Stride & Diemschutz

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Packer claims he sold grapes "about 11:45 pm".

Yeah, but Packer was a little confused about the actual time.
I think it were actually a little later, and not just because of the time given by Marshall.

The suspect seen by Schwartz & Marshall might be the same, but then you compare Marshall's suspect with Packer's suspect, which are quite different.

As you know, Packer was almost an old man, for that era.
From behind a small window, let's see how he goes...

Marshall, compiled: black cut-away coat and dark trousers, middle-aged, round cap with a peak, like a sailors, 5'6", rather stout, appearance of a clerk, no whiskers, no gloves or anything in hands.

Packer, Evening News: The man was middle aged, perhaps 35 years; about five feet seven inches in height; was stout, square built; wore a wideawake hat and dark clothes; had the appearance of a clerk; had a rough voice and a quick, sharp way of talking.

Well, that's not too bad at all, old man!

The main issue would be the headwear, although it's possible that were changed at some point. Like the flower?

[Wickerman]

This story only works if the eyewitness descriptions given by Israel Schwartz and William Marshall, are close match. They are.
Schwartz' broad shouldered man, and Marshall's rather stout man, were one and the same individual.

The suspect seen by Schwartz & Marshall might be the same, but then you compare Marshall's suspect with Packer's suspect, which are quite different.

[Wickerman]

Marshall saw the pair walk down Berner street, toward Ellen street. Matthew Packer said they arrived at his shop, from the opposite direction.
So the grapes sale time, can be narrowed right down.

Packer claims he sold grapes "about 11:45 pm".

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Maybe she shook him off after their encounter at The Bricklayers Arms, only to have the misfortune of him finding her again an hour and half later? By which stage he may have taken a slight on his character to not have been allowed to get what he wanted from her.

She senses all is not right. On the wind is the music of the nearby socialist club. It sounds Russian. She tries to subtlety negotiate her way there, but he won’t leave her be. There might be just enough people around to scare him away. She doesn’t see anyone. She can hear the music clearly now. If only she could get to the club, she will feel much safer.

”It’s not Jack. They said he was a Jew!” she convinces herself. “He is just another pestering man on the street who cannot take no for an answer.”

She crosses the road at pace. The soft soles of her boots barely make a sound against the damp cobbles.

She is almost there. Too late.

Interesting, but you would need to integrate this with the testimony of PC Smith, for it to be a viable story.
Perhaps try weaving it into other accounts...

She senses all is not right.

So she wants to leave, and turns to leave, but he doesn't want her to, and so ...

The man tried to pull the woman into the street ...

She continues to resist, and then ...

he turned her round & threw her down on the footway ...

She screams at him.

Eventually, he convinces her to stick around. He tries to make amends for the rough handling.
So at this stage he was reassuring her ...

... and he was kissing and cuddling her.

The man jokes at her ability to come up with excuses for leaving him and going home. He says ...

You would say anything but your prayers.

She laughs at him.
They then walk off down the street ...

This story only works if the eyewitness descriptions given by Israel Schwartz and William Marshall, are close match. They are.
Schwartz' broad shouldered man, and Marshall's rather stout man, were one and the same individual.

Marshall saw the pair walk down Berner street, toward Ellen street. Matthew Packer said they arrived at his shop, from the opposite direction.
So the grapes sale time, can be narrowed right down.

[caz]

There are 20-30 men at the location she is killed at at the time she is killed.

All the more reason for Stride to think she would be safer there, if she was trying to avoid a man she had met earlier.

And all the more reason why Jack - if it was he - knew it wasn't safe for him to be there, doing a little surgery on this woman.

[caz]

Its entirely possible that someone might have mistaken Stride being out that night her soliciting, and although there is no evidence she was in fact soliciting, she could have been. Its the circumstances that tell us anything about why she was there. If you assemble the pieces youd have to conclude that there were no witnesses who saw her go off somewhere private with any man, though she spoke with some. She was sober, appointed nicely with a flower arrangement. That she acquired after leaving the boarding house with her 6d, she did not have it on when first leaving. She had something to freshen her mouth. A skirt that went down to her boot tops, one she wanted to brush any lint from.

So did Nichols and Chapman wear mini skirts? I'm not getting the point about skirt length. This was 1888, not the 1960s. The 'flower arrangement' and cachous could have been gifts from a stranger in return for empty promises, for all you know. And even a prostitute would use a clothes brush if she had access to one.

[erobitha]

Actively soliciting or not seems moot. I think the question is can anybody come up with a reason why she might not have been approached by Jack?

c.d.

Maybe she shook him off after their encounter at The Bricklayers Arms, only to have the misfortune of him finding her again an hour and half later? By which stage he may have taken a slight on his character to not have been allowed to get what he wanted from her.

She senses all is not right. On the wind is the music of the nearby socialist club. It sounds Russian. She tries to subtlety negotiate her way there, but he won’t leave her be. There might be just enough people around to scare him away. She doesn’t see anyone. She can hear the music clearly now. If only she could get to the club, she will feel much safer.

”It’s not Jack. They said he was a Jew!” she convinces herself. “He is just another pestering man on the street who cannot take no for an answer.”

She crosses the road at pace. The soft soles of her boots barely make a sound against the damp cobbles.

She is almost there. Too late.

[caz]

Sometimes it's hard to tell what someone means by 'Jack' - is it just a placeholder, or something more specific?
Whatever the case, Jack still has to be woven into a timeline, while making at least some sense of witness accounts.

Same applies to whoever killed Stride - unless you believe it was suicide and she managed to throw the knife as far as Schwartz's railway arch before expiring.

If we think of where Stride was standing, and the time of night, it doesn't take much imagination to see why a man might jump to certain unsavoury conclusions about her, whether he ever used prostitutes - which I happen to think Jack did - or thoroughly disapproved of their presence in the area. I doubt most men's first thought would be that she had probably come to clean the club, or was waiting for her boyfriend to take her clubbing. They might have got her wrong, but then so might her killer.

A disgruntled punter could have killed her for rejecting his advances, wrongly perceiving her to be available, but once we allow for that reasonable possibility, it must surely follow that a disgruntled Jack could have done the same, and wrongly assumed she would agree to accompany him somewhere they were less likely to be disturbed.

If we didn't have the striking similarities between this case and the others, as described in the summing up at Stride's inquest, I'd be far more inclined to favour a disgruntled punter with a knife and a belly full of beer, teaching the woman a lesson she had no time to learn and he had no time to regret. But for me, the similarities make such a scenario - angry man, killing for the first and only time - considerably less likely than our active cut throat, using skills he had at his fingertips, and they can't simply be airbrushed out of the record.

[c.d.]

Actively soliciting or not seems moot. I think the question is can anybody come up with a reason why she might not have been approached by Jack?

c.d.

[erobitha]

Ah, but Michael Richards has this vision of a killer who didn't want just any lone woman in a vulnerable position. Oh no. He wanted a prostitute's womb or nothing. So if he had encountered Stride and asked her if she was a prostitute, her answer would have dictated her fate.

[caz]

Hi C.D,

As you earlier said, it's a moot point.
Stride could have been out collecting for a convent, dodging the rain or ducking into the shadows to avoid Mormons. Her intentions are secondary to whatever her killer perceived her intentions to be. She was a lone woman in a vulnerable position. That's all she was guilty of that night.

Ah, but Michael Richards has this vision of a killer who didn't want just any lone woman in a vulnerable position. Oh no. He wanted a prostitute's womb or nothing. So if he had encountered Stride and asked her if she was a prostitute, her answer would have dictated her fate.

"Yes", and he'd have taken what he came for, even with pony hooves pounding in his ears.

A sharp "No!" followed by a stinging slap round the chops, and he'd have apologised profusely and moved on.

Of course, Michael's ripper could have done neither, because the men in white coats had taken him away by then, with admirable justification, all things considered.

And I thought the Brits had a monopoly over eccentricity.

Love,

Caz
X

[Losmandris]

Never let the facts get in the way of a good story hey!

[caz]

The line I highlighted above, that seem right to you? What the medical examiners actually concluded is the opposite, that there WAS knife skills evident in the cases of Polly and Annie..and as we know there are opinions on both sides of the fence with Kate.

Read that part of my post again, Michael. I interpreted it as:

'There had been no skilful mutilation [in Stride's case] as [was evident] in the cases of Nichols and Chapman, and no unskilful injuries [in Stride's case] as [were evident] in the case in Mitre-Square - possibly the work of an imitator; but there had been the same skill exhibited in the way in which the victim had been entrapped, and the injuries inflicted, so as to cause instant death and prevent blood from soiling the operator, and the same daring defiance of immediate detection...'

So not the 'opposite' at all then. It does seem that you regularly manage to get the wrong end of the stick when reading the source materials, which would explain a lot.

Anyway, no biggy here. The main thing is that Stride's murder was deemed comparable to the previous two, in terms of the injury inflicted with skill, to cause instant death, while preventing the killer from becoming blood soaked, and the same daring defiance of immediate detection.

The "injuries" on Liz referred to amounted to a single throat cut, which neither Polly, Annie or Kate suffered. They all had double cuts.

Yeah, I think they knew this was the case, but clearly that single cut was done with skill and care, which was the point being made.

We also have evidence both prior victims confided to others the night they were killed that they were soliciting. Is there evience in Liz Strides case that was her situation that night? Flowers, cashous, boot top length skirt...sober.......

What youve said before is that these women were all part time prostitutes....but were they? And even if you could prove that...which you cant by the way...youd still have to prove that was Strides story that night.

Unless youre claiming that not only does he alter his whole methodology this night, but he also doesnt seek out the same kind of women who allow him to get them into the dark by virtue of their occupation at that moment.

When have I ever claimed that 'these women were all part time prostitutes'? I have always taken pains to see them as individuals, with their own free will, and their own reasons for ending up in the wrong place at the wrong time - while you seem to think they had labels round their necks, to tell their killer who was for sale and who wasn't on any given night.

Would the ripper have steered well clear of trying his luck with a woman like Stride, just because she wore a flower, or a particular type of skirt, or wasn't obviously drunk? How do you know what his 'whole methodology' was, based on just two cases? If the Yorkshire Ripper had quit after his first two attacks, what would his 'whole methodology' have looked like, and how quickly did that picture change in reality, as his killing career progressed?

Why not take a pragmatic approach, just use what evidence is there for that one murder, and stop inserting your ideas of how much this killer must have changed in order to have this fit and established pattern of behavior and victimology.

Why not take a long walk off a short pier? How was I inserting my own ideas, by quoting from the summing up at the Stride inquest??

Why would Annies killer change anything? He apparently got what he was after, from whom he chose, and escaped scott free.

So you must have some idea what he wanted a middle-aged prostitute's uterus and part of her bladder for, enough to risk the hangman's rope. I'm all ears, like Prince Charles.

Now he just wants a single cut...on a woman we have no proof was doing the same thing as Annie was when they met?

How can you possibly know he just wanted a single cut, and would not have preferred to do more to Stride, if the circumstances had been more in his favour?

One question keeps coming up here caz...why do we have to imagine a previous killer when Strides kill is essentially nothing like the priors. Or subsequent victims for that matter.

You can imagine whatever you like - such as Stride's murder being 'essentially nothing like' any of the other Whitechapel murders. You are not alone, and have at least one dance partner in Trevor Marriott, if you can stomach listening to his jam rag apron theory while you're doing the Argentine tango.

Pretending only this Jack guy cuts throats at this time in that area is provably wrong anyway.

Who is pretending this? Why haven't you simply listed the solved cut throat murders which were committed 'at this time in that area'? If your proof consists of the case of Mr and Mrs Brown in Westminster, I can't say it will be that much of a surprise.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

There are 20-30 men at the location she is killed at at the time she is killed. How many men did it take to kill Liz? The only place you need to look for her killer is among those men who were already there, but unseen from the street.

Unseen as of when? By the time Smith sees Stride with man, or after?
Mortimer doesn't see Stride or the man, so where did they go?
You can't ignore the last person seen with the victim, by a credible witness.

The thing with the people inside, is that most of the them are together in groups, most of the time.
It is only those who are down in the yard at any stage, or in the Arbeter Fraint rooms, that could be of interest.
Do you suspect anyone in particular?

As for how many men did it take to kill Liz - well here is my list of murder constraints/criteria (with new additions) ...

Apparent lack of noise
Pattern of bruising/pressure marks
Very tight scarf, turned to the left
Appearing to have been laid gently down
Cachous lodged between thumb and forefinger
Contusion to side of face
Plastered with mud down left side
Unusual state of heart
Absence of arterial spray

Have I forgotten anything? Awkward position of body relative to wound, perhaps?

Anyway, are we looking at a one or multi-man job? Or do we need to split the list across two or more distinct events? You tell me ...

[Michael W Richards]

I'm confused. Who's this Jack person? Is it the man holding the parcel wrapped in newspaper? When does this Jack enter the scene, and when does he leave it, apparently unseen?

There are 20-30 men at the location she is killed at at the time she is killed. How many men did it take to kill Liz? The only place you need to look for her killer is among those men who were already there, but unseen from the street.