Berner Street: No Plot, No Mystery

[FISHY1118]

Lets not forget Schwartz identified Liz Strides body at the mortuary as the women he saw B.S trying to drag into the street and assaulted her.

So as some posters have suggested that the whole Schwartz incident was a lie need to take this into consideration .

Why bother to identify a women you made up a lie about?

[The Rookie Detective]

The Schwartz incident could have occurred before Fanny went onto her doorstep at around (perhaps the footsteps that he heard were Schwartz or BS man instead of PC Smith?) and if we accept the inexactness of times given then perhaps…

The Schwartz incident occurs at 12.44/12.45 (Fanny is indoors)
Fanny comes onto her doorstep at 12.46
Goldstein passes between 12.46 and 12.56
Fanny stays for around 10 minutes then goes back inside around 12.56
Fanny hears Louis pass at around 1.00

If Goldstein had passed before 12.50, he would either have seen BS man who has just assaulted Stride, or seen Stride just after she was assaulted.

The key witnesses are those who claimed to have seen someone pass the murder site BETWEEN the time of the alleged assault witnessed by Schwartz, to the time she was found murdered.

Goldstein to my knowledge is the only person seen by anyone in this time frame.

Goldstein places himself at the scene, which then validates Mortimer's claim.

But WHEN did Mortimer see him walking "hurriedly" ?

Was it before he passed the murder site, or AFTER he had looked up towards the club?

If the latter, then Goldstein may have seen the aftermath of the assault on Stride.


And just because he didn't say he had, doesn't mean he hadn't seen the killer.

If for example the killer was associated with the club, then did the clubs sense of brotherhood outweigh the need to tell the police that the murderer was a club member?


RD

[Herlock Sholmes]

If Goldstein had passed before 12.50, he would either have seen BS man who has just assaulted Stride, or seen Stride just after she was assaulted.

The key witnesses are those who claimed to have seen someone pass the murder site BETWEEN the time of the alleged assault witnessed by Schwartz, to the time she was found murdered.

Goldstein to my knowledge is the only person seen by anyone in this time frame.

Goldstein places himself at the scene, which then validates Mortimer's claim.

But WHEN did Mortimer see him walking "hurriedly" ?

Was it before he passed the murder site, or AFTER he had looked up towards the club?

If the latter, then Goldstein may have seen the aftermath of the assault on Stride.


And just because he didn't say he had, doesn't mean he hadn't seen the killer.

If for example the killer was associated with the club, then did the clubs sense of brotherhood outweigh the need to tell the police that the murderer was a club member?


RD

If the Schwartz incident occurred at around 12.44/12.45 why would Goldstein have seen BS man 5 minutes later?

Fanny said that she saw Goldstein pass but we don’t know if Goldstein mentioned seeing Fanny.

I can’t recall RD has it been proven that Leon Goldstein was a club member or is it the case that the club has been shown to have had a member called Goldstein?

[Fiver]

It also needs pointing out that it’s the coroner who decides who testified at an inquest and not the police.

There's also a double standard going on. They insist that Schwartz be thrown out because he wasn't called as a witness. Yet the theory leans heavily on Kozebrodsky and Hershberg, who were not called as witnesses. The theory accepts Mortimer and Goldstein, who were not called as witnesses.

[Fiver]

So very clearly the police took Schwartz seriously as a witness. All that we have in the way of evidence of dissent is the report in the Star of October 2nd but closer reading of it shows that it certainly doesn’t prove that the police disbelieved him. One possible explanation (and not the only one) is that some at Leman Street might have felt that the man that Schwartz saw wasn’t actually her killer. Abberline was based at Leman Street and he showed no sign of doubting Schwartz in November so the 2nd October newspaper story with no direct quote carries little or no weight.

Some people put a lot of weight on a single ambiguous sentence.

"The police have arrested one man answering the description the Hungarian furnishes. This prisoner has not been charged, but is held for inquiries to be made. The truth of the man's statement is not wholly accepted."

It's often presented as meaning the police did not trust Schwartz' statement. But "the man" could be referring to the man who was arrested, not Schwartz. And the doubts expressed could be those of the reporter, not the police. The sentence is vague.

What isn't vague is that the police put enough faith in Schwartz' statement that they actively searched for the men he mentioned, arrested a man who matched the description, and investigated that man.

That man not being charged is not proof that the police stopped believing Schwartz. It could mean the man showed he had an alibi and/or that Schwartz, upon seeing the man, said he was not the man he saw in Berner Street. It could even mean the man was Pipeman, confirmed Schwartz' story, but convinced the police that he was an innocent bystander with no connection to Broadshouldered man.

With the police files lost, we have no way of knowing.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Some people put a lot of weight on a single ambiguous sentence.

"The police have arrested one man answering the description the Hungarian furnishes. This prisoner has not been charged, but is held for inquiries to be made. The truth of the man's statement is not wholly accepted."

It's often presented as meaning the police did not trust Schwartz' statement. But "the man" could be referring to the man who was arrested, not Schwartz. And the doubts expressed could be those of the reporter, not the police. The sentence is vague.

What isn't vague is that the police put enough faith in Schwartz' statement that they actively searched for the men he mentioned, arrested a man who matched the description, and investigated that man.

That man not being charged is not proof that the police stopped believing Schwartz. It could mean the man showed he had an alibi and/or that Schwartz, upon seeing the man, said he was not the man he saw in Berner Street. It could even mean the man was Pipeman, confirmed Schwartz' story, but convinced the police that he was an innocent bystander with no connection to Broadshouldered man.

With the police files lost, we have no way of knowing.

That’s how I read it Fiver. ‘This prisoner has not been charged but we’re looking further into his story because we aren’t sure yet if he’s being truthful or not.’

It might indicate that some might have thought that BS man wasn’t actually the killer or maybe it was solely the individual police officer that the reporter spoke to had some form of doubt.

As you say though, too much can be read into an absence of further information.

[Fiver]

Why has this been turned into an issue? People sometimes get names wrong:


Chas. Andrew Cross

See also C H Cross, H Charles Cross, and George Cross.

[c.d.]

I'm not sure that disbelief necessarily indicates that he was not believed by the police and therefore they thought he was lying.

Consider the frustration they must have felt in questioning him:

Question: Why was the B.S man trying to pull the woman into the street?

Answer: I don't know.

Question: What did the B.S. man say to the woman?

Answer: I don't know.

Question: What did the woman say to the man?

Answer: I don't know.

It could be that their "disbelief" was based in large part on their frustration at not getting a clear story.

c.d.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Could be c.d. Or as Fiver has suggested, if the guy who had been arrested was Pipeman maybe he remembered some aspect of events slightly differently? Two people witnesses the same thing can often differ in their re-telling.

[Lewis C]

If Goldstein had passed before 12.50, he would either have seen BS man who has just assaulted Stride, or seen Stride just after she was assaulted.

The key witnesses are those who claimed to have seen someone pass the murder site BETWEEN the time of the alleged assault witnessed by Schwartz, to the time she was found murdered.

Goldstein to my knowledge is the only person seen by anyone in this time frame.

Goldstein places himself at the scene, which then validates Mortimer's claim.

Hi RD,

We don't know whether James Brown's sighting was before or after the alleged assault, so it's possible that he saw the couple after it.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

The Schwartz incident could have occurred before Fanny went onto her doorstep at around (perhaps the footsteps that he heard were Schwartz or BS man instead of PC Smith?) and if we accept the inexactness of times given then perhaps…

The Schwartz incident occurs at 12.44/12.45 (Fanny is indoors)
Fanny comes onto her doorstep at 12.46
Goldstein passes between 12.46 and 12.56
Fanny stays for around 10 minutes then goes back inside around 12.56
Fanny hears Louis pass at around 1.00

This scenario is not possible if you are following the report that states that Fanny went to her doorstep immediately on hearing the passing plod of a PC. Presumably, that is why you didn't suggest the above in the first place.

Which scenario are now planning on sticking to - the one in which Fanny locks-up at 12:46, or the one in which Fanny locks-up at 12:56?

[Fiver]

This scenario is not possible if you are following the report that states that Fanny went to her doorstep immediately on hearing the passing plod of a PC. Presumably, that is why you didn't suggest the above in the first place.

Which scenario are now planning on sticking to - the one in which Fanny locks-up at 12:46, or the one in which Fanny locks-up at 12:56?

He is following the newspaper account.

"A woman who lives two doors from the club has made an important statement. It appears that shortly before a quarter to one o'clock she heard the measured, heavy tramp of a policeman passing the house on his beat. Immediately afterwards she went to the street-door, with the intention of shooting the bolts, though she remained standing there ten minutes before she did so. During the ten minutes she saw no one enter or leave the neighbouring yard, and she feels sure that had any one done so she could not have overlooked the fact. The quiet and deserted character of the street appears even to have struck her at the time. Locking the door, she prepared to retire to bed, in the front room on the ground floor, and it so happened that in about four minutes' time she heard Diemschitz's pony cart pass the house, and remarked upon the circumstance to her husband."

[NotBlamedForNothing]

My point was a response to this point from you:

‘The outcome of these arrests could be placing pressure on Schwartz, which results in his story 'evolving'.’

How would Schwartz have been aware of what was going on with the police’s investigation and who was or wasn’t being arrested?

Because the Star was aware.

The problem with trusting the Star version is that we would have to assume incredible stupidity on the part of Schwartz in that, a) he would suddenly remember something as important as a knife at the scene of a confrontation involving a woman that had had her throat cut; something that he’d ‘forgotten’ to tell the police when interviewed, and b) that the police wouldn’t hear of this and haul him back in and that Schwartz wouldn’t be aware of this possibility.

Although we have no record of it I do wonder if the police questioned him again to clarify the point?

It would also be strange (to say the very least) that a man lying in order to claim that he’d seen the killer attack Stride (for whatever motive) would put the knife in the hand of a bystander and not the man that he was actually trying to implicate as the murderer. To me this makes no sense.

Robert Anderson: I have to state that the opinion arrived at in this Dept. upon the evidence of Schwartz at the inquest in Eliz. Stride’s case is that the name Lipski which he alleges was used by a man whom he saw assaulting the woman in Berner St. on the night of the murder, was not addressed to the supposed accomplice but to Schwartz himself.

Where did Anderson get the notion of "the supposed accomplice" from? Was it...

Schwartz cannot say whether the two men were together or known to each other.

Or

...a second man came out of the doorway of the public-house a few doors off, and shouting out some sort of warning to the man who was with the woman, rushed forward as if to attack the intruder.

Or was it, as you suggest, a result of the police questioning Schwartz again? Perhaps a later statement was what Anderson confused for inquest testimony. Whatever the case, we need to keep looking at the evidence we have, rather than just relying on our intuitions to determine what Schwartz would and would not have said, in a given context.

We will have to disagree on this point but I really can’t see any reason for favouring a newspaper report over a police interview.

This comment suggests you haven't really understood my point. As I've made it clear, I don't believe Schwartz, at least partially if not completely. Therefore, to claim that I favour one account over the other, is meaningless - I don't favour either. What I'm saying is that those who do believe Schwartz often dismiss the Star account, claiming that it sensationalises Schwartz, for the benefit of paper sales. This is lazy thinking. The press account makes no mention of a woman being thrown onto hard ground, nor the calling out of an ethnic slur. On the other hand, we have the knife, and the apparent association of the two men.

With Schwartz, I believe there is a crucial element to the puzzle that we are missing.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Lets not forget Schwartz identified Liz Strides body at the mortuary as the women he saw B.S trying to drag into the street and assaulted her.

So as some posters have suggested that the whole Schwartz incident was a lie need to take this into consideration .

Why bother to identify a women you made up a lie about?

Schwartz was taken to the mortuary. He did not go there of his own accord.

[FISHY1118]

Schwartz was taken to the mortuary. He did not go there of his own accord.

And when he identified Liz Strides body in front of the police he Lied according to you ? Yes ?