of the street as Neil entered it via Thomas Street. Neil then had a stretch of about 145 yards to cover, and that stretch would have taken him around a minute and 35 seconds, if he was walking at a speed of three miles per hour, which was supposedly the night time patrolling speed.

Before we can allow Neil into Bucks Row, however, we must have the carmen out of it, having turned into Bakers Row, where they found Mizen. And that would have taken a significant time. All in all, a time of some six minutes would have passed from when Lechmere supposedly found the body and up to when Neil arrived at it, meaning that the time from the examination up until the carmen found Mizen must have been considerably more than three minutes only.

I note you aren't asking Steve, who wrote a book on Bucks Row. Or Jeff, who did some timed analysis. But dodging is what you are good at.

You're also ignoring the actual evidence.

"Witness and the other man walked on together until they met a policeman at the corner of Old Montagu-street, and told him what they had seen. Up to that time not more than four minutes had elapsed from the time he saw the body." - Robert Paul

Jeff's work shows that Lechmere and Paul could have cleared Bucks Row in under 4 minutes of finding the body.

[Fiver]

Yes, it is fine to address such a thing, although a book scrutinizing a theory should not focus on the crackpot suggestions offered by people not involved in shaping the theory.

Agreed. It should only focus on the crackpot suggestions of the people involved in shaping the theory.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I think Fish has gone fishing again.

[Fiver]

And Neil will have been in place around six minutes after the carmen.

Or more likely less than 4, based on someone who actually analyzed it and Robert Paul's testimony.

The prevailing darkness would not have obscured the sounds of four hobnailed feet tottering away in a haste towards the west.

Nobody totters in haste.

There's no evidence that anyone was wearing hobnailed boots.

It must therefore be accepted that the carmen must have not only turned the corner but also walked some way towards Mizen - or perhaps all of the way - before Neil turned into Bucks Row.

Paul and Lechemre probably had turned the corner by the time PC Neil entered Bucks Row. The rest is speculation on your part.

Neil said that the night was an uncannily silent one or something along those lines, and four hobnailed feet hurrying along do not produce an uncannily silent street.

Unusual does not mean the same thing as uncanny.

"He had not heard any noise that night. On the contrary, the place was unusually quiet, and nothing had aroused his suspicion. It was quite possible for anybody to have escaped through Brady street into Whitechapel road, or through a passage into Queen's buildings." PC Neil

Neil and the carmen were effectively not in Bucks Row simultaneously. It is impossible.

Congratulations of refuting a position that nobody on this thread took. Any other straw men you want to destroy?

Jason Payne James and Ingemar Thiblin both thought that six minutes would be on the far side of a good guess about how long the whole bleeding process would likely take!

Almost everything you say in this sentence is false. Based on previous accounts of your discussions, Thiblin stated that he had very little data and estimated 10 to 15 minutes, while James stated he had no data at all and estimated 3 to 7 minutes.

The picture is, I would suggest, a very simple one.

You don't present a picture, merely a frame.

[Fiver]

Would 2 separate attacks on Nichols account for the bleed out conundrum?

Was there time for JTR to go BACK to Nichols to cut her as she lay there unconscious from being strangled previously?

The bleed out is only a conundrum if you accept Fishy's falsification of estimates given by pathologists who admitted there were estimating based on little or no actual data.

If Fishy's bleed out times are correct, the most likely person to have murdered Polly Nichols would be PC Neil. There probably isn't time between Paul and Lechmere leaving Bucks Row and PC Neil entering for another person to have killed and mutilated her.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Fisherman: The prevailing darkness would not have obscured the sounds of four hobnailed feet tottering away in a haste towards the west.

Fiver: There's no evidence that anyone was wearing hobnailed boots.

And if the sound of hobnailed boots had indeed echoed along Bucks Row then Lechmere would have heard Paul from more that 40 or 50 yards away and would have been long gone by the time that he’d arrived at the scene.

[FrankO]

All of the other victims were displayed (except Stride due to interruption or a different killer) and the killer wanted to show his work to the world by exposing their internal organs etc...

Therefore because neither Paul or Lechmere etc... were unaware of her injuries, the killer tried to conceal what he had done.

It’s worth noting that Nichols was the only victim to wear stays, the only victim under whose body her dress seems to have got stuck and there’s evidence to suggest the hem of the dress was left on her chest by the killer.

What would you make of that, TRD?

[Herlock Sholmes]

Fish’s whole case revolves around turning unknowns into ‘knowns.’ And this is the problem. We simply cannot know exactly what time Lechmere arrived in Bucks Row. We also cannot know exactly what time Paul arrived. We cannot know exactly what time Neil arrived but he reckoned 3.45 (and police officers on beats whilst far from infallible have more reason than most to be time aware) but for convenience Fish just adds 6 minutes onto Neil’s time! Just like that! All unknowns. Of course our estimates aren’t going to be far off but a very few minutes here and there can make a huge difference when making claims or assessing likelihoods.

Then we have Fish trying to manipulate the time that the body was discovered by mangling the English language (and not for the first time)

The Coroner: The time at which the body was found cannot have been far from 3.45 a.m., as it is fixed by so many independent data

So Fish thinks that we should use 3.45 as the ToD or that “cannot have been far…” can only have meant a very few seconds. It’s little short of unbelievable that this claim can be made. Baxter was basing his estimate on (independent data) like Neil arriving at the body at 3.45. And Thain who saw Neil’s signal at 3.45. And Mizen who said that he saw Lechmere and Paul at 3.45.

So very clearly (could it be clearer?) Lechmere must have found the body before 3.45 but fairly close too it. But that doesn’t mean 3.44.30 either (as Fish would like) And how long after finding the body did Lechmere and Paul see Mizen?

Paul: Not more than four minutes had elapsed from the time he first saw the woman.

So the only conclusion that we can draw from this (sans deliberate manipulations) is that Lechmere found the body around (or slightly more than) 4 minutes before 3.45.

So 3.40/3.41ish.

—————

Fish and the Church of Lechmere want it to be later of course so that they can imagine a suspicious gap. Just like they don’t like Lechmere’s ‘about 3.30’ for the time that he left home. And they absolutely hate the evidence which points to a later ToD for Annie Chapman too because that would mean that he was at work when she was killed. And they are sooo irritated by Neil, Thain and Mizen’s time and Paul’s ‘4 minutes’ too.

We have to allow margins for error on timings and in both directions. No one goes on about this more than I do but that doesn’t mean that we can pick one time in particular in a possible range and call it factually correct simply to back up a theory.

[bolo]

Hallo Freunde,

wasp nest and all. Tons and tons of interesting information surrounding the Polly Nichols case, really elaborate and convincing.

But then - where's the meat in the other cases? This is where the whole thing falls down in my humble opinion.

Grüße,

Boris

[JeffHamm]

Fisherman: The prevailing darkness would not have obscured the sounds of four hobnailed feet tottering away in a haste towards the west.

Fiver: There's no evidence that anyone was wearing hobnailed boots.

And if the sound of hobnailed boots had indeed echoed along Bucks Row then Lechmere would have heard Paul from more that 40 or 50 yards away and would have been long gone by the time that he’d arrived at the scene.

Never let a paradox get in the way of a good story.

- Jeff