Disregarded evidence

[DVV]

Plus the train timing does STILL does not tally with the oozing blood at 3.45-3.50...
The best,
Fisherman

Fish, we don't know precisely when she heard the train (could have been at 3.35, 3.32, 3.25, whatever...), but more importantly, we don't know how many minutes have passed by before she heard the two voices.

Mrs Green, it's true, lived closer to the spot and heard nothing.

But then again, did Mrs Green, that world-famous light sleeper, hear the train ?

Spratling (3 Sept) said Mrs Green "was up until 4.30", but his assertion is flatly contradicted by Mrs Green's own testimony (17 Sept) : "Witness did not remember waking up until she heard a knock at the front door about 4 o'clock in the morning."

She was therefore sleeping and did not hear the train. No wonder she did not hear the voices either.

[Debra A]

Monty
That's interesting about cutbush - what is the source?

Not the Cutbush or any of his relations, as far as I'm aware.

[Phil H]

Could well be, Phil. But she IS adamant that the sounds and the train were heard simultaneously. Still, she could have been drowsy and gotten it wrong. In which case much could be muddled!

Exactly. She may well have been adamant about what she believed had happened. That does not mean she remembered correctly. She may not have realised she dozed off in between - but I believe that can explain practically any differences.

Phil H

[Monty]

Cutbush

Edward,

Yes, Debs is correct. I was being a very naughty boy....its not THE Cutbush.

Albert Cutbush, in the 1881 or 71 census. Lodger to an elderly chap at No7 Bucks Row.

Sorry, I couldnt resist.

Monty

[Lechmere]

Oh dear - this serious thread was almost derailed by an attempted joke

[curious]

Hi Tom!

A luggage train went by as Lilley heard the sounds. That luggage train went by at 3.30.
At 3.45-3.50 somewhere, PC Neil found Nicholsībody. At that stage, the blood was still oozing from the neck wound.
A woman that has all of the neck vessels severed and - to boot - has her stomach ripper open, will bleed out in the fewest of minutes. I find it hard in the extreme to believe that Nichols would still have bled a full fifteen to twenty minutes after she was cut. Blood oozing three or four minutes after the cut, would however be forensically correct - and in total line with Nichols being cut by Lechmere.

All the best,
Fisherman

Hi, Fisherman,
I, too, have attempted to research this, but the amount of time I found was anywhere from 2 to 4 minutes for the heart to stop beating, then 3 to 15 minutes for the blood to clot.

doing the math, at the short end, you would have 5 minutes and at the long end you would have 19 minutes for death to occur and for the oozing to stop.

curious

[Monty]

Oh dear - this serious thread was almost derailed by an attempted joke

Serious thread?

Most humorous.

Monty

[Debra A]

Edward,

Yes, Debs is correct. I was being a very naughty boy....its not THE Cutbush.

Albert Cutbush, in the 1881 or 71 census. Lodger to an elderly chap at No7 Bucks Row.

Sorry, I couldnt resist.

Monty

oops, sorry, Neil.
Blame David Bullock for stretching one too many Cutbush related details...i couldn't stick another one!

[Lechmere]

The following news story (already referred to by Jon Guy) shows that the coffee stall suspect seen by John Morgan was swiftly discounted. Indeed on the same evening that The Echo reported the story, The Star gave an update that shot The Echo story (which was relied upon in the new Cutbush book) down in flames!

The Star, 1 SEPTEMBER, 1888.

While the medical examination was in progress, an officer arrived from the Bethnal-green Station with two men, who were regarded as possibly able to throw some light on the case. The first was a man who keeps the coffee-stall at the corner of Whitechapel-road and Cambridge-road. He said that at three o'clock yesterday morning a woman answering the description of the deceased came to his stall in company with a man five feet three or four inches high, dressed in a dark coat and black Derby hat, apparently about thirty-five years old. He had a black moustache and whiskers, and was fidgety and uneasy. He refused to have anything to eat, but paid for the woman's coffee. He grumbled and kept telling her to hurry, as he wished to get home. The other man was a Mr. Scorer, an assistant salesman in the Smithfield Market. He had been attracted by the report in The Star that the dead woman's name might be Scorer, and said that his wife, from whom he separated 11 years ago, had been an inmate of Lambeth Workhouse. He said she had a friend named Polly Nicholls, and that he knew the latter by sight. He did not know the colour of his wife's eyes, but said she had two scars on her body - one on the right thigh and the other on the right forearm.
Both men were allowed to view the remains, but nothing came of it.
The coffee-stall keeper said he did not think it was the same woman, but was not sure. The woman, if it was the same, had grown thinner in the face. Scorer said that deceased was neither his wife nor her friend Nicholls, so far as he could remember.

One strange thing is that Mr Scorer, who supposedly knew Polly Nichols, did not identify the body. Or was it someone else called Polly Nichols?
Or did Scorer and Morgan just want to get a voyeuristic close up of the corpse?

[Tom_Wescott]

The Lilley incident

Speaking as someone interested in a suspect who, for a fact, had criminal accomplices, I've in the past looked at the Lilley evidence to consider if it constituted evidence of two killers. Such a thing would clearly support my thesis. But what I came away with was that Lilley was an auditory witness to three events - a train, choking noises, and two people whispering...in that order. The train is clearly an unrelated event, whereas the choking and whispering were linked (in her mind) as related, and I don't think anyone of us would disagree with that, in so far as the choking sounds would have been Nichols, and the whispering would have been about her. The only reason that the train event comes in to play is that she would have been asked what time she heard the other events, and she didn't know the time, but could recall that she had heard a train go by. But the train came at least 15 minutes prior to the discovery of her fresh murder, the implications of which must be one of the following:

1) Lilley was mistaken about the time lapse between the train and the choking/whispering.
2) The source(s) for the time the train actually ran (versus was scheduled to run) is incorrect.
3) Cross and Paul were in on the murder together and waiting 15 minutes from the time they rendered Nichols unconscious to the time they mutilated her.
4) The medical evidence is incorrect about the time of death and Nichols had been killed 15-20 minutes prior to her discovery.
4b) A further implication, arising from 4, would be that two people were involved in the murder of Nichols at 3:30, and these people were not Cross and Paul.

Based on this, it seemed to me that option 1 was far and away the most likely conclusion. I'm also at a loss as to what Lechmere and Fisherman are going for with their take on Lilley, since both believe that Cross was a lone killer.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Fisherman]

Monty:

"The number ran on one side.

Courtesy of Robert Clack."

Thanks, Monty - AND Robert!

"Incidently, Cutbush lived at No7 prior to the Lilleys."

Thomas Haynes C? Wow! Talk of a small world...? When did he move out of there?

Okay, okay - just saw the Albert Cutbush bit. Good one, Monty!

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Jon Guy:

"Unfortunately, Christer, as you know, we do not know how the killer subdued his victim. He may have punched her in the stomach and face to stun her on her feet before pulling her a few yards to the gates and away from the house windows. He could have been walking with his arm around her neck (remember how Marshall`s man was walking with Stride and his arm around her neck) and on approaching the gates tightened his grip."

This is all very true, Jon. Itīs just that I think - and it is no more than thinking, of course, but anyways ... - that if the couple was walking from East to West, then why would he attack her right outside a place where he would know that people lived and quite possibly could hear him? He would have had the fewest of yards to walk to get to the stable doors, and, beyond that, the school building, where no people would be in place and some sort of secure surroundings were on offer. Why first take the risk of waking people up in Lilleys house (AND here window was open, right? Worst possible choice, therefore), only to thereafter drag Nichols along a few yards and set about cutting her?

Does not mean that it could not have happened like this, but it is an awkward scenario in many ways. And if the walked from West to East ... No, letīs not even go there!

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

David:

"Fish, we don't know precisely when she heard the train (could have been at 3.35, 3.32, 3.25, whatever...), but more importantly, we don't know how many minutes have passed by before she heard the two voices."

I believe it has been said that the train was on schedule. But if Lilley was only semi-awake and mixed things and times up, then yes, she may have heard the train, dozed off for some minutes, woke up, heard the killing and Lechmere/Paul. Itīs a very wooly scenario, though.

" then again, did Mrs Green, that world-famous light sleeper, hear the train ?"

Was she asked about it? It would not have been something out of the ordinary, and therefore she would perhaps not have offered it a thought even if she DID hear it.

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Curious:

"I, too, have attempted to research this, but the amount of time I found was anywhere from 2 to 4 minutes for the heart to stop beating, then 3 to 15 minutes for the blood to clot. Doing the math, at the short end, you would have 5 minutes and at the long end you would have 19 minutes for death to occur and for the oozing to stop."

I donīt think doctors do their math like this, however. From what I gather, an extremely severe damage such as having ALL your vessels in the neck severed will - in combination with a victim lying down - ensure that the body is bled out in a matter of very few minutes.

In fact, there are records that tell us that a heart can beat much longer than 4 minutes even if your spine is broken, as per hanging - but a beating heart would not slow the bleeding process - it would speed it up. And with the heart still beating and the kind of damage Nichols suffered, a minute, two at the most, would suffice to empty the body of itīs blood.

Thatīs what I have been able to secure by reading up as best as I could, but Iīm sure that there are medically skilled people out on these threads, so it would be interesting if they could chime in. Iīm sure there will be variations inbetween the bids, but I personally find 19 minutes a very hard figure to believe in.

If we, for comparison, look at Stride, the we have her being cut in the period between 0.45-1.00, and we have Johnston arriving at the scene at 1.12-1.13. That means that she was cut 12-27 minutes before he saw her, and when he did, all the blood had run away and was in a clotted state. And this from a much, much smaller damage, with just the one carotid artery being only partially severed. The amount of opened-up vessels in her neck would not be half as many as the case was for Nichols, and Stride had not had any damage to her stomach to bleed through, whereas there was extensive such damage done to Nichols.

But letīs listen to the ones who know this business, if somebody is willing to take a shot at it.

The best,
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Tom:

"what I came away with was that Lilley was an auditory witness to three events - a train, choking noises, and two people whispering...in that order. The train is clearly an unrelated event, whereas the choking and whispering were linked (in her mind) as related"

But thatīs not how Lilley paints it out. She says "It was quite dark at the time, but a luggage train went by as I heard the sounds." and that links not the moans and the whispers but instead the train and the moans. Of course, if Lilley is right on this, then what she heard was NOT the murder.

She goes on to say that there were also whispers, but she does not say that they were at the same time or following very closely to the moans.

All in all, if we are to allow for her having heard the murder, then she must have gotten the connection to the train wrong - and this may have been so if she was hovering inbetween awakeness and sleep, getting it muddled up as she tried to make sense of things and recall what she had heard.

"I'm also at a loss as to what Lechmere and Fisherman are going for with their take on Lilley, since both believe that Cross was a lone killer."

Exactly what do you mean here, Tom? My take is that Lilley either muddled the events or got it spot on - in which case she heard something else than the murder, possibly a sexual transaction between other people altogether. How does this preclude Lechmere being the single murderer?

Unless you mean that the sound effects give away TWO murderers, working in tandem? The whispers being close in time to the moans, an so on? If so, Iīd say that if Lechmere killed and cut Nichols, only to be disturbed by Paul, then there would have been a matter of seconds only inbeweeen the moans produced by Nichols (if it WAS her moaning) and the whispers produced by Lechmere and Paul. Llewellyn was from the outset of the meaning that the abdominal wounds were inflicted first, and that opens for a possible scenario where Lechmere subdues Nichols, partially strangling her, gets her on the ground, lifts her skirt, chops and cuts away at her abdomen, she gives a painful moan or two, Lechmere notices Paul coming, considers running for it, realizes that Nichols is not dead, decides to ensure that she IS by cutting her neck with two almighty cuts, Paul is meanwhile drawing much closer, Lechmere stashes the knife and gets on his feet, thinking "Bloody hell, how much has this guy seen or heard?", steps out into the street, still very tense and strung like a fiddle, scares Paul who tries to round him ...

That would tally with what Lilley says, I guess. The moans and then, thereafter the whispers, voices she canīt quite make out, since they are some way away.

But, as ever - the train does not fit into it!

The best,
Fisherman