Lawende was silenced

[Fisherman]

Missed this one.

There's no such thing as an "official definition" of a phrase. But to say that someone was "found with a dead body" implies (a) that they were within touching distance of that body and (b) that there was something suspicious about this which potentially implicates them in the death.

These are three clips from a number of British articles about Shehada Issa, who killed hos own son:

Shehada was arrested last Tuesday when he was found with the body of his 29-year-old son Amir Issa, who had been shot twice with a shotgun. The body of*Rabihah Issa, his wife and Amir’s mother, was found within the house, and police reported that the condition of the body suggested she had been dead “for a while.”

Police found the son's body in the backyard, according to*NBC affiliate KNBC.

Issa was arrested after Los Angeles Police discovered Amir’s body outside their house in the North Hills area.
The body of Issa’s*wife was also found stabbed to death in the bathroom of the house.


Shehada Issa called the police himself and awaited them in his home. His son lived in a small house on the same grounds as the main house. The son was found by the police when they searched the grounds, but as you will note, the initial article tells us that Shehada Issa was FOUND WITH THE BODY of his dead son.

In this case, the father was found in his house and the son was found lying on the backyard lawn. Nevertheless, the British paper tells us that the father was found with the body of his dead son.

The idea that writing "found with the body" must comprise a distance allowing for being within touch is your very own invention, as you can see. Others - the real world - make another interpretation. Being "found with the body" simply means that you are on the same premises as the body, nothing else.

Imagine a case where an armed man brings his wife along to an empty 15x15 yard parking lot, and is followed there by the police who hear a gunshot before coming upon the scene, David.

If the police find the man standing in that parking lot with his wife lying shot on it, then no matter where upon the lot the two parts are found, respectively, the police will be quite entitled to write in their report that they found the man with the body of his dead wife.

If you want to argue with that, you are simply bonkers. So donīt do it.

[Fisherman]

David Orsam: But it goes further than this. You are playing a game where on the one hand you want to suggest I am wrong about the 40 or 50 years of electoral registers, telling me I don't know what the 100+ imprints comprise of, while on the other hand trying to claim that there would be nothing wrong with 40 or 50 years of electoral registers being included in the total.

I am not suggesting that you are wrong. I am saying that as you donīt know what the entries look like, you may well be wrong.

Given that the contents of these 100+ imprints must be within your personal knowledge, what you are doing in these posts borders on deception by any definition of the word.

No, it does not border on deception in any way at all. To deceive, I would need to state someting that was not true, and I am not doing that in any shape or form. There are 100+ entries with the carmans name on them, that is a fact. It is also a fact that the name is Lechmere in each case.

How VERY deceptive!

[Fisherman]

Well either there are imprints/signatures are there are not.

I've been on the electoral register for over 30 years and to the best of my recollection I've never signed a thing!

Neither did Lechmere - the signatures are not always in his own hand, something I have pointed out numerous times before. Sonīme are written by himself, but in other cases, his name has been taken down by somebody who has asked him "And your name is...?"

The result is the same, regardless if he signs himself or if he is asked to state his name: Lechmere.

In the one case, he asks himself "Letīs see now, what is my name?" and ends up with Lechmere.

In the other, he does not have to think about it, he just writes Lechmere.

Have you been deceived again now, David, or have you simply not read my posts on the errand over the years?

[Fisherman]

My answer is that Robert would have seen the box of jewellery but he can't be said to have found it because he ignored it. He's not the finder, in other words. The person who sees it and then takes possession of it is the finder.

Now, Fisherman, having answered your question to Robert perhaps you could respond to the challenge I set for Abby yesterday.

I am walking along the street (alone) on the pavement and I pass by a gun in the middle of the road at which point someone else turns into the street and sees both me and the gun.

Would it be fair, accurate and reasonable to say that I was found with a gun?

Ah, the gun question! The one I am SOOOO scared of and runnig DESPERATELY from.

Changing the angles: You are suspected of a gunfire murder by the police. They arrive at your house, and they walk into your lounge. On a small table, fifteen feeet from where you stand, there lies a gun. It is ballistically examined and proven to be the murder weapon.

Do you for a second believe that no paper would ever write "David Orsam was found with the gun"?

In your example, you are supposedly an innocent man passing by a gun lying in the street, and so it would not be fair to say that you were found with a gun. In that context, you would need to have the gun on your person to justify the expression.

But that is to a great deal because we are speaking about an object an not about people. The game changes when we do.

Letīs say that you are searched for, for some not nefarious reason. Itīs a rainy day, and you find a bus shelter where there is an asian man standing. The ones who look for you find you there, and they afterwards tell their friends "we found him in a bus shelter with a chinese".

Would that be impossible to say? Even if you were not within touching distance? I think not.

By the way, if there was a vase of flowers on the floor of the bus shelter, totally not your doing, they would also be allowed to say "We found him in a bus shelter with a vase of flowers".

And - chillingly - if we swop the vase for a gun, guess what happens...?

So you see, far from running, I have all the answers. And Iīve got arthrosis in my knees so I avoid running anyway.

[Fisherman]

I rather doubt it but I'm sure Fisherman will know.

He would have rented. He did not have the means to buy by any stretch. And he moved frequently:

1890 22 Doveton Street
1894 22 Doveton Street
1896 46 Sceptre Street, Mile End
1898 46 Sceptre Street
1900 24 Doveton Street
1901 24 Doveton Street
1903 24 Carlton Road, Mile End
1904 24 Carlton Road
1905 24 Carlton Road
1906 24 Carlton Road
1907 24 Carlton Road
1908 24 Carlton Road
1912 24 Carlton Road
1914 24 Carlton Road
1915 24 Carlton Road
1918 2 Rounton Road, Poplar
1919 2 Rounton Road
1920 2 Rounton Road
1921 2 Rounton Road

[Fisherman]

Look Fish, I have just spent a lot of time carefully pasting your answers into the mail box, putting them in italics and then adding my responses, only to hit a wrong button and lose the lot. I can't be bothered with this.

My sympathies. Been there myself, itīs a bitch. Iīll note your objections and take them to the protocol, if you forgive me for not responding...

[Fisherman]

And they go even further in the documentary with him crouching over the body when Paul arrives in the scene. And then disregard that Paul tried to avoid Cross. Yet to hear a logical explanation as to why Cross didn't let him just walk on by if he was trying to hide something.

Oh that's right the killer was a psychopath, so Cross must be a psychopath even though there isn't one thing in the rest of his life to support such a claim.

Not sure why when someone gets a suspect worth looking at they then need to over egg the pudding with claims like those, but seems to be the norm in the world of Ripperology.

They...?

[Fisherman]

Yes, the voiceover in the documentary states:

"A man called Robert Paul claimed that he had found the body before the police and that when he did there was another man standing over it."

As you say, the accompanying graphic shows Cross actually crouching over the body.

Interestingly, the voiceover also states:

"Christer tried to find out more about the elusive Charles Cross but the mystery only deepened. He’d given his address to the inquest as 22 Doveton Street in Whitechapel. However the official records show no-one called Cross living at that address."

Someone needs to have a word with them because that must be another thing they got wrong!!!

The coroner had an address list. On that address list was the Doveton Street address. Therefore, the inquest had been given the address.

It is another thing that Lechmere did not say it out aloud during the proceedings.

Anything else I can straighten out for you?

Anyway, I and Edward did not shape the documentary, and there are things in it that we would have done differently.

But then you would not get the opportunity to get things wrong, would you?

[Fisherman]

If there is something I have run from today, you are going to have to point it out to me, David, and I will keep running until tomorrow.

Incidentally, since you wrote that I am a bit pathetic (or something to that effect), spending my time out here, I kind of wondered what that makes you, who actually answer my every post...?

Oh well, I guess that can wait until tomorrow too?

[Columbo]

He would have rented. He did not have the means to buy by any stretch. And he moved frequently:

1890 22 Doveton Street
1894 22 Doveton Street
1896 46 Sceptre Street, Mile End
1898 46 Sceptre Street
1900 24 Doveton Street
1901 24 Doveton Street
1903 24 Carlton Road, Mile End
1904 24 Carlton Road
1905 24 Carlton Road
1906 24 Carlton Road
1907 24 Carlton Road
1908 24 Carlton Road
1912 24 Carlton Road
1914 24 Carlton Road
1915 24 Carlton Road
1918 2 Rounton Road, Poplar
1919 2 Rounton Road
1920 2 Rounton Road
1921 2 Rounton Road

Thanks Fisherman.

He did move around quite a bit. did you or Edward find any suspicious activity around these addresses?

Columbo

[Columbo]

The coroner had an address list. On that address list was the Doveton Street address. Therefore, the inquest had been given the address.

It is another thing that Lechmere did not say it out aloud during the proceedings.

Anything else I can straighten out for you?

Anyway, I and Edward did not shape the documentary, and there are things in it that we would have done differently.

But then you would not get the opportunity to get things wrong, would you?

Sometimes people don't think about what goes into making a documentary. The producers want a little controversy to make it interesting. Many JTR documentaries get so many of the facts wrong or change them to shape the story.

Columbo

[Fisherman]

Sometimes people don't think about what goes into making a documentary. The producers want a little controversy to make it interesting. Many JTR documentaries get so many of the facts wrong or change them to shape the story.

Columbo

True enough, Columbo. In our case - or should I say in Blink Filmsī case - a very compelling and accurate documentary was the outcome, and that owed to no small part to the combination of how the film team hade made theor homework extensively, and how the producer, David McNab, was a longstanding Ripper student himself.
The crew started out in a very neutral way, but as we moved along it became apparent that they were very much taken with Lechmereīs candidacy. All in all, it was a great experience shooting the documentary, and I still speak to a couple of the involved people every now and then.
David McNab described it as one of the Heureka moments of his life when he heard the full Lechmere story. Having spent decades researching the case, he had arrived at the conclusion that it would never be solved. Lechmere changed all that for him, and he regards the case as cleared up today.

[Columbo]

True enough, Columbo. In our case - or should I say in Blink Filmsī case - a very compelling and accurate documentary was the outcome, and that owed to no small part to the combination of how the film team hade made theor homework extensively, and how the producer, David McNab, was a longstanding Ripper student himself.
The crew started out in a very neutral way, but as we moved along it became apparent that they were very much taken with Lechmereīs candidacy. All in all, it was a great experience shooting the documentary, and I still speak to a couple of the involved people every now and then.
David McNab described it as one of the Heureka moments of his life when he heard the full Lechmere story. Having spent decades researching the case, he had arrived at the conclusion that it would never be solved. Lechmere changed all that for him, and he regards the case as cleared up today.

The documentary is one of the few JTR ones my wife actually sat through. She has no interest in crime or JTR, but once she started watching she was fascinated. So from a complete newbie's point of view Lechmere became a leading candidate.
I'll get in trouble for that but sometimes you need fresh eyes to see something new and my wife pointed out a few interesting things we've discussed here, even though she's never read or seen a thing about JTR.

Columbo

[David Orsam]

If you want to argue with that, you are simply bonkers. So donīt do it.

Don't be stupid!

As Robert has already mentioned, context is everything. What I have been saying relates to being in the open, such as in a street, because that is where Lechmere and the body were.

If we are talking about some form of confined space, i.e. a house or room, (including house and garden because it's all one area) then, yes, one doesn't need to be in touching distance because one is found in a situation where one has exclusive access to the body. That's not what we are talking about in the case of a body being discovered in the open, in a street. In that case, the person simply has to be within touching distance for the sentence to make sense otherwise it's meaningless.

Just to give you an example of what I mean. If the body of Nichols had been lying in Bucks Row at the corner of Brady Street, and Lechmere had been standing in Bucks Row at the corner of Bakers Row, some hundreds of yards away, would it have been fair to say that Lechmere was found with the body?

I assume your answer is no, therefore there must be some kind of distance cut off where it is fair to say that a person is found "with" someone. In the context of an open street it has to be touching distance.

[David Orsam]

I am not suggesting that you are wrong. I am saying that as you donīt know what the entries look like, you may well be wrong.

I'm sorry Fisherman but that strikes me as a disingenuous or even deceptive statement on your part. As you know what the 100+ "entries" comprise of, then, if I am right, it is nothing short of mendacious for you to say that I "may well be wrong" in the full knowledge that I am not wrong.