Patricia Cornwell

[Stewart P Evans]

Facts

...some authors who have tinkered with the unknown facts to make them suit their suspect; and then presented them as the known facts.
Like Tumblety being out on police bail at the time of Kelly's murder.
Like Kelly wasn't murdered by the Whitechapel Murderer when it becomes questionable whether Tumblety was ever on police bail.
Like Tumblety lodged in Batty Street, etc. etc. & etc.

Any author who writes about about a suspect is, naturally, going to present the best possible case for the possibility of that suspect being the Ripper. We have seen it plenty of times in the past (A P Wolf provides an example in the Cutbush chapter of his book) and we will see it again in the future.

I wrote my Tumblety book in 1994 - 14 years ago - and there is a lot more information available now than there was then. When the information on Tumblety's gross indecency charges was found, the court calendar presented, prima facie, the possibility that he was in custody from 7 November 1888 - which would mean that he could not have murdered Mary Kelly. Littlechild stated that he considered Tumblety 'a very likely one [suspect]' which, of course, would be impossible if he was locked up.

Therefore I explored two scenarios which could explain this apparent anomaly in what Littlechild stated.

1. The first was that Tumblety may have been granted police bail for the misdemeanors and would thus have been free on 9 November. Research revealed a similar bail system in 1888 to that which we frequently use in modern times of a 7 day police bail and return to the police station for charging or no further action.

2. That Kelly was not a Ripper victim and this was another explanation for the puzzle. The idea that Kelly might not be a Ripper victim had occurred to me as a real possibility years before (around 1987) and had also been suggested by others, notably Bernard Davies whose grandfather was a police officer attached to the Ripper enquiry and who had been told by some detectives working on the Kelly case that they did not think it was the work of the Ripper. Bernard told this story at the Cloak and Dagger Club meeting when Robin Odell was the guest speaker.

Neither of these did I state as a fact and I merely presented the arguments as an explanation to address new information to hand. The Tumblety interview that has recently been found bears out my contention that he was not held very long - certainly not a week or longer. As regards the Batty Street lodger story, more press reports have been recently found on this from which different interpretations have been drawn. But in 1994 this story had never been published and I presented it as fitting the Tumblety scenario. This idea was reinforced after the book came out when I discovered the 1911 George R Sims article which recounted a very similar landlady story and where the suspect was categorically stated to be 'an American doctor', albeit the landlady thought the same man was then practising in north London.

But lets get this straight. I do not know and have no proof that Tumblety was out on bail at the time of the Kelly murder - I merely presented this possibility in response to the discovery of the court calendar by Mark King. Further I have never stated that Mary Kelly was not a Ripper victim. I have stated that she may not have been which is, of course, a fact. No one can prove that she was - they are all undetected murders with no known offender(s). An open mind should be kept and the same applies to Stride, again whom I have never stated (unlike A P Wolf) was not a Ripper victim, but that she may not have been. And I have given explanations for both possibilities. In the case of Stride I should say that I waver more towards the possibility that she was not a Ripper victim whereas in the case of Kelly I think it more likely that she was a Ripper victim (and hers would be the case that would militate more against the Tumblety theory than Stride would).

Obviously these are contentious points and many would argue strongly against them. Frankly I have to say that I simply do not know and as all the murders are unsolved no one can positively say who was killed by whom - Ripper or not. I was the first to point out there is no hard evidence against Tumblety - as is the case with all of the suspects. Finally I do not say that Tumblety was the Ripper - I merely presented an argument for that possibility. I do say he was a genuine contemporary police suspect. All my books since then have not been suspect related.

[Jeff Leahy]

Aarrh! so Norder ye does have some spunk in ye'

I shall be back...

[Tom_Wescott]

AP,

Your thinly veiled insults on the male author Ally is 'cozy' with do you no favors. You should at least have the courage to write his name and face the consequences. You don't because you know that nobody on these boards will agree with your opinion of this person. And just for the record, I've never seen Ally show favor to any person based solely on his standing in the Ripper community. If you don't believe me, go ask Paul Begg over at the forums where all your fellow Casebook haters post.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Ally]

No it's a little further north, in Maryland, called the Mason-Dixon line. If you are going to use a word either pejoratively or not, know what it means to the people you are using it against. Yankee means people from New England and states north-east. Only the cluelessly old-fashioned attempt to call all people of the United States yankees.

[Cap'n Jack]

'No actually I am southerner. But once again, let's not let the facts get in the way of your verbal vomit stream.'

My 'umble apologies, Ally, I didn't realise that the American Civil War was still unresolved.
Where do you cross the line?
Atlanta?

[Dan Norder]

Hey Cap'n,

Ummm... you should be able to scroll down (or hit the little triangle pointing right at the top of the display window) and get the next page... If that doesn't work, let me know and I'll just post the text and graphic straight into this thread (maybe it's only allowing me to do that because I had the search result cached in my web browser?)

[Ally]

And to make it clear because Pirate Jack is attempting to stir up trouble on yet more topics he knows nothing about (re: my pride):

I have absolutely NOTHING to do with the guests, hosts or format of the Podcasts. That is entirely within the domain of Mr. Menges. I am occasionally privileged to be allowed to join the panel of questioners. Additionally, I have stated to him privately and now publicly that if anyone is too afraid to come on a podcast with me, I'll be happy to bow out for the greater good.

If Cornwell ever did come on, and she ever did apologize for her remarks to the Ripper community or hell, wrote an email to be published on the Casebook, I'd be happy to cut her some slack. But I sincerely doubt that will ever occur.

[Cap'n Jack]

Nice post, Dan, but the link didn't provide the whole text?

[Ally]

I don't remember crossing a line, JM, but mind you I don't remember going to bed last night either.
My comments to Ally were concerned with her ability to be quite kosher with some authors who have tinkered with the unknown facts to make them suit their suspect; and then presented them as the known facts.

Let's just address the never ending stream of lies that AP WOlf vomits forth on a daily, no hourly, basis. First of all, if you will learn to read, a helpful step when engaging in a written debate, you will find that I have repeatedly stated that ALL authors with a suspect bias read what they want into the available facts. lAnd that ALL are equally guilty of this. My beef with Cornwell is that once again...read it slowly and carefully, is that she slandered, defamed and lied about living people, while hypocritically doing the EXACT same behavior she railed against us for doing.

I realize that once again, you don't want the facts to get in the way of what you believe another person is saying, thinking or feeling, but Cornwell's suspect theory is irrelevant to why she is held with contempt by a large portion of people.

In regards to the whole Tumblety thing, please find one instance where I have ever debated Tumblety one way or another, so that you can say that I am "okay" with any given position. I'll tell you, you can't. But again, let's not let the truth get in the way of your determined lies, distortions and misrepresentations.

Now if you want to go start a tumblety thread, and ask me what I think of it, I'll be happy to address all Tumblety points you care to toss my way, but for right now once again, my dislike for Pat stems on one issue:

She lied about, slandered and defamed every single person who studies and pursues an interest in Ripperology, while doing the same thing.

I don't believe I ever accused Ally of casting disparaging remarks about fellow Rippersaurs, for she saves all that sort of flabbergasted invenctive for me.
Bless 'er cottons.

No, I don't save it for you, you just happen to be the one who keeps mentioning my name honey bunch. Take a look back on this thread, and see who decided to throw down first, that would be you. So please get over your pathetic and lame attempt to cast yourself as the victim. And frankly sweety I have made disparaging remarks about a whole bunch of rippersaurs, almost all of them in a much better class than you.

I have accused her of being a Yankee.
But she is, isn't she?.

No actually I am southerner. But once again, let's not let the facts get in the way of your verbal vomit stream.

[Dan Norder]

"Pirate Jack" seems to be trying to claim that pointing out that Professor Bower comes to conclusions no other scientist has and that these conclusions just happen to support the person who paid him is somehow a personal attack on the man. JSchmidt points out, rightly, that Bower is considered a reputable expert and, wrongly, that therefore he couldn't be acting as a yes man for anyone. Both of these arguments miss the common sense reality that experts are not some purely objective beings whose conclusions are formed without outside influence.

Experts can be and often are blind to their own bias. It can be that they naturally want to find support for someone they consider a friend, or that they want to find something so that someone paying them continues to pay them more to find other things, or to be involved with something that they think will be historic. That's how we have archaeologists claiming to have found evidence proving that Atlantis (a purely fictional creation of Plato) existed in some 20 different locations, for example... not to mention countless Ripper authors all claiming things that contradict each other. Experts also can and often do take sides for purely financial reasons. That's how lawyers can find experts who will argue for either the prosecution or the defense to "scientifically" declare something that would help convict or defend someone. Some experts can remain more or less objective than others. Bower seems to be part of the group that loses common sense when it's convenient for his client.

Let's just go with Bower's most important claim. He argues that, by looking at cuts on the edges of sheets of paper, he can state with near perfect reliability whether those pages all came from the same batch of 24 sheets of paper when they were cut together by one sweep of a paper trimmer, and that two Sickert letters and two Ripper letters happened to have come from this same batch.

I would think that it should be obvious that this is an amazingly unrealistic claim. He's not comparing DNA in wood pulp to prove that the paper was made from wood from the same tree (in which case narrowing it down to 24 sheets would still be impossible). He's not just saying that the paper was all cut by the same paper cutter at a factory (similiar to, say, how different bullets fired from the same gun at different times can be linked fairly reliably) at different times, but cut at the *exact* same time (so not only that bullets were fired from the same gun, but also what hour of what day of what year they were fired). And he's doing it by eyeballing some paper edges and just saying that they look the same to him. This was not done in a blind study (comparing a large group of papers not knowing which ones Cornwell wanted to link together). This was not done so that other paper experts who weren't employed by Cornwell could look at the pages and make their own decision. This is not how science works, and any expert who was being realistic about what tests could and could not determine wouldn't make such claims.

Worse than that, it's pretty obvious that these pages are not from the same batch of 24 sheets of paper just by a quick glance:

[ATTACH]1821[/ATTACH]

These weren't even made in the same year! The paper used in the Sickert letter (on left) was made in 1886, while the one used in the Openshaw Letter (on right) was made in 1887. The watermarks were pressed into the pulp of the paper during manufacturing at completely different times. They would have gone through countless numbers of quires of 24 pages through the cutter in a single day, let alone the weeks and months that separated when these different paper samples were made.

Bower's conclusion makes no sense at all; it doesn't even sound slightly plausible. Remember also that the ONLY person who made the claim is on Cornwell's payroll and said a number of other things that no other experts have agreed with him on. People with any sense at all know that all of that put together means that Bower's claims can't be taken seriously.

Every test result Cornwell purchased for her book can be shown to be equally unreliable. The alleged DNA match on the letters (which even Cornwell has to begrudgingly admit is not a match but merely not NOT a match), the supposed message found in some hotel register that she claims was written by Sickert admitting to be the Ripper which really talks about selling chickens (somehow she found a supposed linguistic expert who can't tell the difference between a fusion of German/Italian and Dutch), the idea that Bower and his wife can state that handwriting in hundred of Ripper letters were all by Sickert trying to disguise his handwriting -- it's all nonsense.

[Tom_Wescott]

How knows, if the Irish can sort out their problems..

Howard Brown is the last person to reference regarding the burial of the proverbial hatchet. He's one of the few people I've seen in Ripperology who actually nurtures grudges even when handed an olive branch.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Cap'n Jack]

I don't remember crossing a line, JM, but mind you I don't remember going to bed last night either.
My comments to Ally were concerned with her ability to be quite kosher with some authors who have tinkered with the unknown facts to make them suit their suspect; and then presented them as the known facts.
Like Tumblety being out on police bail at the time of Kelly's murder.
Like Kelly wasn't murdered by the Whitechapel Murderer when it becomes questionable whether Tumblety was ever on police bail.
Like Tumblety lodged in Batty Street, etc. etc. & etc.
But that's all okay by Ally, because she is nitty gritty with the folks who claim all these things.
I don't believe I ever accused Ally of casting disparaging remarks about fellow Rippersaurs, for she saves all that sort of flabbergasted invenctive for me.
Bless 'er cottons.
I have accused her of being a Yankee.
But she is, isn't she?
Personally I have always felt that there is a degree of snobbery involved in this Cornwell thing, in that many Brits resent the intrusion of a wealthy American into the fray, especially those involved in the publishing world, and then by some degree of magic - which I admit I do not understand, yet - the American contingent, again involved in the commercial side of this komisch world, turn against their fellow American because they are just oh so comfortable in bed with the accepted British experts, who sort of justify their fragile existence in this strange world.
I don't think wealth has anything to do with it.
I'm a wealthy bloke myself, but I like to get dirty in the gutter, and I don't like snobs.

[Jeff Leahy]

The Podcasts are getting better and really work well..actually I beloeive they'd be an excellent platform for PC..tis the new radio, she could reach teh right audience with her findings.

I'm under know illusion that everybodies going to kiss and be freinds (metophorically) but perhaps if the disagreement was put in perspective..instead of attack we all eased up and see what she has to say..

How knows, if the Irish can sort out their problems..

Jeff

PS..Piracy and free spirit 'tis in the blood..'tis the Wolf man that will hav' to change of his name..arhh!

[jmenges]

Hi Jeff,

It was AP who crossed the line and I felt that you might have been taking on his throne comment by asking if it was beneath Ally to extend some kind of hypothetical olive branch to Cornwell. A notion I find ridiculous. If I'm mistaken then I apologize. BTW, 'extending an olive branch' means the same to us Americans as it means to the Brits. Have my olive branch.

But I am glad that the podcasts have dispelled the notion in your head that Ally is a witch. And either you or AP should think about changing your member name.

And Tom,

I agree with you entirely that her non-participation in the podcast would be because it is rinky-dink and beneath her. Not because she is afraid of us.

JM

[Jeff Leahy]

like it or not thats exactly what she is..and she is not the only ripperologist who favours Sickert..on the whole Ripperology is about trying to prove inocent people are guilty..150 suspects..they cant all be JtR..

Although I guess some theories mix more than one suspect..

Any sign of Norders evidence against Peter Bower..any sign of the experts he claims disprove his work?