A Possible Reason Why Jack Didn't Mutilate Liz

[protohistorian]

Hello all,

I wish the contemporary police were more forthcoming on why they attributed Liz's death to Jack in the first place...because that may have prevented the slim-chance scenarios that people use today to do so.

Clearly...by statements that were given with times........whether you think they knew what time it was or not, the fact is they swore to their "guess"...there are a woman and a man alone outside an empty yard at 12:46. If Jack isnt Broadshouldered man....he aint here. theres no-one hiding in the yard at 12:40.,...theres no-one that sees Broadshouldered Man leave, and there is 14 minutes left before anyone will be on that same mark as they were.

Before anyone suggests he parachuted in....could we rationally factor the timings of the given witnesses, the cut time estimate by a professional, and the known part that is we have statements that Jack if not BSM, was not there.

Unless of course he is Liz herself, and the reason there is only one cut is because it was suicide.

Cheers all.

Didn't the coroner explicity rule out self infliction? So now Jack was Liz Stride. Damn, I was looking at the suspect all along. I did not even see that one coming......OUCH

[c.d.]

Hi Michael,

You say that no one saw the BS man leave. But we do know for a fact that he did leave otherwise Diemschutz would have seen him standing over Liz knife in hand. So if the BS man was able to leave without anyone seeing him why can't Jack arrive on the scene without anyone seeing him? The answer would appear to be that there was a period of time in which no one saw what took place in the yard. No departures, no arrivals.

Your time frame covers everyone, the BS man, Jack or anyone else who might have killed Liz. Now lets call this time frame X. Whoever killed her had to do so in this X time frame. Now no one saw the BS man kill Liz. No one saw him leave. So therefore we have no way of knowing when he did leave the scene after being seen by Schwartz. Now if after throwing Liz to the ground and chasing off Schwartz, he leaves the scene with a good cussing out and maybe a kick for good measure, how long does that take? Maybe 30 seconds? So this time frame in which the murder has to take place is now reduced by 30 seconds.

Now where was the BS man before being seen by Schwartz? We don't know do we? But he was able to make an appearance on the scene. So couldn't Jack make an appearance as well? Our time frame of X has been reduced by only 30 seconds at this point. If we give Jack three minutes to arrive and two minutes to chat up Liz, we have now reduced X by 5 minutes and 30 seconds. Since both the BS man and Jack would have needed time to actually kill Liz, we will give them the same amount of time to do so.

Both the BS man and Jack would have had to have killed Liz at some point in the X time frame. The BS man has a time advantage but how long? We simply don't know. If he left the scene within 30 seconds or a minute and we give Jack time to arrive and chat up Liz, Jack could have been her killer with only a few minutes of this X time frame being used up. Since the X time frame is based on guesses and estimates, it would seem Jack had plenty of time.

c.d.

[Ben]

Again, CD, you're seemingly stuck in "BS or Jack" mode.

If he left the scene within 30 seconds or a minute and we give Jack time to arrive and chat up Liz, Jack could have been her killer with only a few minutes of this X time frame being used up.

That would entail an implausible an unnecessary coincidence, irrespective of what was "possible" in the time frame. We simply don't need to posit the existence of another attacker if the evidence gives us a perfectly good one already, and just at the right time. The fact that it was possible for someone else to arrived very shortly afterwards and attack her after "attack #1" in the same location (what a hideously unlucky women that Liz was?!?) doesn't make it any more probable.

Best regards,
Ben

[c.d.]

Hi Michael,

And what if this first "attack" was nothing more than a club member saying get the hell away from here?

c.d.

[Roy Corduroy]

HI C.D., Michael et al,

Speaking of time, Gavin Bromley wrote an extensive essay on time and PC Smith's Beat. (click) He argues that Smith came along a little later ih his beat and his description of the man he saw is reliable.

Gavin says "There is one account there that does not sit well with the others at all, certainly for the timing given of the event. That is the statement of Israel Schwartz."

But Gavin does leave the door open that Schwartz did see the killer and I quote "This was a short window and also ten minutes after Schwartz said the events happened. This is not an issue in itself, as witnesses do sometimes get the time wrong. If it did happen at that time, then it is certain that he witnessed the beginning of the attack that led to her death as she was found dead within four to five minutes."

This is my opinion. Schwartz saw the killer in the first act of bold murder. Right there. Right at Dutfields Yard.

His story is a lock because he IDed the body of Liz Stride at mortuary as the woman he saw. He was not called to inquest simply because his account contained the name "Lipski" uttered. The officials, for reasons of public safety, wanted no part of that. They had plenty to establish her death as murder without him.

And Israel Schwartz, as recent research has shown, continued on with his life in St George's East, raising a family and becoming a storekeeper. He was an honest witness.

His time was off by about ten minutes.

Roy

[c.d.]

Hi Roy,

Well Bromley may be correct but Donald Swanson, who was a Chief Inspector at Scotland Yard at the time, and who had all the facts available to him, didn't see it that way. He believed that it was possible for the killer to be someone other than the BS man and expressed his opinion in an official report.

So in a Bromley/Swanson shootout, I prefer to go with Swanson.

c.d.

[Roy Corduroy]

PS:

My opinion of Schwartz's role as witness in the Stride murder has nothing to do with "Anderson's witness."

I've got no dog in that hunt.

Roy

[Roy Corduroy]

Donald Swanson, who was a Chief Inspector at Scotland Yard at the time, and who had all the facts available to him, didn't see it that way. He believed that it was possible for the killer to be someone other than the BS man and expressed his opinion in an official report.

Hi c.d.

You are correct. Swanson left the door open for another bad actor on the scene. My opinion is just one bad guy, with the witness timing a little off.

Roy

[perrymason]

HI C.D., Michael et al,

Speaking of time, Gavin Bromley wrote an extensive essay on time and PC Smith's Beat. (click) He argues that Smith came along a little later ih his beat and his description of the man he saw is reliable.

Gavin says "There is one account there that does not sit well with the others at all, certainly for the timing given of the event. That is the statement of Israel Schwartz."

But Gavin does leave the door open that Schwartz did see the killer and I quote "This was a short window and also ten minutes after Schwartz said the events happened. This is not an issue in itself, as witnesses do sometimes get the time wrong. If it did happen at that time, then it is certain that he witnessed the beginning of the attack that led to her death as she was found dead within four to five minutes."

This is my opinion. Schwartz saw the killer in the first act of bold murder. Right there. Right at Dutfields Yard.

His story is a lock because he IDed the body of Liz Stride at mortuary as the woman he saw. He was not called to inquest simply because his account contained the name "Lipski" uttered. The officials, for reasons of public safety, wanted no part of that. They had plenty to establish her death as murder without him.

And Israel Schwartz, as recent research has shown, continued on with his life in St George's East, raising a family and becoming a storekeeper. He was an honest witness.

His time was off by about ten minutes.

Roy

Im not looking to one up you Roy, but I can guarantee that people had read me post close to that very thought here over the past three years. It is implausible to accept he was checking to see if his wife finished moving at 12:45...he is outside a Jewish Working Mens Club after a meeting and he is a Working Jewish Man, and the front door was already locked so if he left at that time he would have to leave via the side door and yard. He steps into the yard, sees the scuffle with Liz by a bully, maybe sees a man smoking a pipe by the gates, he scurries on past not wanting to be involved, and as he and this other chap split Liz is being fatally assaulted.

Schwartz cannot provide his story in his own words to Police due to his inability to speak any English, and his translator may have been Wess, who may have translated for Goldstein also. I think Goldstein saw what happened by the way....he had a case full of empty cigarette cartons and cigarette makers lived in the cottages, and some stated they were awake at the time. I believe he decided against entering the yard when he saw a body or a man over one...

The Club was known as an anarchist club, with low men hanging about until past one in the yard smoking and talking. Yet the witnesses say no-one at all was in the yard on that night.

I believe the attack and murder was committed by a drunk and surly attendee of that nights meeting, and the club members constructed an outside the gate scenario during the translations that puts the likely killer coming from off the property...cause he couldnt have come from the club street door...its locked.

The Club knew if police could prove that murderers attended meetings there, the radical press "Arbeter Fraint" and the Club are no more.

Consider this........of all the Inquest details there cannot be any more strange a one than the fact that William Wess is the first person to speak at Liz's Inquest. We dont know if he had ever seen or heard of a Liz Stride...and we also know he said that he had left long before she is killed.

So this is the most relevant opening statement....he speaks before Diemshutz? Or Kidney?

The truth of Dutfields Yard lies within a woven tale around it.....its defensive SPIN by the club, little more.

Cheers Roy

[caz]

Here I am, late to the party as usual.

It's hardly pointless to examine a case on its own merits, Caz - which is all the thought experiment invites us to do.

The technique needn't be confined to thought experiments either. I'm reminded of the fact that astronomers have recently managed to image extra-solar planets, which would otherwise have been undetectable owing to the glare of their parent star. The way the astronomers achieve this is by blotting out the star, so that the planets have a chance of being seen. We know that the star exists, but (in effect) "pretending" that it isn't there is essential in order to make possible the objective analysis of bodies in its periphery.

If ever there were a metaphor of how the "Double Event" should be looked upon, that's it. Put aside "Saucy Jacky", 120 years of Ripper lore, and blot out the glare of the Eddowes murder, and what are we left with?

Yeah, yeah, yeah Sam. Very good. But it wouldn't actually prove anything if what you appeared to be left with was (A) a simple one-off murder in Berner, while what you could equally have been left with (regardless of what Katy did next) was (B) a murder by a man who was hell-bent on attacking a woman - any woman - that night, with a sharp knife he was carrying for the purpose, and would not have said no to inflicting some more damage had he considered the conditions favourable. In both (A) and (B) the killer could of course have called it a night after Liz and crept off to bed with a mug of cocoa and a penny dreadful.

So in order to have a stab at guessing which was more likely to be the case, (A) or (B), you might then be advised to start looking at any other knife attacks that happened around the same time and place, in case there might be some evidence, for example, of (C) a murder by a man with his blood up, taking advantage of conditions that allowed him to inflict considerably more damage on a woman than had been the case with (A) or (B) just an hour earlier and a short walk away.

And lo and behold, you would be able to depend on Kate driving herself magnificently into view - if not in the form of a fire engine ringing her own bell.

I'm not sure how anyone could safely ignore her after that, or insist that with or without her (A) is still the far more likely scenario. Not only that, but you know as well as I do that the man who cut Kate’s throat had done it before. Indeed it had become quite a habit of his by the time your one-off killer tried his hand. Lucky for him, if Liz knew who he was, that the single slash he went for was enough to silence her for good. I thought it was a bit touch and go.

Love,

Caz
X

[rtomko]

If Jack killed Liz, why didn't he mutilate her? The most common explanation seems to be that he might have been interrupted. The longer that Jack was alone with her in the yard, the weaker that argument becomes. We naturally assume that Jack began his mutilations immediately after killing his victim. But what if Jack had some sort of ritual that he followed before beginning to cut? Something that was extremely important to him and something from which he would not deviate. It could have been so compulsive that had he been interrupted in mid ritual, he could no longer go forward with the act.

What do you think?

c.d.

The two strongest arguements are that (1) JTR was interrupted and had to get away quickly or (2) it wasn't JTR that killed Liz.

[caz]

(3) This one won't go willingly to a quieter location like the others, away from pesky witnesses. So he quickly cuts her throat at the point of encounter, in case she's thinking of reporting him as suspicious, and goes off in search of greener pastures.

Anything fatally flawed there?

Love,

Caz
X

[The Good Michael]

Caz,

3 is the best choice.

Mike

[Sam Flynn]

(3) This one won't go willingly to a quieter location like the others, away from pesky witnesses. So he quickly cuts her throat at the point of encounter, in case she's thinking of reporting him as suspicious, and goes off in search of greener pastures.

Ooh... now that I like, Caz. That would, at least, tie in neatly with the struggle at the gates.

That said, it needn't necessarily have been solely Jack's preserve to be worried of being reported for roughing up a prostitute, given the climate of suspicion that persisted in the East End at the time.

[Ben]

I've suggested in the past that Stride's non-compliance might account for some of the "differences" in this particular murder, so (3) would get my vote too.